October 2005

This past Sunday on Meet the Press, Condi told Tim Russert that she would not
run in 2008. The following is a transcript of the reasons for this:

MR. RUSSERT: Before you go, I'd like to read something from The
Washington Times. Headline: "Americans for Rice, a group that hopes to draft
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a presidential candidate in 2008, has
paid for a 60-second ad to run in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday night during
ABC's `Commander in Chief,' a new show about a female president of the
United States. Iowa, of course, traditionally holds the first presidential
contest, a caucus system. The same ad appeared in New Hampshire...during the
Sept. 27 broadcast of `Commander in Chief.' New Hampshire, of course,
traditionally holds the first presidential primary."

Would you accept a position on the Republican ticket in 2008?

SEC'Y RICE: Tim, I'm flattered that people think of me in that
way, but I think it was on your show that I said I don't know how many ways
to say no. I really am--I'm not somebody who wants to run for office,
haven't ever run for anything. I don't think I ever ran for high school
president. And I think I'm doing what I need to do, which is to try and
promote American foreign policy and American interests, the president's
democracy agenda at an extraordinary time. And to the degree that I can do
that across the world, that's what I'd better keep doing.

Full transcript here.

Seems like more people who have worked in top positions throughout the Bush
presidency are now coming out and sharing their views on Bush's failed foreign
policy:

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the
government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out
policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top
aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel
Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said:
“What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States,
Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical
issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being
made.

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret,
but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

Mr Wilkerson said such secret decision-making was responsible for
mistakes such as the long refusal to engage with North Korea or to back
European efforts on Iran. It also resulted in bitter battles in the
administration among those excluded from the decisions.

“If you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in the bureaucracy
as they carry out your decisions, you are courting disaster. And I would say
that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran.”

The comments, made at the New America Foundation, a Washington
think-tank, were the harshest attack on the administration by a former
senior official since criticisms by Richard Clarke, former White House
terrorism czar, and Paul O'Neill, former Treasury secretary, early last
year.

Raw Story has done it again. They are breaking news on a second aide in
Cheney's office now cooperating with Patrick Fitzgerald on the leak
investigation. The second aide is Cheney's Middle East advisor David Wurmser.
According to the article Wurmser has agreed to provide evidence to the
prosecution that Cheney's office did in fact coordinate the leak of Valerie
Plame's identity.

Now, those close to the investigation say that a second Cheney aide,
David Wurmser, has agreed to provide the prosecution with evidence that the
leak was a coordinated effort by Cheney’s office to discredit the agent's
husband. Her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was one of the most
vocal critics of the Iraq war.

You can read the full article

here.

The fact that we have found out about two aides now cooperating with the
Prosecutor must send shockwaves through the White House. One can only guess at
how the atmosphere must be as evidence continues to come out that incriminates
the actions of the WHIG.

(OK it has been a while since I done one of these)

For years Presidential campaigns have been fought and won
on wars. Until recently the wars haven’t been the more violent ones, but the
catch phrases are victory getters none the less.

“The War on Drugs” or “The War on Abortion”. These are the
phrases candidates like to use. They actually bestow a sense of confidence and
ass kicking into the voter base. Republicans have been good at using these catch
phrases to muster the support they need but with one of those wars failing and
the other one possibly coming to an end, its time for the Democrats to create
some wars.

The first war they should start is the “War on
Environmental Terrorists”. These terrorists will have no place to hide. We will
hunt them down to all corners of the globe and make them pay for the tyranny
they have placed upon poor Mother Nature. We go after them on their battle
fields. We place heavy sanctions on them and fight them there so we don’t have
to fight them here. There of course means actually cutting the emissions at the
factories and not bringing them to court for a slap on the wrist.

With the strongest hurricane on record aiming for Florida,
it should be an enormous wake up call that we must do something to correct our
out of balance environment. Of course if you’re George Bush, balancing it means
pumping more pollution out so that there is no clean air left in the world.