XSha Tell the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1086
(12/6/03 4:26 am) Reply
RESUME of GEORGE W. BUSH
George W. Bush
The White House, USA
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE
* LAW ENFORCEMENT: I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.
* MILITARY: I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I
refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.
* COLLEGE: I graduated from Yale University. I was a cheerleader.
PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:
* I ran for U.S. Congress and lost.
* I began my career in the oil business in Midland, Texas in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas. The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.
* I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took
land using taxpayer money.
* With the help of my father and our right-wing friends in the oil industry
(including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected Governor of Texas.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR:
* I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making
Texas the most polluted state in the Union.
* During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog ridden city in America.
* I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in
borrowed money.
* I set the record for the most executions by any Governor in American history.
* With the help of my brother, the Governor of Florida, and my father's
appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after losing by over
500,000 votes.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:
* I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.
* I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.
* I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.
* I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any
12-month period.
* I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market.
* I am the first president in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.
* I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one year period.
* After taking-off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.
* I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical Bunker Buster," a WMD.
* In my State Of The Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq, then blamed the lies on our British friends.
* I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. president.
* In my first year in office over 2-million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month.
* I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.
* I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any president in U.S. history.
* I set the record for least amount of press conferences than any president
since the advent of television.
* I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to
intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.
* I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.
* I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families-in war time.
* I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people) shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind.
* I've broken more international treaties than any president in U.S. history.
* I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history. My "poorest millionaire," Condoleezza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.
* I am the first president in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign
nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S.citizens, and the world community.
* I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in
the history of the United States government.
* I am the first president in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.
* I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.
* I refused to allow inspectors access to U.S. prisoners of war (detainees) and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.
* I am the first president in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).
* I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.
* My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends,
Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S.
history. My political party used the Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision. I have protected my friends at Enron and
Halliburton against investigation or prosecution. More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating
one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history.
* I garnered the most sympathy for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.
* I am first president in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.
* I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded
government contracts.
* I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to justice.
RECORDS AND REFERENCES:
* All records of my tenure as Governor of Texas are now in my father's library, sealed, and unavailable for public view.
* All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
* All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.
* Please consider my experience when voting in 2004 -
the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1110
(9/8/05 17:13) Reply
Wow
You so-called [by that I mean those that call themselves Gorean 'cause I have news for you you ain't Americans] Americans must really be PO'ed at your Federal Government.
Then again this is all Survival of the Fittest, so I guess you must all approve of the delays and incompetance.
And Death.
Afterall if people die it's their own fault if they can't help themselves.
And for those idiots that voted Republican, well shame on you.
XSha Tell the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1114
(5/3/06 11:48) Reply
Usted votó por él!
Last week, at the height of the illegal immigrant's boycott build up, Bush told reporters: "I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English."
Bush sang Star Spangled Banner en español during 2000 campaign
Wed May 03 2006 09:35:20 ET
"When visiting cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, or Philadelphia, in pivotal states, George W. Bush would drop in at Hispanic festivals and parties, sometimes joining in singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Spanish, sometimes partying with a “Viva Bush” mariachi band flown in from Texas."
the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1171
(7/24/06 13:10) Reply
Europe blames US for WTO failure
Last Updated: Monday, 24 July 2006, 18:09 GMT 19:09 UK
Europe blames US for WTO failure
Mr Mandelson said he could not back the US proposals EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has blamed the US for the collapse of the latest round of global trade talks.
US conditions attached to cutting farming subsidies were "unacceptable" for developing countries, he said.
But the US said it was "fully committed" to the talks and blamed Europe for its lack of ambition over reaching a deal to cut farming tariffs.
After assessing the situation, the World Trade Organization (WTO) decided no more talks should be attempted.
"We will certainly not conclude the round this year," WTO director general Pascal Lamy said.
That could mean even further delays to the so-called Doha round of talks which began in 2004.
'Missed opportunity'
Negotiators had been hoping for a deal this year before the special authority US President George W Bush has to negotiate trade deals expires, making it harder for him to win congressional approval for a treaty.
Mr Lamy warned that the richer members of the WTO must now keep the negotiation process going, saying: "We have missed a very important opportunity to prove that multilateralism works."
EU Commissioner Mandelson said he was "profoundly disappointed" that talks had stumbled, mainly as a result of America's inflexibility.
"What they're saying is that for every dollar that they strip out of their trade-distorting farm subsidies they want to be given a dollar's worth of market access in developing country markets," he said.
"That is not acceptable to developing countries and it's a principle that I on Europe's behalf certainly couldn't sign up to either."
US trade representative Susan Schwab insisted the US remained "fully committed to multilateral trading system".
But she said that "a number of developed and advanced developing countries were looking for ways to be less ambitious, to avoid making ambitious contributions".
Meanwhile, Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate finance committee that would have to approve any trade deal, backed the stance of the US trade negotiators.
"I've always said that no deal is better than a bad deal, and a 'Doha light' deal would be a bad deal," he said.
"I'm glad our trade negotiators held their ground."
'Terrible blow'
The EU, US, Brazil, Australia, India and Japan have been negotiating a deal to boost world trade in industrial and agricultural goods.
The [American] deal on the table would have caused great damage to developing countries
Charity Christian Aid said that the collapse of talks struck "a terrible blow" for the world's poor.
It had removed the most important weapon in the fight against global poverty, the charity's senior trade analyst Dr Claire Melamed said.
"Any chance of a genuinely pro-poor outcome was lost long ago, and the deal on the table would have caused great damage to developing countries," he said.
the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1183
(7/28/06 12:43) Reply
War Crimes Charges Feared
Detainee Abuse Charges Feared
Shield Sought From '96 War Crimes Act
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 28, 2006;
An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.
Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecutionfor past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996.
That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.
In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the international Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees in the terrorism fight, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such "protections," according to someone who heard his remarks last week.
Gonzales told the lawmakers that a shield is needed for actions taken by U.S. personnel under a 2002 presidential order, which the Supreme Court declared illegal, and under Justice Department legal opinions that have been withdrawn under fire, the source said. A spokeswoman for Gonzales, Tasia Scolinos, declined to comment on Gonzales's remarks.
The Justice Department's top legal adviser, Steven G. Bradbury, separately testified two weeks ago that Congress must give new "definition and certainty" to captors' risk of prosecution for coercive interrogations that fall short of outright torture.
Language in the administration's draft, which Bradbury helped prepare in concert with civilian officials at the Defense Department, seeks to protect U.S. personnel by ruling out detainee lawsuits to enforce Geneva protections and by incorporating language making U.S. enforcement of the War Crimes Act subject to U.S. -- not foreign -- understandings of what the Conventions require.
The aim, Justice Department lawyers say, is also to take advantage of U.S. legal precedents that limit sanctions to conduct that "shocks the conscience." This phrase allows some consideration by courts of the context in which abusive treatment occurs, such as an urgent need for information, the lawyers say -- even though the Geneva prohibitions are absolute.
The Supreme Court, in contrast, has repeatedly said that foreign interpretations of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions should at least be considered by U.S. courts.
Some human rights groups and independent experts say they oppose undermining the reach of the War Crimes Act, arguing that it deters government misconduct. They say any step back from the Geneva Conventions could provoke mistreatment of captured U.S. military personnel. They also contend that Bush administration anxieties about prosecutions are overblown and should not be used to gain congressional approval for rough interrogations.
"The military has lived with" the Geneva Conventions provisions "for 50 years and applied them to every conflict, even against irregular forces. Why are we suddenly afraid now about the vagueness of its terms?" asked Tom Malinowski, director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch.
Since the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, hundreds of service members deployed to Iraq have been accused by the Army of mistreating detainees, and at least 35 detainees have died in military or CIA custody, according to a tally kept by Human Rights First. The military has asserted these were all aberrant acts by troops ignoring their orders.
Defense attorneys for many of those accused of involvement have alleged that their clients were pursuing policies of rough treatment set by officials in Washington. That claim is amplified in a 53-page Human Rights Watch report this week that quoted interrogators at three bases in Iraq as saying that abuse was part of regular, authorized procedures. But this argument has yet to gain traction in a military court, where U.S. policy requires that active-duty service members be tried for any maltreatment.
The War Crimes Act, in contrast, affords access to civilian courts for abuse perpetrated by former service members and by civilians. The government has not filed any charges under the law.
The law's legislative sponsor is one of the House's most conservative members, Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-N.C.). He proposed it after a chance meeting with a retired Navy pilot who had spent six years in the notorious "Hanoi Hilton," a Vietnamese prison camp. The conversation left Jones angry about Washington's inability to prosecute the pilot's abusers.
Jones's legislation for the first time imposed criminal penalties in the United States for breaches of the Geneva Conventions, which protect detainees anywhere. The Defense Department's deputy general counsel at the time declared at the sole hearing on it in 1996 -- attended by just two lawmakers -- that "we fully support the purposes of the bill," and urged its expansion to cover a wider range of war crimes. The Republican-controlled House passed the bill by voice vote, and the Senate approved it by unanimous consent.
The law initially criminalized grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions but was amended without a hearing the following year to include violations of Common Article 3, the minimum standard requiring that all detainees be treated "humanely." The article bars murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, torture and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." It applies to any abuse involving U.S. military personnel or "nationals."
Jones and other advocates intended the law for use against future abusers of captured U.S. troops in countries such as Bosnia, El Salvador and Somalia, but the Pentagon supported making its provisions applicable to U.S. personnel because doing so set a high standard for others to follow. Mary DeRosa, a legal adviser at the National Security Council from 1997 to 2001, said the threat of sanctions in U.S. courts in fact helped deter senior officials from approving some questionable actions. She said the law is not an impediment in the terrorism fight.
Since September 2001, however, Bush administration officials have considered the law a potential threat to U.S. personnel involved in interrogations. While serving as White House legal counsel in 2002, Gonzales helped prepare a Jan. 25 draft memo to Bush -- written in large part by David Addington, then Vice President Cheney's legal counsel and now Cheney's chief of staff -- in which he cited the threat of prosecution under the act as a reason to declare that detainees captured in Afghanistan were not eligible for Geneva Conventions protections.
"It is difficult," Gonzales said in the memo, "to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to bring unwarranted charges." He also argued for the flexibility to pursue various interrogation methods and said that only a presidential order exempting detainees from Geneva protections "would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution." That month, Bush approved an order exempting those captured in Afghanistan from these protections.
But the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld effectively made Bush's order illegal when it affirmed that all detainees held by the United States are protected by Common Article 3. The court's decision caught the administration unprepared, at first, for questions about how its policy would change.
On July 7, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England signed a memorandum ordering all military departments to certify that their actions in the fight with al-Qaeda comply with Article 3. Several officials said the memo, which was reviewed by military lawyers, was provoked by the renewed threat of prosecution under the War Crimes Act.
England's memo was not sent to other agencies for review. Two White House officials heavily involved in past policymaking on detainee treatment matters, counsel Harriet Miers and Addington, told friends later that they had not been briefed before its release and were unhappy about its language, according to an informed source. Bradbury and Gonzales have since drafted legislation to repair what they consider the defects of the War Crimes Act and the ambiguities of Common Article 3.
Several officials said the administration's main concerns are Article 3's prohibitions against "outrages upon personal dignity" and humiliating or degrading treatment. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters on July 12 that he supported clearing up ambiguities so that military personnel are not "charged with wrongdoing when in fact they were not engaged in wrongdoing."
Several advocates and experts nonetheless said the legal liability of administration officials for past interrogations is probably small. "I think these guys did unauthorized stuff, they violated the War Crimes Act, and they should be prosecuted," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based group that has provided lawyers for detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Ratner said authorized interrogation techniques such as stress positions, temperature extremes and sleep deprivation are "clearly outlawed" under Common Article 3. But he added that prosecutions are improbable because the Justice Department -- which has consistently asserted that such rough interrogations are legal -- is unlikely to bring them. U.S. officials could argue in any event, Ratner said, that they were following policies they believed to be legal, and "a judge would most likely say that is a decent defense."
Some officials at the Pentagon share the view that illegal actions have been taken. Alberto J. Mora, the Navy's general counsel from 2001 until the end of last year, warned the Pentagon's general counsel twice that some approved interrogation methods violated "domestic and international legal norms" and that a federal court might eventually find responsibility "along the entire length of the chain of command," according to a 2004 memo by Mora that recounted the warnings. The memo was first obtained by the New Yorker magazine.
At a July 13 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Air Force's top military lawyer, Maj. Gen. Jack L. Rives, affirmed that "some of the techniques that have been authorized and used in the past have violated Common Article 3" of the Geneva Conventions. The top military lawyers for the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, who were seated next to Rives, said they agreed.
the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1185
(7/28/06 23:15) Reply
Re: RESUME of GEORGE W. BUSHBush Gives the 'Idol' Finalists a Tour
Jul 28 6:10 PM US/Eastern
By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
It's not clear if President Bush has ever actually watched "American Idol," but the TV show's finalists got to hang out with him Friday at the White House.
They got a group photo and a tour from the president. He got a harmonica engraved with "American Idol 2006."
The 10 finalists dropped into the Oval Office to see Bush in between his meeting withBritish Prime Minister Tony Blair and another photo session with top high school students.
[He has time in his day during this crisis to entertain TV hacks and high school kids? I guess he caught Bin Laden and I forgot to post it, did Al Qaeda surrender and I missed that too? How's New Orleans?]
Their tour and photo opportunity with Bush _ with still cameras only, no reporters allowed _ came during their one-day visit to Washington for their "American Idols Live" tour.
Re: RESUME of GEORGE W. BUSH
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sectarian violence is spreading in Iraq and the security problems have become more complex than at any time since the U.S. invasion in 2003, a Pentagon report said Friday.
In a notably gloomy report to Congress, the Pentagon reported that illegal militias have become more entrenched, especially in Baghdad neighborhoods where they are seen as providers of both security and basic social services.
The report described a rising tide of sectarian violence.
Death squads targeting mainly Iraqi civilians are a growing problem, heightening the risk of civil war, the report said.
"Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife," the report said, adding that the Sunni-led insurgency "remains potent and viable" even as it is overshadowed by the sect-on-sect killing.
"Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq, specifically in and around Baghdad, and concern about civil war within the Iraqi civilian population has increased in recent months," the report said. It is the latest in a series of quarterly reports required by Congress to assess economic, political and security progress.
Iraqi forces were dealing with more violence Friday as officials said a mortar attack on an open-air market in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, killed three people and wounded 12. Elsewhere, two policemen were also killed and authorities said they found the body of a Saddam Hussein-era intelligence officer who had been kidnapped and shot.
The bloodshed capped a week in which hundreds of Iraqis were killed despite a security crackdown that targeted some of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods.
A growing number of members of Congress are calling for either a shift in the Bush administration's Iraq strategy or a timetable for beginning a substantial withdrawal of American forces. Although administration officials say progress is being made in Iraq, U.S. commanders have increased U.S. troop levels by about 13,000 over the past five weeks, to 140,000, mainly due to increased violence in the Baghdad area.
In response to the Pentagon's report Friday, the Senate's top Democrat, Harry Reid of Nevada, said it showed the Bush administration is "increasingly disconnected from the facts on the ground in Iraq."
"It is time for a new direction to end the war in Iraq, win the war on terror, andgive the American people the real security they deserve," Reid said.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who recently returned from a visit to Iraq, said the report squared with what he saw there.
"Iraq is tipping toward civil war," Reed said.
The report covered the period since the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki was seated May 20.
From that date through Aug. 11, the average number of attacks per week against Americans and Iraqis was 792, up 24 percent from the previous period of Feb. 11 to May 19. The 792 figure was the highest for any counting period since the war began. The previous high was 641 in the Feb. 11 to May 19 period.
"The last quarter, as you know has been rough," Rodman said. "The levels of violence are up and the sectarian quality of the violence is particularly acute and disturbing."
When asked if they believe "things will be better" in the future, the percentage of Iraqis responding positively has dropped over the past year - whether they were asked to look ahead six months, one year or five years - according to polling data cited in the report.
"The security situation is currently at its most complex state since the initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom," the report said, using the U.S. military's name for the war that was launched in March 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein.
the ADMINISTRATOR
Posts: 1233
(9/19/06 13:57) Reply
Re: RESUME of GEORGE W. BUSHPresident Bush appealed today to the people of Iran to take control of their future and said their leaders were squandering resources in a quest for nuclear weapons.
[Wow the President and myself agree: just imagine how New Orleans would look right now if the Republicans spent a billion dollars a day on reconstruction instead of murdering innocent children, women, and men in Iraq.]
["squandering resources": Indeed]
[Hezbollah is re-building Beruit whilst New Orleans, over a year later, is worse off now than it was straight after the hurricane]
[Shame on the President; and shame on you, the United States of America for allowing it]
[Impeach the President of the United States]Edited by: XSha Tell at: 9/19/06 14:01
Email This To a Friend
Topic Commands
Click to receive email notification of replies 
Click to stop receiving email notification of replies 
