Poor George’s Almanac

Team Proven to be Wrong on Iraq / al Qaeda Link Was Once Touted by Cheney as “the best” Source for Such Info

2002: A meeting is held today in an attempt to resolve differences between the CIA and a special intelligence unit created within the Pentagon. While the CIA is skeptical about al Qaeda-Saddam ties, the Pentagon unit, with close ties to Bush administration officials, is pushing ‘evidence’ of such a link.

In the end, no significant relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam was found. Indeed, a Senate Intelligence Committee found that Saddam had ordered members of his government to have no contact with al Qaeda.

The Defense Dept. inspector general would later investigate this Pentagon group, concluding in 2007 that its use of intelligence on Iraq was “dubious” and “inappropriate”. Thomas Gimble, acting Pentagon inspector general, would say that respected U.S. intelligence agencies “disagreed with more than 50 percent” of the group’s findings.

Still, the team’s frequently flawed, yet invasion-supporting analysis of pre-war Iraq found a receptive ear at the Bush White House. Vice President Dick Cheney once called the discredited group the “best source” for understanding the al Qaeda-Saddam relationship.

U.S.-Led Iraq Interim Gov’t Lost Track of Almost $9 Billion

2004: Fox News reports that an audit by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq will report that the CPA cannot account for almost $9 billion. The audit finds that thousands of ghost employees were on the payrolls of Iraqi ministries under CPA control. For example, in one instance the CPA paid for 8,206 guards but only 603 people could be counted performing the work.

Second Iraqi Governor is Killed In Two Weeks’ Time While Bush Boasts of “progress being made”

2007: The governor of one Iraq province is blown up today by a roadside bomb, the second provincial governor to be killed in two weeks‘ time. Also today, a high-level government official, and five bodyguards were kidnapped off a Baghdad street by a force driving eight SUVs. Just the week before five high-level officials of the Oil Ministry were kidnapped.

President Bush will say tomorrow, “I made a decision to send more troops into Iraq to provide enough security for reconciliation to have the time to take place. It appears to me … there is some progress being made. In other words, one aspect of my decision is working.”

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) will point out the costs: “In the eight months since President Bush announced the surge, we have spent tens of billions of dollars, over 700 American servicemen and women have sacrificed their lives, and nearly 4,400 have been wounded”.

U.N. Headquarters in Baghdad Attacked

“Security is the essential roadblock to achieving the road map to peace.” President Bush, July 25th 2003

2003: A truck bomb kills 22 at the United Nations’s Baghdad headquarters today.

President Instructs On “the lessons of September the 11th” And Then Proceeds to Ignore Those Lessons

“That’s why we are inconveniencing air traffickers, to make sure nobody is carrying weapons on airplanes.” President Bush, inventing a new term to describe airline passengers, April 3rd 2007.
Perhaps it will take off.

2006: In the wake of last week’s foiled terrorist plot to blow up airliners traveling from London to the United States, today’s Wall Street Journal reports that “nearly five years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, significant holes in airline security remain”.

The terrorists’ scheme involved carrying easily disguisable liquid explosives onto planes. The risks posed by liquid explosives are well known; in fact, a similar plot to blow up U.S. airliners over the Pacific in 1995 had been discovered and disrupted. Yet, it wasn’t until this plot was uncovered that Homeland Security took the step of restricting liquids in carry-on luggage. In addition, the Associated Press reports that “As the British terror plot was unfolding, the Bush administration quietly tried to take away $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new explosives detection technology“.

It seems billions are available for Iraq, yet $6 million is too much to spend to try to keep explosives off of airliners. All of this, despite the president’s rhetoric that “our number one priority … is to protect our homeland from further attack”.

As President Bush has said, “One of the lessons of September the 11th is that when this country sees a threat, we must deal with it before it fully materializes … The best way to protect the United States is to take care of threats before they come to hurt us.” Here is a case where Bush’s people saw the threat, the threat was indeed well known, and yet they ignored the dangers of liquids in carry-ons until it was discovered that terrorists were preparing to implement such an attack. Had not that fortunate discovery been made, we could have seen another 9/11 over the Atlantic.

Flip to August 12th 2006 for more information on this terrorist plot.

Federal Judge Rules Against Bush Administration, She Says “There are no hereditary kings in America”

“Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln

2006: Today’s Cnet.com “quote of the day” comes from a judicial opinion first reported yesterday. In declaring illegal President Bush’s warrantless spying program Michigan Federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor stated: “There are no hereditary kings in America”.

The warrantless wiretapping program allows President Bush to spy on Americans’ international communications without seeking the approval of a judge; this despite the fact that such judicial approval is required by U.S. law. Rather than judges, the president’s program allows National Security Agency “shift supervisors” to decide if a particular citizen’s communications should be monitored.

The framers of the Constitution, in reaction to searches conducted at the whim of the British crown, designed a system requiring the government to get a judicial OK before doing citizen searches. “It was never the intent of the Framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights“, declared Judge Taylor.

For more on President Bush’s spy program, flip to December 16th 2005 (coming). To read about President Bush seeming to mislead fellow citizens about the spy program go to April 20th 2004.

The Ever-Growing Bush Contribution to the Public Debt

Public Debt Outstanding on this Date  — Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Public Debt

Aug 18th 2000 $ 5,670,329,490,959
Aug 18th 2007 $ 8,972,241,668,141

Included in the public debt of the United States is almost $1 trillion owed to China. “The fact of the matter is, they hold the mortgage on our house”, says Senator Joe Biden (D-Delaware).

Bush’s Primary Piece of Iraqi WMD ‘Evidence’ had Been Discredited by U.S., U.K., & U.N. Experts BEFORE the War

“If Passion drives, let Reason hold the Reins.” Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1749

2001: According to the New York Times, on this date a classified Technical Intelligence Note is issued. The document reports the findings of U.S. government experts who have examined sample aluminum tubes that a junior CIA officer claims Iraq was intending to use in centrifuges to enrich uranium. The Times reported on the government experts’ tube analysis: “in size and material, the tubes were very different from those Iraq had used in its centrifuge prototypes before the first gulf war. Those models used tubes … made of exotic materials that performed far better than aluminum. ‘Aluminum was a huge step backwards’… the team could find no centrifuge machines ‘deployed in a production environment’ that used such narrow tubes. Their walls were three times too thick … they had a special coating to protect them from weather. … The coating can produce bad reactions with uranium gas. In other words, if [the junior CIA analyst was] right, it meant that Iraq had chosen to forsake years of promising centrifuge work and instead start from scratch, with inferior material built to less-than-optimal dimensions. The Energy Department experts did not think that made much sense … Similar conclusions were being reached by Britain’s intelligence service and by experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency”.

By late 2001 Greg Thielmann, then director of strategic proliferation and military affairs in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, found that the CIA analyst pushing the uranium enrichment theory was ‘very convinced, but not very convincing’.

Amazingly, these discredited tubes were to be cited by the Bush administration as the main piece of evidence in its drive toward war (flip to January 28th 2003, February 5th 2003, April 11th 2001, and (coming) September 8th 2002). For more on the views of nuclear experts on the uses of these tubes, see January 10th 2003, January 27th 2003, and April 11th 2001.

Conservative GOP Presidential Candidate: “If there’s ever a time we needed to see change in Washington, it’s now”

2007: The Boston Globe reports today that conservative former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, a candidate for president, started running TV ads in Iowa this week proclaiming, “If there’s ever a time we needed to see change in Washington, it’s now”. It surely is a sad admission concerning the incompetence of the Bush administration when a conservative Republican can make such a comment about a conservative Republican administration.

Bush: “nothing complicated about supporting our troops”
Soldier’s Dad: “he would have been better off in a Toyota”

2004: President Bush says today, “There is nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat”. The president claims to believe that “those of us in government have a duty to support those who wear the uniform“.

Indeed, many things obviously can and should be done for those bravely risking their lives for their nation. So why wasn’t it until June 2004, a full 16 months after going into Iraq, that the Army could announce that all of the troops finally had armored vests to protect themselves? Prior to this, either some soldiers went without, or they themselves (or their family or friends) bought this potentially life-saving protection.

The fact is, President Bush’s people picked the schedule for this fight; it didn’t have to happen until the troops had the protection they deserved. Consider those soldiers in Iraq who died in that first year and a half in Humvees lacking protective body armor. One father of a fallen soldier said, “he would have been better off in a Toyota Highlander” (Boston Globe), while another said: “this is the … battle between people in Washington who want another 20 supersonic jets vs. making our troops safer. There were no big companies … lined up behind armored Humvees and it’s the troops who pay the price” (MSNBC).

Yes Mr. President, “there is nothing complicated about supporting our troops”. All you have to do is do it.

Flip to May 3rd 2004 to read of the conclusions from a report by the military that estimated just how many U.S. casualties could have been avoided if the Bush administration had truly done a thorough job of “supporting our troops in combat”, instead of just making speeches about it.

“Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries.” Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac

Military Report: Army Suicide Rate is Highest in 26 Years

2007: A report by the U.S. military, released today, reports that soldiers in the Army committed suicide over the past year at the highest rate in 26 years. While a variety of reasons for suicide were indicated, “there was a significant relationship between suicide attempts and number of days deployed” in Iraq, Afghanistan, or in countries nearby, according to the report.

The military has been criticized for extending troops in Iraq beyond 12-month tours of duty, and for not allowing troops adequate time at home before redeployment back to war zones.

CURRENTLY IN THE NEWS: From yesterday’s Boston Globe: Far more US military members deployed abroad are backing Democrat Barack Obama than Republican John McCain. The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign money, reported yesterday that Obama received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas than McCain. Given the actions of Republican leadership in the last few years it is little wonder the majority of troops trust Obama, not McCain, to be the next president.