Saturday, December 25, 2004

Gay Marriage

I just wanna give my quick take on this whole gay marriage...thing. First of all this is a created issue what the Karl Roves of the world call a "wedge issue". So many focus groups are conducted and the human mind's free will is broken down in to a probability matrix. Filter the probability matrix through demographics and you have a model for how voters(automaton voters) will come out.
People are homophobic and Americans especially are homophobic. My whole take on "gay" anything is who gives a fuck? So this guy likes doin other guys in the butt? why the hell should I care? Do you think he stays up late thinking about how I like doin' girls? NO, because who cares. Once there was slavery in the united states, then there was jim crow, and then there was a racist justice system. Progress is slow, but progress is pretty easy to see if you know some basic history. Gays are just another group that define themselves or are defined by our culture as outside "normalcy". Women were once this way; considered chattel, indigenous Americans also, Africans, Asian, Hispanic, Irish, etc. Whatever, groups are oppressed by society. So when a question arises that has to do with "gay" anything its just so strange, because the only basis for any of these ideas are from religion.
Just as Africans were once looked at as less than human, many regard gays as such, as generations grow up and question the values of their ancestors we will see racism, sexism, and homophobia taper off(it will never disappear). But that was a general rant so here is the matter at hand:
Gay marriages summed up real short I feel the same way as John Stewart: "let me get this straight, if they pass this law I will be forced to marry a gay guy!?...Because if not I don't see what the big deal is."

The question of gay marriage should have never existed and in fact it DOES NOT EXIST in political terms. The only question that should be addressed is: "Does a same-sex couple deserve the same tax rights as a heterosexual couple?".

Fuck marriage, marriage is a religious institution, a relic from a time before birth control and before women were even human. Churchs and synagogues should be addressing whether gays can marry and I don't give a shit how they come out.
What I believe is Gays should be given the same tax rights as any other human being who decides to enter in to a lifelong relationship with another. Call it civil unions call it beef jerky for all I care, just give them the same rights every other HUMAN BEING has!
Its like this call went out to all the xenophobic priests in the country and they all decided now is time for the "final solution". What truly scares me is the intense dehumanization of gays that made this 2004 election possibly may have repercussions in the future as the youth have been conditioned with a Hitleresque view of homosexuality.
Now is the time you should go to another page if you are offended by derogatory words and I can release some anxiety.
Jerry Falwell you are a fag, rick santorum you fuck animals, and oh man dick cheney if you weren't so close to death I'd say you were satan himself. You have a gay daughter but you want to PUT A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT STOPPING GAYS FROM HAVING THE SAME TAX RIGHTS AS OTHER HUMANS. You dehumanize your own fucking daughter YOUR OWN DAUGHTER!!!! That is why I have to believe that these neo-cons don't even believe in this shit! They foment anger and prejudice to further entrench their own power I just see third reich everywhere which is my final point.
One of the common traits of facist regimes is oppression of unpopular minority populations. Did clinton or bush sr or reagan give half a shit if gays wanted to spend their life together? Homophobia gets votes, and that is one of the many reasons why I am not proud to be an American, because our government IS a facist regime. I am proud to be an American for many other reasons, but shit like this when Karl Rove creates a "wedge issue" and the media falls in lockstep mimicking Fox News, I get sad that people really are that stupid and ignorant. Believing this makes me arrogant though, so i'm still just trying to find that middle ground between clock tower and monk with gasoline, a blog should suffice :) .

-Jimothy J. Jones




"tryinna find a balance I gotta find my balance"

-Atmosphere

Thursday, December 23, 2004

The Surreal Life

I live in a pulp science fiction novel. The snow and cold beat down on everyone, but we coast at 60 miles per hour to our destination. Looking left and right you catch glimpses of other expensive boxes flying down the road. Their faces illuminated by the combination of the GPS navigation system and the glow of their cell phones.
Emotions are bought and sold, pushed on a populace unfamiliar with the power these messages have. The news sells fear, the sneakers sell glory, the radio sells angst, alcohol sells freindship, fashion sells sex, talk show hosts sell us anger, prozac sells happiness, and DeBeers sells true love.
Every day writings are delivered to your door. These can be used to send tickets to people caught running red lights on camera or even to try to sell you crap. All it takes is to start slow, a few cameras at the housing projects and a few on interesections with a lot of acidents. Soon you will have cameras on every intersection and every public gathering place...for the safety of the people of course. In this world Christians betray the teachings of Christ and Muslims betray the teachings of Mohammed to kill each other, but they still hide behind their respective religions for justification.
The symphonies have all been finished, the literature all written, the movies all have been filmed we are left with what we refer to as "free will": endlessly mimicking art until we are laid to rest. Art does not imitate life anymore, life imitates art completely, in fact art tells life what to do. Art tells life that they need a better dishwashing soap or they are not normal. Art tells life that accellerating the destruction of the enviornment is a small price to pay for the feeling of rugged individualism bestowed from piloting a hummer. Art tells life that they should pay $6 a day to slowly and deliberately kill themselves inhaling carbon monoxide and various carcinogens in 20 seperate delivery systems.
No longer is the world worried about the global economy which is a doomsday machine. No longer is the world worried about nuclear weapons. Instead the news shows footage of "terrorist" training videos, instructing people how to blow up civilians on a bus effectively. In this world the sanctity of life only matters if it creates a political gain.
This fantasy world is at war with a country that did not attack it. If an individual supports the war they must also ignore the war, helpful barriers are constructed to keep people from going through cognitive dissonance. They shield the dead bodies from cameras, they fabricate war victories, and they continually repeat that the war is close to over. As the body count rises individuals against it from the start ask everyone they can, so they can understand: "How can you justify this?". The answer always refers to an event which murdered many civilians. The details of who it was, how it was allowed to happen, and how it was being prevented from ever happening again are very sketchy and if one delves too deep the Government will stop answering their questions.
This fantasy world can be easily created. It takes powerful technology, a catalytic event that is perceived by everyone, and continued conditioning through some medium(in our fantasy world we call this medium "the media").
What is the meaning of progress?
It may be coming to terms with the fact that we could be THE last generation.
Maybe progress IS an endless war with an enemy that cannot be identified and will never surrender.
I think progress is learning.
Things cannot change unless the majority know the difference between Democracy and Facism.

-Jimothy J. Jones


"I got a letter from the government the other day I opened and read it, it said they were suckas. They wanted me for their army or whatever picture me givin' a damn I said never."
-Chuck D

"Now I have to backpedal/from the shower of glass and metal/wondering after it all settles/who provided power to radical rebels/the melting pot seems to be calling the kettle black when it boils over/but only on our own soil so the little boy holds a toy soldier/and waits for the suit and tie to come home..before we destroy his hopes for a colder war to end(now get a closeup of his head)makeshift patriot the flag shop is outta stock, I hang myself at half mast
-Sage Francis "makeshift Patriot"

Thursday, December 09, 2004

Dick Cheney responsible for 9/11?

Michael C. Ruppert has done it again. He has unearthed some very interesting research pertaining to Rudy Guiliani's testimony to the Kean commission. More importantly a source(Arias)(whos brother was killed in the second tower that was hit) came forward and told him that there were multiple war games THAT DAY. They were overseen by Cheney and one was MULITPLE HIJACKINGS IN THE NORTHEAST OF THE COUNTRY!
Now I finally understand why they didn't scramble fighters. He also says he couldn't get a comment out of anyone about the $100,000 wired to Mohammed Atta by ISI chief Gen. Mahmud.

http://www.justicefor911.org/Appendix7_911OmissionsHearings_111904.php
Click on Part III


I'm sure there is a link somewhere down the blog, but you can got to http://www.copvicia.com Once there just go to search and type "lucy". The article that comes up is called "Lucy you got a lotta 'splainin to do". That is the most comprehensive timeline of 9/11 that has yet been constructed in my opinion. The 911 truth movement has been going on for some time and hopefully more people will READ as time goes on. Thats the reason most people don't really beleive any of these factual happenings cited from mass media sources, they are outlandish when told to you and individuals just DON"T READ. Reminds of Marshall McLuhan and his Post Literate society critique. Thats why the 1st link above is easy, all yah gotta do is listen, no reading, so click, download, listen, and enjoy waking up.

I'm halfway done with "Crossing the Rubicon" Ruppert's (massive)book and HOLY SHIT is like all I can say over and over. Everywhere a skeptic like myself says "oh yah where is the cite" he has a footnote with very strong pieces of evidence. Some of the interviews he publishes and the articles he cites are just plain incredible, there is no doubt in my mind that the attacks on 9/11 at the very least were allowed to happen by the most powerful in the government and intelligence community and at the most: actively supplied with money and specific Wargames intel by ISI and US intelligence agencies respectively. I'm gonna do a review and breakdown of the book when I finish it, try to compile some of the best cites I gleaned from the book, if you are not indefinetly broke like myself I suggest yah purchase it.

-Jimothy J. Jones

An open letter to Joe Lieberman

Dear Joe,
Get the fuck outta my party. Oh shit did I say fuck? Oh fuck did I say shit!? Most people have read the 1st amendment. I would think that a senator would at some point in his life have read the 1st amendment. Just because you think a fucking VIDEO GAME, thats right Joe a VIDEO GAME, will cause irreperable harm to society doesn't mean you get to try and censor it. I saw your montage of video game images on C-span a perfectly one sided view. Now I want to ask you a qustion Joe, if those images are so dangerous to our youth and to the country at large...WHY THE HELL DID YOU SHOW THEM ON TV!!??? It is ridiculous more game ratings and more censoring, ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION!!?? People enjoy the first amendment, its that simple, you have been a staunch opponent of free speech, so very simply understood. Tipper Gore and you trying to censor rap music(come on Joe, rap music? that is racism plain and simple) NO OTHER MUSIC. It is idiotic, so now you're back with a cause that will really get people fired up and voting democratic CENSORING VIDEO GAMES! Not a single day goes by when a child can't turn on our news that panders to morbid fascination and see far more disturbing images than a video game. The problem is you are old very simple and any person who supports that move is OLD! Kids can tell the difference between pixels and living tissue for fucks sake. The youth are out here hating the Republican party AND SEARCHING FOR A REASON TO VOTE DEMOCRATIC! Instead you want to make this the party of geriatric puritans who dislike children.

You are a household name because of your run for vice president and although I will never vote for you again as I did in 2000, I hope you use your power to protect the 1st amendment rather than destroy it. As for me I know that there is no harm in people using curse words, there is not harm in pixels exploding, and I KNOW there is incredible damage that will result if you initiate the censoring of art.
I find myself drifting farther and farther away from the democratic party I see Zell Miller screaming jingoist naziesque reassurances to the supporters of the preventive ground invasion and subsequent occupation. I see you on TV wanting to censor and make "tougher" rating systems because these images are so harmful THEN YOU SHOW THE IMAGES ON TV!! Just so hypocritcal. The democratic party is weak because it has weak leaders, YOU are one of the premier leaders of the party. As public opinion swings to opposition to the Iraq war as more and more dead soldiers are shipped home, why doesn't the democratic party STAND UP and show some backbone!? Why dont they try to DO something that the people will NOTICE!? Its very simple Joe the democratic party will wither away until it is a third party, unless YOU show some backbone. Instead of trying to censor harmless(they have to be harmless or you would not have been able to show them on national television) images you should be trying to save the american soldiers dying for this invasion and the Iraqi civilians being slaughtered by our high tech drive bys. So please, strap on a nutsack and stand the fuck up!
Thank you for your time

-Jimothy J. Jones

Monday, November 22, 2004

Jaded Cynic and Unwitting Imperialist Part Three

Setting: JC and UI are talking about the occupation (oh sorry zell miller i meant, Liberation snicker snicker)


Unwitting Imperialist: Did you hear we’re finally gonna put down the terrorists in Fallujah!?


Jaded Cynic: And by put down you mean kill them all right?


UI: No no, we’re spreading freedom to them.


JC: which is a great euphemism for killing everything that moves.


UI: well Fallujah is like the last part of the Iraq Liberation, kinda like space is the final frontier of Man’s voyages.


JC: So you think this means we’re coming to the end of the war?


UI: Hell yah, Iraq will have democracy our troops will be back, then we can start brow beating people I deem to be “liberals”.


JC: You realize of course that this is just another effort at “modulating distress”, right?


UI: I don’t know what you mean so I’ll prepare myself for the anti-american speech.


JC: Well despite that same slander you stick to any individual who questions the answers those in power give us, this is not anti-american. Everyone in power(we can refer to these as the “elites”) is in power because they are good at a few things. The most important being manipulation. One of the subsets of manipulation is modulation of stress.


UI: get to the point


JC:OK so remember how America used to honor its fallen?


UI: what do you mean used to? I see people saying numbers on the news all the time.


JC: exactly…numbers, because thats all they get. Our current vice president, back when he was defense secretary banned pictures of the fallen being honored. This is so the people do not make the complete psychological connection between soldiers dying and a flag draped coffin being soaked in the tears of their respective familes.


UI: I don’t buy it


JC: well its not some conspiracy its pretty simple, to get a democracy to do something you can wait until a movement boils up from the bottom and gets to the top OR you can use your influence at the top to create a want in other people. This is called marketing, for example that Quadra air thing you bought from Sharper Image, you remember that?


UI: yah it works wonders


JC: haha, yah exactly. Well they lost a lawsuit because they couldn’t prove it did ANYTHING they claimed in the commercials. So you bought a product that when in court cannot prove it does ANYTHING, but for some reason you believe it does all kinds of things. Don’t think i’m immune I do the same thing, its just an important psychological heuristic we should all know about, but lemme get back to my point-


UI: yah seriously


JC:- This fallujah offensive first of all proceeded a day after the election, which makes it blatantly obvious that this war is not being fought with our soldiers lives and morale in mind AND without a THOUGHT to the hearts and minds of Iraqis. Instead this war is fought and plans are changed, because of Political considerations.


UI: Bullshit, hes commander in chief, he wouldn’t risk our american soldiers like that.


JC: FIrst of all, that person he obstructed from getting in to the texas air nat’l gaurd probably died in Vietnam, so don’t tell me he is compassionate or not elitist. Think about it man: no pictures of coffins, “mission accomplished” banner, “transfer of sovereignty”, Interim government, and now “the final battle”.


UI: Well I believe my leader and I think that Fallujah will represent the end of the Iraqi occupation.


JC: Listen dude, how long would you let your children live without electricty or sewage? How long would you put up with military checkpoints in your neighborhood? How long would you put up with the bombs falling around the clock?

How long would you put up with foreign soldiers in your fucking backyard!?

How long would you put up with FAMILY MEMBERS AND FREINDS DYING FROM MISSILES THAT FALL ARBITRARLY WHETHER OR NOT YOU RESIST THE OCCUPATION!!!???


UI: See you are anti-american


JC: No, that is where you and your jingoist buddies are wrong. We are the real americans, the ones Bolivar was talking about. The ones that want to see true democracy not coporatism(what Mussolini said Facism should be called) spread to other countries. As our texas fuhrer proceeds to strip us of the rights gauranteed to us by the constitution, we will have to destroy the current institutions of power. You’ll be there UI with the rest of us, it’ll just take a little longer for you guys to come around.


UI: you fuckers will get crushed like the warsaw uprising, haha, stage a revolution in the era or terror and cointelpro, you truly are an idealist.


JC: i’m not the only one, my freind, i’m not the only one. LIke I said earlier though, “Fallujah is to shock and awe as Stalingrad was to the blitzkrieg”.


UI: We are starting to look more and more like nazis


JC: thats the spirit haha. Check it out ok 9/11 killed 3,000 civilians right?


UI: right.


JC: we have killed 100,000 civilians in Iraq so far, so we cannot complain about the next 32, 9/11s.


UI: Those were disgusting acts SPECIFICALLY targeting civilians


JC: well despite the fact that we target civilians as well, its based on an assumption that democracy is our system of government. The truth is the elites control the civilians, so killing civilians didn’t do anything. The terrorists should start fighting the people we’re all fighting against, instead of arbitrarly blowing up buildings because of supposed symbolic meaning.


UI: Not only that but the evidence of responsibility for 9/11 always goes back to two places: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s ISI.


JC: well years from now, we’ll see what they put in the children’s history books, and one thing I gaurantee is that it won’t be the truth.

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Racial profiling in the United States: Is Justice Blind?

The most important problem facing law enforcement today is the issue of Racial Profiling. Statistics do not lie and neither do radical changes in social order. Not since the 1960s has the country been closer to the brink of a race war. Rodney King and the subsequent acquittals of police officers, the O.J. Simpson trial, and recent riots in cities such as Cincinnati all have one common theme: a distrust of law enforcement officials by urban residents. Throughout the course of my research I have come across facts that continually support the belief that race is one of the most important factors in the justice system. Essentially the reason for this disparity is the conditioning that police officers have been subjected to for years. This conditioning in turn spawned a mental picture of what an offender is, this picture soon became the scapegoat of our entire society. Certain individuals deny that racial profiling is a reality and if they do acknowledge its’ existence they argue that it is impossible to stop. These myths need to be debunked, because this unequal enforcement of justice makes a farce of everything the United States stands for.

Dred Scott was the first well known supreme court case that reaffirmed the law that African-Americans are less than human. In this case a slave went to the north and returned to the south, filed a court case for his freedom and was turned down by the courts. This court decision basically said once a slave always a slave, today historians blame it on being sensitive to the southerners. It was basically the next logical step for a constitution guaranteeing equality and a policy that guarantees inequality. The next landmark decision was Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Louisiana, this decision decided that Jim Crow laws were in fact constitutional. Homer Plessy was an individual who was 1/8th African and was forced to sit in the “Colored” car. He filed a court case arguing for equality, since the train did not leave Louisina, it did not fit in to the strict definition the court had at the time of federalism, so judge Ferguson felt that there was not a violation. The court needed to give all citizens equality in the public realm, but it also needed to reaffirm the widely held belief that African-Americans were less than human. The court accomplished this by instituting the “separate but equal” era of race policy. The separate part of this phrase became much more important than the equal facet. Schools, restaurants, and restrooms were divided between white and colored. These facilities existed before the Plessy decision in 1896, but the decision essentially legitimizes the practice. This era lasted for 60 years until the Brown vs. Board of education decision. This period of time is incredibly important in understanding our current racial problems. This long period of time which was only a few generations ago, built in to the collective American psyche an image that African-Americans are less than a white American. Most importantly that they are bestial and dirty, therefore they could not use public swimming pools or a white person’s water fountain. These are not light ideologies, to fuel these beliefs there must be a healthy dose of dehumanizing. Lynchings were still happening in the south and beatings of African-Americans was very common.
About 50 years ago, in 1954 the Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Board of Education that public schools had to be integrated. One could argue this is the single most important supreme court case since Marbury v. Madison. For people in the south this was a 180 degree turn around and for people in the north it was a massive change from the status quo. In the decade that is known for its resistance to change and the image of the stereotypical white nuclear suburban family. Brown v. Board had a tough time being enforced, but the executive branch did its’ best to enforce it. When Governor Wallace declared “…segregation forever!” and attempted to block African-American students from entering the University, the National Guard was sent to enforce the court decision.
The court also brought in to focus an important issue when it came to segregation. The difference between De Facto and De Jure segregation. De Jure is segregation required by the law, while De Facto segregation is the unintended result of environmental and social factors. By deciding Brown v. Board the court basically destroyed De Jure segregation. An issue that then became very important was busing to fight against De Facto segregation, there are many problems with busing itself and there are probably better ways to stop De Facto segregation. The government at least was not upholding the inequality that was mandated by the Plessy decision.

The time after Brown v. Board is widely referred to as the Civil Rights Era. Between this time and 1964 there was a great deal of social change. An important thing to remember is social change is a long, incremental, and nearly impossible thing to accomplish. People are very resistant to change especially when they had been conditioned since their birth that not only were Blacks less than human, but the supreme court recognizes and agrees with this! It was unheard of for a black woman to refuse to sit in the back of the bus and even more unheard of for white people to travel with blacks fighting for civil rights. The remnants of the ku klux klan and southern law enforcement officers worked together to deny blacks their civil rights. At least that is all they were charged with, because all trials against murderers, bombers, and conspirators were decided by an all white, all male jury. These individuals for the most part agreed with the individuals who had committed these heinous acts, because they had been conditioned in the same way. People walked free, the most famous of these incidents is the murder of three freedom riders. Two white males and one black male, had been traveling on integrated bus lines to make sure it was truly integrated. These individuals were dragged out of the car and murdered by Klan members. This resistance to change is very important in understanding our current problem with racial profiling.
In 1964 the civil rights act was passed, essentially the legislative follow up to the Brown v. Board decision and the activists creating social change. This era is important because there has not been a significant court or legislative action dealing with race since then. The closest is the Whren decision which said it was ok to use race as a factor in policing as long as it is not the only factor(Cox Cohan). As Richard Bennet explained to us, the incarceration rate has been steadily increasing at a much faster rate than before. The point of origin for this phenomenon was the 1964 civil rights act. As Bennet argued I began to formulate a hypothesis. These rights were not given to minorities, instead they had been withheld for countless years in basic violation of our constitution. Since being withheld for countless years(you only have to look back 150 years for slavery) our culture has been conditioned to think of African-Americans as lesser beings. The Plessy decision just codified this belief and Brown v. Board all of a sudden told the public everything they knew and had been told was wrong. So after equal rights were guaranteed to be enforced by the federal government, this “group” of “Coloreds” became a group undesirable to society, but it was unlawful to act on this belief. This is the state of America’s collective psyche today.

Since the Civil Rights Act the incarceration rate has steadily increased, compared to its relatively stable pre-1964 rate(Bennet). The people in power needed something to keep those slaves from becoming equal. Far from a rational decision, it become a common psychological reaction to label this group criminals or to at least imagine criminals as looking a certain way.
“…racial profiling doesn’t happen because data justifies the practice but rather because those with power are able to get away with it, and find it functional to do so as a mechanism of social control over those who are less powerful. By typifying certain ‘others’ as dangerous or undesirable,those seeking to maintain divisions between people whose economic and social interests are actually quitesimilar can successfully maintain those cleavages.(Wise)”

The ruling class in this case is White America and the dangerous undesirable group is former slaves. After so many years of being told that the reason they treated this group of people like trash, is because they were animals like dogs and cats. Now all of a sudden these “animals” are equal to them in the eyes of the law. Either one can understand they themselves are evil for treating human beings like animals or they can understand that this group is still less than human and the government is wrong. Now one can easily understand, which entity is it easier to blame this on: yourself or the government? It is obviously that faceless entity known as the government, so racism survives, to be taught to the next generation(Greenblatt).
The police are just a random sampling of the population with a few qualifications: for the most part these individuals come from working or middle class families and many have relatives that were law enforcement officers. So policemen are being told by others before the civil rights act, before Brown v. Board, and even before Plessy that Blacks were less than human. This conditioning does not all of a sudden stop when the government says that it is not true. The thing that was greatly cut down on were terrorist actions, like the bombing of the 16th street Baptist church in Birmingham Now discrimination in jobs were illegal, where could this shared value of racism go? The answer is law enforcement, although today I do consider racial profiling racist, I do not consider the policemen who profile racist. It is simple, if one is discriminated in a job or if they are beaten for being black, that individual simply brings the issue to court. For a victim of racial profiling, you are already a criminal, you cannot say you were discriminated against, because no one will listen. So it happens once, twice, and soon it becomes a common practice. After many years the public and police begin to have a picture of what a criminal looks like. Understanding the root causes of racial profiling helps us understand the problem we face today, because we have seen a long line of improvements in the quest for equal protection under the law. Also the important thing to understand is that we all share responsibility, so it makes the problem hard to accept.

Many individuals seem to have a perception of racial profiling that it probably exists, but only in specific areas like the south or large cities. The truth is that all across our country there is a disproportionately large amount of minorities arrested(as well as searched), convicted, and incarcerated.
“His office investigated the issue for four months before he officially admitted that New Jersey state troopers were regularly engaging in racial profiling. The office also acknowledged that although the racial profiling issue has gained state and national attention, the underlying conditions that foster disparate treatment of minorities have existed for decades…The report found that the problem of racial profiling was real, and not simply imagined.(Meeks)”


The most noticeable difference is in drug possession crimes. African-Americans make up 12% of the U.S. population and 13% of monthly drug users. Well this is to be expected for the proportion of drug use to fluctuate a few points around its’ proportion to the general population. So one would expect that the rate of arrests, convictions, and incarcerations would go back and forth between 6% and 20%. Well it turns out 35% of drug arrests are African-Americans. Maybe for some reason there is just a few more drug users per capita that are African-American that the survey missed in the monthly drug users. Now the next step in the justice process the verdict, at this step in the process African-Americans make up 55% of those convicted of drug possession. Now the judges turn, they have justice in mind, they’ll keep drug users out of jail and in treatment programs so they can rid themselves of their addiction. It turns out African-Americans make up 74% of those incarcerated for drug possession(Walker). At the point of the proportin of drug arrests one may think its just a little bit not to bad a violation, but by the time one understands that 74% of people incarcerated for drugs are African-American we must understand that this problem is pervasive.
Some people argue that minorities are disproportionately distributing drugs or that minorities are impoverished so they have to resort to a life of crime. These are hindsight justifications, the truth is that even if minorities were disproportionately distributing drugs how could they make up 74% of people who possess drugs when they are 12% of the population, this is basically an assumption that all young black males are drug users. This assumption is faulty, because the evidence shows they are only 13% of monthly drug users(Walker). The argument that poverty creates an environment in which crime is the easy way out is true. Crime is a short term answer to poverty, but I know that most impoverished individuals whatever race work very hard to keep their head above water. To assume that a child born in a poverty stricken neighborhood will end up a criminal is not logical. Also to assume that minorities come from impoverished areas is in itself ignorant and prejudiced. As we have seen no matter what social standing a person comes from if they are a minority they are treated negatively by the justice system(Ramirez).
One example of this is what people call DWB, or Driving While Black. In a case the ACLU took, a black prosecutor was driving back to Washington DC after attending a funeral with his family. He was in a hurry to make a trial the next day. He was pulled over in the rain and asked if he would submit to a search. The driver stated that he knew his rights and did not want his car searched. The family was forced to wait there as they brought a drug dog to sniff out the car. As their car was searched the family stood out in the rain. When the attorney arrived in his office he called the ACLU and they filed a case against the police(Meeks). The case led to document that had been circulating among the police that there were lots of drug shipments going through their highway and the perpetrators are usually black and usually in a rent-a-car(Jost). Well the attorney was black and he was in a rent-a-car, but to everyone’s astonishment he was not a drug smuggler. This is just one isolated incident, but if one looks at the ACLU site it quickly becomes obvious that there are cases filed in many states. Although some of them may be exaggerated or simply not true, some of them are true and give us a glimpse in to what it feels like to be singled out and intimidated because of your race.
A recent study found that 9 out of 10 individuals incarcerated in Maryland on drug offenses are African-American(JPI). Also on any given day 42% of African-American men age 18-35 in Washington DC are under the control of the justice system. This is defined as being either on probation, parole, in jail, or in prison. Also one-sixth of African-American men(defined as over age 16) are arrested each year(Walker). The disparity is not only in drug crimes either, African-Americans make up half of all state and federal prisoners. They also make up two-thirds of federal prisoners incarcerated for drugs(Walker).
Certain people think that the racism within the system is a myth. That in actuality it is polices that ranking officers have their officers follow(Fredrickson). For instance to order officers to pull over black people driving rent-a-cars, because they have arrested some black people driving rent-a-cars for drug possession. Some argue this is good policing, like crime mapping you can pick up a pattern. They don’t think of it as racial profiling, it just makes sense. The truth is just because 13 of the 16 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi Arabian and all 16 were Muslim, does not mean that we should search Saudi Muslims a lot more than other individuals when boarding planes. This seems rational because its based on empirical analysis, but instead it puts us more at risk. If law enforcement is too busy searching innocent minorities for drugs and airport security officers are too busy searching innocent Muslims for shoe bombs, no one is catching the real criminals. This is the primary effect that racial profiling has on the justice system in the United States. By focusing on individuals because of their race we are not incarcerating those dangerous to society, we’re incarcerating a race of people. By letting through the criminals everyone in society is endangered by racial profiling.
The secondary effect of Racial Profiling is alienation of the group that is affected. Minorities become dehumanized just as badly if not worse than having to sit on the back of the bus or not eat at lunch counters. With family and friends being searched illegally. Then disproportionately arrested, convicted, and incarcerated its easy to understand the justice system has marginalized this group. Beyond the statistical facts and personal experiences with the justice system, there is the media. The O.J. Simpson trial, the Rodney King beating and subsequent acquittal, and the recent beating in Cincinnati that left a man dead these all create and fuel a perception of the justice system. People who are affected by these tragedies respond in anger, rioting and destroying their own neighborhoods. Many individuals of all races have let the media frame racial profiling without understanding the facts(Lamberth). These very few highly publicized cases convince skeptics that racial profiling is a myth created by the media and convince people who believe in racial profiling that incidents are much more violent than usual. This is interesting because increased perception seems to polarize opinions on racial profiling, when it should unite them. The answer to this in my opinion is to use less sensationalism when covering these stories, to see it as a symptom of the larger problem of racial profiling and not just a fluke.


The newest form of Racial Profiling involves Muslims. This specifically deals with airport security and suspension of habeas corpus. Since the attacks on 9/11 airport security has become controlled by the military. They are operating under orders to look for suspicious persons, since the mental picture of what a hijacker looks like is already ingrained in them, the look for a certain type of person. This person usually wears a cloth on their head, has a certain skin color, and maybe even an accent. Also American citizens detained in Guantanimo bay without being given access to an attorney or communication with their families. These people are held there specifically because they are Muslim and are suspected of knowing certain people. This is fine to arrest and change someone with a crime, but to imprison these people with the term “Enemy Combatants” is a stretch. It becomes obvious that this policy is tilted when one sees that virtually all the prisoners are Muslim. Also racial profiling affects other minorities like Latinos, as it turns out 30% of federal mandatory minimums are given to Latinos(FAMM). Also from many peoples experiences we can understand racial profiling can work in reverse. When a Caucasian is driving in a neighborhood the law enforcement perceive to be a “minority” neighborhood, they are pulled over on the basis of race. The assumption is for the most part based on drug searches.

Now we understand that racial profiling is pervasive, we understand it affects every race, and we know that this problem is exacerbated by drug war policies and media sensationalism. We have a basic understanding of racism in the United States and a recognition that racism has survived.
Many individuals are resistant to the idea of racial profiling, because they feel it scapegoats law enforcement for a societal problem they aren’t responsible for. These individuals are right and wrong. To scapegoat law enforcement officers is wrong and sometimes these claims can come across that way, especially if they are unfounded claims(like many cases very well might be). The truth is law enforcement is responsible for the problem, but just as responsible as everyone else. The police commit small acts of disproportionate arresting, the public with juries commits a few more small acts of disproportionate convictions, and the judge comes down on minorities a little harder. All these subtle differences have a cumulative affect and create a horribly unbalanced justice system.
The people in the system are not racist, they are just products of social conditioning. We are all products of social conditioning, but many of us are not exposed to certain cultures. For instance the culture of law enforcement is very interesting. As Ronald Hampton discussed with us every different station has different values and objectives. Their superior officer gives them orders and they follow them. To lead to this disproportionate arrest rate the police in many jurisdictions must have a subtle shared value of what an offender looks like. These values are pieced together from training, experience, and being taught by previous generations of officers. With arrest rates for drug possession more than twice the rate of consumption for African-Americans this is the most rational explanation. Police officers are not racist, they have just been arresting blacks for so long they’ve created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Again even if they recognize their mistakes, there aren’t that many, just a little lopsided in the enforcement.
Many think that police are the number one problem in addressing racial profiling. The public and the judge are just as important though. Through the jury system, an offender is judged by his/her peers. They determine guilt and as the statistics in Samuel Walker’s book show us they are convicting a higher rate of black people than white people. These juries are samples of the population and are sometimes minorities themselves. As it turns out in society in general no matter what race you are, the conditioning exists to some degree that you believe a certain type of person commits certain types of crimes. Also these juries are viewing trials which are usually good prosecutors with their own future in mind and unskilled defenders, because the defendant can’t afford a better attorney. So they convict a little higher percentage than would be expected.
The judges then have a chance to balance the scales of justice. If more African-Americans are being sentenced why not give a larger percentage non-prison rehabilitation. The statistics don’t take a downturn though, instead they continue to rise. As the number finally becomes a whopping 74% of drug users incarcerated being African-American.
The problem does not rest squarely on any single entities shoulders. Instead the problem is ingrained in our culture and everyone is responsible. So how can such a huge problem ever be addressed?

The first step towards reducing Racial Profiling, is to have every station in the United States record the race of the people they pull over and search. If the current practices continue we will be able to pinpoint certain jurisdictions that use race as the most important factor in determining probable cause. This can lead to a federal lawsuit for violating people’s civil rights. If the current practices don’t continue, because people realize they are being monitored the problem will be solved at the law enforcement level. Frederick Taylor is an organizational theorist known for his popularizing of the theory of Scientific Management, which is a belief that there is a best way to manage any organization. Taylor did a study in the workplace and found out that the more he dimmed the lights the harder people worked, until it got too dark to work. When the study was done he concluded that the people had worked harder, simply because they knew they were being studied. I think that if a police officer is convinced not to search someone, because he is scared of legal repercussions, then that person was not worth searching. The collection of traffic stop/search/arrest data will lead to stricter enforcement of probable cause and eliminate the gap between the 14% of drug users are African-American and 35% of arrestees are African-American.

The next step has to deal with the jury and prosecutor. The convictions are a result of the prosecutors dropping a larger percentage of Caucasian drug cases and public perceptions of drug use. To reduce this disparity we must limit the prosecutorial discretion at some level. Many cases the prosecutor is convinced the person is bad and just throws counts at them to see what will stick. Also all jurors should be made aware of the disparity in conviction rates. This may help them look through their own conditioned prejudice.
For the judges these individuals already have a tight grasp of the law and should not be contributing to this disparity. Simply put these judges need to be aware that they are somehow incarcerating a much higher rate of African-Americans than Caucasians, especially for drug crimes. This may also be contributed to by mandatory minimums. Hurting the judge’s discretion, forcing incarceration for drug crimes instead of rehab(FAMM).

Racial Profiling is a symptom of a larger societal prejudice(Fagan). If we can reduce the disparity and set our goal to eliminate it completely we can cure this symptom. This is a positive step in insuring everyone equal protection under the law. Racial profiling should not be used to determine probable cause for searching or arresting. It does not matter if 100% of plane hijackers in history are Muslim, this does not justify violating the rights of every Muslim. Separate but equal is also not very long ago, we must remember that racism didn’t all of a sudden die in 1964, instead it became something under the surface. It is perpetuated by an unequal justice system and sometimes it boils over and leads to riots.
To catch the real criminals we must stop searching innocents, we must stop marginalizing racial groups with our law enforcement, and we have to accumulate data to gain a greater understanding of the problem. I myself have been conditioned throughout my lifetime, I try to remain open minded and look through the prejudice, obviously this can never happen.
Prejudice and racism will never cease existing, what we need to do is eliminate it from our government. This is a plausible goal and without reaching it I fear we may be taking steps backward in regards to civil rights. Simply put without justice there can be no peace. Racial disparity in the justice system is unjust and affects everyone no matter what race.





Works Cited
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Bain, Bryonn “Tree Days in NYC jails” The Village Voice Sep 24, 2003 Vol. 48 Iss. 39

Carrick, Grady “Police Response to Racial Profiling” Law and Order Oct, 2001 Vol. 49 Iss. 10

Cox, Stephen M. “Racial Profiling: Refuting Concerns About Collecting Race Data on Traffic Stops.” Law and Order Oct, 2001 Vol. 49 Iss. 10

Cox Cohan, Carolyn, Professor at American University

Criminal Justice Publications “Minority Police- Tramping Through a Racial Minefield” Police Magazine Mar, 1979 Vol. 2 Iss. 2

Fagan, Jefferey “Law, Social Science, and Racial Profiling.” Justice Research and Policy Fall, 2002 Vol. 4 pg. 103-129

Fredrickson, Darin D. and Siljander, Raymond P. “Racial Profiling” 2002

Greenblatt, Alan “Are Blacks Still Handicapped By Racism?” The CQ Researcher Jul 11, 2003 Vol. 13 No. 25

Harris, David A. “Racial Profiling Revisited: ‘Just common sense’ in the Fight Against Terror?” Criminal Justice Summer, 2002 Vol. 17 Iss. 2

Hampton, Ronald. Executive Director National Black Police Association, American University Sep 5 2003

Harris, David “Driving While Black: Racial profiling on Our Nation’s Highways” http://www.aclu.org/profiling/report/index.html 1999

Harris, David A. “Stories, The Statistics and the Law: Why ‘driving while black’ matters” Minnesota Law Review Dec, 1999 Vol. 84 Iss. 2

Garret, Ronnie L. “Changing Behavior Begins With Data: Collecting Traffic Stop Data is a Means to Identify Profiling and Stop it in Its Tracks.” Law Enforcement Technology Apr, 2001 Vol. 28 Iss. 4

Jost, Kenneth “How Can Abuses Be Prevented?” The CQ Researcher Mar 17, 2000 Vol. 10 No. 10

Justice Policy Institute study on Maryland Sentencing, http://www.justicepolicy.org/article.php?list=type&type=66

Kennedy, Randall. “Blind Spot Racial Profiling Meet Your Alter Ego: Affirmative Action” The Atlantic Monthly Apr. 2002 pg 24

Kurlander, Neil “Software to Track Traffic Stop Data” Law Enforcement Technology Aug, 2000 Vol. 27 Iss. 7

Lamberth, Karl and Clayton, Jerry “Addressing Racial Profiling” Chief of police May, 2003 Vol. 17 Iss. 3 Pg 21, 24-25

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights United States “Wrong then, Wrong now: Racial Profiling Before and After September 11, 2001” Http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/racial_profiling/Racial_profiling_report.pdf 2001

Masci, David and Marshall, Patrick “Is The Governments Crackdown On Terrorism Too Harsh?” The CQ Researcher Dec 14, 2001 Vol. 11 No. 43

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Meehan, Albert and Ponder, Michael “Race and Place: The Ocology of Racial Profiling African American Motorists.” Justice Quarterly Sep, 2002 Vol. 19 Iss. 3

Meeks, Kenneth “Driving While Black Highways, Shopping Malls, Taxi Cabs, Sidewalks, What to do if you are a Victim of Racial Profiling” Broadway books New York, 2000

National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives United States “A Noble Perspective: Racial Profiling, A symptom of Biased-Based Policing” National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives May 3, 2001

Nebraska Commission on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice United States “Nebraska Crime Commission Update.” National Institute of Justice 2001

New Jersey Attorney General “State Police Review Team Regarding Allegations of Racial Profiling: Interim Report” Report by New Jersey Attorney General Apr 20, 1999

O’Reilly, James T. “Police Traffic Stops and Racial Profiling: Resolving Management, Labor and Civil Rights Conflicts.” 2002

Petrocelli, Matthew; Piquero, Alex; and Smith, Michael “Conflict theory and Racial Profiling: An Empirical Analysis of Police Traffic Stop Data.” Journal of Criminal Justice Jan, 2003 Vol. 31 Iss. 1

Police Assessment Resource Center “Racial Profiling” http://www.vera.org/publication_pdf/162_249.pdf 2002

Ramirez, Deborah; McDevitt, Jack; and Farrell, Amy “Resource Guide on Racial Profiling Data Collection Systems: Promising Practices and Lessons Learned” http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/bja/184768.pdf Nov 2000

Rashed, Dina “U.S. Experts Testify to Racial, Religious profiling in the US” Global Information Network Oct 21, 2003

Rivera, Richard G. “Nine ways to Prevent Racial Profiling” Law and Order Oct, 2001 Vol. 49 Iss. 10

Russell, Katheryn “’Driving While Black’: Corrollary Phenomena and Collateral Consequences” Boston College Law Review May, 1999 Vol. 40 Iss. 3

Sanow, Ed “Overcoming the Perception of Racial Profiling” Law and Order May, 2001 Vol. 49 Iss. 4

Schott, Richard G. “Role of Race in Law Enforcement: Racial Profiling or Legitimate Use?” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin Nov, 2001 Vol. 70 Iss. 11 pg. 24-32

Scoville, Dean “View Askew: A Sideways Look at Racial Profiling” Police Aug, 2000 Vol. 24 Iss. 8

Shepard Engel, Robin; Calnon, Jennifer M.; and Bernard, Thomas J. “Theory and Racial Profiling : Shortcomings and Future Directions in Research.” Justice Quarterly June, 2002 Vol. 19 Iss. 2

Smith, Michael R. and Alpert, Geoffrey P. “Searching for Direction: Courts, Social Science and the Adjudication of Racial Profiling Claims.” Justice Quarterly Dec, 2002 Vol. 19 Iss. 4 pg. 673-703

Sorensen, Jon; Hope, Robert; and Stemen, Don “Racial Disproportionality in State Prison Admissions: Can Regional Variation be Explained by Differential Arrest Rates?” Journal of Criminal Justice Jan, 2003 Vol. 31 Iss. 1 pg. 73-84

Stone, Christopher “Race, Crime, and the Administration of Justice” National Institute of Justice Apr, 1999

Strandberg, Keith W. “Racial Profiling” Law Enforcement Technology Jun, 1999 Vol. 26 Iss. 6

University of Chicago Press “Assessment of the Black Female Prisoner in the South” SIGNS 1977 Vol. 3 iss. 2

US General Accounting Office “Racial Profiling Data Available on Motorist Stops.” http://www.gao.gov Mar, 2000

Walker, Samuel. Sense and Nonsense about Crime and Drugs 2001 Wadsworth Thomson Learning

Weitzer, Ronald and Tuch, Steven “Perceptions of Racial Profiling: Race, Class, and Personal Experience.” Criminology May, 2002 Vol. 40 Iss. 2

Wise, Tim “Racial Profiling and its Apologists” Z Magazine Mar 2002 pg 91-94

Withrow, Brian L. and Jackson, Henry “Race-Based Policing: Alternatives for Assessing the problem.” Crime and Justice in America: Present Realities and Future Prospects 2002

Wood, Peter B. and May, David C. “Racial differences in perceptions of the severity of sanctions: A comparison of prison with Peter B. Wood, David C. May” Justice Quarterly Sep, 2003 Vol. 20

Authority Without Leadership

Wrote this in March so it is somewhat postdated, I think its a decent analysis of Terrorism and Iraq.

The world did not change on September 11th in one way, it did not get more dangerous to live in the United States. Despite the color of the threat status we have been under the same amount of threat since before September 11th. People learned right away that small groups of people could kill large amounts of people, modern technology can give individuals great power. This is a Type III situation the solution and the problem are blurry. First of all the federal government has never come up with a cohesive definition for what “Terrorism” actually is, every agency has a different definition. A solution to try to stop terrorism is impossible, technology being inert will be used for good or evil, nothing can stop this, because the genie is out of the bottle. The way to fight Terrorism in my opinion is eradicate the perpetuation by helping countries develop so young people can work for food instead of joining barracks and being manipulated by older authority figures to do violent acts.
George W. Bush’s presidency has been the most divisive of presidencies recently. His “compassionate conservative” PR flood stated he would unite the country. Instead the president has done many things wrong in handling this threat to the United States. The first mistake was the “Phoenix Memo” to Robert Mueller which was not read or at least not paid attention to by the leaders of the FBI. The memo claims Moussaoui has been training in flight school practicing flying, but never landing or taking off. The memo was ignored and the previous strategy for preventing airplanes from becoming hijacked failed on September 11th.
The president then framed the problem a lanky cave dweller on dialysis had orchestrated an offensive on United States soil. The answer was of course, war. The war on terrorism began in a mindset that Bush created, that this was a type I problem. The terrorists are easy to spot in Bush’s mind they dislike freedom and they hate liberty with a passion. In fact there is very little to “terrorists” except that they are the “bad guys” they’re just plain evil. The idea of “terrorists” is now used to justify any policy. For instance the United States is currently occupying a country that we invaded, because Bush insinuated links between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, even though this link is completely fictional and Bush as well as Rumsfeld have admitted that there is no link in press conferences.
This is important, because we as followers are not being asked to learn. Instead we are being inundated with false news reports and false war reports, all with one thing in mind to make us afraid. We are never asked by our leaders to remember the early 80s visit to Saddam Hussein where Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand and the US presented him with technology to test chemical weapons. To learn that we may share responsibility for the only viable reason in ousting this dictator, that he gassed his own citizens, this may cause learning our president does not want this. We are not asked to remember the Mujahedin or that Bin Laden was trained by the CIA, and that the United States abandoned Afghanistan after it served its purpose fighting off communists. In my opinion many of our modern threats can be traced to horrible foreign policy during the Cold War, this is because everyone was scared of Communism so they allied with Fascist leaders in other countries. I fear the same thing will happen with our treatment of “terrorists” we have not actually investigated our position. We do not truly know why someone would be motivated to give his life to destroy our country. I do know for a fact it is not because that person “hates liberty” or “our lifestyle” like the president says.
This is a type III problem but it is being framed by our leaders as a type I problem. Also the public is not being asked to learn, instead the public is asked by the media to duct tape the windows of their house in case of chemical weapons attack. The only learning our leaders want the public to do is learning where the closest Wal-Mart is and consuming. There is no outcome to this path, the only outcome is an endless “war on terrorism” or as Rumsfeld would call it “A long hard slog.” We need to understand that essentially this problem will never be fully stopped, this is a type III Problem. The answer does not lie in more bombing and ground troops, but through a period of learning and understanding the true motivations for terrorism. This is the most important facet of our war on terrorism, just like the war on drugs, this war is endless and pointless, because it will never stop terrorism.
A few key events since 9/11 have been the deployment of ground troops to Afghanistan, formation of Homeland Security department, invasion/occupation of Iraq, Guantanimo bay prison/internment camp, resisting the 9/11 commission, and the steady encroachment upon civil liberties beginning with the Patriot act.
The deployment of ground troops to Afghanistan was seen as an obvious response, basically a catch Osama task force. While we were deploying troops to catch a Bin Laden in Afghanistan the only flights to take off on 9/12 were those that flew Bin Laden relatives living in the United States to Washington, DC and then to Paris, France by the FBI, before they could be questioned. This story was not latched on to by the media, instead the media focused on our first kneejerk reaction which was the deployment to Afghanistan. These ground forces have been dying since they were deployed and Osama Bin Laden has still not been found. In this specific areas Bush failed to form any semblance of leadership. He framed the problem as finding the culprit, he regulated distress by assuring us that he would catch the criminal responsible, and focused our attention on the fact that we are under threat. The fact that simultaneously at this very moment and every moment since this paper was written, thousands of nuclear weapons have been pointed at you, your friends, and family. Although this threat is far more dangerous and real, our leaders have decided what they are focusing on. Bush has shifted responsibility, maybe not to stakeholders but to followers in the military. Bush has started a new PR blitz that claims the U.S. will find Osama Bin Laden soon. This is another example of regulating stress, people were starting to get tired of waiting for the person responsible for 9/11 so our leader held a press conference.
The formation of the Homeland Security department goes with the framing of the problem as a type I. The problem was lack of horizontal communication and in group/out group dynamics, so the simple answer is to combine all the agencies involved. This has now become the largest reorganization of the federal government in history. This action has given us a color coded threat level that is the mascot for the PR stupidity of our administration. Although the threat level was created to give comedians fodder during stand-up routines, it actually serves a purpose. It is very expensive to raise the threat level and puts things like the coast guard on a little higher alert. This is probably the closest to leadership George W. Bush gets. The homeland security department seems to increase communication and reduce the rivalry between group like the CIA and FBI. So it will help catch some attacks before they happen, like 9/11 should have been stopped because of the “Phoenix memo”.
The invasion of Iraq has also been a cornerstone of the Bush neo-conservative foreign policy. Since Bush’s election Paul Wolfowitz has been searching for a way to steer us in to war with Iraq. The opportunity presented itself in the form of thousands of Americans dying in the WTC and pentagon attacks. The problem was framed in a way that will seem so simply in hindsight in a few years idiotic. We brought up the usual suspects Saddam, Kim Jong Il, and Iran. This is where Bush’s foreign policy changes from not very smart, to catastrophically bad. The problem was framed that Iraq had chemical weapons that could not be found by the UN. Also the fact that Iraq had violated a UN code (in the opinion of the US) justified a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, which itself violated two UN policies. The United States foreign policy has been led astray, the problem has been framed that “If you don’t get them first, they’ll get you.” If we follow Bush’s framing of the problem we can only win by destroying everything and everyone that isn’t American! The war’s justification changed as time has passed, we know there are no Weapons of Mass Destruction, we know that Saddam used technology from the US to build his chemical weapons in the first place, and now the only justification left is that Saddam is generally an evil person. Saddam is George W. Bush’s scapegoat, he is the proverbial deer strapped to the hood of the car, a trophy to show the public that he has done something.
The jailing of “enemy combatants” at Guantanimo bay Cuba is also another example of authority without leadership. Essentially Bush used a technicality in the Geneva convention and abused it on such a level to fill Gitmo detention center. As civil rights groups asked that the American citizens at least be able to contact a family member or attorney. Their families were not even allowed to know they were being held without trial by the United States government. To regulate distress the Bush administration assured America that these people were all terrorists, even though the only definition of terrorists Bush has given us is that they are people who “hate liberty”. This catch-22 worked out nicely and is even comical to read, because if terrorists hate liberty, we’re playing right in to their hands jailing them without trial. Recently the courts decided that Jose Padilla can see a lawyer and talk to his family, which opened the doors for other U.S. citizens being held at Gitmo to finally receive some sort of justice. The Bush administration focuses attention away from Guantanimo bay, because logically everyone makes mistakes many people in Gitmo are innocent and deserve a trial to determine their innocence.
Another example of the poor leadership being displayed is the encroachment on constitutional rights and resistance to the 9/11 commission. The Patriot act made it easier for law enforcement to do a lot of things, but the most important was invade privacy. There is a easier brightline to establish the need for a warrant to tap phones, although these rights have seen a slow encroachment as technology has advanced the mass fear has catalyzed this process.
The leadership President Bush is displaying is very weak. He refuses to deal with Terrorism as a type III problem. He instead will be fighting the symptoms of Terrorism for ever, because he does not frame the problem in the right way.
Terrorism will be here after Bush’s presidency no matter what. The things we will remember are the two wars we are simultaneously fighting overseas, while installing a non-elected leadership council in Iraq, and suspending habeas corpus for American prisoners. Framing the problem as a type I and using fear to build political capital is horrible leadership.
I hope that the United States comes to its senses and the wild rage that has taken hold after 9/11 turns in to a spirit of inquisition. Killing terrorists as we catch them or locking them up and throwing away the key in Cuba are not viable strategies. Only through investigation and understanding of how terrorists are created can we hope to reduce the threat of terrorist attack in the future. Until then I will be ever cognizant of the thousands of nuclear missiles pointed at my head and remember that terrorism is really nothing new.






Bibliography

Rowley, Colleen. “Coleen Rowley’s memo to FBI director Robert Mueller” http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html May 21, 2002

Associated Press. “Pelosi pushes for new 9/11 deadline” New York Times Feb 26, 2004

Heifetz, Ronald. “Leadership without easy answers”

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

We must start building an aversion to conditioning

"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly... it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."
-Joseph Goebbels

"America is safer"
-George Bush Jr.

"The whole story is complicated by Strauss's idea--actually Plato's--that philosophers need to tell noble lies not only to the people at large but also to powerful politicians."
-Stephen Holmes

"There is definetly a link between saddam and what happened on 9/11"
-Condoleeza Rice

"All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country"
-Herman Goring (founder of gestapo) Nuremburg Trials

"If you vote for the wrong guy, chances are we'll get hit again and it'll be worse."
-Dick Cheney

"If the president goes to the American people and wraps himself in the American flag and lets Congress wrap itself in the white flag of surrender, the president will win...The American people had never heard of Grenada. There was no reason why they should have. The reason we gave for the intervention-the risk to American Medical students there-was phony, butthe reaction of the American people was absolutely and overwhelmingly favorable. They had no idea what was going on, but they backed the president. They always will."
-Irving Kristol, The fettered Presidency
(American Enterprise Institute, 1989)

You have read the facts by now or you prolly wouldn't be on this stupid site.
The dominant ideology of this administration is Straussianism (this is how it is referred to in the political science community) or Neo-Conservatism as it has been called in major news oulets.
please wake up its so important that we work to protect our constitution
-Jimothy J. Jones

P.S. I heard a rumor today that Dick Cheney was resigning they're gonna get Rudy Guliani to be VP, and in 2008 The Party will choose either Jeb Bush / Rudy Guliani or vice-versa. Remember also that 1/3 of The Party's delegates support Jeb Bush for president in 2008.

Thursday, October 07, 2004

Was Bush wired with an earpiece in Debate 1? Who was he linked up with? the Brain Karl Rove?

Many individuals noticed (respectively) that Bush had an awkward way of speaking, he paused before answering, he even remarked "let me finish" when there was no disturbance, and the most convincing piece of evidence is the picture of Bush's back (who was wearing a suit which is far to big for him, even though he gets them specially made at this one tailor who is incredibly expensive[i'll get the link it was in the New Yorker]) this picture of his back shows a strangely shaped bulge near the center top of his back. For those who think it some sort of microphone, the debate contract specifies that no microphones are allowed to be brought by individuals. It is also shaped so that it eliminates the posssibility that it is body armor. I will be researching this for the next few days, help me find the smoking gun, the blogosphere is lighting up with speculations. We need to investigate some hard facts and we need to create such a movment online that the mainstream media cannot ignore the evidence. Also remember that the original contract said that the cameras could not even show reaction shots or the backs of candidates(for bald spots), but these demands were ignored which probably made it harder to hide the bullshit. Also if you read mass media articles about how Bush prepped for the debate he did not spend time really at all prepping.

There is also testimony form an individual who says he watched a broadcast of Bush on French television and noticed he was recieving messages and repeating them.
BUSH IS A PUPPET, NOW IS OUR CHANCE TO PROVE IT TO EVERYONE.

Here are the links:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/298647.shtml

Here is the site with the picture: http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=321

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3562

http://www.isbushwired.com

http://theyknew.diaryland.com/041003_98.html

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/008118.html

http://rense.com/general58/prompt.htm

http://crossroads.net/a/2004/10/01/debate_reaction/index.php

http://www.cosmiciguana.com/archives/002979.html

http://rense.com/general35/voices.htm

http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/10/1697371.php

http://ebradlee10.dailykos.com/story/2004/6/9/122728/8176

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

operation Northwoods(the government planned on using terrorism to get the public behind a war with Cuba[the document refers to the sinking of the Maine before the spainish-american war and insinuates this was done for the same reason of motivating the "democracy" to go to war]): http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/

Iran-Contra proved that the federal government of the United States of America is involved in drug smuggling. Where do they smuggle drugs you say? where else, the United States(specifically South Central Los Angeles). So here is the reasoning The CIA would hire criminals to engage in crimes, the sale of arms and the delivery of "humanitarian aid" and do you think these criminals would fly back in to the United States (gauranteed not to have to mess with customs) without some sort of contraband????:http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/#1

At the top of the hierarchy they all knew that they were smuggling drugs in to the country in order to fund a brutal terrorist group in Nicaragua and use Iran to exacerbate the Iraq-Iran conflict that we are using today to justify the invasion of Iraq(specifically the Halabjah mustard gas incident. Here are theories on how high the knowledge went and the fact that our government has made drugs illegal and then imports them(where do they import them you say? obviously where a great deal of poor minorities are duh![Don't you hate these NarcoPolitricks?]): http://www.bwbadge.com/bush.htm , http://www.parascope.com/mx/articles/garywebb/garyWebbSpeaks.htm
http://www.afn.org/~dks/i-c/x-discourse/draper.html


Why do we care about Iran-Contra in this modern day and age? Because our new administration is just recycled iran-contra drug smugglers http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20020311&s=corn
(remember Ollie North went on Fox news' Hannity and Colmes to try to "clear his name"(this is a euphemeism for mislead/lie to the american people to get them to believe he wasn't a known accomplice to massive drug smuggling operations)[Although North lost the election this is another example of Fox News being an agent of right wing propaganda even to the point that they will knowingly lie about an individidual responsible for a massive influx of cocaine in the mid-1980s, some argue this influx caused the 1986 crack epidemic in LA{including Gary Webb and many other sites: http://www.csun.edu/communications/ben/news/cia/ }]

Want Ashcroft to put you in a camp?????
LA Times- http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/CfCAHV.html
Wash. Post -http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/911mar2002.html#0303b

The CIA and drugs: http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia/
"In my 30-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA." --Dennis Dayle, former chief of an elite DEA enforcement unit. FROM: Peter Dale Scott & Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Berkeley: U. of CA Press, 1991, pp. x-xi.

Never forget that according to the National Office of Drug Control Policy as published in Samuel Walker's book "Sense and Nonsense about crime and drugs"
74% of all people incarcerated for narcotics crimes are....you guessed it African-American.

Some people call this a conspiracy, you want conspiracy go look at those crazy fools who deny the halocaust and say we're descendents of aliens and all that crap. Or conspiracies of the ancient secret societies running our entire world. DOCUMENTED FACTS AINT' CONSPIRACY. If you think that during the Iran-Contra fiasco the CIA wasn't complicit in the smuggling of HUNDREDS OF TONS of Cocaine in to the United States then you are.........stupid, ok I said it you're stupid because the proof is there. The George Washington University National Security Archives is constantly subpeoning(spelling?) the federal government under the FOIA to get new documents. Senator Leahy just asked for a shitload of documents relating to the torture of Iraqi Civilians
(good job Leahy, Unlike many Americans who now have been inculcated with a belief that "Justice is un-american" I think we should find the people responsible for these morally repugnant acts[and I do NOT mean the soldiers I mean the people at the top who commanded it, all soldiers CAN do is follow orders they have their psyches broken down so all they CAN do is follow orders, they have been following orders and they are also victims because it is psychologically impossible not to have mental problems after you have sodomized civilian children {on videotape: http://www.pastpeak.com/archives/2004/07/post_1.htm}, raped women http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0421/mondo2.php , Tore at people with dogs, froze or burned them, starved them, beat them, and the two best ones{because Rumsfeld ADMITTED to authorizing them} The Hooding and threatening that you will die if you step off the box and the tying of an individual to a flat board and submerging them underwater http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444 . THESE LAST TWO METHODS WERE APPROVED BY RUMSFELD!!!!])

Let me run the list by you one more time:
-drug war, while smuggling drugs in to country, 74% of people incarcerated for drug crimes are Black

-Ashcroft has plans on concentration camps and how to get United States citizens in to them.

-Oil is about to run out so we are killing and torturing massive amounts of human beings in other countries for this finite resource.

-Freedom of Speech no longer exists in this country instead we have special barbed wire fenced in "free speech zones" and these are the places where it is OK to peacefully assemble.

-Freedom of religion has been diminished by the ongoing PR war against Muslims and the constant references to Bush's christian god. We are fighting a war for Born Again Christians, if you are not one of these hard-core evangelist christians or not a christian at all then how are these policies just???

-More and more of our taxpayer money is being cut from social issues and goes to one of two places: The military industrial complex to run the "war on terrorism" or the Prison industrial complex and law enforcement to run "the war on drugs" (also known as the "war on personal freedoms")

-So why are we giving our money to torture and kill innocents in Iraq, as well as put in cages our freinds and family (specifically the young and minorities) for victimless crimes. The answer is money, I ain't no communist so fuck off stupid neo-cons. I know thats what you're thinking if you've been conditioned by the right, but don't start coming with the same old republican attacks on any type of change by condemning it as communist. This has nothing to do with that argument. The point is simple: The Military and Prison industrial complexes are operated at a loss to provide us with great potential to commit evil. SLASH FUNDING!!(and I do not mean privatize prisons, people who make profit off of putting humans in cages are morally repugnant) I mean actually slash funding you can take 2 moves that would free up massive law enforcement funding: End the war on personal freedoms and the death penalty, these policies are far more expensive than the alternative(which is to not have either of them).
These tax-cut and spend conservatives and their "want to embolden the myth of 'being hard on crime'" freinds on the liberal end are both dumb asses, and don't ever let one side convince you that the other side spends or saves more. THE ONLY THING THAT HAS BEEN SHOWN TO SUSTAINABLY REDUCE CRIME IS A STRONG ECONOMY. We need to reduce defense spending, reduce law enforcement spending, legalize narcotics(which would destroy all gangs currently formed around the sale of narcotics), and stop playing world government(thats the UN's job to enforce the WMD treaties). This will leave tons of money for: treatment of addicts, drug education, prosecution of crimes that have a victim, and education(which is what our government SHOULD be spending the vast majority of its' money in, imagine a world where instead of dropping 100,000 bombs on Iraq, we only drop 98,000 and those other 2,000 instead of being made fund every inner-city school's art and music departments that got slashed (by people claming shrinking government is a higher ideal than education). It really isn't hard, unless the government is occupied by two parties and both are jingoists.

So whats the answer?
The constitution is our social contract. The theory behind a social contract is that when certain individuals start violating our constitution and the supreme court has been so co-opted it does not stop such obvious abrogations, then the social force of "the people" will reclaim their power and individual rights. This is what people call a revolution, the problem with the social contract is the only true motivation in the past for revolution has always been.....money. Essentially meaning that the middle class must be destroyed through a widening income gap, before any revolutionary action will ever occur. The US took this a step farther with a very powerful mass media that will always actively work against such an idea as "the people" reclaming the rights gauranteed to them by the constitution and declaration of independence. This means a massive movement has even less probability. So democracy was intended as the government that would make revolution obsolete, because of constant peaceful revolutions. Things like COINTELPRO destroyed these ideals our democracy has been hijacked by malevolent demagogues. They stand to benefit greatly from 9/11 and will be using it for sympathy in the next week. I am finding myself losing my opposition to the death penalty, becuase individuals who OKed the torture at Abu Ghraib should be given a trial(by a military tribunal in either an Ad-hoc world court or the International Court of Justice or the UN floor) and then executed if guilty. The crime of murder is much worse if our entire country funded it, OKed it, and then sat by and did nothing as we say what played out. YOU THINK ANYONE IN THIS WORLD GIVES A SHIT ABOUT 9/11 BESIDES AMERICA NOW!!!!?????? AMERICANS WATCHED THE BODIES BURIED IN DASHT LEILE, ALMOST THE SAME AMOUNT AS THE PEOPLE KILLED ON 9/11 WHAT PEOPLE CARE ABOUT IS THE UNITED STATES UNILATERALLY TAKING OVER A COUNTRY AND SYSTEMATICALLY TORTURING ITS' CITIZENS WE CANNOT FIGHT TERROR WITH TERROR! Or maybe real justice would be taking all the members of the administration that OKed these tactics and having dogs tear them apart, drown them, electrocute them, smear them with feces, rape their wives, sodomize their children, freeze them, burn them, starve them, and then finally dress them in military fatigues(without flak jacket of course, remember america doesn't care if the people dying for it are properly armored) and march their asses out in to the streets of Fallujah THAT WOULD BE A FITTING PUNISHMENT!

"Why do you hate america?" -Unwitting Imperialist
I don't hate America, I hate people who take the Idea of america(Codified in the Constitution and the Declaration of Indpendence) and shit on it. They shit on it and then drag it through even more shit, they fly to Eurasia to drag it through shit, they use it to justify the 20,000+ wounded in Iraq, the soon to be 1000 person death toll in iraq. What pisses me off more than people who accuse real patriots of being un-american, is when they hide behind the flag themselves. The united states constitution has never stood for colonialism or mercantilism or torture. These are the actions we take though. So to the people who call me anti-american because I am opposed to torture, to you sir or maam I say you are pro-torture so fuck off and stop hiding behind my flag. If you still think 9/11 had anything to do with Iraq then you're an idiot. If you think Afghanistan didn't have anything to do with Unocal you are also an idiot. If you think al-qaida just materialized out of thin air, and wasn't created by our funding and weapons when it was the mujahaden(Reagan's much ballyhooed 'freedom fighters')then you're ignorant. If you don't care that there is no actual point in time which we will definitively actually "win" the occupation of Iraq then you're a facist. If you think calling our country on its' evils is "anti-american" you are the anti-democracy and if the rest of america is like you, then democracy has already failed.

So now what?

We all sit in our respective homes, dutifully watching TV so we'll know what to buy when we get our next paycheck, pretending we live in a democracy but not actually voicing opinion instead shutting all voices of dissent down, bowing down to the flag which George Bush Jr. hides behind and uses for malevolent purpose, and we all embrace complacency.

"Our forefathers would think it's time for a revolution. This is why they revolted in the first place." Says Paul with a laugh, "They revolted against much more mild oppression." -Republican Ron Paul, talking about the Patriot act (thats right.....republican)

Democracy is the only form of government that has a chance of satisfying the right of self-determination. Democracy is also just a word, we need to be able to recognize when democracy has fully been co-opted by an oligarchic or facist power. We the people of the United States may have to forcefully take our democracy back if they start to herd us in to Ashcroft's camps and continue the erosion of our individual liberties.
Our greatest check on tyrannical power is set to go forth in November. We have all heard that this administration obviously has plans to halt the election, if they do I think we may have to react if we want to save the country we love.

-Jimothy J. Jones
(To all you haters, I do not advocate violence in any form, unless in self-defense, I am not seditious for the sake of being seditious, our forefathers gave us the duty to be vigilant over democracy, I am just one voice there are many others[maybe you agree that indefinite global warfare and systematic torture are the result of a fully functioning democratic system] we have to speak up though. The fundamental basis of democracy is that people speak up for their views, by looking through history we can establish empirical evidence, the illiterate hicks and the conservatives (who specialize in Ayn Rand type intellectual justifications of greed) that call us anti-american, these are the individuals who threaten our democracy. NEVER SILENCE DISSENT!!!
Even if they're wackos, idiots, and obviously wrong like those fuckers that don't belive in the halocaust or believe aliens control us, they're still humans that are gauranteed the right to an opinion. Don't just turn your back though, give them the facts, knowledge is power.

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Part one of the Bush vs. Kerry debate analysis (debate #1, transcript, with comments) Miami 2004

This is half of the transcript of the First presidential debates of 2004. I did some analysis, pointin' out good and bad from both. I really wanted to do this because the most important point is that Acting President: Governor George Bush Jr. advocates a constant state of pre-emptive war as many as 4 times, this is eerily reminiscent of the third reich's blitzkreig to spread freedom to Europe. Here is the transcript, my interjections are in parenthesis and italics.




September 30, 2004 from Coral Gables, Fla.
Text From FDCH E-Media

Following is the transcript of the presidential debate between President Bush (R) and Sen. John F. Kerry (D). The moderator of the nationally televised debate was Jim Lehrer of PBS.

LEHRER: Good evening from the University of Miami Convocation Center in Coral Gables, Florida. I'm Jim Lehrer of "The NewsHour" on PBS.
And I welcome you to the first of the 2004 presidential debates between President George W. Bush, the Republican nominee, and Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee.
These debates are sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Tonight's will last 90 minutes, following detailed rules of engagement worked out by representatives of the candidates. I have agreed to enforce their rules on them.
The umbrella topic is foreign policy and homeland security, but the specific subjects were chosen by me, the questions were composed by me, the candidates have not been told what they are, nor has anyone else.
For each question there can only be a two-minute response, a 90- second rebuttal and, at my discretion, a discussion extension of one minute.
A green light will come on when 30 seconds remain in any given answer, yellow at 15, red at five seconds, and then flashing red means time's up. There is also a backup buzzer system if needed.
Candidates may not direct a question to each other. There will be two-minute closing statements, but no opening statements.
There is an audience here in the hall, but they will remain absolutely silent for the next 90 minutes, except for now, when they join me in welcoming President Bush and Senator Kerry.
(APPLAUSE)
LEHRER: Good evening, Mr. President, Senator Kerry.
As determined by a coin toss, the first question goes to you, Senator Kerry. You have two minutes.
Do you believe you could do a better job than President Bush in preventing another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States?
KERRY: Yes, I do.
But before I answer further, let me thank you for moderating. I want to thank the University of Miami for hosting us. And I know the president will join me in welcoming all of Florida to this debate. You've been through the roughest weeks anybody could imagine. Our hearts go out to you. And we admire your pluck and perseverance.
KERRY: I can make American safer than President Bush has made us.
And I believe President Bush and I both love our country equally. But we just have a different set of convictions about how you make America safe.
I believe America is safest and strongest when we are leading the world and we are leading strong alliances.
I'll never give a veto to any country over our security. But I also know how to lead those alliances.
This president has left them in shatters across the globe, and we're now 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq and 90 percent of the costs.
I think that's wrong, and I think we can do better.
I have a better plan for homeland security. I have a better plan to be able to fight the war on terror by strengthening our military,(why would we need to strengthen our military? Why not just not become embroiled in a 2 front war with an all volunteer force) strengthening our intelligence(Is this necessary when the only real fuck up on 9/11 was the scheduling of multiple war games on the same day by NORAD), by going after the financing more authoritatively(this needs to be done by going after Saudi, Iranian, and especially Pakistani(ISI) cash), by doing what we need to do to rebuild the alliances, by reaching out to the Muslim world, which the president has almost not done, and beginning to isolate the radical Islamic Muslims(rather than fund them through the ISI as we did when we build the Taliban from the ground up, or the mujahadin to fight Russia), not have them isolate the United States of America.(this is a great point, kind of a euphemism for “you’re doing what osama wants you to do” implying that by his actions Bush really did cave in to the terrorists demands to essentially make the USA a bully that is now detested more than it has ever been in history)
KERRY: I know I can do a better job in Iraq. I have a plan to have a summit with all of the allies(here is where kerry comes out strong right in the beginning. He knew he was going to have to put the flip-flop thing to rest so he stated his specific plan for Iraq and what he would do better), something this president has not yet achieved, not yet been able to do to bring people to the table.(he shows that the summit is something that is exclusively under his control, that Bush has not been able to do it at all)We can do a better job of training the Iraqi forces to defend themselves(non-specific), and I know that we can do a better job of preparing for elections. (non-specific),
All of these, and especially homeland security, which we'll talk about a little bit later.
LEHRER: Mr. President, you have a 90-second rebuttal.
BUSH: I, too, thank the University of Miami, and say our prayers are with the good people of this state, who've suffered a lot.(if you saw this part on TV he really did not start strong, seemed like he was bitin’ Kerry’s lines, this could just be a result of the social psychology heuristic of primacy, but I still think Bush really was not prepared for an opening statement beside the sentence that comes next:)
September the(notice the THE) 11th changed how America must look at the world(non-specific),. And since that day, our nation has been on a multi-pronged strategy to keep our country safer.
BUSH: We pursued al Qaeda wherever al Qaeda tries to hide(unless its Tora Bora, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or Russia). Seventy-five percent of known al Qaeda leaders have been brought to justice(THEN WHY ARE WE STILL IN AFGHANISTAN, this is BULLSHIT). The rest of them know we're after them.(notice the THEM, September THE 11th distinguished between THEM and us)
We've upheld the doctrine that said if you harbor a terrorist, you're equally as guilty as the terrorist(except when it is Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or the United States like the 2 bin ladens who lived in VA and worked to raise funding for the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, a now recognized terror fund network, the FBI was not allowed to investigate them until the Bin Ladens were flown out of the country by the administration).
And the Taliban are no longer in power(first of all I HATE the Taliban, they stone women, they destroyed the ancient statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, BUT if they are no longer in power WHY ARE WE STILL IN AFGHANISTAN!?). Ten million people have registered to vote in Afghanistan in the upcoming presidential election(Population of Afghanistan:28.5 million[cite:wikipedia.com], facts: http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/09/28/afghan9402.htm )
In Iraq, we saw a threat, and we realized that after September the 11th(this is a common tactic, usually Bush will not mention Saddam unless using classical conditioning to associate Iraq with either: Al-Qaida, Osama, or 9/11. This is an attempt at what we would call “brainwashing” essentially meant to make us think of one of those three things when thinking of Iraq or Saddam), we must take threats seriously, before they fully materialize({1}this is the first time that Bush advocates continuing pre-emptive war in this speech). Saddam Hussein now sits in a prison cell. America and the world are safer for it. (if you believe Saddam was a threat to America you do not read a newspaper, you do not read history books, and you have a very poor grasp of international relations as well as geopolitical power games)
We continue to pursue our policy of disrupting those who proliferate weapons of mass destruction(seriously though, when did they start? What country? Yes qaddafi disarmed because he was scared shitless but qaddafi hasn’t been a threat for years like saddam, it would be like takin Castro out, these people aren’t very nice but fuckin A they they are not a threat to us)
BUSH: Libya has disarmed. The A.Q. Khan network(hadn’t heard of this before the speech gonna have to do a little research, turns out Khan was a criminal network selling weapons here is a link with real info, http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/02/05/pakistan.nuclear/ ) has been brought to justice.
And, as well, we're pursuing a strategy of freedom around the world,(what does this even fucking mean!?) because I understand free nations will reject terror(uhh remember Tim Mc Veigh?). Free nations will answer the hopes and aspirations of their people. Free nations will help us achieve the peace we all want.(the last thing this man wants is peace)
LEHRER: New question, Mr. President, two minutes.
Do you believe the election of Senator Kerry on November the 2nd would increase the chances of the U.S. being hit by another 9/11-type terrorist attack?
BUSH: No, I don't believe it's going to happen.(at this point I was like he doesn’t think we’re gonna get hit?,but no) I believe I'm going to win, because the American people know I know how to lead. I've shown the American people I know how to lead. (lead them in to a quagmire as Bush Jr’s dad would say about Iraq forced us to be occupiers “in a bitterly hostile land”)I have -- I understand everybody in this country doesn't agree with the decisions I've made. And I made some tough decisions. But people know where I stand. (perseverance or stubbornness? This affected 2 different audiences completely differently)People out there listening know what I believe(yah pre-emptive war yer gonna say it 4 times before the debate is over). And that's how best it is to keep the peace.(ok this is the first point I thought of 1984 by Orwell the saying “The Party” make people memorize: “peace is war”) This nation of ours has got a solemn duty to defeat this ideology of hate(yes fundamental Islam is somewhat hateful and dangerous, but you cannot defeat ideas unless you offer alternatives the idea we need to spread is democracy, not bullets with democracy written on them, the former seems a very similar situation to our current conflict, the latter is the true way to spread democracy, the peoples power is a strong enough idea that we do not need bullets. JOHN LOCKE NEVER FIRED A SHOT!). And that's what they are. This is a group of killers(that we not only built from scratch starting with the Mujahadin in Afghanistan we trained and funded to fight soviets, but also tried to influence afghanistan’s political and military development through using the ISI as the CIA’s proxy to encourage certain factions of the Taliban and keep intel on all high ranking military and political leaders in Afghanistan)who will not only kill here, but kill children in Russia(what those people did in Beslan was disgusting, but facism is not the answer), that'll attack unmercifully in Iraq, hoping to shake our will(I’d like to quote that dude from Uncovered! The Truth of the Iraq War [Directed by Robert Greenwald*great movie*] “we sent a buncha soldiers to be sitting ducks, in a place where people think the only good American is a dead one” not only this, but if you remember muslim rebels brought the Soviet Union down because of all the “mujahadin” that came from different countries[that is why Osama is Saudi but was in Afghanistan in the first fuckin place because he wanted to fight against foreign imperialism but the way you motivate people to fight against imperialism in an Arab state is religion THAT’S WHY WE USED IT TO BUILD THE MUJAHADIN, so now the same thing is happening “terrorists” ‘are streaming over the border’ that’s what we read all the time. This is the same situation we tried to create to drive Soviets outta Afghanistan, now the conditions are in Iraq and WE are trying to occupy I MEAN SERIOUSLY JUNIOR HOW OBVIOUS DOES IT HAVE TO GET!?).
We have a duty to defeat this enemy. We have a duty to protect our children and grandchildren.(we do have a duty to our grandchildren and children and that is simply TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION, this is not happening with our current leadership, leaving our kids with a facist government is far more dangerous to them than a few crazy muslims, and YOUR CHILDREN ARE OUT THERE PROTESTING GETTING BEATIN’ BY THE COPS!!!!!! Or rounded up in the new military industrical complex’s pet industry: non-lethal crowd control like the huge orange nets to round people up))
The best way to defeat them is to never waver, to be strong, to use every asset at our disposal, *is to constantly stay on the offensive*(if you’re not scared of that statement then you do not believe in our constitution, a constant state of war, an advocation of future pre-emptive conflicts, this is disgusting, FAR more disgusting then wacko muslims killin kids in Beslan or wacko muslims getting flight traning from the Us military[and funding from Gen Mahmud Ahmed of the ISI in Pakistan, that Ahmed probably got from us(CIA) but we can’t prove it yet] and usin it to fly in to our buildings[that were built to withstand a crash with a commercial jetliner]) and, at the same time, spread liberty.(Constant war and spread liberty? Aren’t these mutually exclusive? Post a comment if you don’t think so)
And that's what people are seeing now is happening in Afghanistan.


Ten million citizens have registered to vote(population of Afghanistan: 28.5 million and remember may isntances of people being registered multiple times) It's a phenomenal statistic. They're given a chance to be free, and they will show up at the polls. Forty-one percent of those 10 million are women.
In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard. You know why? Because an enemy realizes the stakes. The enemy understands a free Iraq will be a major defeat in their ideology of hatred.(this is ridiculous these muslims are not fighting because ‘they hate freedom’ that’s just stupid, their conception of freedom is different, they’re conception of religion is radically different then ours, its like a ‘I see that its all praise to him and you DO NOT!’ it’s a condescending perspective something I think as Americans we can VERY EASILY relate to because of our cultural similarities of –centrism)) That's why they're fighting so vociferously(you watch the video see if he actually says this haha, this was my guess of what he said too, but truthfully the word was not English haha I wonder if the guy or girl writing the transcript had to guess).
They showed up in Afghanistan when they were there, because they tried to beat us and they didn't(if we’ve won Afghanistan...why are we there?). And they're showing up in Iraq for the same reason. They're trying to defeat us(in my opinion this is proof they LOVE freedom not hate it, they have been fighting so hard against the occupying colonial power).
And if we lose our will, we lose(we must lose if Iraq is to ever be truly free and have a democracy created from its people not a group of aristocratic exiles, AND our current polices are creating votes for the islamo-facist parties). But if we remain strong and resolute, we will defeat this enemy(he means stubborn).
LEHRER: Ninety second response, Senator Kerry.
KERRY: I believe in being strong and resolute and determined. And I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, wherever they are(come on, this is too militaristic,I felt it was a mistake he should have said something like “bring them to justice”).
But we also have to be smart, Jim. And smart means not diverting your attention from the real war on terror in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden and taking if off to Iraq where the 9/11 Commission confirms there was no connection to 9/11 itself and Saddam Hussein(nice evidence Kerry), and where the reason for going to war was weapons of mass destruction, not the removal of Saddam Hussein(good reminder that Bush is a liar). KERRY: This president has made, I regret to say, a colossal error of judgment. And judgment is what we look for in the president of the United States of America.
I'm proud that important military figures who are supporting me in this race: former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili; just yesterday, General Eisenhower's son, General John Eisenhower, endorsed me; General Admiral William Crown; General Tony McBeak, who ran the Air Force war so effectively for his father[Bush] -- all believe I would make a stronger commander in chief. And they believe it because they know I would not take my eye off of the goal: Osama bin Laden.(yeah fuck Iraq)
KERRY: Unfortunately, he escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded. But we didn't use American forces, the best trained in the world, to go kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords and he outsourced that job too(outsouce was pretty funny, alluding to the job loss in a way). That's wrong.
LEHRER: New question, two minutes, Senator Kerry.
"Colossal misjudgments." What colossal misjudgments, in your opinion, has President Bush made in these areas?
KERRY: Well, where do you want me to begin?(way too arrogant)
First of all, he made the misjudgment of saying to America that he was going to build a true alliance, that he would exhaust the remedies of the United Nations and go through the inspections.
In fact, he first didn't even want to do that. And it wasn't until former Secretary of State Jim Baker(otherwise known as Satan’s Little Helper, his Baker Botts lawfirm defended the Saudi royals in a suit by the families of those killed in 911[and they label michael moore a traitor]) and General Scowcroft and others pushed publicly and said you've got to go to the U.N., that the president finally changed his mind -- his campaign has a word for that(I never laughed so hard watchin’ a presidential debate in my life) -- and went to the United Nations.
Now, once there, we could have continued those inspections.
We had Saddam Hussein trapped.
He also promised America that he would go to war as a last resort.(whoever believed that has never heard of Wolfowitz, Cheney, or Rumsfeld…oh yah and they’re stupid)
Those words mean something to me, as somebody who has been in combat. "Last resort." You've got to be able to look in the eyes of families and say to those parents, "I tried to do everything in my power to prevent the loss of your son and daughter."
I don't believe the United States did that.
And we pushed our allies aside.


And so, today, we are 90 percent of the casualties and 90 percent of the cost: $200 billion -- $200 billion that could have been used for health care, for schools, for construction, for prescription drugs for seniors, and it's in Iraq.
And Iraq is not even the center of the focus of the war on terror. The center is Afghanistan, where, incidentally, there were more Americans killed last year than the year before(so much for Bush’s statistic of Taliban being 75% dead); where the opium production is 75 percent of the world's opium production; where 40 to 60 percent of the economy of Afghanistan is based on opium(remember that the Taliban destroyed like all the poppies, the only poppy growing was taking place in regions ruled by the Northern Alliance as soon as we invaded the opium production skyrocketed and now Aghanistan is exporting a shitload more opium[personally I don’t give a shit but all those ass holes who think the drug war is worth fighting should start paying attention to how the government{specificallhy intelligence branches} steers drugs in to our country instead of away]); where the elections have been postponed three times.(this stat was new to me, pretty good stuff, another piece of evidence that democracy cannot be delivered down the barrel of a gun)
KERRY: The president moved the troops, so he's got 10 times the number of troops in Iraq than he has in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden is. Does that mean that Saddam Hussein was 10 times more important than Osama bin Laden -- than, excuse me, Saddam Hussein more important than Osama bin Laden? I don't think so.(this is a great message very populist, everyone hates Osama more than Saddam. Everyone knows Osama is the one who is responsible for 9/11 not Saddam, I fully agree that Bush created a massive diversion from his endless “war on terror”) LEHRER: Ninety-second response, Mr. President.
BUSH: My opponent looked at the same intelligence I looked at and declared in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat.(he said he “represented a serious and grave threat” not to the United States though, maybe Iran or Kuwait) He also said in December of 2003 that anyone who doubts that the world is safer without Saddam Hussein does not have the judgment to be president.(Ok there is this world with Saddam Huessein as a dictator, and this world without, which one would you choose? Of course you’d pick the one without, but Kerry did not support going to war as a first option to do this.He thought diplomacy/sanctions and no dead American soldiers would be a much better way of doing it) I agree with him. The world is better off without Saddam Hussein.(is it better off with 1000 american soldiers dead?, 20,000+ wounded? Thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, probably more than saddam ever killed? Turning Abu Ghraib from Saddam’s torture chamber to Uncle Sam’s torture chamber? I mean wake the fuck up governor bush)
I was hoping diplomacy would work(Bush’s idea of diplomacy: “leave Iraq with your sons, or you will be invaded at a time of our choosing”WHAT DIPLOMATIC WORK DID HE DO????? NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). I understand the serious consequences of committing our troops into harm's way(Of course he does, he defended Texas from the Vietcong).

BUSH: It's the hardest decision a president makes. So I went to the United Nations. I didn't need anybody to tell me to go to the United Nations(great move by Kerry, made Bush look like the puppet he is, when Bush is so pissed that Kerry would imply that Bush would pay attention to advice, its hilarious). I decided to go there myself.(yah sure yah did)
And I went there hoping that, once and for all, the free world would act in concert to get Saddam Hussein to listen to our demands. They passed the resolution that said, "Disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences." I believe, when an international body speaks, it must mean what it says.(Except when the resolution states: “the United States cannot invade Iraq”)

Saddam Hussein had no intention of disarming. Why should he? He had 16 other resolutions and nothing took place. As a matter of fact, my opponent talks about inspectors. The facts are that he was systematically deceiving the inspectors.(Ok this is where if you’re a Bush fan you actually have to experience some sort of historical amnesia, and only a few years old history also….1st:IF saddam was “deceiving” inspectors why haven’t the inspectors said anything of the sort, 2nd: If Saddam was “Decieving” the inspectors doesn’t that mean he was omitting certain info like locations and stuff doesn’t that mean that he has WMD?, 3rd: Saddam had no WMD we have learned so WHAT THE FUCK COULD HE HAVE POSSIBLY DECEIVED THE INSPECTORS ABOUT? DID HE FEED THEM DOG AND SAY IT WAS CHICKEN?)
That wasn't going to work. That's kind of a pre-September 10th mentality, the hope that somehow resolutions and failed inspections would make this world a more peaceful place.(as we have seen from the total lackof WMD in Iraq there were no failed inspections, the inspections were an unabashed success)
He was hoping we'd turn away. But there was fortunately others beside himself who believed that we ought to take action.
BUSH: We did. The world is safer without Saddam Hussein.(this is what we call a “Gross Oversimplification” this is a “sound bite” the “tip of the iceberg” those are all euphemisms for BULLSHIT!. If saddam had experienced a heart attack and dropped dead then hell yah the world would be safer. But taken by a mercantilist American military? Losing 1000 soldiers? Fuck that) LEHRER: New question, Mr. President. Two minutes.
What about Senator Kerry's point, the comparison he drew between the priorities of going after Osama bin Laden and going after Saddam Hussein?
BUSH: Jim, we've got the capability of doing both. (did not answer the question, no mention of “priorities” as Lehrer stated)As a matter of fact, this is a global effort.
We're facing a group of folks who have such hatred in their heart, they'll strike anywhere, with any means.(“anywhere” “with any means” these are statements meant to illicit a level of fear from the populace to look to the strong military type leader for protection. Then Bush will soothe them, reassure the unwitting imperialists that we are still the superior culture)
And that's why it's essential that we have strong alliances, and we do.(He is right the Republic of Palau, Romania, and Morocco)
That's why it's essential that we make sure that we keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of people like al Qaeda, which we are(unexplained)
But to say that there's only one focus on the war on terror doesn't really understand the nature of the war on terror(as kerry tries to draw a distinction between “the war on terror” and the occupation of Iraq, Bush keeps trying to blur the line, because he knows they are not the same).
Of course we're after Saddam Hussein -- I mean bin Laden(mistake or intentional method of conditioning to associate Bin Laden and Saddam). He's isolated. Seventy-five percent of his people have been brought to justice(again why are we still there? And as Kerry said why are there more deaths this year than the last?). The killer -- the mastermind(what a great buzzword right?) of the(I really don’t get the “the” September 11th attacks thing, he puts it before it every time) September 11th attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, is in prison.
BUSH: We're making progress.
But the front on this war is more than just one place(flexing his Karl Von Clausewitzesque military mind). The Philippines -- we've got help -- we're helping them there to bring -- to bring al Qaeda affiliates(I believe by al-qaida affiliates he means: Muslim Fundamentalists) to justice there.
And, of course, Iraq is a central part in the war on terror. That's why Zarqawi and his people are trying to fight us(Zarqawi is Jordanian remember, also remember that it seems that he is almost a complete creation of the media, his “connection” to al-qaida is he fought against soviets in Afghanistan. This connection is redundant because we can invade any muslim country for no reason and the fundamentalist muslims will see that we have no fuckin reason and flood there to fight us). Their hope is that we grow weary and we leave(I hope beyond hope we can finally let the Iraqis be free, by pulling out our troops so they don’t have to suffer through our military checkpoints, our cruise missiles, and our random house searches)).
The biggest disaster that could happen is that we not succeed in Iraq(hate to break it to yah junior, but we ain’t succeeding). We will succeed. We've got a plan to do so. And the main reason we'll succeed is because the Iraqis want to be free(you mean this is the main reason we will not succeed in transforming Iraq in to our colony and another free market for us to exploit, because the Iraqis do want to be free, if you don’t believe it see how many of them have committed suicide just to kill a few Americans, or set up roadside bombs, every day an Iraqi is fighting against the US for freedom).
I had the honor of visiting with Prime Minister Allawi(otherwise known as “the butcher” for lining up 6 suspected insurgents and executing them with his own hand one by one, in a police station to set an example of how he wants insurgents to be dealt with). He's a strong(Euphemism for Facist), courageous (Euphemism for likes money more than life, so is willing to risk the assassination attempts for American dollars, just like any good exiled aristocrat)leader. He believes in the freedom of the Iraqi people(hahaha that ones just plain funny).
He doesn't want U.S. leadership, however, to send mixed signals, to not stand with the Iraqi people(euphemism for calling Kerry a flip-flopper).
He believes, like I believe, that the Iraqis are ready to fight for their own freedom(ready!? They’re doin’ it every day). They just need the help to be trained(you don’t really need to train to become a shaheed haha).
There will be elections in January(yah we’ll see how these “elections” turn out). We're spending reconstruction money(feeding in to Kerry’s argument). And our alliance is strong.
BUSH: That's the plan for victory.
And when Iraq if free, America will be more secure(I never agreed with Bush more, yes when America leaves Iraq, letting Iraq be free, America WILL be more secure, because we won’t have a buncha soldiers in a [as bush 41 said] “bitterly hostile land”). LEHRER: Senator Kerry, 90 seconds.
KERRY: The president just talked about Iraq as a center of the war on terror. Iraq was not even close to the center of the war on terror before the president invaded it(this is true, the only “terrorist’ activities were taking place in the northeast where Saddam never had control and where the US still does not have control).
The president made the judgment to divert forces from under General Tommy Franks from Afghanistan before the Congress even approved it to begin to prepare to go to war in Iraq.(fucked up stuff)
And he rushed the war in Iraq without a plan to win the peace. Now, that is not the judgment that a president of the United States ought to make. You don't take America to war unless have the plan to win the peace. You don't send troops to war without the body armor that they need(Remember when Bush took that Big trip to China in the midst of his “war on terror” the amount of money he spent on security could have purchased armor for every one of those kids in Iraq).
KERRY: I've met kids in Ohio, parents in Wisconsin places, Iowa, where they're going out on the Internet to get the state-of-the-art body gear to send to their kids. Some of them got them for a birthday present.
I think that's wrong. Humvees -- 10,000 out of 12,000 Humvees that are over there aren't armored(ever seen Blackhawk down?). And you go visit some of those kids in the hospitals today who were maimed because they don't have the armament.


This president just -- I don't know if he sees what's really happened on there. But it's getting worse by the day. More soldiers killed in June than before. More in July than June. More in August than July. More in September than in August.
And now we see beheadings. And we got weapons of mass destruction crossing the border every single day, and they're blowing people up. And we don't have enough troops there(nicely summed up vision of that thing Bush denies exists: “reality”).
BUSH: Can I respond to that?
LEHRER: Let's do one of these one-minute extensions. You have 30 seconds.
BUSH: Thank you, sir.
First of all, what my opponent wants you to forget is that he voted to authorize the use of force and now says it's the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place(He voted to authorize force because Bush needed something to back up his threats, Saddam is smart enough to know how democracy works. If Bush had threatened him without the “apparent present ability” to follow through on the threat, the threat would have been of no use, so government worked together to give Bush this power so he could threaten Saddam, Kerry stated that he wanted to actually invadet only as a last resort. And on the day that bush entered he stated for the press he thought that more diplomacy should have been used) .
BUSH: I don't see how you can lead this country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place(I see how you can, you can try to change the dynamic in the war, being opposed to Rushing to war without a plan for afterwards is not mutually exclusive with trying to clean up the mess left after rushing in). What message does that send our troops?(the best message there is: you’re gonna be able to leave those desert slums playin bodyguard for oil companies and see your family again) What message does that send to our allies?(the “allies” hes talking about are the lap dogs that followed us in to Iraq, you think they give a shit? They’ll do whatever any president tells them to do, because they’re fuckin puppets[besides blair]) What message does that send the Iraqis?(FREEDOM WILL BE YOURS SOON!) No, the way to win this is to be steadfast and resolved and to follow through on the plan that I've just outlined.(he didn’t outline any plan, I’m just wondering if anyone else caught that?) LEHRER: Thirty seconds, Senator.
KERRY: Yes, we have to be steadfast and resolved, and I am. And I will succeed for those troops, now that we're there(heres the distinction between flipflop and being a steadfast leader. He knows the war is bullshit, but hes gonna try to clean up the mess essentially because: we are already there so its too late now). We have to succeed. We can't leave a failed Iraq. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake of judgment to go there and take the focus off of Osama bin Laden(again the distinction, not flip-flopping just what people would call “common sense). It was. Now, we can succeed. But I don't believe this president can. I think we need a president who has the credibility to bring the allies back to the table and to do what's necessary to make it so America isn't doing this alone.(pounding that talking point that kerry=multilaterilist, while Bush=unilateralist) LEHRER: We'll come back to Iraq in a moment. But I want to come back to where I began, on homeland security. This is a two-minute new question, Senator Kerry.
As president, what would you do, specifically, in addition to or differently to increase the homeland security of the United States than what President Bush is doing?
Jim, let me tell you exactly what I'll do. And there are a long list of thing. First of all, what kind of mixed message does it send when you have $500 million going over to Iraq to put police officers in the streets of Iraq, and the president is cutting the COPS program in America?(the message is this whole thing was done for money haha) What kind of message does it send to be sending money to open firehouses in Iraq, but we're shutting firehouses who are the first- responders here in America(these two reasons are why the 2 largest Fire and Police unions have endorsed Kerry).
The president hasn't put one nickel, not one nickel into the effort to fix some of our tunnels and bridges and most exposed subway systems(This time its Kerry’s turn to try to illicit a response of fear from the populace). That's why they had to close down the subway in New York when the Republican Convention was there(but he does have stronger evidence). We hadn't done the work that ought to be done.
The president -- 95 percent of the containers that come into the ports, right here in Florida, are not inspected(again trying to get some fear).
Civilians get onto aircraft, and their luggage is X- rayed, but the cargo hold is not X-rayed.(again with the fear, this is not the Kerry that I personally am a big fan of, I personally ascribe to the belief that this is “the home of the brave” so its up to each of us to be courageous not just fold under the fear and worship John Ashcroft, observe the color coded terror alert every day, or other ridiculous shit hta ths been newly introduced to our mental enviornment) Does that make you feel safer in America?
This president thought it was more important to give the wealthiest people in America a tax cut rather than invest in homeland security. Those aren't my values. I believe in protecting America first.
And long before President Bush and I get a tax cut -- and that's who gets it(another hilarious shot) -- long before we do, I'm going to invest in homeland security and I'm going to make sure we're not cutting COPS programs in America and we're fully staffed in our firehouses and that we protect the nuclear and chemical plants(seems like filler).
The president also unfortunately gave in to the chemical industry, which didn't want to do some of the things necessary to strengthen our chemical plant exposure.
And there's an enormous undone job to protect the loose nuclear materials in the world that are able to get to terrorists. That's a whole other subject, but I see we still have a little bit more time.
KERRY: Let me just quickly say, at the current pace, the president will not secure the loose material in the Soviet Union -- former Soviet Union for 13 years. I'm going to do it in four years. And we're going to keep it out of the hands of terrorists(a comparative advantage fully distinguished in like 2 sentences a great line). LEHRER: Ninety-second response, Mr. President.
BUSH: I don't think we want to get to how he's going to pay for all these promises. It's like a huge tax gap. Anyway, that's for another debate(euphemism for “tax and spend liberal).
My administration has tripled the amount of money we're spending on homeland security to $30 billion a year(wasn’t he just complaining about too much spending? Trying to appeal to core conservative values and then claiming that the largest expansion of federal government in history is good?).
My administration worked with the Congress to create the Department of Homeland Security so we could better coordinate our borders and ports. We've got 1,000 extra border patrol on the southern border; want 1,000 on the northern border. We're modernizing our borders(I don’t give a shit about illegal immigration, but a lot of people do and Bush is spitting bullshit, he hasn’t done anything to halt illegal immigration). We spent $3.1 billion for fire and police, $3.1 billion.
We're doing our duty to provide the funding.
But the best way to protect this homeland is to stay on the offense(another advocation of a constant state of pre-emptive war). BUSH: You know, we have to be right 100 percent of the time. And the enemy only has to be right once to hurt us(if anyone made sense of this please tell me, because we have been wrong with every move).
There's a lot of good people working hard.
And by the way, we've also changed the culture of the FBI to have counterterrorism as its number one priority(because in his pre9-11 administration he told the FBI to back off the bin laden’s and ignored the “bin laden determined to strike US” memo). We're communicating better. We're going to reform our intelligence services to make sure that we get the best intelligence possible.
The Patriot Act is vital -- is vital that the Congress renew the Patriot Act which enables our law enforcement to disrupt terror cells.(the patriot act is a grave violation of our constitutional rights[but you probably all know that])
But again, I repeat to my fellow citizens, the best way to protection is to stay on the offense(another advocation of a constant state of pre-emptive war).
LEHRER: Yes, let's do a little -- yes, 30 seconds.
KERRY: The president just said the FBI had changed its culture. We just read on the front pages of America's papers that there are over 100,000 hours of tapes, unlistened to. On one of those tapes may be the enemy being right the next time(this is true, because of the huge shortage of Arabic translators employed in the intelligence agencies). KERRY: And the test is not whether you're spending more money. The test is, are you doing everything possible to make America safe?
We didn't need that tax cut. America needed to be safe.
BUSH: Of course we're doing everything we can to protect America. I wake up every day thinking about how best to protect America. That's my job.
I work with Director Mueller of the FBI; comes in my office when I'm in Washington every morning, talking about how to protect us. There's a lot of really good people working hard to do so. (Bush has no policies or future ideas, just bullshit for this answer)It's hard work. But, again, I want to tell the American people, we're doing everything we can at home, but you better have a president who chases these terrorists down and bring them to justice before they hurt us again(more minority report shit). LEHRER: New question, Mr. President. Two minutes.
What criteria would you use to determine when to start bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq?
BUSH: Let me first tell you that the best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be trained to do the job.
BUSH: And that's what we're doing. We've got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year. That is the best way. We'll never succeed in Iraq if the Iraqi citizens do not want to take matters into their own hands to protect themselves. I believe they want to. Prime Minister Allawi(the butcher) believes they want to.
And so the best indication about when we can bring our troops home -- which I really want to do, but I don't want to do so for the sake of bringing them home; I want to do so because we've achieved an objective -- is to see the Iraqis perform and to see the Iraqis step up and take responsibility.
And so, the answer to your question is: When our general is on the ground and Ambassador Negroponte tells me that Iraq is ready to defend herself from these terrorists, that elections will have been held by then, that their stability and that they're on their way to, you know, a nation that's free; that's when.(didn’t we transfer sovereignty?) BUSH: And I hope it's as soon as possible. But I know putting artificial deadlines won't work. My opponent at one time said, "Well, get me elected, I'll have them out of there in six months." You can't do that and expect to win the war on terror(why?).
My message to our troops is, "Thank you for what you're doing. We're standing with you strong. We'll give you all the equipment you need(as long as Lockheed, boeing, Halliburton, or Carlyle sell the equipment you need). And we'll get you home as soon as the mission's done, because this is a vital mission."
A free Iraq will be an ally in the war on terror(just like Afghanistan was an ally in the war on terror, because they contributed troops to our Iraq war hhaha, so that means we can say Iraq is with us when we invade Iran, just like Mike Moore sez “that’s one way to create a coalition, just keep invading countries”), and that's essential. A free Iraq will set a powerful example in the part of the world that is desperate for freedom. A free Iraq will help secure Israel(both candidates make naked attempts for the jewish vote). A free Iraq will enforce the hopes and aspirations of the reformers in places like Iran. A free Iraq is essential for the security of this country.
LEHRER: Ninety seconds, Senator Kerry.
KERRY: Thank you, Jim.
My message to the troops is also: Thank you for what they're doing, but it's also help is on the way. I believe those troops deserve better than what they are getting today.
You know, it's interesting. When I was in a rope line just the other day, coming out here from Wisconsin, a couple of young returnees were in the line, one active duty, one from the Guard. And they both looked at me and said: We need you. You've got to help us over there.(this is a nice way of saying Bush is making soldiers stay longer than they’re required to and forcing them to go back to the desert slums even if they do not want to)
Now I believe there's a better way to do this. You know, the president's father did not go into Iraq, into Baghdad, beyond Basra. And the reason he didn't is, he said -- he wrote in his book -- because there was no viable exit strategy. And he said our troops would be occupiers in a bitterly hostile land(I LOVE that quote, very nicely done by Kerry to remind him that even though his father was a douche he was still a better president).
That's exactly where we find ourselves today. There's a sense of American occupation(sense?). The only building that was guarded when the troops when into Baghdad was the oil ministry. We didn't guard the nuclear facilities(this was a new fact for me, very scary).
KERRY: We didn't guard the foreign office, where you might have found information about weapons of mass destruction. We didn't guard the borders.
Almost every step of the way, our troops have been left on these extraordinarily difficult missions. I know what it's like to go out on one of those missions when you don't know what's around the corner.(this was a cheap shot I mean everyone knows Bush won numerous medals for his bravery in defending Texas from the Vietcong)
And I believe our troops need other allies helping. I'm going to hold that summit(clear distinction between the two’s policies
). I will bring fresh credibility, a new start, and we will get the job done right.
LEHRER: All right, go ahead. Yes, sir?
BUSH: I think it's worthy for a follow-up.
LEHRER: Sure, right.
(CROSSTALK)
LEHRER: We can do 30 second each here. All right.
BUSH: My opponent says help is on the way, but what kind of message does it say to our troops in harm's way, "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time"? Not a message a commander in chief gives, or this is a "great diversion." (from the war on terror”…that’s the rest of that quote)

As well, help is on the way, but it's certainly hard to tell it when he voted against the $87-billion supplemental to provide equipment for our troops, and then said he actually did vote for it before he voted against it. Not what a commander in chief does when you're trying to lead troops.
LEHRER: Senator Kerry, 30 seconds.
KERRY: Well, you know, when I talked about the $87 billion, I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?
I believe that when you know something's going wrong, you make it right. That's what I learned in Vietnam. When I came back from that war I saw that it was wrong. Some people don't like the fact that I stood up to say no, but I did. And that's what I did with that vote. And I'm going to lead those troops to victory.
LEHRER: All right, new question. Two minutes, Senator Kerry.
Speaking of Vietnam, you spoke to Congress in 1971, after you came back from Vietnam, and you said, quote, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
LEHRER: Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake?
KERRY: No, and they don't have to, providing we have the leadership that we put -- that I'm offering.
I believe that we have to win this. The president and I have always agreed on that. And from the beginning, I did vote to give the authority, because I thought Saddam Hussein was a threat, and I did accept that intelligence(they never mention that Bush intentionally instructed the CIA to data mine for justifications for war).
But I also laid out a very strict series of things we needed to do in order to proceed from a position of strength. Then the president, in fact, promised them. He went to Cincinnati and he gave a speech in which he said, "We will plan carefully. We will proceed cautiously. We will not make war inevitable. We will go with our allies."
He didn't do any of those things.(euphemism for calling him a liar) They didn't do the planning. They left the planning of the State Department in the State Department desks. They avoided even the advice of their own general. General Shinsheki, the Army chief of staff, said you're going to need several hundred thousand troops. Instead of listening to him, they retired him.
KERRY: The terrorism czar, who has worked for every president since Ronald Reagan, said, "Invading Iraq in response to 9/11 would be like Franklin Roosevelt invading Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor."(hilarious)
That's what we have here.
And what we need now is a president who understands how to bring these other countries together to recognize their stakes in this. They do have stakes in it. They've always had stakes in it.
The Arab countries have a stake in not having a civil war. The European countries have a stake in not having total disorder on their doorstep.
But this president hasn't even held the kind of statesman-like summits that pull people together and get them to invest in those states. In fact, he's done the opposite. He pushed them away.
When the Secretary General Kofi Annan offered the United Nations, he said, "No, no, we'll go do this alone."
To save for Halliburton the spoils of the war(Rock on Kerry!), they actually issued a memorandum from the Defense Department saying, "If you weren't with us in the war, don't bother applying for any construction."
KERRY: That's not a way to invite people.
LEHRER: Ninety seconds.
BUSH: That's totally absurd. Of course, the U.N. was invited in. And we support the U.N. efforts there. They pulled out after Sergio de Mello got killed. But they're now back in helping with elections.
My opponent says we didn't have any allies in this war. What's he say to Tony Blair?(I’d say “where are the weapons Tony?” What's he say to Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland?(I’d say: “So do you think Poland is a world power? Because I sure as hell don't”) You can't expect to build an alliance when you denigrate the contributions of those who are serving side by side with American troops in Iraq.
Plus, he says the cornerstone of his plan to succeed in Iraq is to call upon nations to serve. So what's the message going to be: "Please join us in Iraq. We're a grand diversion. Join us for a war that is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time?"
I know how these people think. I deal with them all the time. I sit down with the world leaders frequently and talk to them on the phone frequently.(He was struggling for something and all he could come up with was ‘phone calls’) They're not going to follow somebody who says, "This is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time."
BUSH: I know how these people think. I deal with them all the time. I sit down with the world leaders frequently and talk to them on the phone frequently.(redundancy)
They're not going to follow somebody who says this is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time. They're not going to follow somebody whose core convictions keep changing because of politics in America(couldn’t come up with ANYTHING so he just resorts to the flip-flopping slander).
And finally, he says we ought to have a summit. Well, there are summits being held. Japan is going to have a summit for the donors; $14 billion pledged. And Prime Minister Koizumi is going to call countries to account, to get them to contribute(a drop in the fucking bucket, remember the 90% stat). And there's going to be an Arab summit, of the neighborhood countries. And Colin Powell helped set up that summit.
LEHRER: Forty seconds, Senator.
KERRY: The United Nations, Kofi Annan offered help after Baghdad fell. And we never picked him up on that and did what was necessary to transfer authority and to transfer reconstruction. It was always American-run.
Secondly, when we went in, there were three countries: Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's not a grand coalition. We can do better.
LEHRER: Thirty seconds, Mr. President.


BUSH: Well, actually, he forgot Poland. And now there's 30 nations involved, standing side by side with our American troops(how dare Kerry disrespect Palau and Romania, like Bush has disrespected France, Germany, and Spain).
BUSH: And I honor their sacrifices. And I don't appreciate it when candidate for president denigrates(Must only remember one word from his reading of the SAT words) the contributions of these brave soldiers.
You cannot lead the world if you do not honor the contributions of those who are with us. He called them coerced and the bribed. That's not how you bring people together.
Our coalition is strong. It will remain strong, so long as I'm the president.
LEHRER: New question, Mr. President, two minutes. You have said there was a, quote, "miscalculation," of what the conditions would be in post-war Iraq. What was the miscalculation, and how did it happen?
BUSH: No, what I said was that, because we achieved such a rapid victory, more of the Saddam loyalists were around. I mean, we thought we'd whip more of them going in.(I don’t buy it, the insurgents are coming from all over the Arab world, he was referring to the resistance after we took the oil ministry)
BUSH: But because Tommy Franks did such a great job in planning the operation, we moved rapidly, and a lot of the Baathists and Saddam loyalists laid down their arms and disappeared. I thought they would stay and fight, but they didn't.
And now we're fighting them now. And it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it's necessary work.
And I'm optimistic. See, I think you can be realistic and optimistic at the same time. I'm optimistic we'll achieve -- I know we won't achieve if we send mixed signals. I know we're not going to achieve our objective if we send mixed signals to our troops, our friends, the Iraqi citizens.
We've got a plan in place. The plan says there will be elections in January, and there will be. The plan says we'll train Iraqi soldiers so they can do the hard work, and we are.
BUSH: And it's not only just America, but NATO is now helping, Jordan's helping train police, UAE is helping train police.
We've allocated $7 billion over the next months for reconstruction efforts. And we're making progress there.
And our alliance is strong. And as I just told you, there's going to be a summit of the Arab nations. Japan will be hosting a summit. We're making progress.
It is hard work. It is hard work to go from a tyranny to a democracy. It's hard work to go from a place where people get their hands cut off, or executed, to a place where people are free.
But it's necessary work. And a free Iraq is going to make this world a more peaceful place.(again I agree with him “a free Iraq IS going to make this world a more peaceful place” that’s why we got to get the fuck out so they can be free)
LEHRER: Ninety seconds, Senator Kerry.
KERRY: What I think troubles a lot of people in our country is that the president has just sort of described one kind of mistake. But what he has said is that, even knowing there were no weapons of mass destruction, even knowing there was no imminent threat, even knowing there was no connection with al Qaeda, he would still have done everything the same way. Those are his words.
KERRY: Now, I would not. So what I'm trying to do is just talk the truth to the American people and to the world. The truth is what good policy is based on. It's what leadership is based on.(the truth is also what Bush has been ignoring)
The president says that I'm denigrating these troops. I have nothing but respect for the British, Tony Blair, and for what they've been willing to do.
But you can't tell me that when the most troops any other country has on the ground is Great Britain, with 8,300, and below that the four others are below 4,000, and below that, there isn't anybody out of the hundreds, that we have a genuine coalition to get this job done.(Very easy to understand breakdown of the bullshit “coalition of the willing” shattering Bush’s assertion that this was a strong coalition in the first place)
KERRY: You can't tell me that on the day that we went into that war and it started -- it was principally the United States, the America and Great Britain and one or two others. That's it. And today, we are 90 percent of the casualties and 90 percent of the costs. And meanwhile, North Korea has got nuclear weapons. Talk about mixed messages. The president is the one that said, "We can't allow countries to get nuclear weapons." They have. I'll change that(Kerry is deft and precise, and takes him down real easy).
LEHRER: New question. Senator Kerry, two minutes. You just -- you've repeatedly accused President Bush -- not here tonight, but elsewhere before -- of not telling the truth about Iraq, essentially of lying to the American people about Iraq. Give us some examples of what you consider to be his not telling the truth.
KERRY: Well, I've never, ever used the harshest word, as you did just then. And I try not to. I've been -- but I'll nevertheless tell you that I think he has not been candid with the American people. And I'll tell you exactly how.
First of all, we all know that in his state of the union message, he told Congress about nuclear materials that didn't exist.(straight up)
KERRY: We know that he promised America that he was going to build this coalition. I just described the coalition. It is not the kind of coalition we were described when we were talking about voting for this.(straight up)
The president said he would exhaust the remedies of the United Nations and go through that full process. He didn't. He cut if off, sort of arbitrarily. (straight up)
And we know that there were further diplomatic efforts under way. They just decided the time for diplomacy is over and rushed to war without planning for what happens afterwards(straight fuckin up).
Now, he misled the American people in his speech when he said we will plan carefully. They obviously didn't. He misled the American people when he said we'd go to war as a last resort. We did not go as a last resort. And most Americans know the difference.
Now, this has cost us deeply in the world. I believe that it is important to tell the truth to the American people. I've worked with those leaders the president talks about, I've worked with them for 20 years, for longer than this president. And I know what many of them say today, and I know how to bring them back to the table.
KERRY: And I believe that a fresh start, new credibility, a president who can understand what we have to do to reach out to the Muslim world to make it clear that this is not, you know -- Osama bin Laden uses the invasion of Iraq in order to go out to people and say that America has declared war on Islam.
We need to be smarter about how we wage a war on terror. We need to deny them the recruits. We need to deny them the safe havens. We need to rebuild our alliances.
I believe that Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy, and the others did that more effectively, and I'm going to try to follow in their footsteps(attempt to condition us with the populist image).
LEHRER: Ninety seconds, Mr. President.
BUSH: My opponent just said something amazing. He said Osama bin Laden uses the invasion of Iraq as an excuse to spread hatred for America. Osama bin Laden isn't going to determine how we defend ourselves.(well he should if hes the one attacking, am I wrong about this?) BUSH: Osama bin Laden doesn't get to decide. The American people decide(yah the American people good job Bush, I might vote for you!).
I decided the right action was in Iraq(wait a minute… I thought you were just saying the American people decide ohhhh haha you suck, that will teach me to accept your words at face value[isn’t this a flip-flop in the course of 2 sentences?). My opponent calls it a mistake. It wasn't a mistake.
He said I misled on Iraq. I don't think he was misleading when he called Iraq a grave threat in the fall of 2002(yah neither does anyone else buddy, are you implying that because Kerry says you fucked up the war that he now thinks iraq wasn’t a grave threat to those around it?).
I don't think he was misleading when he said that it was right to disarm Iraq in the spring of 2003(disarm through weapons inspections).
I don't think he misled you when he said that, you know, anyone who doubted whether the world was better off without Saddam Hussein in power didn't have the judgment to be president.(redundancy) I don't think he was misleading.
I think what is misleading is to say you can lead and succeed in Iraq if you keep changing your positions on this war(flip-flop slander). And he has. As the politics change, his positions change. And that's not how a commander in chief acts.
Let me finish(Bush looked real stupid here, because Kerry didn’t do anything haha, yet Bush jumped all over his ass).
The intelligence I looked at was the same intelligence my opponent looked at, the very same intelligence. And when I stood up there and spoke to the Congress, I was speaking off the same intelligence he looked at to make his decisions to support the authorization of force.(again and again this argument comes up Kerry has consistently provided a good explanation for this that the president needed the ability to actually use force if he was going to threaten Saddam with it to get him to chill out on the inspectors)
LEHRER: Thirty seconds. We'll do a 30 second here.
KERRY: I wasn't misleading when I said he was a threat. Nor was I misleading on the day that the president decided to go to war when I said that he had made a mistake in not building strong alliances and that I would have preferred that he did more diplomacy.(again a clear distinction, a clear position, and is a strong argument against the flip-flop character assassination we get from Fox News and the Republican talking heads)
I've had one position, one consistent position, that Saddam Hussein was a threat. There was a right way to disarm him and a wrong way. And the president chose the wrong way.
LEHRER: Thirty seconds, Mr. President.
BUSH: The only consistent about my opponent's position is that he's been inconsistent. (no new arguments, Bush is not using his head in this response)He changes positions. And you cannot change positions in this war on terror if you expect to win.
BUSH: And I expect to win. It's necessary we win.(If anyone remembers Bush recently said publicly he was “not sure” we could win the war on “terror”its too bad Fox news doesn’t work for the democrats or this flip-flop label may have been attached to the other candidate…or was that the point?))
We're being challenged like never before. And we have a duty to our country and to future generations of America to achieve a free Iraq, a free Afghanistan, and to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction.

Part 2 comin soon, and Veep ass beatin of cheney