9 posts tagged “cheney”

According to CNN, former Vice President and ex-Halliburton executive Dick Cheney ordered CIA to withhold info on counterterrorism program.

This is no surprise to those who have observed Cheney's actions since Obama was sworn in.

The program was reportedly initiated after 9/11 attacks, was on-again, off-again, on the shelt.  Evidently it was so secret, and the culture of the CIA so warped by Cheney's influence, that CIA Director Leon Panetta didn't find out about it until five months after becoming director!

These new allegations lend credance to the claims that House Dems have made in public, and in a letter to Panetta, testifiying that the Bush-era CIA misled Congress for years.

The exact nature of the program is not specified by the members of the US Congress, however Get Real has reason to believe that Cheney initiated a massive, illegal, all-encompassing surveillance program on US citizen that involved complete digital (telephone and computer) capture of all communications going into, and out of, specific cities for brief periods of time.

The total awareness program that was ostensibly shelved due to public outrage was transformed into an ultra-top secret program also fits with the MO of the administration who saw fit to do as pleased on every issue in spite of the legalities.

That's a valid complaint against any administration.  However, these new allegations are likely to lead to charges of conspiracy of lying to the US Congress.

Under US law, you cannot advise someone to lie to the US Congress, even if you are Vice President.

The next step is that the Justice Department should launch a criminal investigation.

While they are at it, they can also subpoena Dick Cheney and all of the other attendees of Cheney's pre 9/11 top-secret energy policy meeting.

Conservatives have told us they don't want accused terrorists to have basic legal rights because they don't deserve it.

They have told us that they don't want accused terrorists to be moved to the US because they will be a physical danger to our society.

They have told us that they need to use torture to protect American lives.

And they have told us they won't apologize for it.

Now that the accused (and perhaps even real) terrorists are able to speak up in their own defense, we now know why Bush and Co. denied them basic legal rights, kept them locked away, out of sight, in legal limbo: they were afraid that they would recant the testimony that the CIA acquired from them using White-house sanctioned torture.

The same testimony used by the Bush administration in their attempts to justify for their war in Iraq.

Now, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed isn't really my kind of guy.  He is an accused top Al-Qaeda operative and self-confessed mastermind of the September 11 attacks.  But it has come to light that Mohammed, like other key "informants", claimed to have lied under torture by the CIA.

"I just make up stories," he said in broken English, telling a 2007 military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay of an interrogation session during which he was

Asked about the location of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, Modhammed said he didn't know, and was then tortured.  He recounted how if he said yes, bin Laden was in a specific location, they wouldn't torture him.  But if he said no, they would torture him.

It doesn't take a genius to see that anyone would say whatever their captors required to stop the torture.

Adding to the veracity of his comments about lying under torture, Mohammed freely confessed in the same haring  to having participated in n 31 different terror plots and responsibilities.

Other captured non-combatants also admitted to lying under torture.  The CIA and the White House would classify detainees as "high value" if they gave them the answers they needed to take action.

One such "high value" detainee, Abu Zubaydah, testified that he almost died under interrogation.

Zubaydah said, "After months of suffering and torture, physically and mentally, they did not care about my injuries that they inflicted to my eye, to my stomach, to my bladder, and my left thigh and my reproductive organs... Doctors told me that I nearly died four times,"

"They say, 'this in your diary.' They say, 'see you want to make operation against America.' I say no, the idea is different. They say no, torturing, torturing. I say 'okay, I do. I was decide to make operation.'"

Zubaydah was the first "high-value" detainee to be subjected to waterboarding, one of the enhanced interrogation approved by the Bush administration.

A third, Majid Khan, who is a US national held at Guantanamo, also said he had been tortured.

The ACLU obtained the partially redacted documents through legal means in US courts.  "In the end, any classified information you have is through... agencies who physically and mentally tortured me," Khan said.

ACLU staff attorney Ben Wizner summed it up:

"The documents released today provide further evidence of brutal torture and abuse in the CIA's interrogation program and demonstrate beyond doubt that this information has been suppressed solely to avoid embarrassment and growing demands for accountability," said Wizner.

Get Real has previously commented on how we tortured for justification for war.  The Bush administration wanted intel to justify their war.  They wanted intel to link Saddam Hussein directly to al Qaeda.  They wanted to know where the WMDs.  They badly needed to find bin Laden.

They didn't succeed in any of these efforts, and their dismal failure occurred at the cost of the moral high ground of the US in the court of world opinion.

Get Real recommends that we try these war criminals for their crimes and purge our country's soul of their sins.  Get Real suggest that we create required courses at all Law Schools to review the legal failings of the Bush and his administration.

The fact the Cheney is roaming free, without any legal charges against him for his conduct, is counter to every ideal that we hold dear as a free nation.  His political career must end before we will be able to move on to a more enlightened and more truly America future.

When he was vice president, Dick Cheney conducted super-secret briefings with lawmakers to promote harsh interrogations - just as those same methods were coming under congressional scrutiny.  Pamela Hess of the Washington Post cited current and former government officials.

Cheney evidently held these cheerleading sessions in the situation room at the White House.

According to sources, including an official with direct knowledge of a March 8, 2005, meeting on the CIA's interrogation program said the briefing was run by Cheney.

Here's what the news story broke:

(1) Following the Abu Ghraib prison abuse fiasco, Cheney lead briefings with members of Congress at the White House to vigorously champion the Bush policies.
(2) CIA officers were on hand to provide details.
(3) Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz was briefed on the virtues of torture after McCain won overwhelming Senate support for banning cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment for all U.S. prisoners

These briefings adds fuel to the fire that the high-ranking officials in the White House were a possible source of the creation of the CIA's program to use torture.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi apparently had a role in shagging out the truth from the CIA.  These briefings were revealed when the CIA tried to counter claims by Pelosi that the CIA did not brief her on the use of torture.  It's possible that she was briefed by Cheney, not the CIA, because Cheney ran the meetings. ,

Cheney, for his part, continues to cheer for torture, in spite of the known facts: confessions gained under torture are unreliable.  He also implicated others in the White House by saying, rather foolishly, "We all approved it."

The fear of the stink of torture has Republicans running scared - scared enough to try to implicate Democrats, who they claim also knew about the torture.   They are, ironically, trying to smear Pelosi by saying that she knew about it, and did nothing to stand against it at the time.

Well, Get Real is the first to point out that neither did the Republicans, and we know they knew.  By trying to say "Pelosi knew, too!"... they are admitting to knowing themselves, thus the Republicans are implicated.

It's no wonder they don't know which end is up.  Gingrich today back-peddled on his claim that Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor was racist because Newt and Rush have made it difficult for the Republicans who are charged with interviewing her for the job to ask legitimate questions.

Is it me, or is it always this much fun watching the disloyal opposition cannibalize themselves?

Unbelievable.  Former Vice President Dick Cheney said today that he does not believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the planning or execution of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
 

He strongly defended the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, however, arguing that Hussein's previous support for known terrorists was a serious danger after 9/11.

Cheney, in an appearance at the National Press Club, also seemed to be intent on speaking out in defense of the Bush administration's national security record because "a clear understanding of policies that worked [in protecting the United States] is essential."

"I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11. We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true," Cheney conceded.

WOW.  Ok.  The guy is about to be everyone's most level-headed friend again, right?  Well, not quite.  See what comes next.

Incredibly, Cheney restated his ridiculous claim that "there was a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq that stretched back 10 years. It's not something I made up. ... We know for a fact that Saddam Hussein was a sponsor -- a state sponsor -- of terror. It's not my judgment. That was the judgment of our [intelligence community] and State Department."

Cheney identified former CIA Director George Tenet as the "prime source of information" on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Um, Mr. Cheney, make the connection... make the connection.

Um, Mr. Cheney, why didn't you tell the rest of the story... that the "intel" used to create this assertion was ill-gotten through torture?  Torture that you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Rumsfeld approved of?  That YOU were the source of intel by your very bad foreign policy decision to use torture to get intel to justify war on Iraq?

No problem, Mr. Cheney.  We've already made the connection.

You can't have it both ways, anymore, FORMER Vice President Dick Cheney.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney attempted to defend the Bush administration's national security record Thursday using, evidently, the only thing he ever had: lies and fairy tales.

For example, Cheney said the use of controversial "enhanced interrogation techniques" was a success that saved thousands of lives.

Specifically, here, Cheney is referencing the just-so story that was floated in April 2009 by Karl Rove and Cheney and others that waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave up intelligence that allowed them to foil a plot to attack a building in Los Angeles.

Here's the rub: the LA tower attack was foiled in Februray 2002.  The dude they claim to have waterboarded for that intelligence was waterboarded over a year later, in March 2003.

Cheney is happy to recklessly lie, outright, and mislead the American public.

Get Real is not surprised, at all.  It is a perfect continuation of the pack of lies begun by the choir Cheney was preaching to: that bastion of logic and deep thought, the American Enterprise Institute.

Funny that Cheney could be so reckless in his continuation of the Big Lie; he then turns around, and said that a ban on certain interrogation techniques is "recklessness cloaked in righteousness."

Actually, that sounds like a great epitaph for the War in Iraq.

Trying to play revisionist, Cheney pretended that torture was not illegal during the Bush administration, and tried to convince the listeners that the Obama administration was "criminalizing" the policies of its predecessor.

Ho-hum, Mr. Cheney.  No signing statements or decrees by Former President-by-Selection Bush could make torture legal then, now, or anytime.

Cheney, no longer in office, and not really invited to weigh in the United States' currently much-improved, progressive foreign policy, then had the gall to try to advise the administration to think "carefully about the course ahead".

Ironically, Cheney then attempted to chide the Obama administration for moving to close Guantanmo Bay, Cuba prison "with little deliberation, and the no plan".  Odd, it seems to Get Real that it was the Bush administration captured, detained, refused legal rights to the detainees; it was the Bush administration who opened the prison facility with no input from anyone but themselves; it was the Bush administration who failed to create a long-term viable plan for dealing with the detainees, and it was the Bush administration who laid no plans for the closure.

 (5/22/09 Update: Get Real has learned that the closure of the facility actually began under the Bush administration, too).

Cheney's speech, which, in liberal and moderate circles, quickly came to be known as his "Chicken Little Speech",  occured on the same day that a news was released of a foiled plot to bomb a religious center in NY.

Obama, on the other hand, did a good job telling the truth - because speaking the truth takes less twisted logic.  He said that he was busy trying to clean up the mess left behind by the Bush administration.

What Obama didn't say is that most Americans, and many if not most Republicans now realize that by safeguarding the legal rights of the alleged terrorists, President Obama will be taking a major step in the right direction that will restore US integrity around the world, that will, in turn, place us on the correct moral ground to argue that all governments should safeguard human rights, including for detained US citizens abroad.  He will change the nature of the discussion and action around the world on issues that matter, like terrorism.

This is one of the many reasons why Obama won the presidential election, and is one of many reasons why I am glad that there is not a Neocon in the White House.

Related Links

Slate Story that Broke the Lie

Daily Kos on Same

McClatchy Newspapers on Yahoo! News:Cheney's speech contained omissions, misstatements 

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele today made sure that the entire world learned that the GOP is not even slightly interested in any type of reform that would save it from the quagmire it found itself in thanks to the domestic and foreign policies of the Bush administration.

Steele said the following:

"Republicans will no longer talk about their mistakes,"

He also said that Republicans will no longer apologize for their mistakes.

These comments were made against the backdrop of for Vice President Dick Cheney's continued blustering, blow-hard insistence that the Bush administration did no wrong.

This even as the spin doctors try, but fail, to convince that enthusiasm for their tired, failed policies are even worth our consideration.

Steele pointed to the woefully underwhelming tea party protests as some type of groundswell of grassroots support for the party, even as Politico blogger Roger Simon tried hard, but failed to spin the worst days of Dick Cheney's political career somehow into something good.   Read this excerpt from Simon's entry on Politico today:

Everybody has heard of Dick Cheney. True, a Washington Post headline last week said: “As Cheney Seizes Spotlight, Many Republicans Wince.” But a wince can sometimes be mistaken for a spasm of ecstasy.

Cheney has many pluses. He is very, very good on TV. (People who don’t like what he says overlook how good he is at saying it.) He is calm, articulate and often courageous. Who else but Dick Cheney would have the guts to go on “Face the Nation With Bob Schieffer” and say “in terms of being a Republican, I’d go with Rush Limbaugh” rather than Colin Powell?

After that, Maureen Dowd wrote: “Cheney, who had five deferments himself to get out of going to Vietnam, would rather follow a blowhard entertainer who has had three divorces and a drug problem (who also avoided Vietnam) than a four-star general who spent his life serving his country.”

To which the Republican wing of the Republican Party replies, “Yeah? So who wouldn’t?”

There is term that describes individuals, political parties, and governments and nations who do what they want regardless of the impact of their choices on the rest of the world.

That term is sociopath. 

The ongoing melt-down of the GOP is clear evidence that they actually have no regard for anything except that which brings them to power.  Of course, those of us who think deeply about the impact of our existence on the world and those around, knew this all along.

We need to stop expecting the GOP to correct itself.  It has decided that it is beyond introspection, reform, self-improvement; that these things are somehow beneath them.

In so doing, they also have removed any legitimacy for their criticism of any other party, person, nation, or entity.

We have seen its final implosion.

I move that the Democrats pass a resolution suggesting that GOP change its animal to the ostrich.

Ed Rollins, a veteran conservative politico and commentator, recently wrote a palliative commentary on CNNPolitics.com that sounds good, but misses the mark.  Ed pulls all punches and almost - ALMOST becomes and apologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney commented on former Secretary of State Colin Powell's Republican credentials on "Face the Nation."

Ed outlines how Mr. Cheney probably saw Powell's support of President Obama as betrayal by a man who Cheney had supported.  Cheney basically disinvited Powell to the party (as if he had the power to do so!).  Rollins then goes on to assuage readers how

"We are a party that has a large constituent group that believes in a social agenda and we will not abandon them. We are a party that believes in the Second Amendment -- and every other amendment for that matter -- and don't feel they need to be altered by the Supreme Court or the Congress.

The need to find a new generation of leaders is an ongoing challenge that falls to both parties on an ongoing basis. Equally important, we as a party have to become more technologically competent in our campaign tactics -- and our message has to relate better to young voters.

We also need to reach out to constituency groups that have not been traditional Republicans. The Democrats have their leader in Obama and we will find ours.

We now have a serious challenge in the battle for the direction of the country, and the future of our children. In one sense the country is blessed to have two divergent views and two distinct parties. That's what makes our democracy strong."

A couple of points are sticking in Get Real's craw.

(1) Mr. Rollins, did you not hear Mr. Cheney?  The former Republican Vice President also stated, without equivocation, that  he would "go with Limbaugh" on dis inviting Powell.  The same Limbaugh who would have McCain and his daughter leave the party.  The same Limbaugh who wished failure on a sitting US President.

The fact is, the unescapable truth is out there. The Cheney's and Limbaugh's of the world put party before country.  That stings, I bet, for conservatives to hear.  The country, and the moderate constituency in the GOP, has learned the hard to way to watch what the GOP leaders DO, instead of merely listening to what they SAY.  More and more Moderate Republicans are beginning to question whether they are being handed a pack of just-so-stories in a party platform on what's important to the leadership of the Republican party.  It's supposed to be for small government.  Hard to swallow that given Bush's explosion.  It's supposed to be against Socialism.  Yet there is, as Rollins points out, a large consituency in the Republican party who wants a progession social agenda.

(2) Which constituency groups can the GOP 'reach out to' when Cheney so stupidly defines the party as an unwelcome and hostile environment for people who dare think for themselves?  Who does Cheney think he's zooming? We all recall very well how Powell was hung out to dry, forced to testify at the UN on false evidence, false intelligence, intelligence the Bush administration knew was false.

Why is anyone even interested in what Cheney has to say about party or country?  What does he have to offer that is worthy of our attention?  His administration was based on lies and secrecy.  The hubris of this man is ridiculously ginormous; he thinks that the country is stupid enough to sit pat and wait for 50 years to reveal the details of his secre energy plan meeting in which many believe they discussed how to secure oil fields in Iraq during an invasion.... well before 9/11.

Now he thinks his party is stupid enough to believe that he should have a say in the party's future.

Mr. Rollins, Get Real.  Your party has conundrum wrapped in a quagmire soured by the stain of torture and death, deficit and depression, and the American people are not all that interested in the party's future contributions.

So, my take on it? There is no room for NeoCons in a viable future GOP.

Let's face it.  Bush and Cheney ate the political and financial base of the GOP.

In an interview with with Scott Hennen, a North Dakota radio host, Dick Cheney tried to defend the Bush administration.  He also saw fit to fan the flames of the growing GOP Civil War.

“I think it would be a mistake for us to moderate," Cheney said. "This is about fundamental beliefs and values and ideas … what the role of government should be in our society, and our commitment to the Constitution and constitutional principles. You know, when you add all those things up, the idea that we ought to moderate basically means we ought to fundamentally change our philosophy. I for one am not prepared to do that, and I think most of us aren’t. Most Republicans have a pretty good idea of values, and aren’t eager to have someone come along and say, 'Well, the only way you can win is if you start to act more like a Democrat.'"

Problem is that Bush and Cheney caused the GOP to lose its very base, and Cheney does not realize that he has no one left to talk to.  The GOP's traditional SOCIALLY CONSERVATIVE base is gone.  Disinterested, that is.  How did Bush and Cheney do this?  They managed to do it by mismanaging the financing of the economy so poorly that the pension and retirement plans of their SOCIALLY CONSERVATIVE base are all but gone.  They hit their own base where it hurts.

Since Bush & CO. emptied the pocket book of their ideaological base, the GOP can no long count on them to fall for their half-truths and outright lies.

By agreeing with Rush Limbaugh that Colin Powell should leave the party, Cheney is arguing for ideological purification of the party.  This won't wash when the GOP is in such desperate need for new ideas.

It will be VERY hard for the GOP is a year and half to argue that theirs is a party of inclusion when they so boldly proclaim that moderates don't have a place.  Where do they think their support will come from?

It is nice to know that long-standing members of the GOP see that the old party lines are just empty rhetoric.

Two quick examples are sufficient.

"We are the party for small government!" says the party whose last president oversaw the largest expansion of government bureaucracy in US history.  My conservative friends are disgusted and dismayed.  They say that Bush & CO. became "like Democrats" via his spend, spend, spend mentality.

"Democrats are tax & spend!" says the party whose last president earned the GOP the moniker of the "Borrow & Spend Party".  Bush's deficit will be in place for a long, long, long time as a painful reminder of the stupidity of his fiscal policies.

The GOP has no answers to modern problems, because their president created those problems.  The last administration hijacked the party for the benefit of big business to the point where the voters see their pensions - and their taxes - going to the already super-rich in the form of executive bonuses, even as the companies tank.

What can a New Conservative Agenda look like?  Their options are highly restricted.  Certainly it cannot be the old, tired, failed policies that include pre-emptive war, tax loopholes for the rich, secrecy and lies.  Certainly it cannot be the old, expensive, non-sustainable policy of fanning the flames of fear.

Get Real will be first to say that the GOP will ignore those who call for far-right ultra-conservative ideological cleansing of the party.  The sheer amount of evidence of those positions as dismal failures is far too much to overcome with further rhetoric.  In fact, the GOP must come to understand that their dalliance with global domination via unmitigated unprovoked war on Middle Eastern countries was nothing more than an anachronistic adolescent temper tantrum because they feared that the US would lose its grip on international matters.  They need to see the US for what it is, where it is.  As nation, the US is still relatively young.  Somewhere between adolescent and young adulthood, with episodes of falling back on old patterns during times of stress, the US is bound for a calmer, more mature future.  As long as the GOP insists on keeping the US in diapers, they will not win the White House.

The GOP needs to find a new, genuine voice that puts party interests second to world interests.  Yes, SECOND TO WORLD interests.  Focus exclusively on American (US) interests will lead to charges of Bush myopia and nationalism.  There are precedents for this; Reagan's foreign policy was not exclusively Americentric.  Even Bush, Sr. made serious overtures to China and other Asian countries.  The GOP can no longer afford to underestimate our friends and allies overseas.

Their only hope is to find a way to create a foreign policy that leads to the consumption of US goods and services overseas.  Everyone knows that the future of the technology sector is green, renewable energy.  Perhaps with their focus on large business, the GOP could see the real value of adopting the position of exporting US know-how in renewable energy blends of  wind, solar, geothermal, tidal - for developing countries as a way to bring a surge to the US economy.  Are the US Corporations too proud to sublet their factories to Indian interests and build the next generation of cheap, reliable transportation - perhaps the Air Car?  Ok, they can too proud themselves out of existence.

If you're a conservative, and if that sounds moderate to you, then you're probably not going to help your party by turning down real economic opportunities for the US in favor of party pride.  You see, for years, conservatives mocked and laughed at those wacko greenies.  Their blatant and loud consumption waste of non-renewable energy was a symbol of their party's pride.  But you can't eat unsound idealogy.  And the GOP has won its last election of far-right ideology.  The character of the US citizenry has never been to empower the people who hurt them last.  They know who put them in the poor house.

To succeed in an internationalized US, the GOP must adopt a position where eveyone's well-being is considered in every decision.  They must first try to protect US interests, yes.  But the trick they need to learn - and learn fast - is to say, with a straight face, and to mean it when they say it:  "This policy has been checked, and is the policy that leads to most benefit to the largest number of people, and the policy that harms the fewest people, regardless of their nationality. This policy benefits Americans because (1) it will create a less expensive commodity for our lifestyle, (2) it will create jobs for US citizens, or (3) it helps improve the lives of other worldwide, and their improved lifestyle will mean greater consumption of US-made goods".  In short, the GOP is going to have to, finally, admit the interconnectedness of everything, and show specifically, based on real analysis, how their policies are going to help.  Ideology is easier, but their brand of it at least is far too ineffective, and will be, for some time.

The GOP is either in for a period of true enlightenment and reform, or for a dark ages that will last decades.  As they rest of world learns how to help each other out with equitable arrangements, the GOP can either sit, and stew in their wishes for a return to good old days of selfishness wrapped in a cloak of false compassion, or they can can GET REAL and join the global party.
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In a recent Wall Street Journal Opinion, Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, an obvious Bush II apologist, wrote how, in his opinion, "The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace".   Shapiro laments the poor treatment of Bush in the Gallup polls, and cites how some Americans have seen fit to name a sewage treatment plant after Bush II.

Shapiro writes

"This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, "Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.

Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties."

Shapiro is a would-be revisionist who has forgotten conveniently who drew first blood.

Bush is in for years of stunning indictments.  Both rhetorical, and perhaps legal.  It was Bush whose first comments to the first were used to describe how much easier it would be for him if he had a dictatorship.  It was Bush who allowed Cheney to, arrogantly, disregard the American's public's right to know and hold a top-secret "energy policy" meeting - an event at which transpired discussion so secretive that their subject matter is still unknown.  It was Bush who decided to ignore the advice of the majority of the world - including his own father's cabinet members - and go into Iraq without a broad coalition..  It was Bush who arrogantly told the world that the world - to a country - either stood with America or against America.  It was Bush who strutted out on the aircraft carrier under the banner "Mission Accomplished".  It was Bush who challenged terrorists to "bring it on", literally inviting more attacks.  It was Bush who failed so miserably to ask Americans to prepare to sacrifice their time and effort - who instead decided to patronize us with a color-coded fear scheme so blatantly used to manipulate the outcome of the 2004 elections.  It was Bush who saw fit to strip American citizens of their rights to legal representation, to a fair and speedy trial, by his mere claim that a citizen is an 'enemy combatant'.  It was Bush who decided to, so arrogantly, expand the powers of the executive branch to the extent that he consider signing statements synonymous with decrees.  Americans have not suffered life under rule by decree since we rejected the last King George.

Bush's attacks on America's sensibilities - and the world's sensibilities - continue.  It is Bush who, even now, is trying to gut the EPA - as if the political carcass wasn't dead enough.

Mr. Shapiro, it is not a measure of arrogance and weakness for a majority of Americans to reject Bush's many broken, stinking rotten putrid doctrines.  It is a measure of the strength of our democracy.  It shows that we still have sufficient character to recognize incompetent arrogance, although, sadly, so late.  It shows the world that we Americans as a whole do not reject their sensibilities and will not place a succession of leaders in place that will keep the world's smaller countries under our boot heel. 

It is, I might add, arrogant for a minority, like yours, to continue to state what is best for the majority, even after the majority has spoken so clearly.  Your time is, I think, better spent soul-searching for a party platform worthy of an American political party.