Posted on 09/01/2006 9:59:25 AM PDT by Miami Vice
Another smear campaign/conspiracy theory/myth about the Bush administration has been pretty much debunked. For three years now, Joe Wilson, Democrats, communists and the liberal media have been saying that Karl Rove should be indicted and imprisoned for revealing the name of a CIA operative in order to discredit Wilson. Chris Mathews, one of the leading proponents of this conspiracy theory, acted as Rove's judge, jury and executioner. He insisted that Rove was the source. We now know this was not the case - and never was. It was a former State Department official who inadvertently disclosed the information One by one, the conspiracy theories and allegations of lying, made by a coalition of liberals, communists, Democrats and Buchananites, have been discredited. The investigations, so desired by them, have exonerated President Bush. Listed here are some of the more notable false accusations made against the Bush administration along with the names of notable proponents - in parentheses - and the facts. These are:
False accusation #1: The 2000 election was stolen with the help of the Supreme Court. A corollary to this was that blacks were disenfranchised. (Congressional Black Caucus, Michael Moore, the World Socialist Web Site).
Truth: Independent audits by newspapers, antipathetic to Bush being president, revealed that he would have won the election if the recount continued. An investigation by the U.S. Commission for Civil Rights reported, "(The Commission) does not find that the highest officials of the state conspired to disenfranchise voters." [1]
False accusation #2: Bush knew about 9-11 in advance and did nothing to prevent it because he wanted to invade Iraq (Howard Dean, Georgia Congresswomen Cynthia McKinney).
Truth: This one is so bizarre that - to quote Orwell, "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool." This is merely a recycled conspiracy theory from World War II. Then, people claimed FDR knew about Pearl Harbor and did nothing because he wanted an excuse to enter World War II.
False accusation #3: The war was meant to distract from a bad economy (Democratic National Committee).
Truth: The economic boom - during which more blacks own houses than ever before, and there is less child poverty among blacks than ever before - is more a function of the Bush tax cuts and the housing market.
False accusation #4: Bush secretly conspired to whisk Saudis out of the country by authorizing them to fly in the days following 9-11 when no one else, "not even the FBI," could fly (Michael Moore, Vanity Fair).
Truth: The 9-11 commission and my own independent investigation have invalidated this. The day the Saudis flew was the day all commercial flights resumed.
False accusation #5: Bush and Cheney encouraged the CIA to exaggerate the intelligence about Iraq to win favor of war (Chris Matthews).
Truth: The Senate Select Intelligence Committee - and other sources - said that this was not the case. Only Senator Carl Levin, ironically, a hawk about Iraq during the Clinton years, is still trying to insist this is true.
False accusation #6: Bush lied when he claimed during his 2003 State of the Union address, " The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." (Joe Wilson, Tom Daschle)
Truth: In 2004, the Financial Times reported that European intelligence units stated that Iraq was seeking uranium. An independent inquiry about this by a British commission confirmed that there was an attempt by Iraq to purchase uranium from Niger. The Senate Select Intelligence Committee confirmed that this was true as well.
False accusation #7: The Bush administration is in league with Enron and Halliburton and invaded Iraq to annex their oil reserves (Senator Ted Kennedy, Workers World Party, Revolutionary Communist Party).
Truth: It was well known that the former Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration, Paul Rubin, made the call to Paul O'Neill, the Bush administration Treasury Secretary, to do a favor for Enron when Enron was going bankrupt. It is the Bush administration that has been prosecuting Enron executives for crimes committed during the Clinton years.
The only people profiting from Iraqi oil were those who opposed the war. Hussein was paying the French, the Russians and others who opposed the war, bribes by funds from the U.N. Oil-for-Food program instead of paying for food and medicine for sick and starving Iraqi kids.
False accusation #8: The Iraq war was a personal vendetta by George W. Bush because of Saddam Hussein's attempt to assassinate his father in 1993 (LA Times Robert Scheer).
Truth: Considering all the other reasons proffered, this is rather a non sequitur. However, even if true, would not another state's plot to assassinate the President of the United States be considered an act of war?
False accusation #9: Bush lied about a relationship between al-Qaida and Iraq (MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, Revolutionary Communist Party, Workers World Party, The New York Times, Democratic National Committee).
Truth: There have been reports of cooperation between the two in the media and by government for years. Knight-Ridder, ABC, Newsweek all previously reported this during the 1990's. Clinton's CIA Directors James Woolsey, John Deustch and George Tenet also said so. The 9-11 Commission also said there were contacts - stipulating they were not operational ones. Recently, in March of this year, former Democrat Senator and 9-11 Commissioner, Bob Kerry said recent captured documents indicate a much more collaborative relationship between al-Qaida and Iraq.
The Democrat Vice Chair of the 9-11 Commission said that there was no discrepancy between what Cheney said and the Commission's preliminary report. There were reports that Iraq sent instructors to Afghanistan to teach al-Qaida terrorists. It is intrinsically a fallacy to claim Bush lied when years of evidence by various sources told him al-Qaida and Iraq were linked.
False accusation #10: The war is a plot by a cabal of Neocon imperialists to develop an American empire and protect Israel (Columnists Pat Buchanan and Georgie Anne Geyer, Atlanta Journal and Constitution).
Truth: This theory is another redux of a World War II conspiracy theory - the Jewish cabal-FDR theory. False accusation #11: Bush's tax cuts and the war in Iraq caused funding to be cut for levee construction, and this caused the levees to break and the flooding of New Orleans (Clinton adviser Sydney Blumenthal, Will Bunch, Phila. Daily News).
The truth is, during a Sept. 1, 2005 interview with Lt General Strock, the Chief of Engineers, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Strock said, "Let me also address the issue of the general impact of the war in Iraq on civil works funding. We've seen some suggestions that our budget has been affected by the war. I can also say that I do not see that to be the case. If you look at the historical levels of funding for the Corps of Engineers from the pre-war levels back to 1992, '91, before we actually got into this, you'll see that the level of funding has been fairly stable throughout that period. So I think we would see that our funding levels would have dropped off if that were the case; so I do not see that as an issue that is relevant to the discussion of the flood protection of the City of New Orleans." During that same interview, Al Naomi, Senior Project Manager for the New Orleans District Corps of Engineers, said, " we would have had to start work on Category 5 protection 20 or 25 years ago to have had in place to effectuate any differences in what happened with this storm."
The propaganda machine of this coalition of liberals, communists, Democrats and Buchananite conservatives began manufacturing lies about the president since the 2000 election. They are every bit as sophisticated at disinformation as the KGB was during the Cold War.
All the investigations discredited these absurd allegations. Unfortunately, the debunking of the lies never got the media prominence the allegation did - with the exception of the Dan Rather episode.
It is rather sad that Democrats have chosen to use all the worse political tactics of their party has used throughout its long history rather than their best.
It was some Democrats, who later came to be known as "Copperheads," referring to the snake that strikes without warning, who tried to subvert President Lincoln's policies during the Civil War. These Northerners, who were sympathetic to the Southern slaveholders, were so egregious in their opposition to the Civil War that many actively gave support to the Confederacy - much like many of today's so-called " antiwar" protesters actively support the enemy, such as Lynne Stewart, who was convicted of aiding terrorists and Ramsey Clark, who is a counsel for Saddam Hussein.
There was a time in America when politics ended at the water's edge. There was a time in America when an American president could respond to his political opponents' vicious criticism without the media criticizing him for doing so.
Perhaps the greatest irony about the criticism of President Bush is that it implies Bush is committing treason, yet when Bush responds to his critics, they bray at being called unpatriotic by the President, even though he is doing no such thing.
President Bush's political enemies can legitimately criticize his policies for many reasons. The fact that they have to resort to lies, conspiracy theories and distortions leads one to believe that they are totally lacking any constructive and intelligent policies or inititatives.
Michael P. Tremoglie is the author of A Sense of Duty.
This is from Tremnoglie's Human Events piece, which was validated by teh 9-11 Commission Report:
" According to the 9-13-01 edition of the Detroit News," U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said commercial and private planes would be allowed to fly effective 11 a.m. EDT Thursday." Other papers reported the same thing. In fact, limited flights resumed the afternoon of the 12th. William Shumann spokesman for the FAA told me that commercial airline and charter flights resumed 11am September 13. There is a difference between commercial aviation (i.e. airlines or charters such as the Saudi flight) and private or non-commercial ( i.e. an individually owned aircraft) according to Shumann."
What has this have to do with FDR knowing in advance Pearl Harbor was oging to be attacked letting innocent American military personnel be killed!!
Get real will you. Provoking Japan?? Why because we objected to the Rape of Nanking? Are yo familiar with Japan's plans for world conquest?
wish this article got published more widely.
Maybe enough blogs will link to it that it will spread.
BUMP, BUMP, BUMP
Post something on Tremoglie's website http://www.geocities.com/nattybumpo1981/
This piece is very well-executed. Sometimes these things can be just as contrived as what the MSM and moonbats say. But in my opinion, it did not exhibit a right-ward bias other than the overall intent of the piece, which is certainly a fair target.
It doesn't mean that The Swimmer has sympathies for those others (the jury is still out on that), only that he was spreading the same lie as the others were.
I don't believe FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance. FDR did send aggressive signals toward Japan. This was justifiable on the merits, but a gamble to do it before USA had ramped up war machine.
I am amazed that The Bulletin printed this since I though it defunct. Still, it is a great group of points. Perhaps the RNC could use it in the Swann, Santorum campaigns to push the independents there to the Gop. And the same in NJ with the Kean campaign. The Dems winning would cancel any real national security.
They didn't leave this country until almost eight days after the attacks.
Don't be a liberal media lapdog.
Don't be an A$$hole.
Churchill wrote in his Nobel Prize winning series on WWII that FDR knew about the Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor.
That real enough for ya?
Thank you very much.
Churchill wrote in his Nobel Prize winning series on WWII that FDR knew about the Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor.
bookmk ping-a-ling , for later
.. .. Friday in NYC , whoa , a cacophony of horns and clogged streets
The Evening Bulletin was the paper of my childhood. It's a whole lot better now than it was then, though. They need to expand their distribution beyond the Mainline, though. Most of my family lives on the other side of Mongtgomery County and they are starved for a good newspaper.
--There was a time in America when politics ended at the water's edge.--
I've never believed this statement. The author even cites Copperheads during the Civil War. That was in the 1860s.
There have always been internal enemies during wartime - there was a huge anti-war sentiment during the Revolutionary War.
The difference is what this President is willing to do about it. Lincoln jailed all sorts of people. People were arrested all the time during WWII.
What are you prepared to do, President Bush, to muzzle these nuts and WIN THE WAR? That's the real question.
Win the damn war.
A liberal would never read that list. And if you started reading it to them, they'd just call you a racist or homophobe and be done with it.
Fantastic article.
I just wish Bush were as defensible on border security and spending.
Show me in Churchill's Nobel Prize winning series where he said that!!
Don't show me what somebody else said Churchill wrote!
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