BUSH ATROCITIES ARTICLE 2
2. 100 Reasons Not to Vote for George Bush
IRAQ
1. The Bush Administration has spent more
than $140 billion on a war of choice in Iraq .
2. The Bush Administration sent troops into
battle without adequate body armor or
armored Humvees.
3. The Bush Administration ignored estimates
from Gen. Eric Shinseki that several
hundred thousand troops would be required
to secure Iraq .
4. Vice President Cheney said Americans
"will, in fact, be greeted as liberators" in Iraq .
5. During the Bush Administration's war in
Iraq , more than 1,000 US troops have lost
their lives and more than 7,000 have been
injured.
6. In May 2003 President Bush landed on
an aircraft carrier in a flight suit, stood
under a banner proclaiming Mission
Accomplished and triumphantly announced
that major combat operations were over in
Iraq . Asked if he had any regrets about the
stunt, Bush said, "You bet I'd do it again."
7. Vice President Cheney said that Iraq was
"the geographic base of the terrorists who
have had us under assault for many years,
but most especially on 9/11." The bipartisan
9/11 Commission found that Iraq had
no involvement in the 9/11 attacks and no
collaborative operational relationship with
Al Qaeda.
8. National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice said that high-strength aluminum
tubes acquired by Iraq were "only really
suited for nuclear weapons programs,"
warning, "we don't want the smoking gun to
be a mushroom cloud." The government's
top nuclear scientists had told the
Administration the tubes were "too narrow,
too heavy, too long" to be of use in developing
nuclear weapons and could be used for
other purposes.
9. The Bush Administration has spent just
$1.1 billion of the $18.4 billion Congress
approved for Iraqi reconstruction.
10. According to the Administration's handpicked
weapon's inspector, Charles Duelfer,
there is "no evidence that Hussein had
passed illicit weapons material to al Qaeda
or other terrorist organizations, or had any
intent to do so." After the release of the
report, Bush continued to insist, "There
was a risk–a real risk–that Saddam
Hussein would pass weapons, or materials,
or information to terrorist networks."
11. According to Duelfer, the UN inspections
regime put an "economic stranglehold"
on Hussein that prevented him from
developing a WMD program for more than
twelve years.
TERRORISM
12. After receiving a memo from the CIA in
August 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined
to Attack America ," President Bush continued
his monthlong vacation.
13. The Bush Administration failed to commit
enough troops to capture Osama bin
Laden when US forces had him cornered in
the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in
November 2001. Instead, they relied on
local warlords.
14. The Bush Administration secured less
nuclear material from sites around the
world vulnerable to terrorists in the two
years after 9/11 than were secured in the
two years before 9/11.
15. The Bush Administration underfunded
Nunn–Lugar–the program intended to keep
the former Soviet Union 's nuclear legacy
out of the hands of terrorists and rogue
states–by $45.5 million.
16. The Bush Administration has assigned
five times as many agents to investigate
Cuban embargo violations as it has to
track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam
Hussein's money.
17. According to Congressional Research
Service data, the Bush Administration has
underfunded security at the nation's ports
by more than $1 billion for fiscal year 2005.
18. The Bush Administration did not devote
the resources necessary to prevent a resurgence
in the production of poppies, the raw
material used to create heroin, in
Afghanistan–creating a potent new source
of financing for terrorists.
19. Vice President Cheney told voters that
unless they elect George Bush in November,
"we'll get hit again" by terrorists.
20. Even though an Al Qaeda training manual
suggests terrorists come to the United
States and buy assault weapons, the Bush
Administration did nothing to prevent the
expiration of the ban on them.
21. Despite repeated calls for reinforcements,
there are fewer experienced CIA
agents assigned to the unit dealing with
Osama bin Laden now than there were
before 9/11.
22. Before 9/11, John Ashcroft proposed
slashing counterterrorism funding by 23
percent.
23. Between January 20, 2001, and September
10, 2001, the Bush Administration
publicly mentioned Al Qaeda one time.
24. The Bush Administration granted the
9/11 Commission $3 million to investigate
the September 11 attacks and $50 million
to the commission that investigated the
Columbia space shuttle crash.
25. More than three years after 9/11, just 5
percent of all cargo–including cargo transported
on passenger planes–is screened.
NATIONAL SECURITY
26. During the Bush Administration, North
Korea quadrupled its suspected nuclear
arsenal from two to eight weapons.
27. The Bush Administration has openly
opposed the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty, undermining nuclear nonproliferation
efforts.
28. The Bush Administration has spent $7
billion this year–and plans to spend $10
billion next year–for a missile defense system
that has never worked in a test that
wasn't rigged.
29. The Bush Administration underfunded
the needs of the nation's first responders by
$98 billion, according to a Council on
Foreign Relations study.
CRONYISM AND CORRUPTION
30. The Bush Administration awarded a
multibillion-dollar no-bid contract to
Halliburton–a company that still pays Vice
President Cheney hundreds of thousands of
dollars in deferred compensation each year
(Cheney also has Halliburton stock
options). The company then repeatedly
overcharged the military for services,
accepted kickbacks from subcontractors
and served troops dirty food.
31. The Bush Administration told Saudi
Prince Bandar bin Sultan about plans to go
to war with Iraq before telling Secretary of
State Colin Powell.
32. The Bush Administration relentlessly
pushed an energy bill containing $23.5 billion
in corporate tax breaks, much of which would
have benefited major campaign contributors.
33. The Bush Administration paid Iraqiexile
and neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi
$400,000 a month for intelligence, including
fabricated claims about Iraqi WMDs. It
continued to pay him for months after discovering
that he was providing inaccurate
information.
34. The Bush Administration installed as
top officials more than 100 former lobbyists,
attorneys or spokespeople for the
industries they oversee.
35. The Bush Administration let disgraced
Enron CEO Ken Lay–a close friend of
President Bush–help write its energy policy.
36. Top Bush Administration officials
accepted $127,600 in jewelry and other
presents from the Saudi royal family in
2003, including diamond-and-sapphire
jewelry valued at $95,500 for First Lady
Laura Bush.
37. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom
Ridge awarded lucrative contracts to several
companies in which he is an investor,
including Microsoft, GE, Sprint, Pfizer and
Oracle.
38. President Bush used images of firefighters
carrying flag-draped coffins
through the rubble of the World Trade
Center to score political points in a campaign
advertisement.
THE ECONOMY
39. President Bush's top economic adviser,
Greg Mankiw, said the outsourcing of
American jobs abroad was "a plus for the
economy in the long run."
40. The Bush Administration turned a $236
billion surplus into a $422 billion deficit.
41. The Bush Administration implemented
regulations that made millions of workers
ineligible for overtime pay.
42. The Bush Administration has crippled
state budgets by underfunding federal
mandates by $175 billion.
43. President Bush is the first President
since Herbert Hoover to have a net loss of
jobs–around 800,000–over a four-year term.
44. The Bush Administration gave
Accenture a multibillion-dollar border control
contract even though the company
moved its operations to Bermuda to avoid
paying taxes.
45. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush
said, "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to
the bottom end of the spectrum." He passed
the tax cuts, but the top 20 percent of earners
received 68 percent of the benefits.
46. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush
promised to pay down the national
debt to a historically low level. As of
September 30, the national debt stood at
$7,379,052,696,330.32, a record high.
47. As major corporate scandals rocked the
nation's economy, the Bush Administration
reduced the enforcement of corporate tax
law-conducting fewer audits, imposing
fewer penalties, pursuing fewer prosecutions
and making virtually no effort to prosecute
corporate tax crimes.
48. The Bush Administration increased tax
audits for the working poor.
49. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush
promised to protect the Social Security surplus.
As President, he spent all of it.
50. The Bush Administration proposed
slashing funding for the largest federal
100 FACTS AND
1 OPINION: THE
NON-ARGUABLE
CASE AGAINST
THE BUSH
ADMINISTRATION
public housing program, putting 2 million
families in danger of losing their housing.
51. The Bush Administration did nothing to
prevent the minimum wage from falling to
an inflation-adjusted fifty-year low.
EDUCATION
52. The Bush Administration underfunded
the No Child Left Behind Act by $9.4 billion.
53. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush
promised to increase the maximum federal
scholarship, or Pell Grant, by 50 percent.
Instead, each year he has been in office he
has frozen or cut the maximum scholarship
amount.
54. The Bush Administration's Secretary of
Education, Rod Paige, called the National
Education Association–a union of teachers
–a "terrorist organization."
HEALTHCARE
55. The Bush Administration, in violation of
the law, refused to allow Medicare actuary
Richard Foster to tell members of Congress
the actual cost of their Medicare bill. Instead,
they repeated a figure they knew was $100
billion too low.
56. The nonpartisan GAO concluded the Bush
Administration created illegal, covert propaganda
–in the form of fake news reports–to
promote its industry-backed Medicare bill.
57. The Bush Administration stunted
research that could lead to new treatments
for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes,
spinal injuries, heart disease and muscular
dystrophy by placing severe restrictions on
the use of federal dollars for embryonic
stem-cell research.
58. The Bush Administration reinstated the
"global gag rule," which requires foreign
NGOs to withhold information about legal
abortion services or lose US funds for family
planning.
59. The Bush Administration authorized
twenty companies that have been charged
with fraud at the federal or state level to offer
Medicare prescription drug cards to seniors.
60. The Bush Administration created a prescription
drug card for Medicare that locks
seniors into one card for up to a year but
allows the corporations offering the cards to
change their prices once a week.
61. The Bush Administration blocked efforts
to allow Medicare to negotiate cheaper prescription
drug prices for seniors.
62. At the behest of the french fry industry,
the Bush Administration USDA changed their
definition of fresh vegetables to include
frozen french fries.
63. In a case before the Supreme Court, the
Bush Administration sided with HMOs–arguing
that patients shouldn't be allowed to sue
HMOs when they are improperly denied
treatment. With the Administration's help, the
HMOs won.
64. The Bush Administration went to court to
block lawsuits by patients who were injured
by defective prescription drugs and medical
devices.
65. President Bush signed a Medicare law
that allows companies that reduce healthcare
benefits for retirees to receive substantial
subsidies from the government.
66. Since President Bush took office, more
than 5 million people have lost their health
insurance.
67. The Bush Administration blocked a proposal
to ban the use of arsenic-treated lumber
in playground equipment, even though it
conceded it posed a danger to children.
68. One day after President Bush bragged
about his efforts to help seniors afford
healthcare, the Administration announced
the largest dollar increase of Medicare premiums
in history.
69. The Bush Administration–at the behest of
the tobacco industry–tried to water down a
global treaty that aimed to help curb smoking.
70. The Bush Administration has spent $270
million on abstinence-only education programs
even though there is no scientific evidence
demonstrating that they are effective
in dissuading teenagers from having sex or
reducing the transmission of sexually transmitted
diseases.
71. The Bush Administration slashed funding
for programs that suggested ways, other than
abstinence, to avoid sexually transmitted
diseases.
ENVIRONMENT
72. The Bush Administration gutted clean-air
standards for aging power plants, resulting in
at least 20,000 premature deaths each year.
73. The Bush Administration eliminated protections
on more than 200 million acres of
public land.
74. President Bush broke his promise to
place limits on carbon dioxide emissions, an
essential step in combating global warming.
75. Days after 9/11, The Bush Administration
told people living near Ground Zero that the
air was safe–even though they knew it wasn't
–subjecting hundreds of people to unnecessary,
debilitating ailments.
76. The Bush Administration created a massive
tax loophole for SUVs–allowing, for
example, the write-off of the entire cost of a
new Hummer.
77. The Bush Administration put former coalindustry
big shots in the government and let
them roll back safety regulations, putting
miners at greater risk of black lung disease.
78. The Bush Administration said that even
though the weed killer atrazine was seeping
into water supplies–creating, among other
bizarre creatures, hermaphroditic frogs–there
was no reason to regulate it.
79. The Bush Administration has proposed
cutting the budget of the Environmental
Protection Agency by $600 million next year.
80. President Bush broke his campaign
promise to end the maintenance backlog at
national parks. He has provided just 7 percent
of the funds needed, according to
National Park Service estimates.
RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES
81. Since 9/11, Attorney General John
Ashcroft has detained 5,000 foreign nationals
in antiterrorism sweeps; none have been
convicted of a terrorist crime.
82. The Bush Administration ignored pleas
from the International Committee of the Red
Cross to stop the abuse of prisoners in US
custody.
83. In violation of international law, the Bush
Administration hid prisoners from the Red
Cross so the organization couldn't monitor
their treatment.
84. The Bush Administration, without ever
charging him with a crime, arrested US citizen
José Padilla at an airport in Chicago,
held him in a naval brig in South Carolina
for two years, denied him access to a
lawyer and prohibited any contact with his
friends and family.
85. President Bush's top legal adviser wrote
a memo to the President advising him that he
can legally authorize torture.
86. At the direction of Bush Administration
officials, the FBI went door to door questioning
people planning on protesting at the 2004
political conventions.
87. The Bush Administration refuses to support
the creation of an independent commission
to investigate the abuse of foreign
prisoners in American custody. Instead,
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
selected the members of a commission to
review the conduct of his own department.
FLIP FLOPS
88. President Bush opposed the creation of
the 9/11 Commission before he supported
it, delaying an essential inquiry into one
of the greatest intelligence failures in
American history.
89. President Bush said gay marriage was a
state issue before he supported a constitutional
amendment banning it.
90. President Bush said he was committed
to capturing Osama bin Laden "dead or alive"
before he said, "I truly am not that concerned
about him."
91. President Bush said we had found
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, before
he admitted we hadn't found them.
92. President Bush said, "You can't distinguish
between Al Qaeda and Saddam when
you talk about the war on terror," before he
admitted Saddam had no role in 9/11.
BIOGRAPHY
93. George Bush didn't come close to meeting
his commitments to the National Guard.
Records show he performed no service in a
six-month period in 1972 and a three-month
period in 1973.
94. In June 1990 George Bush violated federal
securities law when he failed to inform
the SEC that he had sold 200,000 shares of
his company, Harken Energy. Two months
later the company reported significant losses
and by the end of that year the stock had
dropped from $3 to $1.
95. When asked at an April 2004 press conference
to name a mistake he made during
his presidency, Bush couldn't think of one.
SECRECY
96. The Bush Administration refuses to release
twenty-seven pages of a Congressional report
that allegedly detail the Saudi Arabian government's
connections to the 9/11 hijackers.
97. Last year the Bush Administration spent
$6.5 billion creating 14 million new classified
documents and securing old secrets–the
highest level of spending in ten years.
98. The Bush Administration spent $120
classifying documents for every $1 it spent
declassifying documents.
99. The Bush Administration has spent millions
of dollars and defied numerous court
orders to conceal from the public who participated
in Vice President Cheney's 2001 energy
task force.
100. The Bush Administration–reversing
years of bipartisan tradition–refuses to
answer questions from Democratic members
of Congress about how the White House is
spending taxpayer money.
OPINION
If the past informs the future, four more years
Of the Bush Administration will be a tragic period in
the history of the United States and the world.
The 100 Facts were compiled by Judd
Legum, deputy research director at the
American Progress Action Fund. Sourced
version available at www.thenation.com.