Bush's Second Term: Four more years of lies, warmongering, social devolution, and fear

Election Day, 2004

It turns out that the electorate either didn't remember or don't care about Dubya's DWIs, his coke bust, or his girlfriend's illegal abortion. The Bush AWOL from the TANG, his insider trading deal with Harken Energy, his long-standing relationship with Enron raider Kenny-Boy Lay- no problem. His incoherent foreign policy, his lies about WMDs in Iraq, his continuous insinuations about connections between Saddam and al-Qaeda, his negligence/incompetence in not putting enough troops on the ground to secure Iraq and its thousands of tons of armaments, his alienation of our former allies- what’s the big deal? His wink-and-nod to torture and murder of prisoners illegally held at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and dozens of other torture palaces across the globe, his assault on civil rights as guaranteed by the US Constitution- who cares? The no-bid contracts to his family friends at Halliburton, the incessant and insidious religious proliferation into the US government with the "faith based initiative", the gutting of hard-won environmental and workplace safety laws, and countless other crummy, cheap, and downright mean neocon tricks he's played on the general public for the last four years… just more business as usual.

But George somehow managed to score points with Americans on "morals" issues. Are Bush "morals" voters stupid, hypocritical, or just misinformed? Don't bald-face lies count as "morals" issues? Didn't they understand that the PATRIOT Act was anything but patriotic? Don't they understand that the Bush Doctrine violates international law? Can they not see that dubya's Iraq war lies have committed America to years of paying and dying? Don't they get it that Rumsfeld and Cheney churned out lie after lie about non-existent chemical weapons, biological weapons, and nuclear weapons? Is there any moral content to attacking Iraq with insufficient troops to secure the country because it was politically expedient and then having those troops blown up with looted explosives? Doesn't anyone care about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay... or see how Abu Ghraib and Gitmo could affect the treatment of American POWs in the future? Didn't anyone, including the press, notice the bait-and-switch where Dubya gave speeches about the phony war on terror and craftily turned the topic of terrorism into phony-baloney fear mongering about Saddam? And what about the practice of doublethink when naming programs and Executive Orders? Giving authority to pollute the environment to the polluters is called "The Clear Skies Initiative." Letting timber companies clear-cut is called "Healthy Forests Initiative." We all know what "No Child Left Behind" really means… it means children will be left out entirely. Perpetual war on terrorism... is war now considered "moral"? How about EnronGate, TortureGate, PlameGate, and HalliburtonGate? Is a no-bid contract to Dick Cheney's former company "moral"?  Is it "moral" to gut workplace safety and a clean environment? 

If none of those issues resonated, what did Americans vote on? Did the Religious Right wingnuts win this election for Dubya? Did Osama bin Laden's last minute videotape spoil it for Kerry? Do people really vote sound bites and slogans like "no child left behind" and "flip flop" and "invented the internet" and "weak on terrorism"? Did Sinclair Broadcasting and the Swift Boat Vets and Rush Limbaugh play a part? Has our electoral process dumbed-down into a meaningless joke so that the outcome can be determined by a Howard Dean yelp or continuous pounding of the Fear Drum? We need to know.

America has come to yet another crossroads. Oh, we've been the top dog before, we’ve been hated worldwide before, and we've had prior periods of hyper-religiosity. But no nation has ever possessed such a striking imbalance of sheer destructive weaponry nor has any government ever been equipped with such an instantaneous and ubiquitous propaganda machine. Here we have a near-perfect storm of religious fervor bordering upon superstition, jingoist patriotism, attention deficit disorder voters, corporate-whoring media, and irrational fear. Hitler and Goebbels couldn't have dreamed of a better environment in which to seize control. The warpigs are running the show.

For the last four years, StopDubya.com has been showing our visitors (and thank you, over a million of you) how current events have been shaping this nation, its relationship to the world, and our own citizens. If you look into our archives, you will find a chilling trail of events. For example… Bush's unilateral abrogation of the ABM Treaty, the trashing of the Peaceful Use Of Space treaty, the establishment of the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war, the Faith Based Initiative, the National Debt Gone Wild, and of course, the illegal, immoral, and unnecessary war on Iraq. These are not the actions of a conservative government. These are the actions of ideologues poisoned by religious fanaticism and a twisted and narrow worldview.

It is clear that Dubya had intentions of invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein even before he ran for President in 2000. His obsession with Saddam has been exposed by whistleblowers including Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill, people who were on the inside (National Security Advisor and Treasury Secretary) and therefore in a position to know. Dubya's decision to invade Iraq was made before he took office; one of his first acts after the dubious 2000 election was to order those around him to "find a way" to justify attacking Saddam. Other whistleblowers have verified that the Bush Administration gave direct orders to filter raw intelligence in order to make it appear that Iraq was a direct threat to the US. Most of the garbage "intelligence" came from sources like Ahmad Chalabi, discredited Iraqi "resistance" leader. Chalabi was on the payroll of the Iranian government and therefore posed a dangerous security leak with a direct pipeline to US Intelligence. The stories they wove were as imaginative as they were bogus. Drones that could fly across the Atlantic and spray anthrax and VX. Mobile biological weapons labs. Allegations of mass murder and mass graves. Satellite photos of nuclear weapons facilities. Tapes of "intercepted" cell phone conversations. Yellowcake from Niger.

The findings of the 9/11 Commission show that there were no WMDs in Iraq nor did Saddam Hussein have an active program to create them. The same Commission reached the conclusion that many of us already knew; there was no connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam. In fact, they were religious and political enemies. Dubya's propaganda machine spit out lie after lie to the all-too-willing media in the form of statements from "White House spokesmen speaking on the condition of anonymity". We have the "smoking gun" – it’s the public record, populated by the public statements of former Bush Administration insiders. It shows that the Bush Administration conspired to mislead Congress, the UN, and the American people into believing that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and had plans to attack the US with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Think about that last statement. There was a conspiracy by the present administration to deliberately mislead the Congress, the UN, and the American people into believing that Saddam was planning to attack the US with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons . They did this by direct and indirect lying and by suppressing evidence that did not support their lie campaign. The goal was to persuade Americans and the rest of the world to go to war with Saddam. Americans are now paying the price in human lives lost and shattered and billions of dollars poured into the quagmire of Iraq. We stand by and watch the GI death toll increase at about 2 per day.

There have been many theories advanced regarding Bush’s relentless campaign to drive the nation to war in the Middle East. The least likely theory is that the Bush Administration believed that Saddam Hussein was a military or terrorist threat to the US. Some have suggested that Saddam was threatening to change currency for oil from US dollars to the euro to cause worldwide economic chaos. Others say the war was revenge for Saddam’s assassination attempt on Poppy Bush. Some point to the neocon think-tank PNAC (Project for a New American Century) that postulates the need for American hegemony and control of the world’s oil. Dubya’s slumping poll numbers might have motivated the war as his way to gain instant popularity, since Americans tend to confuse supporting their country and supporting their president as the same thing. There’s another theory that Dubya has deeply rooted psychological problems so the war was prosecuted as a way to one-up his father, with whom he has had many conflicts over the years. Whatever the real reason they picked this war, if they had access to all the information they had and still believed Saddam was a threat, that would constitute gross, paranoid incompetence and incredible stupidity in interpreting the information a nation needs when it embarks on the gravest course of action.

The January elections in Iraq are going to be a watershed event because Dubya has staked his entire case for war on establishing freedom and democracy. (He had to do that because the 9/11 Commission shredded his lies about WMDs and 9/11). One of three outcomes is possible: First, the elections could be a success and the insurgency will run out of steam as the Iraqis accept this as a palatable solution. Second, the elections could be attacked, boycotted, ignored, and disdained by the Iraqis as Bush’s tool to install yet another American puppet government in the region. Chaos and bloody attacks would then escalate. The third possibility is that the chaotic situation in Iraq could expand over the next few weeks and boil over into a nationwide revolt and civil war, causing the elections to be postponed indefinitely. At the time of this writing (Mid-December) it seems that all three possibilities could still happen. If either of the latter two occur, the prospects become very grim. The word “quagmire” will take on another synonym: Iraq.

The war clouds are gathering again. This time the target is Iran or maybe Syria and it may be the case that Iran actually is trying to build nukes. They may already have them; there were thousands of nuclear warheads scattered around the skeleton of the old USSR and between Russia and the US there has been a failure to track and destroy those warheads. It seems ironic indeed that Dubya may well be facing a real adversary with real nukes and an economy that hasn't been trashed by 10 years of sanctions. Is the US up to the task? How can we be? Our nation is near bankruptcy, our troops are worn out and spread thin all over the world and our national credibility with those who could help is in the toilet.

StopDubya is changing our focus. We want to encourage the conversation about what legal means we have in this democracy to put the brakes on the rogue government that has tightened its grip on our nation. We fully expect that this administration will try to build the case for additional wars against Iran, Syria, North Korea or other nations and StopDubya will work for peace. We will examine the strategic failures of the last election and explore what the Progressive movement can do to create a permanent place in the national dialogue. And we will continue to point out every slick, nasty trick Dubya and his people try to pull on all of us. Thank you in advance for your participation in this struggle. I appreciate your feedback. Please feel free to write to me at the address below.