sane time sane place

President Bush has again demonstrated this administration's uncanny ability to deceive without actually lying. We have been told that we have transported terror suspects to CIA "black sites" at locations around the world. The president reassured Americans that "America doesn't torture", and that he has not, and will not, authorize torture. That sounds great. Does the assertion mean that the terror suspects held at the black sites were not tortured- no. The president did not say that foreign nationals did not engage in torture. If foreign interrogators were used at the black sites, they would not require "authorization" from the POTUS. It should be noted that the president also did not state that Americans did not torture. He said specifically that America doesn't torture. He admitted that tough interogation methods were used at the CIA sites. All experts on interrogation agree that these tough interrogation methods are nonproductive at best, and counterproductive at worst. The president said that a number of terror plots were stopped as a result of information gained from the held suspects. The American people have no way of knowing if that in fact is true.

The Bush administration has done a superb job of high-jacking language. Early in his first term president Bush sat in the Rose Garden and promised that he would sign a bill renewing the ban on assault weapons. This certainly was seen as good news by Americans in favor of gun control. The president did not say that he would insist that the legislation reach his desk. He did not even say that he would push for the legislation. At the time that he uttered his promise, he knew that the legislation would never reach his desk. The ban on assault weapons was allowed to expire. The president made a promise that he knew he would not have to keep. In the bargain the president benefitted politically from the act of making the hollow promise.

The estate tax which affects very few American households was re-named the death tax- and death affects everyone. Legislators in favor of moving our troops to Kuwait are accused of wanting to cut and run. The most effective use of deceptive language was demonstrated in the ramp-up to the war in Iraq. The administration never claimed that Iraq participated in or abetted the attacks of 9/11/01. By consistently using the terms "Iraq" and "9/11" in the same sentences, the administration was able to convince over 40% of Americans that Iraq was involved.

Although the Bush administration have used deceptive language masterfully, they have been guilty of outright dishonesty. The slate of accusations prepared for Colin Powell to present to the UN was rife with dishonest statements. The Bush administration's entire case for going to war against Iraq was based on flimsy intelligence that was communicated as hard cold fact. It was never conveyed that the US believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It was communicated that they knew that Iraq possessed these weapons. Doubt and uncertainty never were included in the equation. This fact is chilling because all intelligence is graded according to credibility. Some of the intelligence that was made public prior to the invasion of Iraq did include caveats that referenced the dubious reliability of some of the sources. These caveats were redacted by the Bush administration when they used them to bolster their case for war.

The Bush team might not be liars, but they are masters of decptive use of language.

Mr. Snow, the shiny new Press Secretary, did a pathetic job of defending Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Secretary Snow cited the "catastrophic success" of the invasion as the cause of the post-invasion problems. According to Mr. Snow, the Secretary of Defense could not be faulted with the problems that surfaced after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, ie. Abu Ghraib, 2600 Americans deaths etc. Secretary Snow also credited Rumsfeld with attempting to remake the military to better suit the post-Cold War requirements. It is true that we need a different military dynamic to address the current challenges. It is also true that there will be strong opposition to said changes. The military that is needed today does not require the level of spending on high-priced military toys that had been the norm during the Cold War. Using aircraft carriers and atomic submarines is not a cost efficient means of combating global terrorism. That was one of the downsides to the Afghanistan conflict. It wasn't expensive enough. Iraq was a much more attractive conflict because it would create the need for more defense spending- not only to conduct the war, but to also replace the equipment destroyed and weaponry used. To use Rumsfeld's own words, in Iraq there existed "real targets" as opposed to the mud huts that comprised the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
There is no credible defense for the actions and statements of Secretary Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld's critics need only replay the infamous press conference during which he was asked by a soldier why they had to rummage through dumps in order to find metal to use as armor for their ill-equipped Hummers. Rumsfeld's answer of "going to war with the army you have" quote should have been blasted out of the water the day it was uttered. There have been a lot of WWII analogies being misused lately. As concerns Rumsfeld there is an apt WWII analogy. When we were attacked at Pearl Harbor we were thrust into WWII with the army we had. We were not thrust into the Iraq war. Iraq was not an imminent threat to the USA. We had the luxury of choosing when we would invade. The US had enough latitude to decide the date of the invasion based on weather. No professional military would ever enter a conflict prepared for a best-case scenario (as we did in Iraq). Our military is considered the best in the world. As such, the military leaders should have insisted that we not invade until we were prepared for the worst-case scenario. Had this been done, the lives of every soldier killed in a lightly armored Hummer could have been saved. We did not invade Iraq prepared for the worst. We did not schedule the invasion based on preparedness. The timetable was set by non-military members of the Bush administration. The invasion of Iraq mirrors the posture of the Bush administration-arrogant and ill-informed.

Labor Day- The holiday should be suspended during the Bush administration's tenure in Washington. The individuals and entities that have benefited from the current leadership are far removed from any labor. We are in an economic condition in which organized labor is needed as much as it was during the early decades of the Industrial Revolution. No, children are not working 14 hours/day in factories, but husbands and wives are holding down two or more jobs and working well over 40 hours a week, and are barely getting by. In most cases they do not have health benefits. And yet our Secretary of Labor was on NBC this weekend praising the ways the Bush administration has furthered the workers' cause. It seems that with one exception, everything is just fine as far as the "worker's" situation. The one problem is that so many American blue-collar workers need education and retraining. There is no explanation as to what "knowledge-based" employment opportunities await the newly retrained workers. Thus the American worker needs to seek education and aquisition of skills for positions that are ethereal for lack of a better word.
Organized labor conveniently shot itself in the feet during the 20th century. The exploitationpower and ties to organized crime sullied organized labor. This sordid reputation has made the rebirth of workers' groups slow. The fact that Wal-Mart can be unionized in Communist China but not in America is a telling. fact.
It would be nice to think that the people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, and those standing at the base of the ladder awaiting their chance to climb, could have some glimmer of hope for the near future. But the fact remains that an incredibly small percentage of this nation has amassed an enormous portion of the wealth pie.

Fascism:
A philosophy or system of government that is marked by stringent social and economic control, a strong, centralized government usually headed by a dictator, and often a policy of belligerent nationalism." (From The American Heritage Dictionary).

Hmmmm-does this definition better describe the Islamic terrorists, or the Bush administration?