Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Though our Constitution's Bond and Gagged and They've Chained it to a Chair

host · 05-20-2007, 03:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

thanks folks. very helpful. mulling this over....

roachboy....some more to mull over:

(I grouped, by similarity, the lines of Bush's answers to two seemingly simple questions from a member of the white house press corps. The lines from his answers that were in response to the second question, are italicized. I am impressed by his answers to the point that I believe that the opposite of every point that Bush emphasized repeatedly, is probably much closer to being accurate....and his fear that most of us know it, triggered his impulsive repetition.... fascinating, repulsive, tragic !)

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20070517.html

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
May 17, 2007

President Bush Participates in Joint Press Availability with United Kingdom Prime Minister Blair
Rose Garden

....Q Thank you, sir. There's been some very dramatic testimony before the Senate this week from one of your former top Justice Department officials, who describes a scene that some senators called "stunning," about a time when the wireless -- when the warrantless wiretap program was being reviewed. Sir, did you send your then Chief of Staff and White House Counsel to the bedside of John Ashcroft while he was ill to get him to approve that program? And do you believe that kind of conduct from White House officials is appropriate?

Q Was it on your order, sir?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Kelly, there's a lot of speculation about what happened and what didn't happen;
And so there will be all kinds of talk about it.

I'm not going to talk about it.
As I say, I'm not going to move the issue forward by talking about something as highly sensitive -- highly classified subject.

It's a very sensitive program. I will tell you that, one,
the program is necessary to protect the American people,
And the program, as I say, is an essential part of protecting this country.
I will tell you, however, that the program is necessary.
As I said, this program is a necessary program
It's an important part of protecting the United States.
and it's still necessary because there's still an enemy that wants to do us harm.
And it's still an important part of our protection because there's still an enemy that would like to attack us. No matter how calm it may seem here in America, an enemy lurks. And they would like to strike. They would like to do harm to the American people because they have an agenda. 

And therefore, I have an obligation to put in place programs that honor the civil liberties of the American people;
And so we will put in place programs to protect the American people that honor the civil liberties of our people,

a program that was, in this case, constantly reviewed and briefed to the United States Congress.
 that was constantly reviewed and constantly briefed to the Congress.
and programs that we constantly brief to Congress.

They want to impose an ideology; they want us to retreat from the world; they want to find safe haven. And these just aren't empty words, these are the words of al Qaeda themselves.

I thought that the sentences spoken by the POTUS, above, display a level of repetition, occuring as they do, in just two, one paragraph responses, that is beyond excessive....if communicated by anyone, let alone by the POTUS, in such a public setting, concerning such important circumstances. 

I think that Bush's answers related to Comey's May 15th senate testimony, are a fitting example/summation and epitaph for his [p]residency....a constantly repeated message of fear and lies intended to facilitate a consolidation of power and "unalienable" rights formerly guaranteed to the people and/or the congress of the US.

What is happening as a result of congressional investigations driven questioning of principles in the executive branch, was described well, I think, last september:

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/
Sept. 18, 2006

Bush owes us an apology
by Keith Olbermann

....An apology is this President's only hope of regaining the slightest measure of confidence, of what has been, for nearly two years, a clear majority of his people.

Not "confidence" in his policies nor in his designs nor even in something as narrowly focused as which vision of torture shall prevail -- his, or that of the man who has sent him into apoplexy, Colin Powell.

In a larger sense, the President needs to regain our confidence, that he has some basic understanding of what this country represents -- of what it must maintain if we are to defeat not only terrorists, but if we are also to defeat what is ever more increasingly apparent, as an attempt to re-define the way we live here, and what we mean, when we say the word "freedom."

Because it is evident now that, if not its architect, this President intends to be the contractor, for this narrowing of the definition of freedom.

The President revealed this last Friday, as he fairly spat through his teeth, words of unrestrained fury directed at the man who was once the very symbol of his administration, who was once an ambassador from this administration to its critics, as he had once been an ambassador from the military to its critics.

The former Secretary of State, Mr. Powell, had written, simply and candidly and without anger, that "the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."

This President's response included not merely what is apparently the Presidential equivalent of threatening to hold one's breath, but within it contained one particularly chilling phrase.

"Mr. President, former Secretary of State Colin Powell says the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," he was asked by a reporter. "If a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former secretary of state feels this way, don't you think that Americans and the rest of the world are beginning to wonder whether you're following a flawed strategy?"

“If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic,” Bush said. “It's just -- I simply can't accept that. It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.

Of course it's acceptable to think that there's "any kind of comparison."

And in this particular debate, it is not only acceptable, it is obviously necessary, even if Mr. Powell never made the comparison in his letter.

Some will think that our actions at Abu Ghraib, or in Guantanamo, or in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, are all too comparable to the actions of the extremists.

Some will think that there is no similarity, or, if there is one, it is to the slightest and most unavoidable of degrees.

What all of us will agree on, is that we have the right -- we have the duty -- to think about the comparison.

And, most importantly, that the other guy, whose opinion about this we cannot fathom, has exactly the same right as we do: to think -- and say -- what his mind and his heart and his conscience tell him, is right.

All of us agree about that.

Except, it seems, this President.....