Graydon Carter Shows How Bush Makes Lies Seem True ...

[struggle4progress]

... and Just What We've Lost on Bush's Watch

<snip> Graydon Carter: It’s so broad. From the first day they got into office, the administration began a series of rollbacks or eliminations altogether of environmental protections, some of which were coming on board, and some of which have been on the books for 30 years. These protections have been fought over so hard by environmentalists over these last three decades.

In any case, where the Bush administration had a choice between the basic commonweal of America or their largest group of campaign donors -- the oil, logging, drilling and gas industries -- they chose their campaign donors almost every single time. The ramifications for the environment are so far-reaching. The international treaties we’ve broken, such as Kyoto, have left the entire planet imperiled because America cannot or will not carry its load on reducing greenhouse emissions. It’s then very hard to expect developing countries to.
<snip>

Graydon Carter: When I started doing this, the mail against me ran three to one. Now it’s running about even. I’ve found that the readers absolutely love the stories we’ve done, and in the next issue, we have this huge story called “The Path to 9/11.”So we will have done three stories this year totaling about 75,000 words. You take these large subjects and put them in a narrative form that can help explain the complex issues of our age -- I think the readers appreciate that. I think being older, some readers would just as soon I not write about the Bush administration. After this election, I’ve said everything I can say, and it’s time to move on and just cover it the way we covered it before the war, which is some things they’re going to be doing right, and some things they’re going to be doing wrong. <snip>

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/09/int04049.html


That Sinking Feeling
Reviewed by Kevin Phillips
Sunday, September 19, 2004; Page BW04

<snip> WHAT WE'VE LOST By Graydon Carter. Farrar Straus Giroux. 340 pp. $25 <snip>

The list is repulsive, especially in light of the simultaneous war profiteering by contractors like Vice President Cheney's old company, Halliburton. The largely unarmored Humvees used on patrol were such deathtraps that civic groups in hometowns like Mobile, Ala., arranged special steel plating for their National Guard unit's vehicles. U.S. companies producing body armor, in turn, were deluged with calls from parents trying to buy vests and plate for their ill-equipped sons and daughters in khaki. In 2003, only weeks before the Iraq war started, the Defense Department admitted that it could not certify that U.S. troops sent there had been provided with the minimum level of chemical and biological warfare protection equipment that the Pentagon itself required.

Additional shabby details show how the Bush administration sought to charge some returning troops a first-ever $250 fee to enroll in the Veterans Administration medical plan; to block expanded health care for returning reservists and National Guard members; to restrict officials of the Disabled American Veterans organization from visiting soldiers in the hospital; and to cut the extra $250 per month received by the families of combat soldiers to $100, calling the larger outlay "wasteful and unnecessary." Besides the more than 1,000 military U.S. dead, the White House is also trying to avoid discussing the nearly 7,000 wounded, quite a few of whom have lost single or multiple limbs in attacks and explosions. Many families even face awful decisions about turning off life-support systems. The entertainer Cher, talking on C-SPAN, described a visit to Washington's Walter Reed Hospital: "I wonder why Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bremer, the president -- why aren't they taking pictures with all these guys? . . . Talking about the dead and the wounded, that's two different things. But these wounded are so devastatingly wounded. . . . It's unbelievable."

Carter's other chapters -- on the economy, the environment, the judiciary, Bush's State of the Union addresses (which the author suggests may break the U.S. Criminal Code's bar on fraudulent official statements) and more -- teem with information, but the greatest punch comes up front. Revealingly, Howard Dean -- the one major Democratic contender to oppose the war in Iraq -- underscores the same point. Families with a chief breadwinner in Iraq "were stunned when the Bush administration, despite its constant platitudes in support of the troops, tried to cut off the soldiers' hazardous-duty pay by declaring the Iraq conflict 'over'. . . . And they wondered where our government's loyalty was to its troops and to our veterans who were having their health-care benefits slashed while the president flew to Baghdad for a turkey dinner with the troops." <snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27481-2004Sep16.html

[Norquist Nemesis]

1. Wish I could afford all of these books

so I could buy them and put them in my Dad's hands. They'ld probably sit there for a couple of weeks, but eventually, he'd pick them up out of curiosity, thumb through them, and then... :cry:

I saw Carter tonight on Lou Dobbs. Dobbs seemed to be amazed at the level of detail this indictment on the Bush administration (all backed up) goes to. He was stunned. And while Dobbs is staunch conservative, he really has been fighting for the middle class and wondering how the hell this has happened with our country. Dobbs gave the book a high recommendation for reading. :)

[MissMarple]

2. Perhaps he may watch Lou. That could be a good thing.

[LiberalFighter]

3. How could our military personnel and their families support and vote gw*?