GOP: Bin Laden tape a "little gift"

Despicable.

"We want people to think 'terrorism' for the last four days," said a Bush-Cheney campaign official. "And anything that raises the issue in people's minds is good for us."

A senior GOP strategist added, "anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush."

He called it "a little gift," saying it helps the President but doesn't guarantee his reelection. NY Daily News

Iraqi Nuclear Site Also Looted - Boston Globe

This account parallels what happened at Al Qaqaa. Troops were NOT ordered to guard the nuclear facility at Tuwaitha, which was completely looted.

Boston Globe
Eyewitness to a failure in Iraq
By Peter W. Galbraith | October 27, 2004

.... "When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated. He shook his head and said, 'I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon.' About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere.

"There was nothing secret about the Disease Center or the Tuwaitha warehouses. Inspectors had repeatedly visited the center looking for evidence of a biological weapons program. The Tuwaitha warehouses included materials from Iraq's nuclear program, which had been dismantled after the 1991 Gulf War. The United Nations had sealed the materials, and they remained untouched until the US troops arrived."

* * * *

"Some of the looting continued for many months -- possibly into 2004. Using heavy machinery, organized gangs took apart, according to [an] IAEA [report this month], 'entire buildings that housed high-precision equipment.' This equipment could be anywhere. But one good bet is Iran, which has had allies and agents in Iraq since shortly after the US-led forces arrived.

"This was a preventable disaster. Iraq's nuclear weapons-related materials were stored in only a few locations, and these were known before the war began. As even L. Paul Bremer III, the US administrator in Iraq, now admits, the United States had far too few troops to secure the country following the fall of Saddam Hussein. But even with the troops we had, the United States could have protected the known nuclear sites. It appears that troops did not receive relevant intelligence about Iraq's WMD facilities, nor was there any plan to secure them. Even after my briefing, the Pentagon leaders did nothing to safeguard Iraq's nuclear sites."

NPR: Bush shows World Trade Center wreckage before his entrance at rallies

link to audio + my transcript of that section:

scroll down

NPR

Bush, Kerry Trade Barbs in Pennsylvania, Ohio

At 00:45

Reporter:President Bush started the day in Pennsylvania, a state he has visited 41 times since taking office.

This morning he spoke in a hockey arena in Wilkes Barre.

Bush"Just seems like yesterday I was here in Wilkes Barre. But come to think of it, I was."

ReporterBut that folksy greeting quickly gave way to a speech that contained a sustained assault on John Kerry, portraying the Democrat as a man who won't do what is necessary to protect the nation.

Before the president took the stage, images from the World Trade Center wreckage played on the arena's giant TV screens.

CIA Report on 9/11 Suppressed by BushCO

Who will stand up to these monsters?

October 19, 2004
Robert Scheer:
The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket
The agency is withholding a damning report that points at senior officials.

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."

* * * *
The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.

"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible." L.A. Times

Getting Closer

Are we about to see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs?

Rove Testifies Before Grand Jury in CIA Leak Investigation



WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2003 — With election day getting closer the President's top advisor, Karl Rove, took time away from his duties to testify before a federal grand jury this morning. Rove appeared before the federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA officer's name and testified for almost 2 and a half hours.

Rove declined to answer reporters' questions as he departed the federal courthouse and set off in a-non descript bronze colored midsize car. Rove was escorted out of the courthouse by two US Marshals and an unidentified man. Rove sat in the back seat of the car and immediately began making using his cell phone. - ABC News

"Stolen Honor" producer is a Bush appointee

The owner of Sinclair's "Stolen Honor" production company is a Bush appointee. Surprise, surprise.

As originally posted at DU:

This is the address of Quantum Communications, the production company of "Stolen Honor":
Red, White and Blue Productions
C/O Quantum Communications
123 State St.
Harrisburg, PA 17101
Phone 717-213-4955
link

This is the man who owns Quantum Communications:
Mr. Charles R. Gerow
Law Offices of Charles R. Gerow
Reagan/Bush Campaign Field Staff, 1980
Reagan Alumni Association
Active involvement in numerous campaigns
Advance work in 6 Presidential campaigns
Alternate Delegate at Large, 1988
Dole for President, surrogate speaker,1996
Candidate for U.S. Congress
Lawyers for Bush, 2000
Principal, Quantum Communications
Adjunct faculty of several Pa. colleges
link

He ran for Congress as a Republican in 2000:
link

He was a Pennsylvania delegate to the GOP Convention in New York
"I don't like smoking bans. I'm a guy who believes in freedom," said Charlie Gerow, a cigar-smoker and delegate from Harrisburg, Pa. "Doesn't every civilized person enjoy cognac with a good cigar after dinner? I miss that here."
link

He's doesn't just own the production company, he's the publicist for "Stolen Honor":
The controversy over the anti-John Kerry ads aired by the swift boat vets has settled to a low boil, but the issues could take on new life and a new direction on September 9 with the premiere in Washington of a for-profit documentary called Stolen Honor. "I believe this is going to be the documentary of 2004," says Charlie Gerow, publicist for the film. "Forget about Michael Moore."
link

HE'S A BUSH APPOINTEE
The President intends to appoint Charles R. Gerow, of Pennsylvania, to be a Member of the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Commission. (Recommendation submitted by the Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.)
link

If Bush Took a Mulligan on the Three Mistakes Question...

If he weren't a moral coward, he might say:

I regret that I did not anticipate nor prevent the attacks of September 11th, and I deeply, deeply regret the loss of those 3000 lives on that horrific day. It happened under my watch.

I regret the intelligence failures prior to the Iraq War, and I will do everything in my power to prevent such a failure in the future. It happened under my watch.

I regret the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. It happened under my watch. I bear full responsibility.

But of course he would never say any such thing.

Buckle Your Seatbelts

Also, there seem to be threats with regard to Election Day.

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U.S. Alerts Schools About Terror Threat
Thu, Oct 07, 2004

WASHINGTON - The Education Department has advised school leaders nationwide to watch for people spying on their buildings or buses to help detect any possibility of terrorism like the deadly school siege in Russia.

The warning follows an analysis by the FBI (news - web sites) and the Homeland Security Department of the siege that killed nearly 340 people, many of them students, in the city of Beslan last month.

"The horror of this attack may have created significant anxiety in our own country among parents, students, faculty staff and other community members," Deputy Education Secretary Eugene Hickok said in a letter to schools and education groups. - Yahoo!
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Bush: Kerry Would 'Weaken' U.S.
President Defends Iraq War in Run-Up to Second Debate

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 7, 2004; Page A01

=snip= The strongly worded speech, which indicted Kerry as a "tax-and-spend liberal," was timed to deflect criticism of Bush's Iraq policy from such key sources as former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. weapons inspector and the State Department. A Bush adviser said the president hopes to change the dynamics of the race with more biting attacks on Kerry's record and trustworthiness and on what Bush charges is Kerry's reluctance to use U.S. military force to defeat terrorism. The strategy is aimed at stoking public fears about terrorism, raising new concerns about Kerry's ability to protect Americans and reinforcing Bush's image as the steady anti-terrorism candidate, aides said. - Wash. Post

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