Freeze Frame

During a recent public relations speech in West Virginia, a woman in the carefully screened audience commented to President Bush that the media do not report the good things the Bush administration does. In her mind, I suppose, hearing stories about violence in Iraq, the New Orleans fiasco, and presidential misconduct shows the Bush administration in a bad light. She wishes the media would report more good stories. That’s it! We need more happy stories! We do not need an independent media that reports the truth, holds politicians accountable, and lets the political chips fall where they may. We do not need stories showing the gruesome reality of the Iraq war or showing fallen soldiers coming home in coffins. We do not need to know that, as a result of Bush’s war, tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, including innocent men, women and children. We do not need to hear evidence that shows the president has lied repeatedly to the American people and to Congress. We do not need to

Just like the build-up to the Iraq war, the hypocritical U.S. Government and its media allies are creating an artificial sense of urgency regarding Iran. Vice President Dick Cheney said that there will be “meaningful consequences” if Iran does not change its present course. “We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” Cheney said. Sound familiar? Remember the constant media drumbeat in 2002 and 2003 regarding Saddam Hussein and Iraq? Remember the accusations that Iraq was supporting terrorism? Remember the bogus assertion that Iraq was responsible for 9/11? Remember the imagery of the “mushroom cloud” and the U.S. insistence that Iraq had a vast stockpile of chemical weapons? Of course, the former United Nations weapons inspectors were saying at the time that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, but this point of view was drowned out by the loud drumbeat for war. There was no meaningful diplomacy during that time because the Bush crime family had already decided

History will regard the 109th Senate as the most corrupt ever. In the same way that President Bush fixed the facts to fit his neocon war plans in Iraq, the Republican leadership in the 109th Senate uses its power to short-circuit meaningful debate and independent investigations of presidential wrongdoing. On March 13, 2006, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), called upon the Senate to censure President Bush for ignoring the Constitution and misleading Congress and the American people on the use of warrant-less wiretapping. Bush loyalists claim that the president has the right to circumvent existing statutes and to use whatever means he sees fit in the so-called “war on terror.” One chief loyalist, Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH), even wants to introduce legislation making Bush’s warrant-less wiretapping on American citizens legal in order to cover the president‘s past illegal actions. What a sham! Senate Majority Leader Frist (R-TN) wanted to force an immediate vote on the Feingold resolution