According to Internal Revenue Service data:

 ·        “The richest one percent of Americans earned a postwar record of 21.2 percent of all income in 2005, up from 19 percent a year earlier, reflecting a widening income disparity among different classes in the nation…The data showed that the fortunes of the bottom 50 percent of Americans are worsening, with that group earning 12.8 percent of all income in 2005, down from 13.4 percent the year before… the last time wealthy Americans had such a high percentage of the national income pie was in the 1920s.”--Reuters, 10/12/07

 ******

 ·        “Retired Vice Admiral Scott Redd, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told NBC News this weekend that the U.S. is not ‘tactically’ safer as a result of the Iraq war….  Redd also acknowledged that, over the short term, the Iraq war has created a ‘giant recruiting tool’ for terrorists.”--ThinkProgress, 10/17/07

      But if there is one thing that is not tolerated by the Bush Administration; it is truth.

 ·        “Retired Vice Adm. John Scott Redd said he is stepping down next month to have a long-delayed surgery and spend more time with his five grandchildren and the rest of his family.”--AP, 10/17/07

 
******

 ·        “[I]’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”--George W. Bush, press conference, 10/17/07

      If the Bush Administration is so interested in preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, why did they leak the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, who was working toward that very goal?

 (From CBS’s 60 Minutes, 10/21/07)

 PLAME: Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys, basically, did not get nuclear weapons.

 COURIC: When senior administration officials leaked [Plame’s] name to reporters, they may have exposed other spies and damaged operations targeting Iran. CBS News has learned that she was involved in one highly classified mission to deliver fake nuclear weapons blueprints to Tehran [Iran]. It was called Operation Merlin, and it was first revealed in a book by investigative reporter James Risen.

      President Bush vowed to fire anyone in his administration that was involved in leaking Ms. Plame’s name. It eventually came out that at least four White House officials had leaked Ms. Plame’s name and CIA connection to various reporters, but President Bush did not fire anyone. In fact, he pardoned the only person indicted in connection with the leak-- Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, who was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury for his part in covering-up the White House leak.

 ******

     Before the dust from the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings had settled, The Bush Administration whipped out their wish list of unconstitutional powers and started pushing them through the Republican-controlled Congress as fast as they could. Anyone who objected was labeled “soft on terrorism”.

 1  |  2