Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
FOCUS | Keith Olbermann | Bush Years: 8 in 8 Minutes http://www.truthout.org/011809Z
#1
[Image: button1-addthis.gif]

Olbermann | Bush Years: 8 in 8 Minutes

Friday 16 January 2009
»
[URL="http://www.scribd.com/doc/10732327/Transcript-for-Keith-Olbermann-Segment-on-Bush-Years"]by: Keith Olbermann, MSNBC Countdown
[/URL] [Image: F1_011809Z_narrow.jpg]
President George W. Bush. (Illustration: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)


George Walker Bush.

43rd president of the United States.
First ever with a criminal record.
Our third story tonight, his presidency:

Eight Years In Eight Minutes.


Early in 2001 the U.S. fingered Al Qaeda for the bombing of the USS Cole. Bush counterterrorism adviser, Richard Clarke had a plan to take down Al Qaeda.

Instead by February the NSC had already discussed invading Iraq, and had a plan for post-Saddam Iraq.

By March 5 Bush had a map ready for Iraqi oil exploration and a list of companies. Al Qaeda?
Rice told Clarke not to give Bush a lot of long memos.
Not a big reader.

August 6, 2001
A CIA analyst briefs Bush on vacation:
"Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S."
Bush takes no action tells the briefer - quote
"All right, you've covered your ass now."
Next month Clarke requests using new predator drones to kill Bin Laden, the Pentagon and CIA say no.

September 11th
Bush remains seated for several minutes to avoid scaring school children by getting up and leaving. He then flies around the country and promises - quote "A full scale investigation to find those folks who did it."

Rumsfeld says Afghanistan does not have enough targets we've got to do Iraq. When the CIA traps Bin Laden at Tora Bora, it asks for 800 rangers to cut off his escape. Bush outsources the job to Pakistanis sympathetic to the Taliban. Bin Laden gets away.

In February General Tommy Franks tells a visiting Senator, Bush is moving equipment out of Afghanistan
so he can invade Iraq. One of the men who prepped Rice for her testimony, that Bush did not ignore pre 9-11 warnings later explains - quote "We cherry picked things to make it look like the president had been actually concerned about Al Qaeda. They didn't give a bleep about Al Qaeda."

July and Britain's intel chief says Bush is fixing intelligence and facts around the policy to take out Saddam.

January 03
Bush and Blair agree to invade in March. Mr. Bush still telling us he has not decided, telling Blair they should paint an airplane in UN colors, fly it over Iraq and provoke a response a pretext for invasion.

The man who said it would take several hundred thousand troops, fired.

The man who said it would cost more than a hundred billion, fired.

The man who revealed Bush's yellowcake lie, smeared, his wife's covert status exposed, the White House liars who did it, and covered it up, not fired. One convicted. Bush commutes his sentence.

Then in Iraq, stuff happens:
Iraq's army, disbanded, the government de-Baathified
200,000 weapons, billions of dollars, just lost.
Foreign mercenaries immunized from justice.

Political hacks run the Green Zone.
Religious cleansing, forcing one out of six Iraqis from their homes. Abu Ghraib, the insurgency, Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Other stuff does not happen:
WMD
Post-war planning
Body armor
Vehicular armor

The payoff?
Oil and billions for Halliburton, Blackwater and other companies, while Mr. Bush denies VA healthcare to 450,000 veterans, tries to raise their healthcare fees,
blocks the new G.I. Bill, and increases his own power with the USA PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, public orders exempting himself from a thousand laws, and secretly from the Presidential Records Act, The Geneva Conventions, FISA sparking a mass rebellion at the Justice Department.

Secret star chambers for terrorism suspects, overturned by Hamdan v Rumsfeld.

Denying habeas corpus, overturned by Boumediene v Bush.

200 renditionings, sleep deprivation, abuse. Rumsfeld warned in 2002 that he was torturing, that it would jeopardize convictions out of 550 at Gitmo. Hundreds ultimately go free with no charges. Dozens are tortured,
eight fatally, three are convicted on U.S. soil, twelve hundred immigrants rounded up without due process,
without bail, without court dates, without a single charge of terrorism.

It wasn't just Mr. Bush no longer subject to the rule of law. He slashed regulations on everyone from banks to mining companies, appointed 98 lobbyists to oversee their own industries, weakening emission standards for mercury and 650 different toxic chemicals.

Regulators shared drugs, and their beds, with industry reps. The Crandall Canyon mine owner told inspectors to back up because his buddy, Republican Mitch McConnell, was sleeping with their boss. McConnell's wife is Bush Labor Secretary, Elaine Chao. Her agency overruled engineer concerns about Crandall Canyon, and was found negligent after nine miners died in the collapse there.

Mr. Bush's hands off as Enron blacks out California, doubling electric bills after months of rejecting price caps. Mr. Bush bows to pressure the blackouts end.

Mr. Bush further deregulates commodity futures, midwifing the birth of unregulated oil markets which, just like Enron, jack up prices to an all time high until Congress, and both presidential candidates, call for regulations and the prices fall.

Deregulating financial services, and lax enforcement of remaining rules, created a housing bubble, creating the mortgage crisis, creating then a credit crisis, devastating industries that rely on credit from student loans to car dealers. Firms that had survived the Great Depression could not survive Bush.

Those that did, got seven hundred billion dollars, no strings, no transparency, no idea whether it worked.
Unlike the auto bailout, which cut workers' salaries.
A GOP memo called it, "a chance to punish unions."
But Bush failed even when his party and his patrons did not stand to profit. Investigators blamed management cost cutting, communication for missed warnings about Columbia.

Bush administration convicts include: sex offenders at Homeland Security, convicted liars, every kind of thief in the calendar, and if you count things that were not prosecuted, the vice president of the United States actually shot a man in the face. The man apologized.

Mr. Bush faked the truth with paid propaganda in Iraq on his education policy. Tried to silence the truth about global warming, rocket fuel in our water, industry influence on energy policy, politicized the truth of science at NASA, the EPA, the National Cancer Institute, Fish and Wildlife, and the FDA.

His lies, exposed by whistleblowers from the cabinet down, "complete BS," the Treasury Secretary said of Mr. Bush on his tax cuts. Rice's mushroom cloud, Powell's mobile labs, Iraq and 9-11, Jack Abramoff, Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, Pat Tillman again, Pat Tillman, again.
The air at Ground Zero, most responders still suffering respiratory problems. Global warming, carbon emissions,
a Clear Skies initiative lowering air quality standards, the Healthy Forests initiative increasing logging, faith based initiatives, the cost of medicare reform.

Fired US attorneys, politically synchronized terror alerts,
the surge causing insurgents to switch sides, that abortion causes breast cancer, that his first recession began under Clinton, that he did not wiretap without warrants, that we do not torture, that American citizen John Walker Lindh's rights were not violated, that he refused the right to counsel, heckuva job Brownie, some survivors still in trailers, New Orleans still at just two-thirds its usual population.

The lie that, "No one could have predicted the economic crisis," except the economists who did. "No one could have predicted 9-11," except one ass-covering CIA analyst, or thirty. "No one could have predicted the levee breach," except literally Mr. Bill in a PSA that aired on TV a year before Katrina. Bush actually admitted that he lied about not firing Rumsfeld because he did not want to tell the truth. Look it up.

All of it, all of it, and more, leaving us with ten trillion in debt to pay for 31% more in discretionary spending.

The Iraq War, a 1.3 trillion dollar tax cut.
Median income down two thousand dollars.
Three-quarters of all income gains under Bush going to the richest one percent.
Unemployment up from 4.2 to 7.2 percent.
The Dow, down from ten thousand five hundred eighty- seven, to eighty two hundred seventy-seven.
Six million more, now in poverty.
Seven million more, now without health care.
Buying toxic goods from China, deadly cribs.
Outsourcing security to Dubai.
Still unsecure in our ports, and at our nuclear plants. More dependent on foreign oil.
Out of the international criminal court.
Off the anti-ballistic missile treaty, military readiness, and standards down with two unfinished wars.
A nuclear North Korea.
Disengaged from the Palestinian problem.
Destabilizing Eastern European diplomacy with anti- missile plans, and unable to keep Russia out of Georgia. 2000 miles of Appalachian streams destroyed by rubble from mountaintop mining.

At his last G-8 summit, he actually bid farewell to other world leaders saying - quote, "Goodbye from the world's greatest polluter."

Consistently undermining historic American reverence for the institutions that empower us, education, now "academic elites." And the law, "activist judges," capping jury awards.

And, Bin Laden? Living today unmolested in a Pakistani safe haven created by a truce endorsed and defended by George W. Bush.

And, among all the gifts he gave to Bin Laden the most awful, the most damaging, not just to America but to the American ideal, was to further Bin Laden's goal by making us act out of fear rather than fortitude, leaving us with precious little to cling to tonight, save the one thing that might yet suffice: hope.

»

IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THIS MATERIAL IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. TRUTHOUT HAS NO AFFILIATION WHATSOEVER WITH THE ORIGINATOR OF THIS ARTICLE NOR IS TRUTHOUT ENDORSED OR SPONSORED BY THE ORIGINATOR.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Irish writer.
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Use of the Espionage Act from 120 years ago Peter Lemkin 0 1,048 18-08-2022, 12:36 PM
Last Post: Peter Lemkin
  Guatemala 1954 CIA Coup About to End? [61 years too late] Peter Lemkin 3 6,552 28-08-2015, 12:30 PM
Last Post: Magda Hassan
  Berlin surrendered to Russians 70 years ago Tracy Riddle 2 4,583 09-05-2015, 05:45 AM
Last Post: Lauren Johnson
  Russian Parliament siege – as seen 20 years ago: LIVE TIMELINE Magda Hassan 1 5,205 04-10-2013, 02:09 PM
Last Post: David Guyatt
  Brazil's 'lost report' into genocide surfaces after 40 years Magda Hassan 6 6,245 18-06-2013, 01:01 PM
Last Post: Magda Hassan
  The origin of Bush's October Surpirse David Guyatt 2 3,793 10-05-2013, 03:50 AM
Last Post: Magda Hassan
  40 Years Since Kent State Ed Jewett 9 9,807 27-04-2012, 08:03 AM
Last Post: Magda Hassan
  World War II: After the War - Alan Taylor - In Focus Bernice Moore 0 3,013 15-11-2011, 05:52 AM
Last Post: Bernice Moore
  Taking a Bush Secret to the Grave [Iran-Contra & Bush secret flight to Paris?] Ed Jewett 0 3,153 29-09-2011, 03:25 AM
Last Post: Ed Jewett
  How the US Planned to Destroy Britain Just a Few Years Before World War II Magda Hassan 4 4,536 25-09-2011, 11:55 PM
Last Post: Ed Jewett

Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)