Just What Did Edelman Instigate Here? ( NEED SOME HELP FROM FREEPERS ! )

I seem to be the liberal lone ranger on here -- other than Judge O'Brien that is! Thanks for your moral support Dennis amidst the reactionary rhetoric that stains this otherwise wonderful discussion forum.

I don't insult anyone -- that's merely the perception from conservatives because, as I have often stated, they are all basically stupid, are ignorant of history and only react to the limbic section of their brain.

Take the most recent postings from McCommas and Davies - typically insulting and sexist to boot. So you must dismiss me because I'm young, a female and because I use my claws! Jeez! See my point.

I had a great professor at college who said study what you can't understand or that which culturally and personally offends you, so I have studied American conservatism in depth since Barry Goldwater, who wanted to nuke the Soviet Union if you remember.

Nixon took up the new conservative mantle and he was a cheat, liar, bully and thug who bombed Cambodia into the stone age, killed students at Kent State, wire tapped democrats, laid false evidence to discredit the SDS, and Black Panthers, or anyone who opposed him.

Bush is of a similar ilke, but of course, the difference between Nixon and Bush is that Bush is stupid and is manipulated by Ashcroft, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld - a dangerous old guard of reactionaries.

Let's face it, if Ashcroft, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld strolled down Main Street Willimantic, you'd think they'd have walked straight out of the Hotel Hooker.

Listen up you Limbics! Listen to Richard Clarke testify today, and find out what these idiots who run our White House have been up to!

If the FBI, CIA and Starr had nor been spending billions trying to impeach Clinton for real estate deals, murdering Vince Foster, and for lying about sexual pecadilloes between 1992-2000 (no man has ever done that of course. Bush and Bush Daddy for example, have had a string of affairs) then they may have just noticed that Al Queda was planning something nasty.

The obsession with impeaching Clinton emerged from the Nixon era, and the lust for revenge for Nixon's impeachment!

Hilary Cinton was dead on about the Great Right Wing Conspiracy. We are living it everday now, and I pray to my God that we don't allow them to fix next November's election too.

Here's a challenge for the King of Limbics McCommas, Lenny Limbic, and Davies and Boudreau, the midwestern and Japanese Limbics -- make a point to point denial of the charges in Paul Kruger's article in yesterday's New York Times.

Lifting the Shroud
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Tuesday 23 March 2004

From the day it took office, U.S. News & World Report wrote a few months ago, the Bush administration "dropped a shroud of secrecy" over the federal government. After 9/11, the administration's secretiveness knew no limits EAmericans, Ari Fleischer ominously warned, "need to watch what they say, watch what they do." Patriotic citizens were supposed to accept the administration's version of events, not ask awkward questions.

But something remarkable has been happening lately: more and more insiders are finding the courage to reveal the truth on issues ranging from mercury pollution Eyes, Virginia, polluters do write the regulations these days, and never mind the science Eto the war on terror.

It's important, when you read the inevitable attempts to impugn the character of the latest whistle-blower, to realize just how risky it is to reveal awkward truths about the Bush administration. When Gen. Eric Shinseki told Congress that postwar Iraq would require a large occupation force, that was the end of his military career. When Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV revealed that the 2003 State of the Union speech contained information known to be false, someone in the White House destroyed his wife's career by revealing that she was a C.I.A. operative. And we now know that Richard Foster, the Medicare system's chief actuary, was threatened with dismissal if he revealed to Congress the likely cost of the administration's prescription drug plan.

The latest insider to come forth, of course, is Richard Clarke, George Bush's former counterterrorism czar and the author of the just-published "Against All Enemies."

On "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Mr. Clarke said the previously unsayable: that Mr. Bush, the self-proclaimed "war president," had "done a terrible job on the war against terrorism." After a few hours of shocked silence, the character assassination began. He "may have had a grudge to bear since he probably wanted a more prominent position," declared Dick Cheney, who also says that Mr. Clarke was "out of the loop." (What loop? Before 9/11, Mr. Clarke was the administration's top official on counterterrorism.) It's "more about politics and a book promotion than about policy," Scott McClellan said.

Of course, Bush officials have to attack Mr. Clarke's character because there is plenty of independent evidence confirming the thrust of his charges.

Did the Bush administration ignore terrorism warnings before 9/11? Justice Department documents obtained by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, show that it did. Not only did John Ashcroft completely drop terrorism as a priority Eit wasn't even mentioned in his list of seven "strategic goals" Ejust one day before 9/11 he proposed a reduction in counterterrorism funds.

Did the administration neglect counterterrorism even after 9/11? After 9/11 the F.B.I. requested $1.5 billion for counterterrorism operations, but the White House slashed this by two-thirds. (Meanwhile, the Bush campaign has been attacking John Kerry because he once voted for a small cut in intelligence funds.)

Oh, and the next time terrorists launch an attack on American soil, they will find their task made much easier by the administration's strange reluctance, even after 9/11, to protect potential targets. In November 2001 a bipartisan delegation urged the president to spend about $10 billion on top-security priorities like ports and nuclear sites. But Mr. Bush flatly refused.

Finally, did some top officials really want to respond to 9/11 not by going after Al Qaeda, but by attacking Iraq? Of course they did. "From the very first moments after Sept. 11," Kenneth Pollack told "Frontline," "there was a group of people, both inside and outside the administration, who believed that the war on terrorism . . . should target Iraq first." Mr. Clarke simply adds more detail.

Still, the administration would like you to think that Mr. Clarke had base motives in writing his book. But given the hawks' dominance of the best-seller lists until last fall, it's unlikely that he wrote it for the money. Given the assumption by most political pundits, until very recently, that Mr. Bush was guaranteed re-election, it's unlikely that he wrote it in the hopes of getting a political job. And given the Bush administration's penchant for punishing its critics, he must have known that he was taking a huge personal risk.

So why did he write it? How about this: Maybe he just wanted the public to know the truth.

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