George Walker Bush.

    43rd president of the United States.

    first ever with a criminal record.

    our third story tonight,

    his presidency: eight years in eight minutes.

    early in 2001 the U.S. fingered Al Qaeda

    for the bombing of the USS Cole

    Bush counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke

    had a plan to take down Al Qaeda.

    instead by February the NSC

    had already discussed invading Iraq,

    and had a plan for post-Saddam Iraq.

    by March 5 Bush had a map ready for Iraqi oil exploration

    and a list of companies.

    Al Qaeda?

    Rice told Clarke not to give Bush a lot of long memos.

    not a big reader.

    

    August 6, 2001

    a CIA analyst briefs Bush on vacation:

    "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S."

    Bush takes no action tells the briefer - quote

    all right, you've covered your ass now.

    next month Clarke requests

    using new predator drones to kill Bin Laden

    the Pentagon and CIA

    say no.

    September 11th

    Bush remains seated for several minutes

    to avoid scaring school children

    by getting up and leaving.

    he then flies around the country

    and promises quote a full scale investigation to find

    those folks who did it

    Rumsfeld says Afghanistan does not have enough targets

    we've got to do Iraq.

    when the CIA traps Bin Laden at Tora Bora

    it asks for 800 rangers to cut off his escape

    Bush outsources the job to Pakistanis

    sympathetic to the Taliban

    Bin Laden

    gets away

    in February General Tommy Franks tells a visiting Senator

    Bush is moving equipment out of Afghanistan

    so he can invade Iraq.

    one of the men who prepped Rice for her testimony

    that Bush did not ignore pre 9-11 warnings

    later explains quote we cherry picked things

    to make it look like the president

    had been actually concerned about Al Qaeda

    they didn't give a bleep about Al Qaeda

    July and Britain's intel chief says Bush is

    fixing intelligence and facts around the policy to take out Saddam

    January 03

    Bush and Blair agree to invade in March

    Mr. Bush still telling us he has not decided

    telling Blair they should paint an airplane in UN colors

    fly it over Iraq and provoke a response

    a pretext for invasion

    the man who said it would take several hundred thousand troops

    fired

    the man who said it would cost more than a hundred billion

    fired

    the man who revealed Bush's yellowcake lie

    smeared

    his wife's covert status

    exposed

    the White House liars who did it

    and covered it up

    not fired

    one convicted

    Bush commutes his sentence

    then in Iraq, stuff happens:

    Iraq's army, disbanded

    the government de-Baathified

    200,000 weapons, billions of dollars just

    lost

    foreign mercenaries immunized from justice

    political hacks run the Green Zone

    religious cleansing forcing one out of six Iraqis from their homes

    Abu Ghraib

    the insurgency

    Al Qaeda in Iraq

    other stuff does not happen:

    WMD

    post-war planning

    body armor

    vehicular armor

    the payoff?

    oil

    and billions for Halliburton, Blackwater and other companies

    while Mr. Bush denies VA healthcare to 450,000 veterans

    tries to raise their healthcare fees

    blocks the new G.I. Bill

    and increases his own power with the USA PATRIOT Act

    with the Military Commissions Act

    public orders exempting himself from a thousand laws

    and secretly from the Presidential Records Act

    The Geneva Conventions

    FISA

    sparking a mass rebellion at the Justice Department

    secret star chambers for terrorism suspects,

    overturned by Hamdan v Rumsfeld.

    denying habeas corpus,

    overturned by Boumediene v Bush.

    200 renditionings

    sleep deprivation

    abuse

    Rumsfeld warned in 2002 that he was torturing

    that it would jeopardize convictions

    out of 550 at Gitmo

    hundreds ultimately go free with no charges

    dozens are tortured

    eight fatally

    three are convicted

    on U.S. soil twelve hundred immigrants rounded up

    without due process

    without bail

    without court dates

    without a single charge of terrorism

    it wasn't just Mr. Bush no longer subject to the rule of law

    he slashed regulations on everyone from banks to mining companies

    appointed 98 lobbyists to oversee their own industries

    weakening emission standards for mercury

    and 650 different toxic chemicals

    regulators shared drugs

    and their beds

    with industry reps

    the Crandall Canyon mine owner told inspectors to back up

    because his buddy, Republican Mitch McConnell

    was sleeping with their boss

    McConnell's wife is Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao

    her agency overruled engineer concerns about Crandall Canyon

    and was found negligent

    after nine miners died in the collapse there

    Mr. Bush's hands off

    as Enron blacks out California

    doubling electric bills

    after months of rejecting price caps Mr. Bush bows to pressure

    the blackouts end

    Mr. Bush further deregulates commodity futures

    midwifing the birth of unregulated oil markets

    which just like Enron jack up prices to an all time high

    until Congress and both presidential candidates call for regulations

    and the prices fall

    deregulating financial services and lax enforcement of remaining rules

    created a housing bubble

    creating the mortgage crisis

    creating then a credit crisis

    devastating industries that rely on credit

    from student loans to car dealers

    firms that had survived the Great Depression could not survive Bush

    those that did got

    seven hundred billion dollars

    no strings, no transparency

    no idea whether it worked

    unlike the auto bailout

    which cut workers' salaries.

    a GOP memo called it

    a chance to punish unions

    but Bush failed even when his party and his patrons

    did not stand to profit

    investigators blamed management cost cutting communication

    for missed warnings about Columbia

    Bush administration convicts include

    sex offenders at Homeland Security

    convicted liars

    every kind of thief in the calendar

    and if you count things that were not prosecuted

    the vice president of the United States actually

    shot a man in the face

    the man apologized.

    Mr. Bush faked the truth

    with paid propaganda in Iraq

    on his education policy

    tried to silence the truth about global warming

    rocket fuel in our water

    industry influence on energy policy

    politicized the truth of science at NASA, the EPA,

    the National Cancer Institute, Fish and Wildlife

    and the FDA

    his lies

    exposed by whistleblowers from the cabinet down

    "complete BS" the treasury secretary said

    of Mr. Bush on his tax cuts.

    Rice's mushroom cloud

    Powell's mobile labs

    Iraq and 9-11

    Jack Abramoff

    Jessica Lynch

    Pat Tillman

    Pat Tillman again

    Pat Tillman, again.

    the air at Ground Zero

    most responders still suffering respiratory problems.

    global warming

    carbon emissions

    a Clear Skies initiative lowering air quality standards

    the Healthy Forests initiative increasing logging

    faith based initiatives

    the cost of medicare reform

    fired US attorneys

    politically synchronized terror alerts

    the surge causing insurgents to switch sides

    that abortion causes breast cancer

    that his first recession began under Clinton

    that he did not wiretap without warrants

    that we do not torture.

    that American citizen John Walker Lindh's rights

    were not violated

    that he refused the right to counsel

    heckuva job Brownie

    some survivors still in trailers

    New Orleans still at just two-thirds its usual population

    the lie that no one could have predicted the economic crisis

    except

    the economists who did

    no one could have predicted 9-11 except

    one ass-covering CIA analyst

    or thirty

    no one could have predicted the levee breach

    except literally

    Mr. Bill

    in a PSA that aired on TV a year before Katrina

    Bush actually admitted that he lied about not firing Rumsfeld

    because he did not want to tell the truth.

    look it up.

    all of it

    all of it and more leaving us with

    ten trillion in debt

    to pay for 31% more in discretionary spending

    the Iraq War

    a 1.3 trillion dollar tax cut

    median income down two thousand dollars

    three-quarters of all income gains under Bush

    going to the richest one percent

    unemployment up from 4.2 to 7.2 percent

    the Dow, down from ten thousand five hundred eighty seven

    to eighty two hundred seventy seven

    six million now more in poverty

    seven million more now without health care

    buying toxic goods from China

    deadly cribs

    outsourcing security to Dubai

    still unsecure in our ports

    and at our nuclear plants

    more dependent on foreign oil

    out of the international criminal court

    off the anti ballistic missle treaty

    military readiness and standards down

    with two unfinished wars

    a nuclear North Korea

    disengaged from the Palestinian problem

    destabilizing eastern european diplomacy with

    anti missile plans

    and unable to keep Russia out of Georgia

    2000 miles of Appalachian streams

    destroyed by rubble from mountaintop mining

    at his last G-8 summit,

    he actually bid farewell to other world leaders

    saying quote - goodbye from the world's greatest polluter

    consistently undermining historic American reverence

    for the institutions that empower us

    education, now "academic elites"

    and the law, "activist judges"

    capping jury awards

    and Bin Laden?

    living today unmolested in a Pakistani safe haven

    created by a truce endorsed and defended by George W. Bush

    and among all the gifts he gave to Bin Laden

    the most awful, the most damaging not just to America

    but to the American ideal

    was to further Bin Laden's goal

    by making us act out of fear rather than fortitude

    leaving us with precious little to cling to tonight

    save the one thing that might yet suffice:

    hope.

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http://www.truthout.org/011809Z