ARTICLES & EDITORIALS 

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www.GregPalast.com
Remembering President Reagan
another view by Greg Palast, investigative reporter,

June 14, 2004 

     The Reagan Right has used the late President's funeral for a shameless political victory dance, carefully wiping the blood off the historical files. Before the truth is interred, let us have a moment of remembrance...

      Reagan politically fathered... the Bush junta: Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, the kind of Dr. Strangelove that scares even Henry Kissinger; John Poindexter, convicted of abetting Contra terrorists while in the Reagan White House... and James Baker...

        In November 2001... I reported that, during the Reagan presidency, a US embassy
official in Saudi Arabia was, in his own words, "repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants."... They claimed to be engineering students who, when queried as to what school they attended, answered they "could not remember"... 

       After investigation, the career diplomat, attorney Michael Springmann, learned they were, "recruits, rounded up by Osama bin Laden, to [bring to] the United States for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets... They (came) home to roost... with a sickening vengeance.

Read the entire article at here...

NY Times:
The Orwellian Olsens
by Maureen Dowd
April 25, 2004

It's their reality. We just live and die in it.

• In Bushworld, our troops go to war and get killed, but you never see the bodies coming home.
• In Bushworld, flag-draped remains of the fallen are important to revere and show the nation, but only in political ads hawking the president's leadership against terror.
• In Bushworld, we can create an exciting Iraqi democracy as long as it doesn't control its own military, pass any laws or have any power.
• In Bushworld, we can win over Falluja by bulldozing it.

Molly Ivins:
April 15, 2004

My, what a full plate we have as a result of President Bush's primetime press conference. Most importantly, the president believes in freedom. Also, we are trying to change the world (did we sign up for that? did the rest of the world? I thought we were trying to catch terrorists). And glorious news: We may yet find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Someone unearthed 50 pounds of mustard gas on a turkey farm. Oh, and another thing, some of the president's critics say "brown-skinned people" can't create democracies.
Read the entire article here...

truthout editorial:
George and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamtie
By William Rivers Pitt,
April 15, 2004

The first thing we got was the tie.  We lost the White House press conference, which Bush had only done twice during prime time because he isn't good at them.

We lost the fact that the 9/11 Commission had been punching the Bush administration around the room for the last couple of weeks, saying that September 11 could have been prevented by an administration that was actually paying attention.
Read the entire article here...

American Prospect
The Last Word
W.'s Second Term: If you think the first is bad...
Robert B Reich
April 1, 2004

If Bush is re-elected, what could we expect in the next four years?  Here are some thoughts by Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary and co-founder of the American Prospect:

     Musings about a second Bush term typically assume four years of the same right-wing policies we've had to date.  But it'd likely be far worse.  So far the Bush administration has had to govern with the expectation of facing American voters again in 2004. But suppose George W. Bush wins a second term. The constraint of a re-election contest will be gone... and... the radical conservatives will be unleashed.

     A friend who specializes in foreign policy and hobnobs with subcabinet officials in the Defense and State departments told me that the only thing that's stopped the Bushies from storming into Iran and North Korea is the upcoming election. If Bush is re-elected, "[Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld are out of the box," he said. "They'll take Bush's re-election as a mandate to wage the 'war on terror' everywhere and anywhere."

     ...Bush will seek to push "Patriot II" through Congress, giving the Justice Department and the FBI powers to inspect mail, eavesdrop on phone conversations and e-mail, and examine personal medical records, insurance claims, and bank accounts.

     Right-wing evangelicals will solidify their control over the Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services — curtailing abortions... (funding) private religious groups, pushing prayer in the public schools, and promoting creationism...

     Economic policy, meanwhile, will be tilted even more brazenly toward the rich... The goal will be to eliminate all taxes on capital gains, dividends, and other forms of unearned income and move toward a "flat tax." The plan will be for deficits to continue to balloon until Wall Street demands large spending cuts as a condition for holding down long-term interest rates... In consequence, Bush will slash all domestic spending outside of defense. He will also argue that Social Security cannot be maintained in its present form, and will push for legislation to transform it into private accounts. Meanwhile, the few shards of regulation still protecting the environment and the safety of American workers will be eliminated.

     [If Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Chief Justice William Rehnquist retire, Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas will dominate the Supreme Court] Such a court will curtail abortion rights, whittle down the Fourth and Fifth amendments, end all affirmative action, and eliminate much of what's left of the barrier between church and state.

     [Congressional redistricting and voting machine abuses will] transform American democracy into a one-party state... Changes in campaign finance laws will permit larger "hard money" donations by corporate executives and federal contractors who have benefited by Republican policies.

     [And, finally, the media will be consolidated into] three or four giant media empires — all tightly connected to the Republican Party...

Read the entire article here...