Monday, July 09, 2007

Interview with an Idiot

Ireland: I wanted to slap him
George W Bush was so upset by Carole Coleman’s White House interview that an official complaint was lodged with the Irish embassy. The RTE journalist explains why the president made her blood boil
With just minutes to go to my interview with George W Bush, I was escorted to the White House library, where a staff member gave instructions on how to greet the president: “He’ll be coming in the door behind you, just stand up, turn around and extend your hand.”
I placed my notes on the coffee table, someone attached a microphone to my lapel, and I waited. The two chairs by the fireplace where the president and I would sit were at least six feet apart; clearly I would not be getting too close to him.

The room was well-lit, providing the kind of warm background conducive to a fireside chat. Several people had crowded in behind me. I counted five members of the White House film crew, there was a stenographer sitting in the corner and three or four security staff. I was still counting them when someone spoke. “He’s coming.”

I stood up, turned around to face the door and seconds later the president strode towards me. Bush appeared shorter than on camera and he looked stern and rather grey that day.

“Thanks for comin’, Mr President” I said, sticking out my hand. I had borrowed this greeting directly from him. When Bush made a speech at a rally or town hall, he always began by saying “Thanks for comin’” in his man-of-the-people manner. If he detected the humour in my greeting, he didn’t let on. He took my hand with a firm grip and, bringing his face right up close to mine, stared me straight in the eyes for several seconds, as though drinking in every detail of my face. He sat down and an aide attached a microphone to his jacket.

Nobody said a word. “We don’t address the president unless he speaks first,” a member of the film crew had told me earlier. The resulting silence seemed odd and discomforting, so I broke it. “How has your day been, Mr President?” Without looking up at me, he continued to straighten his tie and replied in a strong Texan drawl, “Very busy.”

This was followed by an even more disconcerting silence that, compounded by the six feet separating us, made it difficult to establish any rapport.

“Will Mrs Bush be seeing any of our beautiful country?” I tried again, attempting to warm things up by adding that I had heard that the taoiseach would be keeping him too busy for sightseeing on his forthcoming trip to Ireland.

“He’s putting me to work, is he? Have you not interviewed Laura?” “No, I haven’t met your wife.” I suggested that he put in a good word for me. He chuckled. By now he seemed settled and the crew looked ready, but still nobody spoke. I was beginning to worry that the clock may have already started on my 10 minutes.

“Are we all ready to go then?” I asked, looking around the room. The next voice I heard was the president’s. “I think we have a spunky one here,” he said, to nobody in particular.

MC, a White House press officer whom I’ve decided not to identify, had phoned me three days earlier to say that President Bush would do an interview with RTE. “Good news,” she had said. “It goes this Thursday at 4.20pm. You will have 10 minutes with the president and Turkish television will talk to him just before you.”

My initial excitement was dampened only by the timing, much later than I had hoped. The interview would take place just three hours before I was to fly back to Ireland to cover his arrival at the EU summit at Dromoland Castle in Clare and just 15 minutes before the start of RTE’s Prime Time programme on which the interview would be broadcast. It would be practically impossible to have the president on air in time for this.

“That’s fabulous,” I gushed, “but is there any way I could go before the Turks?” I had previously explained about the Prime Time programme, so MC knew the situation. “I’ll look into it,” she offered.

The interview sounded like quite a production. We wouldn’t be able to just saunter in there with a camera. It would be filmed by a White House crew, which would then hand over the tapes to me to be copied and returned the same day.

MC asked me for a list of questions and topics, which she said was required for policy purposes in case I should want to ask something that the president needed to be briefed on. The request did not seem odd to me then. The drill had been exactly the same for an interview I had conducted six months earlier with the then secretary of state, Colin Powell.

“What would you ask the president of the United States?” I enquired of everyone I met in the following days. Ideas had already been scribbled on scattered notepads in my bedroom, on scraps of paper in my handbag and on my desk, but once the date was confirmed, I mined suggestions from my peers in RTE and from foreign policy analysts. I grilled my friends in Washington and even pestered cab drivers. After turning everything over in my head, I settled on a list of 10 questions.

Securing a time swap with Turkish television ensured that I saw the president 10 minutes earlier, but there was still less than half an hour to bring the taped interview to the production place four blocks away in time for Prime Time.

Still, with the arrangements starting to fall into place, the sense of chaos receded and I returned to the questions, which by now were perpetually dancing around my head, even in my sleep. Reporters often begin a big interview by asking a soft question — to let the subject warm up before getting into the substance of the topic at hand. This was how I had initially intended to begin with Bush, but as I mentally rehearsed the likely scenario, I felt that too much time could be consumed by his first probable answer, praising Ireland and looking forward to his visit. We could, I had calculated, be into the third minute before even getting to the controversial topics. I decided to ditch the cordial introduction.

()

The majority of the Irish public, as far as I could tell, was angry with Bush and did not want to hear a cosy fireside chat in the middle of the most disputed war since Vietnam. Instead of the kid-glove start, I would get down to business.

On Thursday June 24, Washington DC was bathed in a moist 90-degree heat, the type that makes you perspire all over after you have walked only two blocks. Stephanie and I arrived at the northwest gate of the White House that afternoon, and were directed to the Old Executive Office building, Vice President Dick Cheney’s headquarters, and were introduced to MC, whom I had spoken to only by phone. An elegant and confident woman, she was the cut of CJ, the feisty White House press secretary on The West Wing television drama.

A younger male sidekick named Colby stood close by nodding at everything she said and interjecting with a few comments of his own every now and then. Colby suggested that I ask the president about the yellow suit the taoiseach had worn the previous week at the G8 Summit on Sea Island in Georgia. I laughed loudly and then stopped to study his face for signs that he was joking — but he didn’t appear to be. “The president has a good comment on that,” he said.

The taoiseach’s suit had been a shade of cream, according to the Irish embassy. But alongside the other more conservatively dressed leaders, it had appeared as a bright yellow, leaving our Bertie looking more like the lead singer in a band than the official representative of the European Union. It was amusing at the time, but I was not about to raise a yellow suit with the president. “Really?” I asked politely. But a little red flag went up inside my head.

Then MC announced that she had some news for me. “There may be another interview in the pipeline for you,” she said.

“Me?”

“We’re not supposed to tell you this yet, but we are trying to set up an interview with the first lady.”
She indicated that the White House had already been in contact with RTE to make arrangements for the interview at Dromoland Castle, where the president and Mrs Bush would be staying. As an admirer of Laura Bush’s cool grace and sharp intellect, I had requested interviews with her several times previously without any reply. Now the first lady of the United States was being handed to me on a plate. I could not believe my luck.

“Of course, it’s not certain yet,” MC added. And then her sidekick dropped his second bombshell. “We’ll see how you get on with the president first.”

I’m sure I continued smiling, but I was stunned. What I understood from this was that if I pleased the White House with my questioning of the president, I would get to interview the first lady. Were they trying to ensure a soft ride for the president, or was I the new flavour of the month with the first family?

“I’m going to give the president his final briefing. Are there any further questions you want to pass on to him?” MC asked.

“No,” I said, “just tell him I want to chat.”

Stephanie and I locked eyes and headed for the ladies’ powder room, where we prayed.

Mr President,” I began. “You will arrive in Ireland in less than 24 hours’ time. While our political leaders will welcome you, unfortunately the majority of our people will not. They are annoyed about the war in Iraq and about Abu Ghraib. Are you bothered by what Irish people think?”

The president was reclining in his seat and had a half-smile on his face, a smile I had often seen when he had to deal with something he would rather not.

“Listen. I hope the Irish people understand the great values of our country. And if they think that a few soldiers represent the entirety of America, they don’t really understand America then . . . We are a compassionate country. We’re a strong country, and we’ll defend ourselves. But we help people. And we’ve helped the Irish and we’ll continue to do so. We’ve got a good relationship with Ireland.”

“And they are angry over Iraq as well and particularly the continuing death toll there,” I added, moving him on to the war that had claimed 100 Iraqi lives that very day. He continued to smile, but just barely.

“Well, I can understand that. People don’t like war. But what they should be angry about is the fact that there was a brutal dictator there that had destroyed lives and put them in mass graves and torture rooms . . . Look, Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, against the neighbourhood. He was a brutal dictator who posed a threat that the United Nations voted unanimously to say, Mr Saddam Hussein . . .”

Having noted the tone of my questions, the president had now sat forward in his chair and had become animated, gesturing with his hands for emphasis. But as I listened to the history of Saddam Hussein and the weapons inspectors and the UN resolutions, my heart was sinking. He was resorting to the type of meandering stock answer I had heard scores of times and had hoped to avoid. Going back over this old ground could take two or three minutes and allow him to keep talking without dealing with the current state of the war. It was a filibuster of sorts. If I didn’t challenge him, the interview would be a wasted opportunity.

“But, Mr President, you didn’t find any weapons,” I interjected.

“Let me finish, let me finish. May I finish?”

With his hand raised, he requested that I stop speaking. He paused and looked me straight in the eye to make sure I had got the message. He wanted to continue, so I backed off and he went on. “The United Nations said, ‘Disarm or face serious consequences’. That’s what the United Nations said. And guess what? He didn’t disarm. He didn’t disclose his arms. And therefore he faced serious consequences. But we have found a capacity for him to make a weapon. See, he had the capacity to make weapons . . .”

I was now beginning to feel shut out of this event. He had the floor and he wasn’t letting me dance. My blood was boiling to such a point that I felt like slapping him. But I was dealing with the president of the United States; and he was too far away anyway. I suppose I had been naive to think that he was making himself available to me so I could spar with him or plumb the depths of his thought processes. Sitting there, I knew that I was nobody special and that this was just another opportunity for the president to repeat his mantra. He seemed irked to be faced with someone who wasn’t nodding gravely at him as he was speaking.

“But Mr President,” I interrupted again, “the world is a more dangerous place today. I don’t know whether you can see that or not.”

“Why do you say that?”

“There are terrorist bombings every single day. It’s now a daily event. It wasn’t like that two years ago.”

“What was it like on September 11 2001? It was a . . . there was relative calm, we . . .”

“But it’s your response to Iraq that’s considered . . .”

“Let me finish. Let me finish. Please. You ask the questions and I’ll answer them, if you don’t mind.”

His hand was raised again as if to indicate that he was not going to tolerate this. Again, I felt I had no choice but to keep quiet.

“On September 11 2001, we were attacked in an unprovoked fashion. Everybody thought the world was calm. There have been bombings since then — not because of my response to Iraq. There were bombings in Madrid, there were bombings in Istanbul. There were bombings in Bali. There were killings in Pakistan.”

He seemed to be finished, so I took a deep breath and tried once again. So far, facial expressions were defining this interview as much as anything that was said, so I focused on looking as if I was genuinely trying to fathom him.

“Indeed, Mr President, and I think Irish people understand that. But I think there is a feeling that the world has become a more dangerous place because you have taken the focus off Al-Qaeda and diverted into Iraq. Do you not see that the world is a more dangerous place? I saw four of your soldiers lying dead on the television the other day, a picture of four soldiers just lying there without their flak jackets.”

“Listen, nobody cares more about death than I do . . .”
“Is there a point or place . . .”

“Let me finish. Please. Let me finish, and then you can follow up, if you don’t mind.”

By now he was getting used to the rhythm of this interview and didn’t seem quite so taken aback by my attempt to take control of it. “Nobody cares more about death than I do. I care a lot about it. But I do believe the world is a safer place and becoming a safer place. I know that a free Iraq is going to be a necessary part of changing the world.”

The president seemed to be talking more openly now and from the heart rather than from a script. The history lesson on Saddam was over. “Listen, people join terrorist organisations because there’s no hope and there’s no chance to raise their families in a peaceful world where there is not freedom. And so the idea is to promote freedom and at the same time protect our security. And I do believe the world is becoming a better place, absolutely.”

I could not tell how much time had elapsed, maybe five or six minutes, so I moved quickly on to the question I most wanted to ask George Bush in person.

“Mr President, you are a man who has a great faith in God. I’ve heard you say many times that you strive to serve somebody greater than yourself.”

“Right.”

“Do you believe that the hand of God is guiding you in this war on terror?”

This question had been on my mind ever since September 11, when Bush began to invoke God in his speeches. He spoke as if he believed that his job of stewarding America through the attacks and beyond was somehow preordained, that he had been chosen for this role. He closed his eyes as he began to answer.

“Listen, I think that God . . . that my relationship with God is a very personal relationship. And I turn to the Good Lord for strength. I turn to the Good Lord for guidance. I turn to the Good Lord for forgiveness. But the God I know is not one that . . . the God I know is one that promotes peace and freedom. But I get great sustenance from my personal relationship.”

He sat forward again. “That doesn’t make me think I’m a better person than you are, by the way. Because one of the great admonitions in the Good Book is, ‘Don’t try to take a speck out of your eye if I’ve got a log in my own’.”

I suspected that he was also telling me that I should not judge him.

I switched to Ireland again and to the controversy then raging over the Irish government’s decision to allow the use of Shannon Airport for the transport of soldiers and weapons to the Gulf.

“You are going to meet Bertie Ahern when you arrive at Shannon Airport tomorrow. I guess he went out on a limb for you, presumably because of the great friendship between our two countries. Can you look him in the eye when you get there and say, ‘It will be worth it, it will work out’?”

“Absolutely. I wouldn’t be doing this, I wouldn’t have made the decision I did if I didn’t think the world would be better.”

I felt that the President had now become personally involved in this interview, even quoting a Bible passage, so I made one more stab at trying to get inside his head.

“Why is it that others don’t understand what you are about?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. History will judge what I’m about.”

I could not remember my next question. My mind had gone completely blank. The president had not removed me from his gaze since we had begun and I wanted to keep up the eye contact.

If I diverted to my notes on the table beside me, he would know he had flustered me. For what seemed like an eternity, but probably no more than two seconds, I stared at him, searching his eyes for inspiration. It finally came.

“Can I just turn to the Middle East?”

“Sure.”

He talked about his personal commitment to solving that conflict. As he did so, I could see one of the White House crew signalling for me to wrap up the interview, but the president was in full flight.

“Like Iraq, the Palestinian and the Israeli issue is going to require good security measures,” he said.

Now out of time, I was fully aware that another question was pushing it, but I would never be here again and I had spent four years covering an administration that appeared to favour Israel at every turn.

“And perhaps a bit more even-handedness from America?” I asked, though it came out more as a comment.

The president did not see the look of horror on the faces of his staff as he began to defend his stance. “I’m the first president to have called for a Palestinian state. That to me sounds like a reasonable and balanced approach. I will not allow terrorists determine the fate, as best I can, of people who want to be free.”

Hands were signalling furiously now for me to end the interview.

“Mr President, thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied, still half-smiling and half-frowning.

It was over. I felt like a delinquent child who had been reprimanded by a stern, unwavering father. My face must have been the same colour as my suit. Yet I also knew that we had discussed some important issues — probably more candidly than I had heard from President Bush in some time.

I was removing my microphone when he addressed me.

“Is that how you do it in Ireland — interrupting people all the time?”

I froze. He was not happy with me and was letting me know it.

“Yes,” I stuttered, determined to maintain my own half-smile.

I was aching to get out of there for a breath of air when I remembered that I had earlier discussed with staff the possibility of having my picture taken with the president. I had been told that, when the interview was over, I could stand up with him and the White House photographer would snap a picture. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I stood up and asked him to join me.

“Oh, she wants the photograph now,” he said from his still-seated position. He rose, stood beside me and put an arm around my shoulder. Taking his cue, I put an arm up around his shoulder and we both grinned for the cameras.

In my haste to leave I almost forgot the tapes and had to be reminded by the film crew to take them. I and my assistants bolted out to the street. We ran, high heels and all, across Lafayette Park. Running through rush-hour traffic, I thought that this had to be about as crazy as a journalist’s job gets.

I had just been admonished by the president of the United States and now I was turning cartwheels in order to get the interview on air. As I dashed past a waste bin, I had a fleeting urge to throw in the tapes and run home instead.

At the studio I handed over the tapes. My phone rang. It was MC, and her voice was cold.

“We just want to say how disappointed we are in the way you conducted the interview,” she said.

“How is that?” I asked.

“You talked over the president, not letting him finish his answers.”

“Oh, I was just moving him on,” I said, explaining that I wanted some new insight from him, not two-year-old answers.

“He did give you plenty of new stuff.”

She estimated that I had interrupted the president eight times and added that I had upset him. I was upset too, I told her. The line started to break up; I was in a basement with a bad phone signal. I took her number and agreed to call her back. I dialled the White House number and she was on the line again.

“I’m here with Colby,” she indicated.

“Right.”

“You were given an opportunity to interview the leader of the free world and you blew it,” she began.

I was beginning to feel as if I might be dreaming. I had naively believed the American president was referred to as the “leader of the free world” only in an unofficial tongue-in-cheek sort of way by outsiders, and not among his closest staff.

“You were more vicious than any of the White House press corps or even some of them up on Capitol Hill . . .The president leads the interview,” she said.

“I don’t agree,” I replied, my initial worry now turning to frustration. “It’s the journalist’s job to lead the interview.”

It was suggested that perhaps I could edit the tapes to take out the interruptions, but I made it clear that this would not be possible.

As the conversation progressed, I learnt that I might find it difficult to secure further co-operation from the White House. A man’s voice then came on the line. Colby, I assumed. “And, it goes without saying, you can forget about the interview with Laura Bush.”

Clearly the White House had thought they would be dealing with an Irish “colleen” bowled over by the opportunity to interview the Bushes. If anyone there had done their research on RTE’s interviewing techniques, they might have known better.

MC also indicated that she would be contacting the Irish Embassy in Washington — in other words, an official complaint from Washington to Dublin.

“I don’t know how we are going to repair this relationship, but have a safe trip back to Ireland,” MC concluded. I told her I had not meant to upset her since she had been more than helpful to me. The conversation ended.

By the time I got to the control room, the Prime Time broadcast had just started. It was at the point of the first confrontation with the “leader of the free world” and those gathered around the monitors were glued to it. “Well done,” someone said. “This is great.”

I thought about the interview again as I climbed up the steps to RTE’s live camera position at Dromoland Castle to account for myself on the 6pm news next day. By now the White House had vented its anger to the Irish embassy in Washington. To make matters worse for the administration, the interview had made its way onto American television and CNN was replaying it around the world and by the end of the day it had been aired in Baghdad.

Had I been fair? Should I just have been more deferential to George Bush? I felt that I had simply done my job and shuddered at the thought of the backlash I would surely have faced in Ireland had I not challenged the president on matters that had changed the way America was viewed around the world.

Afterwards I bumped straight into the taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, who was waiting to go on air.

“Howya,” he said, winking.

“I hope this hasn’t caused you too much hassle, taoiseach,” I blurted.

“Arrah, don’t worry at all; you haven’t caused me one bit of hassle,” he smiled wryly.

I don’t know what he said to the president, who reportedly referred to the interview immediately upon arrival, but if the taoiseach was annoyed with me or with RTE, he didn’t show it.

When I returned to my little world on the street called M in Washington, I felt a tad more conspicuous than when I’d left for Ireland. Google was returning more than 100,000 results on the subject of the 12-minute interview. The vast majority of bloggers felt it was time a reporter had challenged Bush.

At the White House, the fact that I had been asked to submit questions prior to the interview generated enquiries from the American press corps. “Any time a reporter sits down with the president they are welcome to ask him whatever questions they want to ask,” Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, told the CBS correspondent Bill Plante.

“Yes, but that’s beside the point,” replied Plante.

Under repeated questioning, McClellan conceded that other staff members might have asked for questions. “Certainly there will be staff-level discussion, talking about what issues reporters may want to bring up in some of these interviews. I mean that happens all the time.”

I had not been prevented from asking any of my questions. The only topics I had been warned away from were the Bush daughters Jenna and Barbara, regular fodder for the tabloids, and Michael Moore — neither of which was on my list.

Moore did notice RTE’s interview with the president and in the weeks that followed urged American journalists to follow the example of “that Irish woman”.

“In the end, doesn’t it always take the Irish to speak up?” he said. “She’s my hero. Where are the Carole Colemans in the US press?”

© Carole Coleman 2005

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posted by Lomstradamus at 8:13 PM 0 comments

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Nobody Marched to Impeach Bill Clinton!

Nobody Marched to Impeach Bill Clinton!

By Linda Milazzo
Created Jul 8 2007 - 9:48am
NOBODY marched to impeach Bill Clinton. Angry citizens DIDN'T fill the streets, carry signs and beg a non-responsive Congress to do its Constitutional duty and remove Bill Clinton from his job. Panels WEREN'T held across the nation, moderated by Constitutional scholars who loved their country so much that they traversed its full span to inform packed audiences of the high crimes Bill Clinton had done.

Nope. That DIDN'T happen.

In 1998, thousands upon thousands of Americans DIDN'T call, write, fax and visit their elected leaders every day imploring them to impeach Bill Clinton. Millions of citizens DIDN'T believe that the rest of the world wanted Bill Clinton impeached. Groups of citizen activists DIDN'T band together to camp out at their Representatives' homes and District Offices for days, sometimes weeks, holding "Impeach Bill Clinton" signs and wearing "Impeach Bill Clinton" T-shirts. Thousands of cars DIDN'T bear "Impeach Bill Clinton" bumper stickers.

Nope. That DIDN'T happen.

Average citizens DIDN'T travel to Washington, DC to walk the Halls of Congress and seek audiences with their elected officials demanding to have Bill Clinton impeached.

Nuh-uh!

"Impeachment Centers" WEREN'T opened dedicated to impeaching Bill Clinton like the one in Los Angeles that opened on the Fourth of July, dedicated to impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Hundreds of people DIDN'T join together in a park on a national holiday for an impeach-Bill-Clinton-rally the way they joined together in a park in Los Angeles on Wednesday for an impeach-Bush-and-Cheney-rally.
(http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-impeach5jul05,0,3983892.story?coll=la-home-center [1])

In 1998, the people DIDN'T need to inspire Congress to impeach Bill Clinton. The 105th Congress couldn't wait to throw the popular President out of his job. In fact they impeached Bill Clinton even though we-the-people implored them not to.

Of course, there were some Americans in 1998 who bought the smear and destroy campaign by the rabid Republican spin-machine and rabid Republican legislators to impeach Bill Clinton under the guise of restoring the Presidency. These duped citizens were conned by mainstream media's daily theatrics, directed by then-adulterer Congressman Henry Hyde, then-adulterer Speaker Newt Gingrich, then drug-addict Rush Limbaugh, future-indicted Congressman Tom Delay, and Special Pornographer Kenneth Starr. (My apologies to Larry Flynt).

How ironic for Gingrich and Hyde that Clinton was caught with his pants down just as they were dropping theirs. How further ironic that the lynchpin asserting the case for Clinton's impeachment was Ken Starr's obsessively compiled pornographic tome, whereas Americans today have a virtual library of scholarly books on the Constitutional merits of impeaching Bush and Cheney. Thanks to Mr. Starr's salacious expose, it is likely his lurid accounting of a private consensual affair will be his singular most powerful climax.

The fact is, during the 105th Congress's impeachment of Bill Clinton, Clinton's public APPROVAL rating was a positive 73%. Conversely, as the current 110th Congress takes NO action to impeach George W. Bush, Bush's public APPROVAL ratings range between 28 and 36%. http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm [2].

This means that the people's well-liked President Clinton was penalized, while the people's despised President Bush is allowed to stay on.

If this isn't a failure of democracy of, for, and by the people, then what is?

The 105th Congress's impeachment of Bill Clinton was an elitist backlash to pummel an Arkansas poor-boy for dethroning the patriarch of the ruling class. Unfortunately, the 110th Congress conforms to the same eliticism, refusing to impugn the progeny of that same ruling class. The collapse of our democracy is in no small part due to the ideological similarities between the Republican and Democratic parties, fueled by cronyism and mutual corporate ties.

Sadly, Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic Congress will rue the day they took impeachment off the table. By disregarding the wishes of The People and making no effort to impeach Bush and Cheney, Speaker Pelosi will go down in history as the Speaker who permitted the most corrupt Administration in American history to perpetrate its crimes. She has secured her legacy as the spineless leader of a spineless Congress that defied the Constitution and sanctioned Bush and Cheney's lies. The 110th Congress and its Speaker have become enablers, accomplices and accessories to the crimes.

The bottom line... Bush and Cheney have eighteen months left to their term. During this time they are capable of many more egregious crimes. Congress's failure to initiate articles of impeachment for Bush and Cheney's criminal acts is a breach of Congress's Oath "to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic." If Pelosi and the 110th Congress do not uphold this Oath, they have secured their rightful places alongside Bush and Cheney as enemies of the state.

One final note: Members of both the House and the Senate have stated that impeachment is certain to fail. Let it be known that if the current Legislative Branch doesn't make an honest attempt at impeachment, they have already failed.

But If they make an honest, heart-felt and diligent try, even if they fail, at least they have done their job.

_______


About author Linda Milazzo is a Los Angeles based writer, educator and activist. Her writing has appeared in numerous domestic and international newspapers, magazines and journals. Over the past three decades, Linda has divided her time between the entertainment industry, community development projects and education. A political and social activist since the Vietnam War, Linda attributes her revitalized-fully-engaged-intense-head-on-non-stop-political activism to the UNFORTUNATE EXISTENCE OF GEORGE W. BUSH and her disgust with greed-ridden American imperialism, environmental atrocities, egregious war, nuclear proliferation, lying leaders, and global tyranny!

posted by Lomstradamus at 9:25 PM 0 comments

The US is in Serious Trouble - We Can't Ignore It

The US is in Serious Trouble - We Can't Ignore It

by Timothy Gatto | Jul 7 2007 - 11:36pm | permalink
article tools: email | print | read more Timothy Gatto
Today is the day that I take off my gloves and say what I have wanted to say for a long time, but haven’t because of some silly notion that I didn’t want to sink to the depths that other people have. I don’t care anymore. If you have delicate sensibilities, don’t read past this point. You might see something that will bother you, and I just wanted to say I warned you.

First of all, I have no respect for any of these politicians that say they believe that God created Adam and Eve and he created this world in seven days. If you are a politician that believes in the creationist theory, than you are either stupid, too stupid to hold office, or you are a liar, and you are lying to get stupid Christians that believe that to vote for you. In both cases, you are not qualified to hold political office. You should resign.

Anyone that believe that we are fighting them there so we won’t fight them here should also either go back to school and pay attention this time, or stop and think of what you are saying. Fighting them there had absolutely nothing to do with fighting them here. That entire line of reasoning is flawed. If they want to attack us here they can whether or not we fight them there. In fact, many people that want to attack us aren’t even “there”, they are somewhere else. That is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard anyone say. If you believe that, then you are stupid too. Sorry, but someone has to give you the message.

Bush and Cheney don’t give a goddamn shit about this country or anyone in it except the people that pay them. I’m not talking about the lousy salary they get for being in office. I’m talking about all the money that is given to them under the table from Halliburton, Blackwater and the Oil Companies and all the others making a fortune off the death and destruction going on in Iraq. I guarantee that Bush and Cheney have never cared about bringing freedom to the Iraqi people. If you believe that, you should get a check-up from the neck-up.

I believe that anyone that is blocking the impeachment of the President and the Vice-President should be charged for obstruction of justice. When it gets to the point when political interests outweigh moral interests, then these people should no longer be holding public office. There shouldn’t even be an argument about holding impeachment proceedings against these people. I am going to put my money where my mouth is, stay tuned. Meanwhile I will now paste an excerpt from a commenter (Sabresong) from my blog liberalpro:

sabresong said...
“anonymous said...
What I'd like someone to do is to verify, establish point blank, what crimes have been committed.”

“An excellent request. It's taken me some time to separate the proven crimes from the conspiracy theories, and I'm still working on it. I'll post it on my own blog at www.eledanthe.com/news once it's finished.

until then, the following list is taken directly from the proposed articles of impeachment, calling for the impeachment of G.W. Bush and Dick Cheney:

1) Seizing power to wage wars of aggression in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter and the rule of law; carrying out a massive assault on and occupation of Iraq, a country that was not threatening the United States, resulting in the death and maiming of over one hundred thousand Iraqis, and thousands of U.S. G.I.s.

2) Lying to the people of the U.S., to Congress, and to the U.N., providing false and deceptive rationales for war.

3) Authorizing, ordering and condoning direct attacks on civilians, civilian facilities and locations where civilian casualties were unavoidable.

4) Instituting a secret and illegal wiretapping and spying operation against the people of the United States through the National Security Agency.

5) Threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently changing its government by force and assaulting Iraq in a war of aggression.

6) Authorizing, ordering and condoning assassinations, summary executions, kidnappings, secret and other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and psychological coercion of prisoners to obtain false statements concerning acts and intentions of governments and individuals and violating within the United States, and by authorizing U.S. forces and agents elsewhere, the rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

7) Making, ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda about the conduct of foreign governments and individuals and acts by U.S. government personnel; manipulating the media and foreign governments with false information; concealing information vital to public discussion and informed judgment concerning acts, intentions and possession, or efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction in order to falsely create a climate of fear and destroy opposition to U.S. wars of aggression and first strike attacks.

8) Violations and subversions of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, both a part of the "Supreme Law of the land" under Article VI, paragraph 2, of the Constitution, in an attempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes in wars and threats of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and others and usurping powers of the United Nations and the peoples of its nations by bribery, coercion and other corrupt acts and by rejecting treaties, committing treaty violations, and frustrating compliance with treaties in order to destroy any means by which international law and institutions can prevent, affect, or adjudicate the exercise of U.S. military and economic power against the international community.

9) Acting to strip United States citizens of their constitutional and human rights, ordering indefinite detention of citizens, without access to counsel, without charge, and without opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on the discretionary designation by the Executive of a citizen as an "enemy combatant."

10) Ordering indefinite detention of non-citizens in the United States and elsewhere, and without charge, at the discretionary designation of the Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense.

11) Ordering and authorizing the Attorney General to override judicial orders of release of detainees under INS jurisdiction, even where the judicial officer after full hearing determines a detainee is wrongfully held by the government.

12) Authorizing secret military tribunals and summary execution of persons who are not citizens who are designated solely at the discretion of the Executive who acts as indicting official, prosecutor and as the only avenue of appellate relief.

13) Refusing to provide public disclosure of the identities and locations of persons who have been arrested, detained and imprisoned by the U.S. government in the United States, including in response to Congressional inquiry.

14) Use of secret arrests of persons within the United States and elsewhere and denial of the right to public trials.

15) Authorizing the monitoring of confidential attorney-client privileged communications by the government, even in the absence of a court order and even where an incarcerated person has not been charged with a crime.

16) Ordering and authorizing the seizure of assets of persons in the United States, prior to hearing or trial, for lawful or innocent association with any entity that at the discretionary designation of the Executive has been deemed "terrorist."

17) Engaging in criminal neglect in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, depriving thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and other Gulf States of urgently needed support, causing mass suffering and unnecessary loss of life.

18) Institutionalization of racial and religious profiling and authorization of domestic spying by federal law enforcement on persons based on their engagement in noncriminal religious and political activity.

19) Refusal to provide information and records necessary and appropriate for the constitutional right of legislative oversight of executive functions.

20) Rejecting treaties protective of peace and human rights and abrogation of the obligations of the United States under, and withdrawal from, international treaties and obligations without consent of the legislative branch, and including termination of the ABM treaty between the United States and Russia, and rescission of the authorizing signature from the Treaty of Rome which served as the basis for the International Criminal Court.”

If you cannot understand the above charges, have someone explain them to you.

I am tired of people from “progressive” sites that I write for, taking one sentence from my articles and making a federal case about it. Sometimes when I write, I say things that are necessary to keep the article flowing. A case in point is the article I wrote on Total War. Because I explained what the doctrine of Total War was, does not mean that I condone any type of war. Before you comment on something of mine in the future, try to take what I have said in the context of what I’m writing about. People on the left seem to fight more with each other than anyone else. If some people would take this “boundless energy” that they have and point it towards the enemies of our Republic, namely the right wingnuts, we would all be better off. Sometimes I find myself writing an article and I’m so busy thinking of how to phrase something so I won’t be attacked, that I water down what it was I am trying to say so I won’t offend anyone. Forget about it.

Next week I am going to tell you about something that will make history (if everything works out OK) watch for it. I’m tired of just writing about these criminals holding office, Republican AND Democrats. There is no reason on Earth why Congress doesn’t support Dennis Kucinich on his quest to impeach VP Cheney. Cheney is not fit to hold office. Leaving the scene of an accident after he shot his friend in the face was a criminal act, although minor compared to the things he has done since becoming VP. Unless we DEMAND that this administration step down, we could lose our Republic, and replace it with a dictatorship. Just remember this, the German people got what they deserved by supporting Hitler. If you are not with us, than you are against us. This is no time for people to be sitting on the fence. I don’t make this stuff up.

_______
Timothy V. Gatto

posted by Lomstradamus at 1:09 AM 0 comments