1,001 Reasons Not To Vote For Bush (Vol. 89)
881. It's that anti-democracy thing again. Campaign Extra! provides this telling quote by Philadelphia politician John Perzel (in U.S. News and World Report) on what the Bush campaign sees as the key to success: "The Kerry campaign needs to come out with humongous numbers here in Philadelphia. It's important for me to keep that number down."
882. It's not just the human cost of war that keeps rising. From an Oct. 26, 2004, Washington Post article: "The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year, Pentagon and congressional officials said yesterday."
883. The by-now-obligatory reference to erroneous administration statements on Iraq, from that Oct. 26, 2004, Washington Post article: "The new numbers underscore that the war is going to be far more costly and intense, and last longer, than the administration first suggested."
884. The Sunday Herald reported Oct. 24, 2004: "Coalition claims that Iraq may still be able to hold elections in January are seriously undermined by secret intelligence material passed to the Sunday Herald which reveals the full extent of the resistance in the country. Far from a limited number of pro-Saddam resistance groups fighting coalition forces, well-funded cells and militias representing a spectrum of Islamic groups are now spread across Iraq."
885. From that Oct. 24, 2004, Sunday Herald article: "The increasing number of anti-coalition militias are believed to receive funds from wealthy Saudi donors and to be in receipt of funds from money placed in Syrian banks before the fall of Saddam."
886. Saudi Arabia. Hmmmm. Isn't that a country with ties to most of the 9/11 hijackers? And isn't that a country with ties to the administration?
887. In his Oct. 26, 2004, column in the New York Times, Paul Krugman sums things up nicely: "Although President Bush's campaign is based almost entirely on his self-proclaimed leadership in that war, his officials have thrown a shroud of secrecy over any information that might let voters assess his performance."
888. Under that shroud, it's not pretty. As Krugman writes in that Oct. 26, 2004, column: "Administration officials have known about the looting of Al Qaqaa for at least six months, and probably much longer. But they didn't let the I.A.E.A. inspect the site after the war, and pressured the Iraqis not to inform the agency about the loss. They now say that they didn't want our enemies - that is, the people who stole the stuff - to know it was missing. The real reason, obviously, was that they wanted the news kept under wraps until after Nov. 2."
889. Maureen Farrell offers undecided voters 101 "points to ponder" before Election Day. This is No. 8: "FBI officials complained after Bush took office, intelligence agencies were instructed to 'back off' from investigations involving other members of the Bin Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan."
890. And in Maureen Farrell's list, this is No. 48: "School teachers threatened with arrest and tossed out of a Bush rally for wearing T-shirts that read 'Protect our civil liberties.' "


- posted by Boots @ 10/26/2004 11:42:00 AM