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She explained to me how she and her husband voted for Bush. She said they were conservative and watched Fox News regularly; however, something touched her in seeing and hearing everyday people from around the world talk about her beloved country as a bully; a hypocrite. Something touched her when faced with the sobering charge of War Crimes and the images of torture at the hands of Americans under orders from the US Government. Something touched her that day that made her think about what she thought she knew.

This woman said these things to me after watching a test screening of a new documentary called Internationally Speaking.

I've been doing this, political activism, a short time, relatively; but it never ceases to amaze me how much people care. How one instant, one piece of information can open a person's mind to something they didn't see before.

More and more American citizens are losing support for Bush and losing support for this war in Iraq.  They are learning certain things, with increasing speed. These things the activist community knew before the war started: that we were opening a dangerous can of worms by attacking Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan knows how one instant can change your life forever. Other Mothers who have lost sons know. Now Mothers and Fathers and Sisters and Brothers are learning this before it's too late. Still there are those who think their voice is futile.

Last week at the post office I was speaking with a Postal worker about Camp Casey. "I respect what she's doing," the woman had said to me, "but he'll never talk to her. He can't, because then he'll have to talk to everyone."

I said. "Exactly. Cindy Sheehan deserves answers. This country deserves answers."

"I have three sons in Iraq," the woman told me, "one of them – it's his third time over."

"You should go to Crawford!" I replied.

"Well, my sons aren't dead… yet"

I told her that was the best time to go – before they died. It's getting to that point, folks. People are starting to wake up and speak up before it hits their little box of reality.

As Cindy said, "If you fall on the side that is pro-George and pro-war, you get your ass over to Iraq, and take the place of somebody who wants to come home. And if you fall on the side that is against this war and against George Bush, stand up and speak out."

It's far passed time to speak out, America – stand up in solidarity with Cindy. Speak out in your local communities. Write letters to the editor. Let's generate a sound heard around the world – "America says NO to this war. America says NO to torture and abuse. America says NO to occupation. America says NOT ONE MORE PERSON WILL DIE because of this war."

Speak up, America. Stand up. Let's roll.

Christine Rose is an activist and filmmaker. Her films include Liberty Bound (www.libertybound.com) & Internationally Speaking (www.internationally-speaking.com). She can be reached at bluemoosefilms@hotmail.com.

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Babcock proclaims his admiration for the Roman Empire, for its gifts to the world of "political stability, rule of law, the virtues of political enfranchisement, the preservation of learning and the arts, and the respect for other cultures and religions." Certainly, the Roman elite believed this about themselves, but seen from the perspective of the poor, Rome was a menace.

As a Christian, I claim a particular historical perspective, namely that handed down by the Bible. The Bible stands as the most anti-imperial tome in human history. It is the story of a people at odds with empire from its inception. The Bible gives us a look at empire from the perspective of the victims. The Jewish people experienced slavery, slaughter, exile and occupation at the hands of various empires.

In his critique of economic practices that allowed the rich to get richer while the poor starved, Jesus was undermining the very foundation of the exploitative Roman economic system. In his opposition the puppet government of the Temple, Jesus was denouncing Roman political repression. In his denial of the use of violence, Jesus was de-legitimizing the most important tool of imperial repression.

Jesus was legally crucified for his actions (a demonstration of that famed Roman rule of law). Christians, along with the Jews, remember that it was Rome that laid waste to Judea (Roman political enfranchisement), slaughtered thousands, took thousands more as slaves, destroyed the Temple (a taste of Roman religious tolerance), and basically shattered the Jewish nation so thoroughly that it took it more than 18 centuries to reconstitute itself.

It was the Roman Empire that on several occasions tortured and killed people in the most brutal way, merely for professing their Christian faith. And after Christianity became the official religion of the empire, it was Rome that began the repression of Jews and other non-Christian faiths.

All of this history, not to mention our own nation's rejection of the British empire, should be enough to dissuade supposedly learned men such as Babcock from embracing the lure of empire. Even more so, since Babcock hails from Liberty University, that overtly Christian University founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Falwell was the man who recently demonstrated his discriminatory memory of scripture by proclaiming, "God is pro-war."

The selective memories of Babcock and Falwell are now applied in support of the imperial policies of our nation. They, like fellow fundamentalist Christian George W. Bush, believe that the United States as empire has the right to ignore the United Nations, break international law, invade nations, imprison and torture at will, and lay claim the resources of weaker nations and poor people. This is a very Roman perspective on proper national behavior.

We, as the citizens of this nation, should say clearly that we do not want the policies and practices of empire. For all their haughty claims, empires exist for one reason only -- to take resources from the weak and funnel them to the mighty. This stands in utter contradiction to faith of Moses and the witness of Jesus. By their words and actions Babcock, Falwell and the president dishonor this nation, and mock the faith the president and Falwell so ardently proclaim.

The Rev. Rich Gamble is pastor of the Keystone Congregational Church of Christ in Seattle.

© 2005 Seattle Post Intelligencer

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

So here's a question: Should people who are being recruited into the armed forces be told the truth about the risks they are likely to face if they agree to sign up and put on a uniform?

Right now, that is not happening. Recruiters desperate for warm bodies to be shipped to Iraq are prowling selected high schools and neighborhoods across the country with sales pitches that touch on everything but the possibility of being maimed or killed in combat.

The recruiters themselves are under enormous pressure from higher-ups who are watching crucial components of the all-volunteer military buckle under the strain of a war that was supposed to have been won in a jiffy, but instead just goes on and on.

So the teenagers who are the prime targets for recruitment are being told just about anything to ward off whatever misgivings they may have. Need money for college? No problem. You want to go to a nice place? Certainly. Maybe even Hawaii.

A young man who recently registered, as required, with the Selective Service System received an upbeat brochure in the mail touting the military's 30 days of annual "paid vacation," its free medical and dental care, its "competitive retirement" benefits and its "home loan program."

There was no mention of combat, or what it's like to walk the corridors and the grounds of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where you'll see a tragic, unending parade of young men and women struggling to move about despite their paralysis, or with one, two or three limbs missing.

I am not at all opposed to the military. I was in the Army for two years, and I've personally known many people who have had long and honorable careers in the service. I've known many men and women who made almost unimaginable sacrifices - including, in some cases, giving up their lives - while in uniform.

But I think it is precisely because the stakes are so high that we should be straight with potential recruits. Instead we present them with a lollipopped, sugarcoated, fantasyland version of what life in the military is like.

In a segment on PBS's "NewsHour" last December, an Army recruiter said: "I joined because I was seeking some adventure, all right? And I've been to a lot of different countries - Athens, Greece, Ireland, Rome. Been to Egypt twice, to the pyramids. All sorts of fun stuff."

The Army actually has an online video game that it likes to brag is one of the "top five" on the Web. Geared to children as young as 13, it has more than five million registered players.

But war is not a game. Getting your face blown off is not fun. The fundamental task of the military is to fight and kill the enemies of the United States, and fighting and killing is a grotesquely brutal experience. Potential recruits should be told the truth about what is expected of them, and what the risks are. And they should be told why it's a good idea for them to take those risks. If that results in too few people signing up for the military, the country is left with a couple of other options:

Stop fighting unnecessary wars, or reinstate the draft.

Instead, the military and its harried recruiters are preying more and more on youngsters who are especially vulnerable and impressionable, and they're doing it by creating a patently false impression of what life in the wartime military is like.

The youngsters recruited most relentlessly are those from small towns, rural areas and impoverished urban neighborhoods. They are kids who are not well-to-do, and who don't have much of a plan for their future. The military, with its uniforms, its slick ads and its video games, can look very good to these unsophisticated youngsters.

With a series of television ads, the Army is also trying to win over what it calls the "influencers," the parents and other adults who have been counseling youngsters to stay away from the military. That campaign was packaged by the Leo Burnett agency, which has the following to say about itself:

"Leo Burnett USA creates ideas that inspire enduring belief for many of the world's most valuable brands and most successful marketers, including McDonald's, Disney, Procter & Gamble, Marlboro, Altoids, Heinz, Kellogg, Nintendo and the U.S. Army."

© 2005 New York Times, Co.

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Bigger garages. Bigger houses. New fuel economy standards that will omit the biggest cars. Hoo-aah.

Brave Marines we are. From the halls of McMansions to the steps of our SUVs, we fight our exurban battles, ripping up every living tree.

Next month will mark four years since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Four years is a time period often associated with sending children off to institutions of higher learning in the assumption they will become members of an enlightened citizenry.

But the four years since 9/11 have come and gone with no sign that the United States sees the light. As soldiers pay the ultimate price in Afghanistan and Iraq, we continue to be toy soldiers, the invulnerable warriors of consumption. No report of a real soldier dying from a roadside bomb, no administration assertion that fades into falsehood, not even fill-ups that hit $40 and $50 a tank has spurred us to question our schizophrenic nature.

For four years, Americans have waved flags and stuck ''Support the Troops" magnets on the backs of their cars. Such acts, of course, stem from sincere sentiments we all share for their safety. But we can no longer escape our responsibility in one of the most insincere wars in the nation's history.

We have allowed a president to send off the sons and daughters of the working class and the poor to invade Iraq, killing thousands of innocent Iraqi working class and poor along the way. As each day passes, the fact that no Osama has been flushed out, the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and the fact that there was never a tie between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 becomes not just Bush's responsibility but ours as well.

Americans probably know this deep down. It is almost as if we are binging to distract us from the needless killing. We build bigger subdivisions as far out as we can, no matter what it means in commuting time and $2.55 gasoline.

Even though the average size of the American family has shrunk, the average size of a new home has grown from an average of 983 square feet in 1950 to 2,330 square feet today, according to the National Association of Home Builders. The percentage of new homes over 2,400 square feet has zoomed from 10 percent in 1970 to 38 percent today. The percentage of new homes with two-car garages has grown from 39 percent in 1970 to 82 percent today.

In a New York Times feature this week about ''living large" in the exurbs, a sales representative joked with a family that was looking at a model home, ''Lots of places to hide, aren't there, boys?" It is mathematically impossible for the rest of the world to live like this. As the boys play hide and seek for a moment, the parents play out the fantasy that hiding from the reality of consuming a quarter of the world's energy and producing a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases is an all-American right.

Unfortunately, it is difficult for a populace to be enlightened if its leader keeps leaving it in the dark. President Bush, according to the Times, is planning to leave out mega-SUVs such as Hummers from new fuel economy standards, apparently to ease the competitive strain on Detroit, which has invested far more in selling gas guzzlers than foreign automakers. With the explosion of SUVs (trucks now account for 50 percent of light-duty vehicle sales), the nation's average fuel economy has been flat for a quarter century and has actually fallen slightly, from 22.1 miles per gallon in 1987 to 21 miles per gallon today.

It is now the responsibility of Americans to turn on the lights in the White House. It is understandable that the United States prefers presidents who enable our denial. The death of each soldier denies us that privilege. Supporting the troops just might involve rethinking what it means to have a ''Support the Troops" magnet on an SUV, and asking ourselves if we need that much room in the exurbs to hide from each other.

© 2005 Boston Globe

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

As an assistant White House counsel in 1984, John Roberts scoffed at the notion that men and women should earn equal pay in jobs of comparable importance, and he belittled three female Republican members of Congress who promoted that idea to the Reagan administration.

The memo from Roberts, now President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, was a response to a letter that the three women - one of whom was Olympia Snowe of Maine, now a U.S. senator - had sent to the administration. The women had said that the concept of "equal pay for equal work" had not sufficiently boosted women's wages because women were not in many of the same fields as men. The three were promoting the notion of equal pay for different jobs of comparable value, based on factors such as skills and responsibility.

In his memo to White House counsel Fred Fielding, Roberts said the women's letter "contends that more is required because women still earn only $0.60 for every $1 earned by men, ignoring the factors that explain that apparent disparity, such as seniority, the fact that many women frequently leave the work force for extended periods of time. ... I honestly find it troubling that three Republican representatives are so quick to embrace such a radical redistributive concept. Their slogan may as well be, 'From each according to his ability, to each according to her gender.' "

The Feb. 20, 1984, memo from Roberts was among 5,393 pages of records released Monday by the National Archives that were from Roberts' work during the Reagan administration in the early 1980s.

The records, which have been stored at the Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif., did not include material from Roberts' tenure as deputy U.S. solicitor general from 1989 to 1993, a period in which he took part in cases involving abortion rights, school desegregation and religion in public places. Senate Democrats and the Bush administration continue to wrangle over the release of those papers. The administration has withheld the documents, saying that to release them would breach the attorney-client relationship.

Monday's papers reinforced the portrait of Roberts that emerged in previous releases of documents from his government work two decades ago, before he went on to a career in private practice and then became a judge on a U.S. appeals court. The papers show him as a young aide eager to advance Reagan's conservatism on civil rights, school prayer and women's rights.

Roberts' tone on some women's issues contrasts with that of Sandra Day O'Connor, the justice whom Roberts would succeed. As an Arizona legislator, she complained about women's low wages. As the court's first female justice, she voted for affirmative action and broadly interpreted federal law protecting girls from bias in school programs.

Roberts' memo in the debate over "comparable worth" in wages arose after a U.S. trial judge in Washington state ruled that federal anti-discrimination law required equal pay for men and women who held different jobs that required comparable skills and effort. Reagan officials were considering whether to urge an appeals court to reverse the ruling.

Snowe - along with Nancy Johnson, who is still a House member from Connecticut, and Claudine Schneider, who represented Rhode Island - wanted the ruling to stand and urged the Reagan administration to stay out of the case. (In the end, the administration did not intervene. An appeals court reversed the trial judge's decision.)

In a statement Monday, Snowe said that she recently had a "productive conversation" with Roberts "on a range of issues." She added, "Hopefully, 21 years later, Judge Roberts possesses an openness with respect to issues of gender-based wage discrimination."

One of Monday's documents might undercut the image of Roberts put forward recently by NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group. A TV ad by the group cast Roberts as being sympathetic to bombers of abortion clinics. The group withdrew the ad last week under criticism that it was unfair.

In February 1986, Roberts drafted a letter for a White House official to a lawmaker who had raised concerns that Reagan might pardon people who had been convicted of bombing abortion clinics. "No matter how lofty or sincerely held the goal, those who resort to violence to achieve it are criminals," Roberts wrote, adding that "neither the cause ... nor the target of their violence will in any way be considered to mitigate the seriousness of their offense against our laws."

© 2005 USA Today

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Bedeviled by the mounting casualties in Iraq and increasingly confused by the mixed messages emanating from war leaders, Americans in large numbers are losing confidence in the mission.

New polls report that for the first time, a majority of Americans reject President Bush's contention that the war over there is making us safer over here. Indeed, barring major immediate progress in Iraq, some suggest that 2005 may well be remembered as the year when public opinion went south and never came back — a mood shift roughly analogous to 1968, when domestic confidence in the Vietnam War began its irreversible slide.

There has long been public frustration about the gap between administration statements and battlefield realities — witness Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's prewar prediction that the fighting "could last six days, six weeks, I doubt six months," or that 92 percent of U.S. military deaths have occurred since Bush declared on May 1, 2003, that "major combat" was over.

But for a long time the restive Americans tended to be Democrats who already disliked Bush or who never bought his war pitch in the first place. What's new today is that frustrations about the war are being voiced by those who backed the mission at the outset. These Americans — as evidenced in interviews by reporters from Texas to New York City during the past week — are increasingly alarmed by the facts on the ground and confused about the best course of action in the future.

Consider Pennsylvanian Eric Zagata. He is a 24-year-old from Luzerne who served in Iraq last year as a member of the 109th Field Artillery's Bravo Battery until he was injured by shrapnel. He was luckier than the 92 Pennsylvanians slain thus far — in battle deaths, Pennsylvania ranks third in the nation, behind California and Texas — but he is a changed man.

"Going into it," he said, "I just felt it was my obligation. Now I feel bad. I think we're in such a spot. We can't pull out of there because if we do, it would just be a waste of all our people's lives and all their people's lives. I think it's a real Catch-22."

His sentiments shifted after "seeing all these guys getting killed every day for nothing, really. We went over there, and we're fighting this war, and we're still paying $2.40 a gallon for gas. Eighteen hundred people have died, and nothing has been accomplished." (The U.S. military death toll, on Friday, was 1,846.)

Or consider Marcy Price, 54, who was shopping Thursday near Fort Jackson, the U.S. Army's largest basic training center, in South Carolina. She backed the war at the outset because "I thought that it was very worthwhile — that it was something we needed to do in response to 9/11." However, "I changed my mind because of the length of the war" and because, as she sees it, the Bush administration has failed to show that Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a crucial front in the broader fight against terrorism.

These sentiments are reflected in the polls. When the war was a year old, in March 2004, about 65 percent of Americans were supporting the decision to wage it. But in the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, support has sagged to 44 percent. Meanwhile, 57 percent now say that the war has made the U.S. "less safe from terrorism" — a Gallup record high and a key finding because it undercuts a core Bush argument for launching the war in the first place.

Retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, an expert on war and public opinion who teaches at Boston University, said: "At this point, the president has nearly exhausted the extra moral authority that he was granted after 9/11. It's hard for people to accept battlefield deaths when they can't see where a war is going."

Debby Boarman, a 58-year-old retiree from Evansville, Ind., voted for Bush in 2000 and in 2004. But visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington last week, she said: "I don't think he's doing as good a job as he said he was going to do. I don't like the way he is handling (Iraq) — well, he isn't handling (it). … It's more of a lack thereof."

Bush can still count on staunch support from millions of Americans, including Greg Henning of Ohio, who was visiting Ground Zero in New York on Tuesday.

"If we had done this (war) in the 1990s, I don't think (9/11) would have happened," he said. He sees the Iraq casualties as an acceptable sacrifice because "if thousands of soldiers hadn't died (in previous wars), we wouldn't have been here right now" living in freedom.

And notwithstanding the attention focused on Cindy Sheehan, who is camping out at Bush's ranch to protest her son's death in Iraq, there are many women like Diane Eggers, a 51-year-old Bush voter from Euless, Texas, whose son, Kyle Eggers, was killed last December. She said: "He supported President Bush because he believed in what (Bush) was doing. There's no good part of any war … You just have to go with it."

The public's growing bewilderment stems in part from the perception that Bush and his war leaders are communicating poorly. In the latest poll conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 64 percent say that Bush is failing to articulate a "clear plan" for winning the war, the highest negative share since the start of the conflict.

"In the absence of the president making a persuasive case, many people don't know how to judge what's going on there," Bacevich said. First glance.

• In March 2004, about 65 percent of Americans supported the decision to wage war in Iraq.
• In the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, support has sagged to 44 percent.

© 2005 Kansas City Star

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Bush has, after all, spent his entire two terms in office talking tough about countries and dictators that conceal weapons of mass destruction and even tougher on individuals who supply rogue nations and terrorists with the means to build WMDs. For all intents and purposes, Pakistan and Musharraf fit that description.

Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and top members of the administration reacted with shock when they found out that Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan 's top nuclear scientist, spent the past 15 years selling outlaw nations nuclear technology and equipment. So it was sort of a surprise when Bush, upon finding out about Khan's proliferation of nuclear technology, let Pakistan off with a slap on the wrist. But it was all an act. In fact, it was actually a cover-up designed to shield Cheney because he knew about the proliferation for more than a decade and did nothing to stop it.

Like the terrorist attacks on 9-11, the Bush administration had mountains of evidence on Pakistan's sales of nuclear technology and equipment to nations vilified by the U.S. —nations that are considered much more of a threat than Iraq —but turned a blind eye to the threat and allowed it to happen.

In 1989, the year Khan first started selling nuclear secrets on the black-market; Richard Barlow, a young intelligence analyst working for the Pentagon prepared a shocking report for Cheney, who was then working as Secretary of Defense under the first President Bush administration: Pakistan built an atomic bomb and was selling its nuclear equipment to countries the U.S. said was sponsoring terrorism.

But Barlow's findings, as reported in a January 2002 story in the magazine Mother Jones, were "politically inconvenient."

"A finding that Pakistan possessed a nuclear bomb would have triggered a congressionally mandated cutoff of aid to the country, a key ally in the CIA's efforts to support Afghan rebels fighting a pro-Soviet government. It also would have killed a $1.4-billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad ," Mother Jones reported.

Ironically, Pakistan, critics say, was let off the hook last month so the U.S. could use its borders to hunt for al-Qaeda leader and 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Cheney dismissed Barlow's report because he desperately wanted to sell Pakistan the F-16 fighter planes. Several months later, a Pentagon official was told by Cheney to downplay Pakistan 's nuclear capabilities when he testified on the threat before Congress. Barlow complained to his bosses at the Pentagon and was fired.

"Three years later, in 1992, a high-ranking Pakistani official admitted that the country had developed the ability to assemble a nuclear weapon by 1987," Mother Jones reported. "In 1998, Islamabad detonated its first bomb."

During the time that Barlow prepared his report on Pakistan , Bryan Siebert an Energy Department analyst, was looking into Saddam Hussein's nuclear program in Iraq Siebert concluded that " Iraq has a major effort under way to produce nuclear weapons," and said that the National Security Council should investigate his findings. But the Bush administration--which had been supporting Iraq as a counterweight to the Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran --ignored the report, the magazine reported.

"This was not a failure of intelligence," Barlow told Mother Jones. "The intelligence was in the system."

Cheney went to great lengths to cover-up Pakistan 's nuclear weaponry. In a New Yorker article published on March 29, 1993 investigative reporter Seymour Hersh quoted Barlow as saying that some high-ranking members inside the CIA and the Pentagon lied to Congress about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal so as not to sacrifice the sale of the F-16 fighter planes to Islamabad, which was secretly equipped to deliver nuclear weapons. Pakistan's nuclear capabilities and the had become so grave by the spring of 1990 that then CIA deputy director Richard Kerr said the Pakistani nuclear threat was worse than the Cuban Missile crisis in the 1960s.

"It was the most dangerous nuclear situation we have ever faced since I've been in the U.S. government," Kerr said in an interview with Hersh. "It may be as close as we've come to a nuclear exchange. It was far more frightening than the Cuban missile crisis."

Presently, Kerr is leading the CIA's review of prewar intelligence into the Iraqi threat cited by Bush.

Still, in l989 Cheney and others in the Pentagon and the CIA continued to hide the reality of Pakistan 's nuclear threat from members of Congress. Hersh explained in his lengthy New Yorker article that reasons behind the cover-up "revolves around the fact… that the Reagan Administration had dramatically aided Pakistan in its pursuit of the bomb."

"President Reagan and his national-security aides saw the generals who ran Pakistan as loyal allies in the American proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan : driving the Russians out of Afghanistan was considered far more important than nagging Pakistan about its building of bombs. The Reagan Administration did more than forgo nagging, however; it looked the other way throughout the mid-nineteen-eighties as Pakistan assembled its nuclear arsenal with the aid of many millions of dollars' worth of restricted, high-tech materials bought inside the United States. Such purchases have always been illegal, but Congress made breaking the law more costly in 1985, when it passed the Solarz Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act (the amendment was proposed by former Representative Stephen J. Solarz, Democrat of New York), providing for the cutoff of all military and economic aid to purportedly non-nuclear nations that illegally export or attempt to export nuclear-related materials from the United States."

"The government's ability to keep the Pakistani nuclear-arms purchases in America secret is the more remarkable because (since 1989) the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Department (under Cheney) have been struggling with an internal account of illegal Pakistani procurement activities, given by a former C.I.A. intelligence officer named Richard M. Barlow," Hersh reported. "Barlow… was dismayed to learn, at first hand, that State Department and agency officials were engaged in what he concluded was a pattern of lying to and misleading Congress about Pakistan 's nuclear-purchasing activities."

The description by Hersh of what took place in mid-1990 is eerily reminiscent of what's taking place today in terms of the current Bush administration's foreign policy objectives and its

Hersh interviewed scores of intelligence and administration officials for his March 1993 New Yorker story and many of those individuals confirmed Barlow's claims that Pakistani nuclear purchases was deliberately withheld from Congress by Cheney and other officials, for fear of provoking a cutoff in military and economic aid that would adversely affect the prosecution of the war in Afghanistan.

Jason Leopold is the author of the explosive memoir, News Junkie, to be released in the spring of 2006 by Process/Feral House Books. Visit Leopold's website at www.jasonleopold.com for updates.

© 2005 Jason Leopold

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

His latest slap in the face to Congress, the recess appointment of John C. Bolton ambassador to the United Nations, demonstrates that he loves the power granted to Congress by the Constitution only when he can speak of it in the lofty words provided by his speech writers or, as in this case, cram it down the throats of his opponents. Who needs the advice and consent of the Senate anyway? Consent doesn't mean agreement does it? Or maybe I'm just disassembling...

How much more power can the man want anyway? His party controls both houses of Congress and the 28 of the statehouses, including those of the largest states and, paradoxically, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the most Democratic of the blue states. The GOP's successful bid to consolidate its power by controlling all possible the avenues to the White House can be seen in the intense though quiescent pressure on all the lobbying firms in the capital who have been advised that they will be granted access to the administration only if they do not represent any Democratic interests. Yet he conveniently forgets that almost as many voters opposed him as voted for him: 59,028,111 for Kerry, another 1,224,611 for Nader and other third-party candidates for a total of 49.27% of the vote, versus 62,040,610--50.73% of the vote for Bush. 1,787,888 votes do not make a mandate.

Bush's attitude can only be understood through the lexicon of sports: Football's sudden death means that your team takes home the Superbowl trophy; the go-ahead run in extra innings can make you the World Series Champions. Bush regards this as a game. The win obliterates the other side. For Bush as for Green Bay Packers the late coach Vince Lombardi, "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."

It is absolutely clear that Bush has a gloves-off, take-no-prisoners approach to government. I am all for civility on Capitol Hill but the time has come for the Democrats to put aside their distaste for direct confrontation and to oppose Bush and his policies at every turn. Polite regard for the feelings and sensibilities of others is little more than spinelessness when you're dealing with aristocrats who are accustomed to getting their own way and getting their lackeys to do their dirty work. When Bush Sr. was president, Lee Atwater took the heat for what was clearly the desire of the president. Now, I am not saying that Atwater wasn't a slime ball; he was, but he also deflected anger from his boss for policies that he carried out for him. George W. has a whole stable of snarling alter-egos, from the despicable Karl Rove to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

The unbelievable thing is that whenever a Democrat says something even remotely critical of Bush or the GOP, like Senator Richard Durbin's observations about Abu Ghraib or any statement by party chairman Howard Dean, the Right clobbers him/her and the Democrats crumple like so much used Kleenex.

The president realized early on in his administration that talking a good game, initially characterizing himself as a "uniter" rather than a divider; portraying himself as a nice guy who middle America would enjoy having a beer with; joking about his poor use of language; and publicly communing with his deity would shore-up his "political capital." His supporters re-elected him happily and have continued to defend him.

In the last week, Bush has won the approval of the energy bill that despite the encroaching dangers of global warming makes no mention of the need for conservation and ignores the need for development of alternative forms of energy and of CAFTA which lifts tariffs on goods of several Central American and Caribbean nations. Now he has given Bolton a recess appointment. All that remains for a complete rout of the Democrats is the confirmation of John G. Roberts to the United States Supreme Court.

The Democratic Party should take a hard look at its mascot. Donkeys are renowned for their stubborn refusal to accede to the will of others and their tendency to kick when pushed. This donkey has not been doing enough kicking back to suit me. It is about time it did.

Dr. Rosa Maria Pegueros is an associate professor of Latin American History at the University of Rhode Island. She may be reached at pegueros@uri.edu