by William Rivers Pitt / Truthout.org –
Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.
— Winston Churchill
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
Nicole Frye and Bryan Spry are dead because of George W. Bush. Both died in Iraq. Both were 19 years old. William Ramirez was also 19 years old, as was Holly McGeogh. Luis Moreno and Nathan Nakis, Jeffrey Braun and Jason Wright, Joey Whitener and Steven Acosta and Rachel Bosveld, all were 19 years old when they died in Iraq. Ryan Thomas and Michael Mihalakis were 18 when they died in Iraq. They join the 544 American soldiers who have been killed there in less than a year.
They were lied to, as were we all, and now they are forever young in death. The lie they, and we, were fed still sits on the White House website. You can find the lie if you go to www.WhiteHouse.gov and do a search for the page titled ‘Disarm Saddam Hussein.’
The page is still there, in all its dishonest glory, even today. The page will tell you that Iraq possesses 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, and 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. 500 tons, for those without calculators, equals 1,000,000 pounds.
Hide that.
This White House page likewise claims Iraq is in possession of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering the 64,000 liters of anthrax and botulinum toxin no one can find, along with the 1,000,000 pounds of sarin, mustard and VX gas no one can find. Better still, the page claims a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda that never existed and cannot be proven.
Best of all, the page claims that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger for use in a nuclear weapons program. This was the lie that Bush used in his State of the Union address, to the humiliation of us all. This was the lie that motivated Ambassador Joseph Wilson to speak out on the pages of the New York Times.
This was the lie that motivated White House staffers to take revenge against Wilson by exposing his CIA wife, Valerie Plame, thus sparking a federal investigation. This was the lie that might bring down the administration. It is still on the White House website.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
The American people continue to be kept almost completely in the dark regarding the events of September 11. Very nearly a thousand days have passed since the attacks, and yet the best we have to work with is “Evildoers who hate our freedom.”
The best we have to work with is an unnecessary invasion of Iraq as a substitute for actual answers and actions. Had the Bush administration been given what it wanted, the best we would have had to work with was master secret-keeper Henry Kissinger chairing a hand-picked investigation committee that would have come armed with pens, paper and buckets of whitewash.
Why Has No One Been Held Accountable for 9-11?
The families of the September 11 dead have published some questions they would like to see George W. Bush answer publicly. Among them are:
• Beginning with the transition period between the Clinton administration and your own, and ending on 9/11/01, specifically what information (either verbal or written) about terrorists, possible attacks and targets, did you receive from any source?
• This would include briefings or communications from out-going Clinton officials, CIA, FBI, NSA, DoD and other intelligence agencies, foreign intelligence, governments, dignitaries or envoys, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and/or Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar.
• Specifically, what did you learn from the August 6, 2001, PDB about the terrorist threat that was facing our nation?
• Did you request any follow-up action to take place?
• Did you request any further report be developed and/or prepared?
• As Commander-in-Chief, from May 1, 2001 until September 11, 2001, did you receive any information from any intelligence agency official or agent that UBL was planning to attack this nation on its own soil using airplanes as weapons, targeting New York City landmarks during the week of September 11, 2001 or on the actual day of September 11, 2001?
• Please explain why no one in any level of our government has yet been held accountable for the countless failures leading up to and on 9/11?
• Do you continue to maintain that Saddam Hussein was linked to al Qaeda?
• What proof do you have of any connection between al-Qaeda and the Hussein regime?
No one on the entire earth has more moral authority on this issue than the wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers of the men and women who were killed that day. To ignore their demand for answers is to slap them across the face. To ignore their demand is to kill their loved ones all over again. These questions must be answered in the broad light of day.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
The Bush Bust: 2.2 Million Jobs Lost
Since George W. Bush came to Washington DC, some 2.2 million jobs have evaporated. Last year, the administration promised to create 1.7 million new jobs, a promise that went laughably unfulfilled. Just last week, the administration promised to create either 2.6 million new jobs or 3.8 million new jobs, depending upon which administration official you chose to listen to.
These White House predictions are so off-the-scale ludicrous that the administration officials charged with shepherding the economy have refused to have anything to do with them.
Both Treasury Secretary John Snow and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans have put as much distance as political physics will allow between themselves and these predictions. “Macroeconomic models are based on a lot of assumptions,” said Secretary Snow, who further stated that such things are, “not without a range of error.”
Indeed. The “range of error” may well be found in the fact that this administration has promised millions of new jobs while simultaneously — and by ‘simultaneously’ I mean within the pages of the same economic report — claiming that the outsourcing of millions of American jobs to foreign countries is a good thing for the economy and the American people.
Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich asked a pointed question about this which has gone unanswered: In which country will these jobs be created?” They won’t be created in America, for Americans.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
A Quantum Leap Forward
Seldom in the history of American politics has the Democratic Party fielded a more competent, patriotic, excellent group of candidates for the office of the Presidency than that which has been in the running to date.
A case can be made, however, that each has bruises on their records as progressives; from voting for the Iraq War Resolution to voting for the PATRIOT Act to espousing right-leaning economic principles to questionable allegiance to a woman’s right to choose, each and every candidate has failed the purity test somewhere along the line.
Yet held against the appalling record compiled by the Bush administration to date, of which the issues raised above comprise only a damnable fraction, the truth is as self-evident as the shining sun at noontime.
Each and every one of the Democratic candidates represent a quantum leap forward for America, should any of them attain that high office. Each and every one of them can be pressured, cajoled, even attacked by the progressive community to act in a manner required by the people. No amount of pressure from the progressive community has moved the Bush administration one inch away from its extremist agenda to date, and no amount of pressure will move them should Bush win the 2004 election.
We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For
Is John Kerry the one you’ve been waiting for? Is John Edwards? Howard Dean? Dennis Kucinich? Al Sharpton? Were any of the candidates who have dropped out the one you’ve been waiting for? The answer to those questions will vary from person to person. At the end of the day, however, the final answer is no.
No, none of these candidates are the one you’ve been waiting for.
The one you’ve been waiting for has always been here. The one you’ve been waiting for pressured these candidates to fight the onslaught of the Bush administration. The one you’ve been waiting for took to the streets before the Iraq invasion, worked for the campaign which most inspired, agitated against the PATRIOT Act, spoke to friend and neighbor and family about what has gone wrong.
This final truth is self-evident. You are the one you’ve been waiting for. You drive the agenda. You make or break this political season. You are the hero. You’ve been here the whole time.
(i>William Rivers Pitt is the senior editor and lead writer for truthout. He is a New York Times and international bestselling author of two books ‘War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition is Silence.
