MoveOn.org ::: Censure Bush

[LunaSea]

i'm not sure if this is the right place to post it... but on the site, www.moveon.org, is massive articles/supported + backed up news facts about bush and the need for congress to censure him bc of his lies re: war w/ iraq, the non-existant weapons of mass distruction.. please take a minute to skim/read thru this and help censure bush by clicking on this link:

http://www.moveon.org/censure/


this is their campaign message.:

Dear MoveOn member,
>
> During the buildup to war, President Bush said the United States "must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud....

We have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring." [1]

On the eve of sending troops into battle, Bush asserted that "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." [2]

Now David Kay, the CIA's chief weapons inspector, has testified before Congress that these weapons do not exist.

In an attempt to evade responsibility for the misleading statements that pushed the nation into war, Bush has announced plans to form an independent inquiry to look into what went wrong. An inquiry would serve the Bush administration well: it would envelop the issue in a fog of uncertainty, deflect blame onto the intelligence
services, and delay any political damage until 2005, after the upcoming election. [3]

But the facts need no clarification. Despite repeated warnings from the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, President Bush and his administration hyped and distorted the threat that Iraq posed.
[4] And now that reality is setting in, the President wants to pin the blame on someone else. We can't let him.

Congress has the power to censure the President -- to formally reprimand him for betraying the nation's trust. If ever there was a time for this, it's now. Join our call on Congress to censure President Bush at:

http://www.moveon.org/censure/?id=23...rP17vvI79m03Iw

It's clear that we've been mislead:

* David Kay said last week, "I'm personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction," and "We don't find the people, the documents or the physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on." Kay said these things shortly after resigning from his
post as Bush's chief weapons inspector in Iraq. [5]

* Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union address, said, "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." [6] Yet Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was sent to Niger in February 2002 to determine whether Iraq was trying to purchase uranium materials there, concluded that "intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." [7]

* A CIA report in February 2003 said: "We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since [1998] to reconstitute its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs." [8]

It's also clear that the misleading was deliberate:

* The respected Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently found that the administration "systematically misrepresented the threat" from Iraq. [9]

[LunaSea]

* The basis for President Bush's African uranium claim was known at the time to be forged [10] and not credible. "Top White House officials knew that the CIA seriously disputed the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa long before the claim was included in Bush's January address to the nation," according to the Washington Post. [11]

* Secretary of State Colin Powell became alarmed at the level of intelligence distortion. When he read the first draft of his speech to the UN -- prepared for Powell by Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff -- he was so upset that he lost his temper, throwing several pages in the air and declaring, "I'm not reading this. This is bullsh--." [12]

Our democracy only works when we know the truth. We now know President Bush and his administration deliberately misled Congress and the American people. Censure is the least we should expect in response.
The independent inquiry will need a year or more to come to a conclusion, according to the Bush administration. It took less time than that for the country to go to war. We don't need more investigation, we need accountability, and we need it now.

Join our call on Congress to censure President Bush at:

http://www.moveon.org/censure/?id=23...rP17vvI79m03Iw

We'll be holding a press conference in Washington on Tuesday, February 10th, announcing our campaign for Censure. If you sign on now, we can count your signature at the press conference. Please sign on right away.
Thank you.

Sincerely,

--Adam, Carrie, Eli, James, Joan, Laura, Noah, Peter, Wes, and Zack
The MoveOn.org Team
Monday, February 9, 2004

[1]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Jan27.html

[2] htp://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/2000317-7.html

[3]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Feb1.html

[4] An excellent, comprehensive rundown on the Bush
administration's deliberate distortion of intelligence is available at:

http://www.americanprogress.org/site...VF&b=24889

[5]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/26/in...ast/26KAY.html

[6]http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html

[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/opinion/06WILS.html

Note: Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, had her CIA cover blown, possibly by the White House, in apparent retaliation for Wilson's contradicting the White House's line on WMDs.

[8] http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3340723/

[9] http://www.ceip.org/files/pdf/Iraq3G...nd_SummRec.pdf

[10]
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/08/in...al/08PREX.html

[11] http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald...on/6362092.htm

[12]
>
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/a...0609040506.php
Note: The article with the Powell quote is available for
purchase from the US News & World Report archives for $2.95.

[endymion]

I am happy to see this posted here. I am going to move it to Junkie Chat, I think that this is relevant outside of NYC. Lots of us down in South Beach want to move on as well.

[web_norah]

move on is a cool informative DEMOCRATIC site...werk!

[bcnjunkie]

This war was a mistake and it's just beginning. President Bush began to roll that snowball down a steep long hill. This is just beginning !

One more grand result of the war, two days ago the Euro went up 25% compared to the $

[zacashus]

This war was a mistake and it's just beginning. *President Bush began to roll that snowball down a steep long hill. *This is just beginning !

One more grand result of the war, two days ago the Euro went up 25% compared to the $

i agree w/ that, however i gotta say that i'm glad sadaam is out of power and iraq can be a free and democratic nation. (lets hope it sticks) sadaam def. needed to be put down and the iraqi people deserve the same freedoms that are shared over the rest of this great world. however, i don't agree w/ our gov't manipulating the american people to believe that this was the reason why we were going into that country and not some ulterior motive (i.e. oil). the morality card that is played by our gov't on our people to rally support sickens me. .... if we really practiced what we preached we would be doing away w/ alot of wrongs that are occuring all over this planet. If we want to send a moral message to the rest of the world we must be consistent..... and we are NOT! This is why the rest of the world has a slanted view of our gov't and society. AND IT'S NOT THE AMERICAN PUBLIC'S FAULT!!!! this really upsets me. ...... but i guess we have to start somewhere... i only hope that this will change.

[bcnjunkie]

zacashus:

One great thing about this country is that it's made up of so many cultures and we've been forced to get along with each other. In Miami alone I've had the opportunity to work side-by-side and meet so many different people of different cultures, ethnic and religious backgrounds with difeerent political views. For the most part I think people here have no choice but to try and get along. I think you make an excellent point that sometimes the rest of the world has a slanted view of the US and found most people that critize it, haven't had the opportunity to really get to know it. I do think that sometimes our goverment uses the "freedom fighters" campaign as a mask for a hidden agenda (such as in Iraq). I think that because of our sense of pride, sometimes it clouds the fact that our goverment does alot of (for a lack of a better expression) f****d up things around the world (which my friends in the midwest have a hard time believing. But alot of times it doesn't reflect the attitude of the American people who are generous and hospitable

[endymion]

A huge part of the problem is that people who think like we do tend to not vote. *Bush wasn't elected in the first place, but if the 18-30 age demographic were as easy to mobilize as the churgoing crowd then 2000 would have turned out differently and we wouldn't have been counting hanging chads.

The Rock the Vote people are trying as hard as they can to get people our age to remember that it's 18 to vote, not 30.

That war pretty much did it for me as far as the next presidential election goes. *No way to explain that one away. *"No soup for you, NEXT!!"

[Artemis]

The fact that we have a president that uses his position to push a personal and business agenda as opposed to one that is centered on the citizens of this country as a whole, shows that we have become largely apathetic when it comes to politics.

Hmmm... Bush is republican. Congress is controlled by republicans. Exactly how much censure do these people really believe is going to occur?

[Apotheosis]

tech you make a great point: most people that share our train of thought don't vote. it's freakin ridiculous how many of my friends didn't vote in 2000, and it really pissed me off. and now, there's another chance to change things, and we all have to do our part. i get more and more paranoid every day about the way our government runs things completely independent of public involvement. a few notes of concern for me: 1st john ashcroft scares the freakin crap out of me. in fact, it wouldn't surprise me that one of his cronies is reading this post right now! :P 2nd it was revealed that g. dubbya doesn't read the newspaper. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? there is just soooo much that is wrong with that. 3rd this FCC mierda is getting entirely way out of hand. every day it's getting worse, all in the guise of "protecting our kids". blech. makes me sick. it's so sad to me that there are only 2 political parties in this country, and no realistic room for anything else. but i choose the lesser of the two evils. i'll make my voice heard in november, and you bastards better make your voices heard, too!!!! ;D