Reporting on the lies and hypocrisy, the death and destruction, the high crimes and misdemeanors that define Bu$hWorld.

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 Its official: The rich have gotten richer, and the poor have gotten poorer in Bu$hWorld.

      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

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   Every once in a while, the truth slips out--even in Bu$hWorld.

 ·        “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

 
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 ·        “[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.

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     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”.

      Americans were told the Federal government needed to search our homes, read our mail, tap our phones, and monitor our internet usage--to keep us safe from Islamofascist terrorists. They also claimed they had to grab people off the street, imprison them indefinitely, torture them or send them to other countries to be tortured--so they could find the evil-doers that are plotting in our very midst.

      President Bush and his supporters often speak of the many lives that have been saved and the terrorist plots that have been thwarted because of their unconstitutional methods. Of course they can never give us any details because that would threaten “national security”.

 ·        “[Kidnapping suspected terrorists and sending them to other countries to be tortured (extraordinary rendition) has already] protected the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions of American lives.”--Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), CBC News, 10/19/07

      Millions of American lives saved--Wow! That would be great, if only it were true.

      New York University’s Center on Law and Security just released a six-year study in which they “tracked 510 cases that were described as terrorism-related when arrests were made”. Of those 510 “terrorist” arrests, only 158 people were actually prosecuted for terrorism. Of those 158 prosecutions, a total of four people have been convicted of planning attacks within the United States (and that includes “the twentieth hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested before 9/11; and the infamous “shoe bomber”, Richard Reid, who was apprehended by airline personnel). A quick check of the score finds that all the spying, prying, torture and renditions have netted us a total of two convictions.

 ·        “The vast majority of cases turn out to include no link to terrorism once they go to court… [The analysis] “suggests the presence of few, if any, prevalent terrorist threats currently within the U.S.”-- CNN, 10/15/07

     I hate to think how many billions of dollars each of those four convictions have cost American taxpayers; but America has lost something far more valuable than money. America has lost its claim to be a defender of human rights and its ability to insist on humane treatment of prisoners in other countries. Even worse, the Bush Administration and its accomplices in Congress have rendered the U.S. Constitution and our laws virtually meaningless. As long as King George can choose which of our laws he will obey and can imprison people indefinitely, without trial; America can no longer call itself a nation of laws. That is our greatest loss.

      We can’t say the Founding Fathers didn’t warn us:

 ·        “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759

      Let’s hope they aren’t right about everything:

 ·        “[A] Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever.”--John Adams, 1775

Authors Bio:

Mick Youther is an American citizen, an independent voter, a veteran, a parent, a scientist, a writer, and all-around nice guy who has been roused from a comfortable apathy by the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush Administration.