March 19, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

LIFE MUCH WORSE FOR IRAQIS

I remember a memo circulated by right-wingers that claimed things were just going great in Iraq since the U. S. invasion. They were getting new hospitals; they had electricity; the girls were getting educated. It was just propaganda, of course. A new poll shows the vast majority of Iraqis feel their lives are worse and they are very pessimistic about the future. This article by Susan Page and Omar Salih is at www.usatoday.com:

Jobs gone and schools closed. Marriages delayed and children mourned. Markets bombed and clean water in short supply. Speaking freely now a dangerous act.

And hope lost.

Four years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Iraqis describe daily lives that have been torn apart by spiraling violence and a faltering economy. The bursts of optimism reported in a 2004 public-opinion survey taken a year after the invasion and another in 2005 before landmark legislative elections have nearly vanished.

Face-to-face interviews with 2,212 Iraqis — a survey sponsored jointly by USA TODAY, ABC News, the British Broadcasting Corp. and ARD, a German TV network — find a nation that in large measure has fragmented into fear. Six in 10 Iraqis say their lives are going badly. Only one-third expect things to improve in the next year.

LIKE OIL AND WATER

Conservatives can't govern. That's been fairly well established. Eisenhower was the closest to a decent Republican president, although there were problems with his presidency too. Then we got louts like Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, and now Bush II. All their administrations have been characterized by scandals. These are real scandals, not the phony Monica Lewinsky dustup. As this article notes, it boils down to ideology. How can a philosophy that consistently denigrates government make government work? The article by Robert L. Borosage is at www.huffingtonpost.com:

What is it about conservative administrations that lead them into disgrace and indictment? Incompetence isn't at the core of these scandals--ideology is.

Conservative presidents--from Nixon to Reagan to Bush--believe in the imperial presidency. They assume that in the area of the national security, the president operates above the law, or as Nixon put it, "When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." They operate routinely behind the shield of secrecy and executive privilege, with utter disdain for the law. So Reagan spurned the Congress when it cut off funds for his loony covert war on tiny Nicaragua. And Bush trampled the laws to set up the torture camps in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and elsewhere.

Each would seek to keep their lawlessness secret; and that would foster lies, obstruction of justice and ultimately disgrace.

Second, conservatives are acutely aware that they represent a minority, not a majority, position in America. From Nixon to Lee Atwater to Karl Rove, they play politics and exploit America's divisions with back-alley brass knuckles--from Reagan's welfare queen to Bush's impugning the patriotism of Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a Vietnam War hero who literally sacrificed his limbs in the service of his country. They excel in the politics of personal destruction, as Democratic presidential candidates Michael Dukakis and John Kerry discovered. And in the grand tradition of the establishment in American politics, they are relentless is seeking to suppress the vote, particularly of the poor and minorities who would vote against them in large numbers.