“No, it isn’t about sex. It’s about character, lying, arrogance and abuse of power.
It’s about dodging the draft. When it came up in the campaign, you concocted a story nobody believed, but we excused you and looked away. (http://www.awolbush.com/)
[...]
It’s about illegal political contributions. It’s about soliciting contributions and selling influence “ – Eric Jowers
“A CULTURE OF LYING (PART 1): A front-page report in Sunday’s Post helps reveal a culture of lying. Headline: GOP Eyes Tax Cuts as Annual Events. “Congress will soon pass the third tax reduction in as many years for President Bush,” the authors say. “Yet the impressive trio of reductions is but a small step toward the administration’s goal: nonstop tax cuts.” Dana Milbank and Dan Balz then dished out their nugget:
MILBANK AND BALZ: White House officials have told
allies they will attempt a new tax cut every year Bush remains in office, and
there is already talk of another round.
A new tax cut every year! Milbank and Balz named some sources:
MILBANK AND BALZ: Paul Weyrich, a conservative with
ties to Bush, said he was told at a White House meeting that “we intend to try
to offer a new tax cut every year”—a view top Bush aides have expressed to a
number of business lobbyists. Grover Norquist, an anti-tax advocate who works
closely with Bush aides, predicts: “You’ll have a tax cut each year. I state it
that way in all of the (White House) meetings, and I never get an argument.”
According to Milbank and Balz, White House spokesman Dan
Bartlett didn’t exactly confirm these claims. But unless he was taken out of
context, he didn’t exactly deny them either. “Steps in 2001 and beyond have
been in the right direction,”
Will more tax cuts be proposed every year? According to
Milbank and Balz, Weyrich, Norquist, and “business lobbyists” have been told
just that. And you’d surely be a fool to doubt it; Paul Krugman’s column in
last Friday’s New York Times described the mammoth cut in revenues implied by
certain versions of the current tax package. But there’s one major problem with
all these tax plans—they fly in the face of what the public was told by
Candidate Bush back in Campaign 2000. Even when he debated Gore, Bush was
surrounded by a culture of lying. But the proposals he’s made in the past few
years contradict what he said when he applied for his job. The Post story
highlights the culture of deceit, which now drives budget policy inside
What did Bush say in Campaign 2000? As of September 2000, budget authorities were projecting a $4.6 trillion federal surplus over ten years. And here’s what Bush told fifty million viewers at the start of Bush-Gore Debate I:
BUSH (
Bush’s math was quite fuzzy in this presentation [...]. But during his more lucid moments, Bush made that highlighted pledge quite clear. Of the $4.6 trillion projected surplus, $2.4 trillion was in “payroll taxes”—payments made to Social Security. Like everyone else in the 2000 race, Bush pledged that he wouldn’t spend that money. His representation was clear throughout. Bush had counted every penny—and when it came to federal tax cuts, $1.3 trillion was all we could afford. Again, everyone said this at the time, press and politicians alike. Everyone said that, with the baby boomers’ retirement approaching, we had to start using those S[ocial ]S[ecurity] surplus[es] to pay down the national debt.
Three years later, Bush’s continuing tax cut plans fly in the face of what he pledged as a candidate. Now we hear that the cuts will continue. [...]
HE MUST THINK HE INVENTED THE CALCULATOR: Candidate Bush laid it right on the line: $1.3 trillion was all we could afford. Anything else and we’d have to spend the S[ocial ]S[ecurity] surplus—and he swore that he wouldn’t do that. But Bush got his $1.3 trillion in 2001, and we’re now spending vast amounts of that S[ocial ]S[ecurity] surplus. Result? Weirdly, Bush wants to tax-cut $726 billion more, and “business leaders” are being told that the tax cuts will only continue. Meanwhile, how much is the new proposed cut really worth? Needless to say, our culture of lying obscures all such matters. But Krugman mentioned a figure last Friday. “The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the true cost of the House bill, without the sunset scam, would be $1.1 trillion over the next decade,” he wrote. If you want to know more about “sunset clauses,” read his entire column. Eventually, it will be posted here.
Of course, that is the House, not the White House, proposal. But has anyone heard a word from Bush about how these proposed tax cuts have gone way too far? By the way, if you read the Krugman column, you’ll remember how Bush dealt with similar “sunset clauses” when the 200l tax cut was passed:
KRUGMAN: Needless to say, the [2001] bill was silly by
design. The administration didn’t intend to compromise: it fully expected to
get the sunset clause repealed in a future Congress. And President Bush was
soon out there ridiculing the way the tax cut was programmed to expire,
implying that the expiration date was imposed by scheming liberals, when in
fact it was a trick perpetrated by his own Congressional allies.
President Bush
would behave that way? Oh yes! A culture of lying surrounds the great man.
Bought-and-sold journalists know not to notice—but you can read more in THE
HOWLER all week.
A CULTURE OF LYING (PART 2): During Campaign 2000, everyone said they agreed on the basics. The baby-boomers would soon be retiring. Therefore, Social Security surpluses had to be used for paying down federal debt. (This would strengthen Social Security in the coming decades.) Here, for example, was Candidate Bush at the first Bush-Gore debate:
BUSH (
What a thoughtful man! More specifically, Bush pledged that the entire projected Social Security surplus ($2.4 trillion in the coming ten years) would be used for Social Security alone. And because all that money had to go to S[ocial ]S[ecurity], we could only cut taxes by $1.3 trillion. Bush said this at every stop. That was what this dissembling man said when he was trying to win over voters.
But that was then, and this is empire, as we learned in Sunday’s Post. Bush got his $1.3 trillion tax cut in 2001; a second small tax cut in 2002; and now he’s seeking $726 billion more. And not only that—he plans to cut taxes every year after this, according to Milbank and Balz! So how in the world do all these tax cuts fit what Candidate Bush told the public? It’s very hard to figure that out. But inside the press corps, cowering pundits all know that they must never ask.
It’s hard to know just how to explain the change in Bush’s approach. After all, we’re now spending large amounts of those Social Security surpluses—money Bush said he never would touch. Despite that, even more tax cuts are being proposed—and no one dares ask the manly-man why. Bush’s endless cuts fly in the face of his solemn pledges in Campaign 2000. But of one thing you can be certain. Cowering pundits know not to question. A culture of faking surrounds George Bush—and scripted pundits know they’re paid not to see it.
How odd is the mainstream press corps’ current culture? Let’s look at a remarkable column in last Thursday’s Post. We think the piece made a lot of good sense. But midway through, its author—Jonathan Chait—made some remarkable statements. As Chait noted, some antiwar liberals have come to believe “that Bush made the whole thing up about weapons of mass destruction.” Chait thinks Iraq did have such weapons. But listen to Chait’s remarkable statements as he considers the alternate view:
CHAIT: It’s entirely appropriate to question the
honesty of Bush’s stated rationale for fighting. After all, the arguments he
uses to justify his domestic agenda are shot
through with deceit. (Consider his shifting, implausible and contradictory
justifications for cutting taxes.) And it’s also true that a few elements of
the administration’s evidence against Iraq have turned out to be overstatements
or outright hoaxes.
So Bush’s
claims should never be taken at face value. But accepting the fact that
Iraq had an extensive and continuing program for weapons of mass destruction
doesn’t require taking Bush at his word…
Chait thinks there really were WMDs; here at THE HOWLER, we’ve assumed as much too. But note the pundit’s remarkable statements. “Bush’s claims should never be taken at face value,” he says. After all, “the arguments he uses to justify his domestic agenda are shot through with deceit.” Indeed, “it’s also true that a few elements of the administration’s evidence against Iraq have turned out to be outright hoaxes.” The key thing to remember about WMD? Believing that they really existed “doesn’t require taking Bush at his word.”
Hoaxes. Deceit. You can’t believe Bush. And these
statements come from a bright young writer who generally supported Bush on Iraq! But Chait understands what others will
not—a Culture of Lying surrounds George Bush. Lying has followed wherever he
goes. Chait doesn’t choose to ignore it.
DEBATE
I, WHEN THE LYIN’ WAS EASY: Already, a Culture of Lying surrounded Bush as
he stood on that stage with Al Gore. The hopefuls were staging their first
debate, on October 3, 2000, in Boston. “Governor Bush, one minute rebuttal,”
Jim Lehrer said, after Gore answered the evening’s first question. Candidate
Bush made his first remarks. And he lied right in Jim Lehrer’s face:
BUSH (10/3/00): Well, we do come from different
places. And I come from West Texas. I’ve been a governor. A governor is the
chief executive officer and learns how to set agendas. And I think you’re going
to find the difference reflected in our budgets. I want to take one-half of the
surplus and dedicate it to Social Security, one-quarter of the surplus for important projects, and I want to send
one-quarter of the surplus back to the people who pay the bills. I want
everybody who pays taxes to have their tax rates cut.
Was it true? Did Bush want to use “one-quarter of the surplus for important projects” and “send one-quarter of the surplus back to the people who pay the bills?” Actually, no, he did not. Bush’s budget called for a $1.3 trillion tax cut—and for $474 billion in new spending (ten years). In fact, his tax cut was about three times as big as his new spending proposals. So why was Bush saying that his new spending equaled the size of his tax cut? According to Gore, Bush’s tax cuts were so large that they left little money for “important new projects.” So Bush had crafted a bogus sound-bite which made it seem that this just wasn’t so.
For the record, everyone in the national press knew that Bush was dissembling. In the New York Times, Paul Krugman had spent three columns on the topic; the most recent had appeared just two days earlier. In late September, Bush had appeared on CNN’s Moneyline. On Moneyline, he’d lied right in Willow Bay’s face. Krugman expressed his amazement:
KRUGMAN (10/1/00): First, Mr. Bush talked about the
budget—“There’s about $4.6 trillion of surplus projected,” he declared…He then
went on to say: “I want some of the money, nearly a trillion, to go to projects
like prescription drugs for seniors. Money to strengthen the military to keep the
peace. I’ve got some views about education around the world. I want to—you
know, I’ve got some money in there for the environment.”
Nearly a trillion? The budget statement released by
the candidate’s campaign three weeks ago shows total spending on new projects
of $474.6 billion—less than half a trillion.
Krugman listed two other groaners from Bush’s appearance. “[W]hat Mr. Bush said to that national television audience simply wasn’t true,” he complained. And he noted a strange phenomenon. “Moneyline would never let a C.E.O. get away with claiming to spend twice as much on research as the sum announced in the company’s own press release,” Krugman said. “But when Mr. Bush declared that he would spend twice as much on new programs as the sum announced by his own campaign, the interviewer said nothing.”
Krugman expressed his surprise at the general way the press was letting Bush dissemble. But he may as well have saved his breath. Within days, Bush’s dissembling would reach comic new heights—and the press would continue to snore, burp and slumber. By the time of that first debate, a Culture of Lying surrounded Bush. And scripted members of the national press corps seemed to know that they must never notice.
The problem began at the start of the debate, when Gore challenged Bush’s tax cut proposal. Gore offered his basic critique of the Texan’s plan:
GORE (10/3/00): His tax cut plan, for example, raises
the question of whether it’s the right choice for the country. And let me give
you an example of what I mean. Under Governor Bush’s tax cut proposal, he would spend more money on tax cuts for
the wealthiest one percent than all of the new spending that he proposes for
education, health care, prescription drugs and national defense, all combined.
Now, I think those are the wrong priorities.
Bush had proposed $382 billion in new spending in those four areas. How much would the top one percent get in tax cuts? That question was slightly problematic, depending on how one scored the benefits of Bush’s proposed estate tax repeal. But as Ron Brownstein explained in the Los Angeles Times, “if only half the estate tax cuts goes to the top one percent,” Gore’s statement was accurate, with twenty billion to spare. But no matter. The Bush campaign would swing into action, pretending Gore had used “phony numbers.” Peddling absurdly fake numbers themselves, the Bush camp would call Gore a liar.
Consummate clowning would be involved in the effort to shoot down Gore’s statement. But it all began with a blunder by Bush. The morning after that first debate, Bush appeared on Good Morning America. Asked about Gore’s “one percent” claim, Bush seemed to say that the claim had been accurate. Charles Gibson had to ask his question two times. But the second time, he got Bush to answer:
GIBSON (10/4/00): You said all of that. But is he
incorrect in saying that you would give to the top one percent of income
earners in this country in tax relief more than you would spend on health care,
prescription drugs, education, and national defense combined?
BUSH: No. That’s what I just said. I think what people
have got to understand is, wealthy people pay a lot of taxes today. And if
everyone gets tax relief, wealthy people are going to get tax relief.
To all appearances, Bush had said that Gore’s claim was factually accurate. Clearly, that’s what GMA thought he had said. “We heard Governor Bush just say that Vice President Gore was right on the amount that he’d be spending for the richest Americans,” Diane Sawyer said, a few moments later.
Within hours, though, that had changed. By the afternoon of October 4, Candidate Bush was trashing Gore hard, saying that his claims were invented. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun’s Karen Hosler, he basically called Gore a liar:
HOSLER: [Bush] spoke disparagingly of figures Gore
gave regarding Medicare. “I don’t know where he drug up those numbers,” said Bush in his Texas
twang, “probably the same place he drug up the numbers on rich people—he made it up.”
In fact, everyone knew where Gore “drug up” his numbers. They came from a study by Citizens for Tax Justice—and from the proposed spending figures on Bush’s own web site. But no matter. That same day, Bush took the same approach in an interview with Darrel Rowland of the Columbus Dispatch:
ROWLAND: “Vice
President Gore will make up numbers,” Bush said. “When I talked about fuzzy
math, I meant it.”
By the afternoon of October 4, Bush was at a Columbus rally, accusing Gore of faking his numbers—and offering an absurdly phony number of his own. Tom Raum described the scene for the Associated Press:
RAUM (10/4/00): [A]t a rally and question session at a
suburban Columbus, Ohio, high school, Bush disputed Gore’s debate assertion
that a disproportionate share of Bush’s $1.3 trillion tax cut plan would go to
the nation’s wealthiest 1 percent.
Bush, citing figures his staff said were from a review
of his plan by Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, said that $223 billion of the total would go to
these affluent taxpayers not the some $561 billion the Gore campaign has
suggested.
“That’s far short of the numbers he was throwing
around last night,” Bush said.
Comically, the crowd was yelling “no fuzzy math” as Bush announced his fake number.
Where did Bush get that remarkably low number? Readers can probably guess. Reacting quickly, the Bush campaign had begun peddling numbers drawn from Bush’s income-tax cuts only. Bush’s tax cut proposal had several major parts; income tax cuts were only one part of the proposal. But Bush presented numbers from that one part of his plan while pretending to discuss the plan as a whole. This left out the estate-tax repeal, which would benefit the super-rich disproportionately. Beyond that, Bush’s numbers applied to the year 2005—before many of his income-tax cuts for the highest earners would have taken effect. In short, the numbers he cited were laughably phony. But on that afternoon’s Inside Politics, he tossed the fake number at poor Candy Crowley. The unsuspecting CNN scribe mentioned Gore’s claim about the top one percent:
CROWLEY: [Gore] kept saying, “You’re not answering my
question. You’re not denying what I’m saying.” Do you deny it?
BUSH: Well, I’ll deny it right now. Of course I do.
The top one percent receive $223 billion of tax cuts. That’s far less than I’m
going to spend. The top one percent pay a third of the taxes and get 20 percent
of the cuts.
Snore. Bush’s numbers all referred to the cuts in income tax only, and they referred to the year 2005. But as Bush and crew tossed these numbers around, this distinction was never offered. They offered the public a set of fake numbers—and they said it meant Gore was a liar.
And yes, that’s just what the Bush campaign did. It takes guts to throw fake numbers around—and say they show that the other guy’s lying. But that’s just what the Bush camp did, as the press corps sat back and watched. On Sunday, October 8, for example, Karen Hughes appeared on Fox News Sunday. “Now unlike Al Gore, Governor Bush doesn’t just make up facts,” she said, preparing herself to make up some facts. “He wants to make certain that what he says is in fact accurate.” She then rattled off her inaccurate numbers. “At the risk of boring you all with too much detail, but let me tell what you what that one percent—that tax cut for the top one percent of taxpayers will cost $223 billion over the next ten years,” she said. And she offered another absurdly fake number—the $9.9 trillion in total federal spending that would occur in the next ten years. Gore had said that Bush’s new spending was less than his cuts for the top one percent. But Hughes feigned confusion—and called Gore a faker. “Now I know the vice president’s been in Washington for a long time,” she pandered. “But most Americans can understand there’s a big difference between $223 billion, with a B, and $9.9 trillion with a T. So that is a completely erroneous statement by the vice president, and I think he should be held accountable for misstating important facts.” Showing a bit of steely professionalism, Fox’s panel avoided laughing out loud—and, of course, they avoided noting the absurdity of Hughes’ presentation. On CNN’s Late Edition, meanwhile, Karl Rove was peddling those fake numbers too. For the record, Bush was pushing another set of fake numbers at this time—numbers he would use in Bush-Gore Debate III. “Under my plan, if you make—the top, the wealthy people pay 62 percent of the taxes today. Afterwards, they pay 64 percent. This is a fair plan,” he said. By “afterwards,” Bush meant in 2005, and the numbers referred to income tax only. In short, all the numbers Bush employed were deliberately meant to deceive.
In short, a Culture of Lying was already present when Bush and Gore staged their first debate. In the first words out of his mouth, Bush misstated his own budget plan—just as he had been doing for months. And starting on the very next day, he peddled a set of phony statistics—numbers that could only mislead those who heard them. All the while, he told the public that it was Gore who was making up facts.
Your press corps took it like champions. They offered a string of polite “analyses” which treated these phony numbers with respect. In the Chicago Tribune, for example, Monica Davey said that “both [Bush and Gore] may be correct because they start with different assumptions—crucial, conflicting assumptions that few voters will ever hear much about.” And what exactly was Bush’s assumption? “Bush offers a different accounting, which he calls ‘real numbers,’” Davey said. “Bush’s figure only counts the effects of his income-tax cuts. It doesn’t take into account the effect of repeal of the estate tax.” So Bush’s “different assumption” was this—if someone says your tax plan favors the rich, you can adopt a “different assumption,” in which you only discuss the part of your plan which doesn’t do what is charged! So it went as pundits struggled to pretend that Bush wasn’t lying. Meanwhile, many reporters were simply deceived. On October 5, for example, Bush went stumping for votes in Wisconsin. The next day, Dave Umhoefer limned his remarks in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
UMHOEFER (10/6/00): Bush, who in the eyes of some of
his backers responded too politely to Vice President Al Gore’s attacks on his
tax plans during their first debate, offered numerical and flesh-and-blood
evidence of the fairness of his proposal. Under it, he said:
—The top 1% of wage-earners would pay one-third of
federal taxes but get just one-fifth of the reductions he seeks. “Most of the
tax relief is for those on the bottom rung,” he said.
—A total of $223 billion out of a total tax cut of
$1.3 trillion would go to the top 1%. The wealthiest would pay 64% of total
federal tax collections—up from the current 62%.
Most of the tax relief was for those on the bottom rung? That, of course, was complete, screaming nonsense. And all those numbers were patently phony, though Umhoefer probably didn’t know it. Neither, of course, did Wisconsin voters who read the fake facts the next day.
Meanwhile, the press corps scurried hither and yon. As you’ll recall, they were deeply convinced that Gore was a Liar, and they were eager to let the world know it. They had just spent several weeks on lunatic tales about doggy-pills and old union songs. Now they worked themselves into a lather about a school desk down in Florida. A Culture of Lying already prevailed when Bush replied to Jim Lehrer that night. But the press played an active role in maintaining that culture—a role which they play to this day
SENIORITY SYSTEM: You can’t believe a thing he says, Jonathan Chait said, speaking of Bush. Bush has “a rather flexible idea” about telling the truth, E. J. Dionne said on Tuesday (Bush is from the “say-anything school”). In this morning’s Post, meanwhile, the editors complain about the Bush administration’s latest “charade” and “masquerade;” the House tax bill was “about as a phony as a tax bill could get,” but the new White House effort is even more “dishonest.” And on page one, the French government is quoted saying that “it is the victim of an ‘organized disinformation campaign from within the Bush administration.’” You’d like to think that couldn’t be true. But of course, it most likely is.
But then, a Culture of Lying has surrounded Bush at least since the fall of 2000, when the candidate began dissembling hard in his effort to get to the White House. At the crucial first debate with Gore, Bush lied about his budget plan, then accused Gore of using “phony numbers” and “fuzzy math” when he described the budget plan accurately. The next day, the fun really started, as Bush and aides toured the country, tossing off palpably bogus facts—and saying that they showed Gore was lying. It truly takes a low, slimy man to call the other guy a liar on the basis of “facts” which he’s simply made up. But a Culture of Lying surrounded Bush—and the press corps already knew not to notice. In the past few weeks, complaints from the mainstream press have been heard. But this culture is a thing that they made.
For the record, there was one journalist who spoke in real time, discussing Bush’s post-debate lying. Her piece appeared on October 17, 2000. The sub-headline? “Bush seems to be having trouble with math lately.” Here’s how the article began:
During the first presidential debate in Boston, Gov.
George W. Bush accused Vice President Al Gore of using “fuzzy math” when Gore
pointed out that Bush’s plan would spend more of the surplus on tax cuts for the
wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers than on education, health, prescription drugs
and the national defense combined.
The next day on “Good Morning America,” Bush admitted
that Gore’s math wasn’t fuzzy after all. Later that day on CNN, he changed his
story again.
Somehow, this scribe had managed to notice Bush’s October 4 flip-flop, which we described in yesterday’s HOWLER. Then, she noted a nasty “irony”—an irony that would somehow elude the mainstream “press:”
Bush’s attack on the vice president’s mathematical
calculations has a dual irony. First, Bush was using fuzzy math himself…While
Bush accused his opponent of using “fuzzy math,” the Republican candidate’s own
statistics were partisan-created rhetoric rather than substantiated facts.
We don’t know of any other journalist who noted this basic point—who noted that Bush was accusing Gore of the very thing he, Bush, was doing. The journalist then laid out some basic problems with Bush’s fake, phony “facts:”
Gore was correct in his statement about Bush’s budget
figures. In Bush’s plan, the tax cut for the top 1 percent of Americans ($620
billion) is greater than total domestic spending on education ($47.6 billion),
health ($131.9 billion), prescription drugs ($158 billion), and national
defense ($45 billion) combined.
Bush’s questionable calculations were made apparent
again during the second presidential debate last Wednesday. Again, Bush
defended his tax plan, saying that the top 1 percent would receive only $223
billion.
Likewise, the Bush campaign cites that only 21 percent
of the tax cut goes to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. But this 21
percent and associated $223 billion numbers do not include the repeal of the
estate tax…
Ignoring these facts, Bush argued that his tax cut for
the wealthy was far less than his actual policies and plans demonstrate.
This journalist wasn’t the only scribe who explained where Bush got his numbers. As we saw yesterday, other scribes explained that Bush’s “$223 billion” only included his income tax cuts, completely ignoring the $236 billion in estate tax cuts he proposed. (We noted something else which this journalist didn’t; even in Bush’s income tax figures, he was talking about the year 2005—a year when many of his income-tax cuts for the highest earners wouldn’t yet have taken place.) But this journalist did something no one else did—she realized that this meant Bush was a liar. She didn’t use the L-word herself; more politely, she noted the “irony” of Bush’s claims. But as we saw yesterday, mainstream writers weren’t even up to this task. Instead, mainstream “journalists” were rushing about, looking for ways to make Bush’s behavior seem reasonable. Bush was simply using different “assumptions” from Gore, one scribe said. Mainstream scribes were already involved in creating the Culture of Lying.
Who wrote this October 17 critique? Why, it was Melanie Ho, a UCLA senior, writing in the Daily Bruin. While mainstream “journalists” cowered and quaked—and told the world what a liar Gore was—a college student was somehow able to note the “irony” in what Bush was doing. We’ve often asked if high school students could get away with work like the press corps’. In the fall of 2000, only Melanie Ho—a college student—had the courage to get this tale right.
THE NUMBERS, THEY WERE A-CHANGIN’: A clarification on one set of numbers from yesterday’s incomparable DAILY HOWLER. At one point, we saw Candidate Bush at Bush-Gore Debate 3, offering this rebuttal to Gore:
BUSH (10/17/00): Under my plan, if you make—the top,
the wealthy people pay 62 percent of the taxes today. Afterwards, they pay 64
percent. This is a fair plan.
As we saw, these numbers—offered in a variety of contradictory formulations—were routinely offered as a response to Gore’s claim about that “top one percent.” For example, we saw Andrea Neal (Indy Star) cite these numbers. Neal said they helped us see Gore’s “pure demagoguery.”
Yesterday afternoon, we finally saw where those numbers came from, and what those numbers actually meant. On April 11, 2000, Bush spoke in Cleveland, pretending to have major plans for the poor. On that day, he cited those numbers—and explained what they actually meant:
BUSH (4/11/00): Today, the wealthiest taxpayers, those earning more than $100,000, account
for 62 percent of total income taxes paid. Under my plan, this will increase to
64 percent.
Oh! Bush’s numbers referred to income tax only, and they referred to everyone making 100K or up. For the record, this was roughly ten percent of all earners; in 2000, the top one percent were those who earned $319,000 or more. We’ll assume that this figure was also gimmicked by date, and did not include the high-end income-tax rate reductions that Bush had scheduled for the later years of the decade. By the fall, almost every number out of Bush’s mouth had been gimmicked to mislead and deceive. “
-- Bob Somersby, The Daily Howler
“Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his former business partner?
By James Hatfield
Editor's note: In light of last week's horrific events and the Bush administration's reaction to them, we are reprising the following from the last column Jim Hatfield wrote for Online Journal prior to his tragic death on July 18:
July 3, 2001—There may be fireworks in Genoa, Italy, this month, too.
A plot by Saudi master terrorist, Osama bin Laden, to assassinate Dubya during the July 20 economic summit of world leaders, was uncovered after dozens of suspected Islamic militants linked to bin Laden's international terror network were arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, and Milan, Italy, in April.
German intelligence services have stated that bin Laden is covertly financing neo-Nazi skinhead groups throughout Europe to launch another terrorist attack at a high-profile American target—his first since the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last October.
According to counter-terrorism experts quoted in Germany's largest newspaper, the attack on Dubya might be a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives.
Why would Osama bi Laden want to kill, Dubya, his former business partner?
I knew that bombshell would whip your heads around. So here's the straight scoop, folks.
In June 1977, Dubya formed his own drilling company, Arbusto Energy ("arbusto" means "bush" in Spanish), in Midland, Texas. Like his father before him, Dubya founded his oil business with the financial backing of investors, including James R. Bath, a Houston businessman whom Dubya apparently first met when they were in the same Texas Air National Guard unit. (Interestingly, both Dubya and Bath were both suspended from flying in August and September 1972, respectively, for "failure to accomplish annual medical examination.")
Tax documents and other financial records show that Bath, an aircraft broker with controversial ties to Saudi Arabia sheiks, had invested $50,000 in Arbusto, granting him a 5 percent interest in two limited partnerships controlled by Dubya.
Time magazine described Bath in 1991 as "a deal broker whose alleged associations run from the CIA to a major shareholder and director of the Bank of Credit & Commerce." BCCI, as it was more commonly known, closed its doors in July 1991 amid charges of multibillion-dollar fraud and global news reports that the financial institution had been heavily involved in drug money laundering, arms brokering, covert intelligence work, bribery of government officials and—here's the kicker—aid to terrorists.
Bath was never directly implicated in the BCCI scandal, but according to The Outlaw Bank, an award-winning 1993 book by Time correspondents, Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, Bath originally "made his fortune by investing money for [Sheikh Kalid bin] Mahfouz and another BCCI-connected Saudi, Sheikh bin Laden," reportedly the brother of none other than Osama bin Laden, the man accused by the U.S. government of masterminding the August 1998 terrorist bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed more than 250 people.
According to court documents, Bath swore that in 1977 he represented four prominent and wealthy Saudi Arabians as a trustee and used his name on their investments in the United States. In return, he received a 5 percent interest in their deals. Time reporters Beaty and Gwynne suggest in their book that the $50,000 Bath invested in Dubya's Arbusto Energy drilling company may have belonged to Bath's Saudi clients since the Houston businessman "had no substantial money of his own at the time."
The FBI and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network later investigated Bath after allegations were made by one of his American business partners that the Saudis were using Bath and their giant piggy bank to influence U.S. policy. (Dubya's father had been appointed by President Ford to head the CIA from 1976–77.)
So, folks, the Middle Eastern oil money used to underwrite the first business venture of our future president of the United States, may have been derived at least in part from the family fortune of Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden, who is now being accused of masterminding his assassination.
From the what-it's-worth-department: I think Dubya's handlers have fed disinformation through the CIA and other backdoor channels to German and Italian intelligence agencies about a possible hit on Dubya by the fugitive terrorist to gain public sympathy and concern for a U.S. president who has taken a nose-dive in the opinion polls.
The latest New York Times/CBS News poll showed Dubya's approval rating fell to 53 percent from 57 percent a few weeks ago, its lowest since he took office. Only 50 percent of those polled approved of his handling of the economy, while 47 percent approved of his foreign policy performances. Some 44 percent felt Dubya was not respected by foreign leaders, a mere 39 percent agreed with his policies on the environment, and a whopping 61 percent of Americans believed the new prez was not addressing the issues they care most about.
Obviously, the pollsters didn't call Dubya's sugar daddies—the oil and gas companies. Because he sure is taking care of their interests.
CIA to Review Iraq
Intelligence
Questions of Accuracy, Bias Spur Studies
By
Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington
Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 23, 2003; Page A13
The House intelligence committee, expressing concern about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, asked Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet yesterday "to reevaluate U.S. intelligence" used by the Bush administration before the war to describe Iraq's proscribed weapons programs and its links to terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda.
The administration based its argument for going to war against Iraq on the dangers posed by Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and its alleged ties to al Qaeda.
The CIA, at the suggestion of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, has an unusual study underway that will compare intelligence given to President Bush and other policymakers before the war to information now being gathered in Iraq from the ousted Iraqi government's files and interrogations of former Iraqi government personnel, according to senior intelligence officials.
The CIA review, coupled with the letter sent to Tenet by the House intelligence panel, follows criticism that the Defense Department, particularly a new Pentagon intelligence office, and other parts of the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to make the case for war in Iraq. Some members of Congress and intelligence officials are questioning the accuracy of the intelligence describing Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda.
Four retired senior CIA analysts conducting the study, which was first reported in yesterday's New York Times, have completed a 100-page draft review of analyses put out by the CIA before the war as well as estimates produced by the National Intelligence Council (NIC), a group made up of representatives of the 12 U.S. intelligence agencies. The senior analysts are now reviewing reports produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency.
There is some question of how long it will take to complete the internal study since the Pentagon is in the process of sending out a 2,000-man Iraq Survey Group whose job is to gather intelligence not only on weapons of mass destruction, but also on al Qaeda connections and other areas of interest. "It could be months before we can draw conclusions," said an intelligence official involved in the process.
One official who has read a draft of the NIC and CIA prewar studies said, "There is no question there was a lot of pressure on analysts to support preconceived judgments." But, he added, "the analysts' record is not bad when you consider you have strong policymakers pushing analysts for information that supports their specific views."
Neither the agency's study nor the committee's request addresses how accurately top policymakers, in particular Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, portrayed the classified intelligence and advice they received before making their public statements.
"Since some questions have been raised and it is taking a long time to find out the WMD [weapons of mass destruction], we think this is prudent to ask for," said Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the panel's ranking Democrat. "This could conceivably be the greatest intelligence hoax of all time. I doubt it, but we have to ask."
The letter, signed by Harman and Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), the committee chairman, states that their goal is "to ensure that the intelligence analysis relayed to our policymakers from the intelligence community was accurate, unbiased, and timely -- in light of new information resulting from recent events in Iraq." Both lawmakers are ardent supporters of the CIA.
The committee wants to know "how the intelligence picture regarding Iraqi WMD was developed" and asks the CIA to answer questions on issues such as the amount and quality of the information provided to administration officials and whether "dissenting views" were "properly weighed." The committee, which oversees the intelligence budget and operations, asked for a report from Tenet by July 1.
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, called the CIA's estimates about possible weapons of mass destruction "wholly unimpressive." Rockefeller is asking the inspector general's offices of the CIA and the Pentagon to investigate the fact that documents the CIA suspected to be forged were used by administration officials to claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium oxide from Niger for use in weapons production.
In October, Rumsfeld first suggested that Tenet conduct an inquiry because of the disagreements between the Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department over intelligence on Iraq.
"I'm sure a lot of people in the Defense Department see this as a scorecard, but Secretary Rumsfeld believed it was a way to learn about the [intelligence] process, including the policymaker's role in it," said one official aware of the details of the study. "He [Rumsfeld] wanted to compare what we find there [in Iraq] and see what we got right and wrong," another official said.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
By Sen. Robert Byrd
May 23, 2003
Senate Floor Remarks - May 21, 2003
"Truth, crushed
to earth, shall rise again,
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers."
Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually.
But the danger is that at some point it may no longer matter. The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized. The reality is that, sometimes, it is easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue. We see a lot of this today in politics. I see a lot of it – more than I would ever have believed – right on this Senate Floor.
Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not. The run up to our invasion of Iraq featured the President and members of his cabinet invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to drones poised to deliver germ laden death in our major cities. We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein's direct threat to our freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 9/11. It was the exploitation of fear. It was a placebo for the anger.
Since the war's end, every subsequent revelation which has seemed to refute the previous dire claims of the Bush Administration has been brushed aside. Instead of addressing the contradictory evidence, the White House deftly changes the subject. No weapons of mass destruction have yet turned up, but we are told that they will in time. Perhaps they yet will. But, our costly and destructive bunker busting attack on Iraq seems to have proven, in the main, precisely the opposite of what we were told was the urgent reason to go in. It seems also to have, for the present, verified the assertions of Hans Blix and the inspection team he led, which President Bush and company so derided. As Blix always said, a lot of time will be needed to find such weapons, if they do, indeed, exist. Meanwhile Bin Laden is still on the loose and Saddam Hussein has come up missing.
The Administration assured the U.S. public and the world, over and over again, that an attack was necessary to protect our people and the world from terrorism. It assiduously worked to alarm the public and blur the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden until they virtually became one.
What has become painfully clear in the aftermath of war is that Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S. Ravaged by years of sanctions, Iraq did not even lift an airplane against us. Iraq's threatening death-dealing fleet of unmanned drones about which we heard so much morphed into one prototype made of plywood and string. Their missiles proved to be outdated and of limited range. Their army was quickly overwhelmed by our technology and our well trained troops.
Presently our loyal military personnel continue their mission of diligently searching for WMD. They have so far turned up only fertilizer, vacuum cleaners, conventional weapons, and the occasional buried swimming pool. They are misused on such a mission and they continue to be at grave risk. But the Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a preemptive invasion has become more than embarrassing. It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world?
What makes me cringe even more is the continued claim that we are "liberators." The facts don't seem to support the label we have so euphemistically attached to ourselves. True, we have unseated a brutal, despicable despot, but "liberation" implies the follow up of freedom, self-determination and a better life for the common people. In fact, if the situation in Iraq is the result of "liberation," we may have set the cause of freedom back 200 years.
Despite our high-blown claims of a better life for the Iraqi people, water is scarce, and often foul, electricity is a sometime thing, food is in short supply, hospitals are stacked with the wounded and maimed, historic treasures of the region and of the Iraqi people have been looted, and nuclear material may have been disseminated to heaven knows where, while U.S. troops, on orders, looked on and guarded the oil supply.
Meanwhile, lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and refurbish its oil industry are awarded to Administration cronies, without benefit of competitive bidding, and the U.S. steadfastly resists offers of U.N. assistance to participate. Is there any wonder that the real motives of the U.S. government are the subject of worldwide speculation and mistrust?
And in what may be the most damaging development, the U.S. appears to be pushing off Iraq's clamor for self-government. Jay Garner has been summarily replaced, and it is becoming all too clear that the smiling face of the U.S. as liberator is quickly assuming the scowl of an occupier. The image of the boot on the throat has replaced the beckoning hand of freedom. Chaos and rioting only exacerbate that image, as U.S. soldiers try to sustain order in a land ravaged by poverty and disease. "Regime change" in Iraq has so far meant anarchy, curbed only by an occupying military force and a U.S. administrative presence that is evasive about if and when it intends to depart.
Democracy and Freedom cannot be force fed at the point of an occupier's gun. To think otherwise is folly. One has to stop and ponder. How could we have been so impossibly naive? How could we expect to easily plant a clone of U.S. culture, values, and government in a country so riven with religious, territorial, and tribal rivalries, so suspicious of U.S. motives, and so at odds with the galloping materialism which drives the western-style economies?
As so many warned this Administration before it launched its misguided war on Iraq, there is evidence that our crack down in Iraq is likely to convince 1,000 new Bin Ladens to plan other horrors of the type we have seen in the past several days. Instead of damaging the terrorists, we have given them new fuel for their fury. We did not complete our mission in Afghanistan because we were so eager to attack Iraq. Now it appears that Al Queda is back with a vengeance. We have returned to orange alert in the U.S., and we may well have destabilized the Mideast region, a region we have never fully understood. We have alienated friends around the globe with our dissembling and our haughty insistence on punishing former friends who may not see things quite our way.
The path of diplomacy and reason have gone out the window to be replaced by force, unilateralism, and punishment for transgressions. I read most recently with amazement our harsh castigation of Turkey, our longtime friend and strategic ally. It is astonishing that our government is berating the new Turkish government for conducting its affairs in accordance with its own Constitution and its democratic institutions.
Indeed, we may have sparked a new international arms race as countries move ahead to develop WMD as a last ditch attempt to ward off a possible preemptive strike from a newly belligerent U.S. which claims the right to hit where it wants. In fact, there is little to constrain this President. Congress, in what will go down in history as its most unfortunate act, handed away its power to declare war for the foreseeable future and empowered this President to wage war at will.
As if that were not bad enough, members of Congress are reluctant to ask questions which are begging to be asked. How long will we occupy Iraq? We have already heard disputes on the numbers of troops which will be needed to retain order. What is the truth? How costly will the occupation and rebuilding be? No one has given a straight answer. How will we afford this long-term massive commitment, fight terrorism at home, address a serious crisis in domestic healthcare, afford behemoth military spending and give away billions in tax cuts amidst a deficit which has climbed to over $340 billion for this year alone? If the President's tax cut passes it will be $400 billion. We cower in the shadows while false statements proliferate. We accept soft answers and shaky explanations because to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular, or may be politically costly.
But, I contend that, through it all, the people know. The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin, and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood – when it comes to wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women, and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie – not oil, not revenge, not reelection, not somebody's grand pipedream of a democratic domino theory.
And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.
©Charlie Carey 5/03 Mail me
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