The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration

I found this little gem on www.thenation.com.... This list contains 100 facts about the Bush Administration and only 1 Opinon.

I will post this list so it will be easier for members to reference each fact.

IRAQ

1. The Bush Administration has spent more than $140 billion on a war of choice in Iraq.

Source: American Progress

2. The Bush Administration sent troops into battle without adequate body armor or armored Humvees.

Sources: Fox News, The Boston Globe

3. The Bush Administration ignored estimates from Gen. Eric Shinseki that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq.

Source: PBS

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.

Source: CNN.com

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.

Source: csmonitor.com

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.

Source: nti.org

NATIONAL SECURITY

26. During the Bush Administration, North Korea quadrupled its suspected nuclear arsenal from two to eight weapons.

Source: New York Times

27. The Bush Administration has openly opposed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, undermining nuclear nonproliferation efforts.

Source: commondreams.org

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.

Sources: www.gao.gov/new.items/d04409.pdf, Los Angeles Times

29. The Bush Administration underfunded the needs of the nation's first responders by $98 billion, according to a Council on Foreign Relations study.

Source: nationaldefensemagazine.org

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.

Sources: The Washington Post, The Tapei Times, BBC News

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.

Source: detnews.com

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.

taxpayer.net, Washington Post

33. The Bush Administration paid Iraqi-exile and neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi $400,000 a month for intelligence, including fabricated claims about Iraqi WMD. It continued to pay him for months after discovering that he was providing inaccurate information.

Source: MSNBC

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."

Source: CBS News

40. The Bush Administration turned a $236 billion surplus into a $422 billion deficit.

Sources: Fortune, dfw.com

41. The Bush Administration implemented regulations that made millions of workers ineligible for overtime pay.

Source: epinet.org

EDUCATION

52. The Bush Administration underfunded the No Child Left Behind Act by $9.4 billion.

Source: nwitimes.com

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.

Source: Source: edworkforce.house.gov x

54. The Bush Administration's Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, called the National Education Association--a union of teachers--a "terrorist organization."

Sources: CNN.com

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.

Source: Washington Post, realcities.com

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.

Source: General Accounting Office

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.

Source: CBS News

ENVIRONMENT

72. The Bush Administration gutted clean-air standards for aging power plants, resulting in at least 20,000 premature deaths each year.

Source: cta.policy.net

73. The Bush Administration eliminated protections on more than 200 million acres of public lands.

Source: calwild.org

74. President Bush broke his promise to place limits on carbon dioxide emissions, an essential step in combating global warming.

Source: Washington Post

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.

Source: hrwatch.org

82. The Bush Administration ignored pleas from the International Committee of the Red Cross to stop the abuse of prisoners in US custody.

Source: Wall Street Journal

83. In violation of international law, the Bush Administration hid prisoners from the Red Cross so the organization couldn't monitor their treatment.

Source: hrwatch.org

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 failure in American history.

Source: americanprogressaction.org

89. President Bush said gay marriage was a state issue before he supported a constitutional amendment banning it.

Sources: CNN.com, White House

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."

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.

Source: boston.com

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.

Source: The Guardian

95. When asked at an April 2004 press conference to name a mistake he made during his presidency, Bush couldn't think of one.

Source: White House

SECRECY

96. The Bush Administration refuses to release twenty-seven pages of a Congressional report that reportedly detail the Saudi Arabian government's connections to the 9/11 hijackers.

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

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.

Source: openthegovernment.org

98. The Bush Administration spent $120 classifying documents for every $1 it spent declassifying documents.

Source: openthegovernment.org

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.

- edited for length

[edit on 11/8/2004 by Simulacra]

Yeah, I posted this article awhile back, in a thread I started on Nov. 1st, about waiting until that time to counter all the massive propaganda we were seeing. Didn't hang around long, that thread.

You do realize that some are going to blast you because the sources are not from where they think they should come from. I personally couldn't agree more.....Bush is a liar, a killer, and should be removed out of the white house. He is little more than a puppet.

Anything can be "argued"... (re: Non-Arguable )
I'm not gonna do it but somebody will.

Originally posted by LadyV
You do realize that some are going to blast you because the sources are not from where they think they should come from.

What do you mean, that the sources are false? I've checked only 30 of them and all of them were true.

Left-wing propaganda is believable only by the fools of this planet.

They say a Left-winger is born every minute.

Stating the facts won't matter, there will still be some ignorant religious conservative to defend and justify Bush on all 100 of these points. We are stuck with him regardless because facts don't mean anything and votes don't mean anything. What matters is who controls the wealth and who will assist the wealthy...

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.

I don't have the time to go through this one by one and debunk them but I know that this one is false.

Now, with his term almost over, Pell Grants have only been raised to half the promised increase. They have held at $4,050 for the past three years with no indication that they will be increasing anytime soon.

wildcat.arizona.edu...

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.

Misleading.

The money is not for implementation of the system but for testing of the system in order to make sure it is effective before implementation as mandated by Congress.

Congress finally agreed this month to order more testing using criteria set by Coyle's former office. The law does not specify any penalties, however, if the testing is not done.

"This is the first time Congress has been willing to put in language saying the program must be tested against an outside standard," a congressional staffer said. "But this is locking the barn door after the horse is out. I can't think of a single other system that was deployed and then tested to see what it could do."

Much of the recent testing for the new system in Alaska has been done in Huntsville, Ala., at an Army-sponsored facility called the Advanced Research Center and at other labs in a Boeing plant near the city airport. There were no launches or midair collisions, just the quiet hum of giant supercomputers fighting battles in cyberspace.

An exact replica of the control room at Fort Greely, Alaska - from the six stations at the horseshoe-shaped console to the gray-green color of the carpet - is behind one door at the Advanced Research Center. The system's operators train there by killing imaginary threats.

Elsewhere, engineers run simulations to check for bugs in the computer software that runs the defense and test pieces of the system's hardware.

www.mercurynews.com...

Excellent find and reaserch, and don't worry it will be not bashing this time SO is making sure that not body gets to hot on topics like this any more.

You got my way above for this one simulacra.

And by the way BlackJackal, Mr.Bush defended the clean air act in one of his debates and we all know he lied about it.

So he has lied before, and in front of the entire world.

Originally posted by marg6043
And by the way BlackJackal, Mr.Bush defended the clean air act in one of his debates and we all know he lied about it.

So he has lied before, and in front of the entire world.

And what pretell does this have to do with either of the posts I have made in this thread? Neither of my references are pro-Bush on the contrary they are both critical of him.

Originally posted by BlackJackal

53. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to increase the
wildcat.arizona.edu...

It's funny that you mention that site because I attended the University of Arizona from 2000-2004. I graduated from there with two BAs...And not to mention, I almost WORKED for that publication, but I have good friends that do work for that publication. In short, the publication is run by the Eller Business College, a mostly Conservative, Republican organization (I know, my roomate was Vice president of the Business fraternity and played a large role in the development of the college from 1999-2004.)

Now, with his term almost over, Pell Grants have only been raised to half the promised increase. They have held at $4,050 for the past three years with no indication that they will be increasing anytime soon.

[edit on 11/8/2004 by Simulacra]

Simulacra,

If you read the article you will see the article is very critical of Bush's politics but very plainly state he has raised the pell grant amount but is very critical that he has not raised it by more than what he has already raised it. So if it is a conservative paper it is quite critical of Bush.

Originally posted by marg6043
Excellent find and reaserch, and don't worry it will be not bashing this time SO is making sure that not body gets to hot on topics like this any more.

You got my way above for this one simulacra.

And by the way BlackJackal, Mr.Bush defended the clean air act in one of his debates and we all know he lied about it.

So he has lied before, and in front of the entire world.

He got your way above vote!? You people give those things away like candy on Halloween! (Boo-yah). Finding something on a website and posting it deserves the way above award!?!? So how does this make sense? The reason nobody is going to debunk it all is because nobody wants to go 1 by 1 offering their opinions on the "facts".

[Edited on 8-11-2004 by Herman]

Herman herman herman, always looking for dear old me, I am just going to ignore this time. After all you are to young for dear old me to handle.

simulacra does research something that you have not learn to master yet he put together a very fine post.

Perhaps one day when you are not following memebers around you will get my vote for a fine job too.

Originally posted by marg6043
Herman herman herman, always looking for dear old me, I am just going to ignore this time. After all you are to young for dear old me to handle.

simulacra does research something that you have not learn to master yet he put together a very fine post.

Perhaps one day when you are not following memebers around you will get my vote for a fine job too.

Oh yes, I'm always looking for you. You only post in just about every single Bush-hating thread. Yeah, it's so damned hard for me to find you! I haven't learned to do research? Where did you come up with that?

# 1 is also an opinion. "war of choice".

The other opinion is that we flushed the cockroaches out of Afganistan, and Iraq is the "roach Motel"

A lot of the others are the cost of performing #1..

And do you really think a president is EVER on an actual vacation?

Nice hit list..Make sure you do the right (left) thing and circulate it widely. The world needs more spam like this..

As far as a very fine post....it was cut n pasted...I wish I could master that myself..

Ha, ha, ha, Herman you need to learn to relax or you will get a hernia.

I promised if you do a nice job and open a nice thread I will give you a vote

And by the way if you don't like anti Mr. Bush thread why don't you just ignore instead of bashing the people that post on them.

I am finish with you for now.

Originally posted by marg6043
Ha, ha, ha, Herman you need to learn to relax or you will get a hernia.

I promised if you do a nice job and open a nice thread I will give you a vote

And by the way if you don't like anti Mr. Bush thread why don't you just ignore instead of bashing the people that post on them.

I am finish with you for now.

Yeah, I'm a raging psycho who's about to smash my computer screen in *Rolls eyes*. Trust me, I'm plenty relaxed. Silly marg.