June 01, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

MCCLELLAN DIDN'T TELL US ANYTHING NEW

From all the commotion, you'd think former White House spokesman Scott McClellan's "tell all" book gave us stunning new revelations. All McClellan really did was verify what many of us already knew, that Bush and company took us into an unnecessary war. Despite the hideous immorality of that war, McClellan claims he still feels an affection for Bush. In this column Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel look at the craven media and its failure to hold Bush accountable as Bush took us into this war. The column is at washingtonbureau.typepad.com:

Until now, we've resisted the temptation to post on former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book, which accuses the Bush White House of launching a propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq.

Why? It's not news. At least not to some of us who've covered the story from the start.

Second, we find it a wee bit preposterous -- and we are being diplomatic here -- that a man who slavishly - no, robotically! -- defended President Bush's policies in Iraq and elsewhere is trying to "set the record straight" (and sell a few books) five years and more after the invasion, with U.S. troops still bravely fighting and dying to stabilize that country.

But the responses to McClellan from the Bush administration and media bigwigs, history-bending as they are, compel us to jump in. As we like to say around here, it's truth to power time, not just for the politicians but also for some folks in our own business.

BLEEDING OURSELVES DRY

The United States is addicted to military spending. We have bases all around the world. We have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet several times over. We are looking at militarizing space. We have aircraft carriers and bombers and fighter planes and attack drones. There's no real enemy now except for ragtag bands of terrorists armed with low tech weapons. But military spending continues to increase. This commentary by Robert Scheer is at www.latimes.com:

The Soviets had developed the most modern arsenals, and the 9/11 hijackers were armed with box cutters, so how could we justify spending more to defeat Al Qaeda than we ever did to combat the communist enemy? That is the third-rail issue that politicians and the media dread touching because of the national security hysteria generated after the 9/11 attacks. Yet no presidential candidate can be serious about cutting the federal debt, improving education, holding down taxes or paying for any of the other things that the candidates of both parties promise without cutting military spending.


Without slashing the inflated military budget, the next president, who will inherit at least a $400-billion current-accounts deficit along with debt service on seven years of profligate military spending, will not be able to finance any of the domestic reforms that both the surviving Republican candidate and his two Democratic opponents advocate.