1. "In 2002, troops from the 5th Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures."
-Shifts from bin Laden hunt evoke questions, Dave Moniz and Steven Komarow, USA Today,Mar 29, 2004. pg. A.04 (link to article abstract)
2. ""Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," President Bush told other governments in the first days following the slaughter of more than 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania"
-'With Us or Against Us' Ultimatum Made Friends and Enemies, Fox News, Thursday, September 05, 2002
3. "This team is tough. You cross them and they go after you and raise questions about you and your credibility rather than what you have to say," said Thomas Mann, a scholar with the Brookings Institution."
-Newsview: Cross Bush, face payback, Saturday, March 27, 2004, By Tom Raum, AP Writer (printed in Seattle Post-Intelligencer et al)
4. Rumsfeld portrayed Iraq as a pending, immediate danger and then tried to lie about it
-video; hosted by Moveon.org, a great resource
5. "I find it outrageous that the President is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it."
-Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism adviser, on 60 minutes
6. "In his new book, "Worse Than Watergate," John Dean, of Watergate fame, says, "I've been watching all the elements fall into place for two possible political catastrophes, one that will take the air out of the Bush-Cheney balloon and the other, far more disquieting, that will take the air out of democracy.""
-This Isn't America, By PAUL KRUGMAN, New York Times, March 30, 2004
7. “I’m disappointed but not surprised that the President would try to trade on the heroism of those fire fighters in the September 11 attacks. The use of 9/11 images are hypocrisy at its worst... Bush is calling on the biggest disaster in our country’s history, and indeed in the history of the fire service, to win sympathy for his campaign."
-read the International Association of Firefighters' statement and watch the ad
8.""Haven't we already given money to rich people... Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle?" Suskind says Bush asked... O'Neill also said in the book that President Bush "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people" during Cabinet meetings.
One-on-one meetings were no different, O'Neill told the network. Describing his first such meeting with Bush, O'Neill said, "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage [him] on. ... I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just listening. It was mostly a monologue.""
-CNN.com - O'Neill: Bush planned Iraq invasion before 9/11
9. "the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking—discussions by fairly senior people who meant Medicaid but were talking Medicare; near-instant shifts from discussing any actual policy pros and cons to discussing political communications, media strategy, et cetera. Even quite junior staff would sometimes hear quite senior staff pooh-pooh any need to dig deeper for pertinent information on a given issue...
This gave rise to what you might call Mayberry Machiavellis—staff, senior and junior, who consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing every issue to its simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible."
-Esquire: Feature Story: the DiIulio Letter
10."Bush provided amusing descriptions of photographs Wednesday night during the annual dinner of the Radio and Television News Correspondents Association. Some showed the president in awkward poses as he looked behind furniture in the Oval Office. For those photos, Bush told the audience, ``Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere ... nope, no weapons over there ... maybe under here?''"
-Guardian Unlimited, "Bush's Joke About WMD Draws Criticism
11. Over 8,000 dead in Iraq; how many more?
-While US Secretary of State Colin Powell has admitted that evidence he submitted to the United Nations to justify war on Iraq may have been wrong.
12. Let me ask you a couple of questions. Who is the AP person?
Q I am.
THE PRESIDENT: You are?
Q Sir, in regard to --
THE PRESIDENT: Who are you talking to?
Q Mr. President, in regard to...
-A jerk, even according to the official white house website's transcript
13. "I quit drinking in '86."
-George Bush, according to his own website. Apparently, that doesn't include at weddings in 1992 as shown in this video. Oh yeah, and that was after he received a DUI.
14. "A review of Bush's military records shows that Bush enjoyed preferential treatment as the son of a then-congressman, when he walked into a Texas Guard unit in Houston two weeks before his 1968 graduation from Yale and was moved to the top of a long waiting list. It was an era when service in the Guard was a coveted assignment, often associated with efforts to avoid active duty in Vietnam. Bush was accepted for pilot training after having scored only 25 percent on the pilot's aptitude test, the lowest acceptable grade. In 2000, the Boston Globe examined a period from May 1972 to May 1973 and found no record that Bush performed any Guard duties, either in Alabama or Houston, although he was still enlisted."
-"Bush's Guard Service In Question," The Washington Post
15. "There was no reason for us to become involved in Iraq recently... That was an invasion based on lies and misinterpretations from London and from Washington, claiming falsely that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, claiming falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction... And I think that President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair probably knew that many of the allegations were based on uncertain intelligence and when a decision was made to invade Iraq then people said 'let's find a reason to do so'... I think that Bush was inclined to finish an invasion that his father had precipitated against Iraq."
-2002 Nobel Peace Prize Winner and former President Jimmy Carter, in an interview with Britain's The Independent
16. "I believe that the United Nations alone can authorize the use of military force across internationally recognized borders. Any NATO action not approved by the United Nations should therefore be considered illegal — including "preventive wars" like that in Iraq. However, should this new principle of the preventive use of force come to be seen as legitimate in international affairs, Russia will have no choice but to adapt as well, and to act in order to ensure its national interests."
-Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, op-ed to the New York Times, April 7, 2004
17. "President George W. Bush said on Monday his administration would maintain its policy of pre-empting potential security threats despite growing doubts over the adequacy of US intelligence to assess such dangers... Mr Bush made clear he would not rethink the approach after Friday's damning report by the Senate intelligence committee. The report concluded that the Central Intelligence Agency made serious errors in asserting that Saddam Hussein's Iraq possessed or was developing weapons of mass destruction. While acknowledging that the report "has identified some shortcomings in our intelligence capabilities", he said that would not cause him to reconsider the approach that led the US to invade Iraq. "America must remember the lessons of September the 11th," Mr Bush said. "We must confront serious dangers before they fully materialise."
-Bush asserts pre-emptive strikes policy, Financial Times, July 12, 2004
18. "The union of a man and woman in marriage is the most enduring and important human institution... I urge members of the House and Senate to pass, and send to the states for ratification, an amendment that defines marriage in the United States as a union of a man and woman as husband and wife."
-Bush On Gay Marriage: Uncivil, CBS News, July 13, 2004
19. "The project, CAPPS II (short for Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System II), was a cornerstone of the Bush administration's plans to prevent terror in the skies. It scared the hell of out Scannell, a former Army signals intelligence officer, war correspondent and online agitator... "My first reaction was, 'We need to get the fuck out of this place.' I had lived in Prague. I had lived in Berlin. I'd seen this movie before. We were in a pot. And that water was getting hotter," Scannell recalled. "But my wife said, 'I'm staying.' And I said, 'If we're staying, I'm going to stay and fight.'""
-"The Man Who Helped Kill CAPPS II," Wired News, July 19, 2004
20."President Bush on Tuesday evening called for the renewal of the USA Patriot Act, the controversial law that has expanded Internet surveillance powers for police and partially expires next year.... permits police to conduct warrantless Internet surveillance with the permission of a network operator... to share the contents of wiretaps or Internet surveillance with the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other security agencies... Section 215, became well known after some librarians alerted visitors that it permits the FBI to learn what books a patron has read and what Web sites a patron visited--and prohibits the recipient of such an order from disclosing that it exists... permits "sneak and peek" warrants, which authorize surreptitious searches of homes and businesses..."
-"Bush wants Patriot Act renewed," CNET News.com, January 20, 2004
21. "The likely new president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, says he admires the United States, but not its occasional arrogance... "I think there are magnificent things that exist in the U.S. as well as some fairly horrific things," he said."
-"Incoming EC leader calls U.S. 'arrogant'," July 14, 2004, United Press International
22."The Bush administration has proposed scuttling a Clinton administration rule that put nearly 60 million acres of national forest largely off-limits to logging, mining or other development... "This doesn't ensure that a single acre of roadless area gets protected," said Marty Hayden, legislative director with Earthjustice... After three years of gradually retreating from the sweeping preservationist rule, which covered about 30 percent of the 191 million acres... of national forests and was embraced by environmentalists, the administration decisively rejected it, substituting a process that makes state officials the moving force in deciding whether to log or to conserve forests."
-"Bush seeks to let states decide fate of forests", International Herald Tribune, July 14, 2004
23. "Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt slammed a Bush administration plan to open nearly 400,000 more acres for oil and gas drilling in Alaska... Under the proposal, development would be open on about 96 percent of the 4.6 million acres of the region along the state's North Slope. The original plan opened 87 percent of the area, protecting vulnerable wildlife habitat, including Teshekpuk Lake in northern Alaska. "That lake is the biological heart of the western Arctic," Babbitt said... Developing it would disturb a delicate ecological system that has fed subsistence hunters for hundreds of years, said John Schoen, a senior scientist with the National Audubon Society's Alaska chapter. "If this area is degraded, the impacts will be felt not only in Alaska but in the lower 48 states, Mexico and Siberia."
-"Former Interior secretary bashes Bush administration NPR-A development plan," JuneauEmpire.com, June 30, 2004
24. "Bush gazed around the diamond-studded $800-a-plate crowd... "This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores," quipped the GOP standard-bearer. "Some people call you the elites; I call you my base."
-"Bush and GOre Do New York," CBS News, Oct. 20, 2000
25. "Any assertion that the Democratic candidates are out of the mainstream might easily be applied to the Republicans as well. In fact, if any of the four candidates on the national party tickets this year is out of the mainstream, it is Mr. Cheney, who in his last full term in the House was on the right flank of roughly 90 percent of his Republican colleagues."
-"Op-Chart: Where Do They Stand?", NY Times, July 26, 2004
26. "A campaign worker for President Bush said on Thursday American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones -- or pop a Prozac to make themselves feel better. "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?" said Susan Sheybani, an assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt... When told the Prozac comment had been overheard, Sheybani said: "Oh, I was just kidding."... Nearly 1.1 million jobs have been lost since Bush took office in January 2001."
-"Unhappy Workers Should Take Prozac --Bush Campaigner", Yahoo! News, July 29, 2004
27. "The mission in Iraq, which the Bush administration undertook in the name of protecting the American people, has cost 144.4 billion... One way the money could have been spent: 7.5 billion to safeguard our ports... 4 billion to expedite upgrading the coast buard fleet... for improved cargo security... to protect American commercial airliners from shoulder-fired missiles... for state-of-the-art baggage screening machines... to equip airports with walk-through explosives detectors...
-and that's just what we can do with 20% of the money spent on the war, "Safety Second", Op-Chart, NY Times, August 7, 2004
28. "When it comes to choosing a president, results matter," said Bush, who spent a week in self-imposed silence at his Texas ranch during the Democratic convention, which he summed up as a collection of "clever speeches" and "big promises."... White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush did not see the speech. "He went to sleep last night. That was a late speech," McClellan told reporters, but he said Bush had "read some of the coverage."
-"Bush Derides Kerry as Man of Few Achievements", Julyt 30, 2004
29. "Malaprop Medal: President Bush, who unveiled a bold new strategy of pre-emption. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," he said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.""
-Bush proves that 4 years in office hasn't improved his speaking ability, NY Times, August 8, 2004
30. "The Nunn-Lugar program to safeguard the material is one of the best schemes we have to protect ourselves... Yet President Bush has, incredibly, at various times even proposed cutting funds for it. He seems bored by this security effort, perhaps because it doesn't involve blowing anything up... Bush needs to display moral clarity about nuclear weapons, making them a focus of international opprobrium. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush is pursuing a new generation of nuclear bunker-buster bombs. That approach helps make nukes thinkable, and even a coveted status symbol, and makes us more vulnerable.
-Nicholas Kristof, "The Nuclear Shadow," NYTimes, August 14, 2004
31. "Re-activists like Priscilla Owen, President Bush's nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, rewrite the Texas parental notification statute in abortion cases, to make it vastly harder for young women to bypass parental consent. Re-activists like another Bush nominee, Janice Rogers Brown, have called the Supreme Court's shift toward defending New Deal legislation in 1937 the start of "the triumph of our socialist revolution.""
-"Activist, Schmactivist," Dahlia Lithwick, NYTimes, August 15, 2004
32. " With helicopters circling in the sky and tanks on the streets, the Iraqi government kicked off its much awaited national conference... Media invitations to the conference included a warning to don flak jackets and helmets while entering the conference location inside the area known as the international zone where American officials, Mr. Allawi and his government are based. A curfew for central Baghdad was issued for the hours of the conference... "This is a consequence of us giving sovereignty to Allawi but not capacity," Mr. Biden said... "This is a reflection of the failure of the administration's year-long effort after Saddam's statue came down."
-"Under Intense Security, Iraqis Gather for 3-Day Conference," NYTimes, August 15, 2004
33. ""We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security," Secretary Tom Ridge declared as he unleashed the latest terrorism scare... Then Ridge promptly heaped praise on his boss, who is campaigning as a "war president," for great "leadership" in fighting terrorism... Republicans persistently suggest that any criticism of President Bush is unpatriotic while we're at war. The president himself constantly flaunts his antiterrorism credentials. Democrats counter by questioning the president's motives and accusing him of fear-mongering... the alarm was based mostly on old data, much of it preceding the 9/11 attacks."
-"Bush paves rough patches with fear," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 12, 2004
34. "Mr. Peterson has been chairman of several corporations and of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and was secretary of commerce under President Richard M. Nixon... he puts the present administration in a class of its own. George W. Bush has discarded traditional Republican qualms against big government, replacing the old Democratic model of tax-and-spend with his own model of borrow-and-spend. Thanks to three unaffordable tax cuts and an unfinanced Medicare drug benefit that will eventually cost $2 trillion a decade, Mr. Peterson writes, ''this administration and the Republican Congress have presided over the biggest, most reckless deterioration of America's finances in history.""
-"While the Politicians Fiddle, America Goes Broke," Christopher Caldwell, NYTimes, August 12, 2004
35. "Tony Blair has snubbed George Bush's pleas to fly to the US and pick up his "war medal" ahead of the Presidential elections... he has refused for more than a year now and for good reason. He cannot possibly accept an award for the Iraq War when British and American troops continue to risk their lives there... A lot of us said at our last meeting we wanted John Kerry to win the Presidential election..."
-"Don't Medal," Sunday Mirror, August 22, 2004
36. "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has catapulted itself to the forefront of the presidential campaign. It has advanced its cause in a book, in a television advertisement and on cable news and talk radio shows, all in an attempt to discredit Mr. Kerry's war record, a pillar of his campaign... A series of interviews and a review of documents show a web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove."
-"Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Anti-Kerry Ad," NYTimes, August 20, 2004; also see this graphic explaining the web of connections and contradictory statements by those in the ads
37. ""Ask President Bush'' question-and-answer sessions with rapt Republican audiences... the questions are not hand grenades that detonate onto the evening news... in Beaverton, Ore., on Friday: "I'm wondering if I can get some inauguration tickets?'' Or consider this from Albuquerque on Wednesday: "Can I introduce my mother and mother-in-law, who are new citizens to this country?''... in Niceville, Fla., on Tuesday: "I'm 60 years old and I've voted Republican from the very first time I could vote. And I also want to say this is the very first time that I have felt that God was in the White House.''... Bush campaign officials readily say that they carefully screen the crowds by distributing tickets through campaign volunteers.... As of this coming Wednesday in Wisconsin, Mr. Bush will have had 12 such campaign forums, which is one less than the number of solo news conferences he has had in three and a half years in the White House."
-"On the Road, Bush Fields Softballs From the Faithful," NYTimes, August 16, 2004
38. ""President Bush's team exerts close control over admission to his campaign events. Dissenters and would-be hecklers are turned away, campaign officials say. On several occasions in recent weeks, Democrats who have gotten in have been ejected because they wore pro-Kerry T-shirts... By contrast, most of Kerry's events are open to the public... Sometimes protesters show up and try to disrupt his appearances. To get across their point that Kerry is a flip-flopper, they often clap flip-flop sandals over their heads, and chant, "Four more years!"... some Democrats who signed up to hear Vice President Dick Cheney speak near Albuquerque, N.M., were refused tickets unless they signed a pledge to endorse Bush. The Bush campaign described the measure as a security step designed to avoid a disruption it contended had been planned."
-"Bush Camp Controlling Admission to Events," August 16, 2004
39. "White House chief of staff Andrew Card whispered in the presidential ear of tragedies. Precisely what Card said is uncertain, but he reportedly told Bush - who already knew a commercial plane had struck the north tower of New York's World Trade Center - that the south tower also had been hit... Seconds passed in silence: 15, 30, maybe more... Bush picked up the book and read with the students for eight or nine minutes... Then he advised the kids to stay in school and told them to be good citizens, stepped away to confer with aides, returned to give Daniels a firm handshake, and left."
-"From A Whisper To A Tear," Tampa Tribune, September 1, 2002; see for the video of bush reading "The Pet Goat" to students for 5 full minutes after he's told the SECOND plane hit the WTCs
40. "...to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists - for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends."
-Attorney General John Ashcroft (a Bush appointee) in testimony to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, December 6, 2001
41. "Ashcroft must approve any subpoena of a journalist, so how do you explain the rash of subpoenas that Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney from Chicago, has doled out to Time magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post and NBC? Already one reporter -- Matthew Cooper from Time -- has been held in contempt by a federal judge for refusing to appear before the grand jury that Fitzgerald convened to investigate which Bush administration senior official(s) leaked a covert spy's identity to columnist Robert Novak."
-Bush's administration oversees a challenge to reporters' confidentiality of sources, "Attacking the Fourth Estate," Wired News, August 25, 2004
42. ""We will not sit to wait for what others will do to us," Shamkhani replied. "There are differences of opinion among military commanders. Some commanders believe a preventive military operation is not a strategy created by Americans, or is not limited to Americans. Any nation, if it feels threatened, may resort to that."... If the U.S. decides to take military action, "that moment will be the end of all our nuclear obligations," Shamkhani said, referring to Iran's cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency."
-Iranian defense minister Ali Shamkhani, "Iran hints at pre-emption over threat from U.S.," August 20, 2004
43. "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know"
-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, another bush appointee, "Rum remark wins Rumsfeld an award", December 2, 2003
44. "President Bush's rejection of the Kyoto agreement on global warming... joins the list. It is now getting quite long: missile defence, which has upset some European allies; Russia and China; his rejection of immediate talks with North Korea, which South Korea wanted; air strikes on Iraq, of which not all members of the Security Council approved; And a hands off approach to Northern Ireland and the Middle East, which concern some Irish and Palestinian activists."
-"Kyoto: Why did the US pull out?," March 30, 2001
45. "President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap... the administration announced that on Oct. 1 it wants to roll back recent modest increases in monthly imminent-danger pay (from $225 to $150) and family-separation allowance (from $250 to $100) for troops getting shot at in combat zones."
-"Editorial: Nothing but lip service," July 2, 2003
46. "Speaking at a political fund-raising event in Texas Thursday night, Bush's message was very personal. "After all, this is a guy who tried to kill my dad at one time," he said, referring to an Iraqi plot to kill former President George Bush after the 1991 Gulf War."
-"Is President Bush Politicizing the Prospect of War?," ABC News
47. "John Ellis is not unlike any other American journalist in wanting to be first with big news. At the helm of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Network's election night decision team, he achieved the now dubious distinction of being the first to call Florida - and the presidential election - for George W. Bush. The numbers he was working from were not official, but the viewers did not know that. Nor did they know that Ellis was very chummy with Bush - he's his first cousin... bragged to the New Yorker magazine that throughout what's come to be known as 'Indecision 2000' he was constantly on the phone with his cousins George and Florida's Governor 'Jebbie', tipping them off with the latest internal projections on the voting... his decision to call it for 'Dubya' on Fox at 2:16am forced the hand of competing networks... the fateful decision has proved convenient for Republicans in the ongoing PR war, say media watchers, creating a lasting impression that Bush 'won' the White House - and all the legal wrangling down in Florida is just a case of Democratic 'snippiness'."
-"Cousin John's calls tipped election tally," November 19, 2000
48. "President George Bush offered an unprecedented admission that he might have "miscalculated" events in post-war Iraq... The President acknowledged he had made "a miscalculation of what the conditions would be". In the interview with the New York Times - Mr Bush's first in three and a half years in office with the country's most influential newspaper - he refused any further speculation on what had gone wrong with the occupation - in which more than 800 US troops have died since Mr Bush's now infamous "Mission Accomplished" appearance on an aircraft carrier on 1 May 2003."
-"Bush admits he may have misjudged post-war state of Iraq," August 28, 2004
49. "President Bush picked the 28th anniversary of the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion to deny U.S. funds to international family planning groups involved in abortion. In a statement read to thousands of participants in the annual "March for Life" in Washington, D.C., Bush pledged "to work toward a day when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law." Bush issued an executive order Monday explicitly scrapping the Clinton Administration's policy of funding international nongovernmental organizations that offer abortion counseling."
-"Abortion 'Gag Rule' Returning Bush limits international aid," January 22, 2001
50. ""Economic growth is strong and getting stronger," Bush told a gathering of minority journalists after the jobs number was released... all evidence suggests that average Americans are worse off today than they were four years ago... When Bush took office on Jan. 20, 2001, the Dow Jones industrial average was at 10,587.59. It closed Tuesday at 9,944.67... the unemployment rate was 4.2 percent. It's now 5.5 percent, according to the Labor Department... U.S. consumer debt totaled almost $1.7 trillion. It's now $2.038 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve... bankruptcy filings during the previous year totaled almost 1.3 million, down 5 percent from a year before. By Dec. 31, 2003, bankruptcies had hit a record of nearly 1.7 million, up 5.2 percent from 2002, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute... the federal budget had been balanced for three straight years and was, in the 2000 fiscal year, running a surplus of $236 billion -- the largest in U.S. history. The White House is projecting a record budget deficit this year of $445 billion."
-"Economy is Bush's downfall," August 11, 2004
Credit: many leads occurred from columns written by others (especially NYT op-ed) or books (go Michael Moore), but anything cited here has been found in the primary source i've cited by me.
This list was started on 3/30/04 and should not in any way be considered inclusive of all reasons to vote for Kerry:)
Please send me any links to mainstream news clearly illustrating a reason to send Bush back to Crawford and I'll include it in the list.
I won't be including any pro-Bush quotes sent in: mainstream media is doing more than a good enough job at getting the official state message out:)
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