Editorial from:  

Yesterday's cautiously upbeat presentations by the two chief United Nations weapons inspectors undercut Washington's already weak chances of winning Security Council endorsement for a new war resolution on Iraq. Britain's effort to widen support by delaying the resolution's deadline is laudable. But the brief extension now being proposed - until March 17 - is unlikely to be enough. The United States and its partners should offer a more meaningful delay. The obligation would then fall on France and others now opposing the resolution to meet them partway.

The main message from Hans Blix was that Iraqi cooperation has increased in recent days and weeks, and that Iraq has begun to move beyond access and procedural questions to the actual destruction...

"Christians are great. Devout Christians are great. Devout fundamentalist Christians are great. Devout evangelical Christians who are light on the evangelical are fine. Theocrats are not. People shoving their religious beliefs down my throat, giving me no respect for mine, and wishing to put religion into the public schools are not fine. People who would rather violate federal anti-dscrimination regulations than receive federal funding are not fine. People whose sick beliefs make them want to inflict torture on others by attempting to 'cure' young gay and lesbian kids in 'conversion camps' are not fine."

- Atrios

By: Paul Krugman  

"Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials? Has 'oderint dum metuant' really become our motto?" So reads the resignation letter of John Brady Kiesling, a career diplomat who recently left the Foreign Service in protest against Bush administration policy.

"Oderint dum metuant" translates, roughly, as "let them hate as long as they fear", It was a favorite saying of the emperor Caligula, and may seem over the top as a description of current U.S. policy. But this week's crisis in U.S.-Mexican relations - a crisis that has been almost ignored north of the border - suggests that it is a perfect description of George Bush's attitude toward the world.

By: Dennis Rahkonen  

As evidenced by opinion polls and widespread, growing protest, the American people have not authorized a war which millions believe is needless, and for which they rightly feel peaceful, diplomatic alternatives exist.

Bush and his belligerent cohorts have abysmally failed to prove exactly what Iraq has done to the United States that would justify returned aluminum caskets piling up on American airport tarmac - or the world being giving shocking basis for calling our nation a mass-murdering war criminal in the cradle of civilization.

Real patriotism demands that we question and resist when so much grievous, lasting harm would befall our country from rash, wrong choices made in the partisan politics and special-interest pandering of today.

By: David S. Broder  

From the heart of the business establishment comes a statement criticizing and rejecting the Bush tax cuts - a stunning repudiation of the President's fundamental economic strategy delivered by the very corporate leaders who make the investment decisions on which recovery and growth turn.

Along with the criticism of the administration plan leveled last month by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, the report being issued today by the Committee for Economic Development, a blue-ribbon organization of corporate CEO's and civic leaders, is a warning that President Bush's policies risk long-term damage to Americans' prosperity and the government's fiscal stability.

While administration officials defend the deficits in store for this year and next as small by historical standards and temporary, the committee says that more realistic calculations show that over the next decade we can expect "annual deficits of $300-$400 billion, increasing as far as the eye can see".

In which the Bush Doctrine means never having to say, sorry about all the warheads and death.

By: Mark Morford  

It cannot be overstated: Shrub's war marks a momentous shift in our society, a huge political and philosophical sea change, as we move from a unified coherent defensive posture to an aggressive, roguish, preemptive-strike attitude, kill first and ask questions never.

It is called the Bush Doctrine, aka: Shut the Hell Up You Durn Foreigners and Eat Our Might, and it is in flagrant defiance of not just the U.N. charter and international law but also every moral and philosophical tenet America itself was founded on.

This is the thing about ultraviolent preemptive attacks on whatever petty little nation we choose - it sort of makes us the world's bully. It sort of goes against our fundamental notions of justice and fairness.

By: Roger Ebert  

This is really an argument between two kinds of prayer - vertical and horizontal. I don't have the slightest problem with vertical prayer. It is horizontal prayer that frightens me. Vertical prayer is private, directed upward toward heaven. It need not be spoken aloud, because God is a spirit and has no ears. Horizontal prayer must always be audible, because its purpose is not to be heard by God, but to be heard by fellow men standing within earshot.

This simple insight about two kinds of prayer, which is beyond theological question, should bring a dead halt to the obsession with prayer in public places. It doesn't, because the purpose of its supporters is political, not spiritual. Their faith is like Dial soap: Now that they use it, they wish everyone would. I grew up in an America where people of good breeding did not impose their religious convictions upon those they did not know very well. Now those manners have been discarded.

"God is a neutral observer in the affairs of man. Man cannot march into war and assume God will be at his side."

- the Pope

By: Gene Lyons  

Hypocrisy in a politician is universally held to be a very bad thing, religious hypocrisy worst of all. Alas, to Americans holding post-Enlightenment world-views, it has come down to this: either we must earnestly pray that George W. Bush is a cunning opportunist merely throwing hay to the great lowing herd of pious cattle who confuse the evening news with the Book of Revelation, or face the prospect that the United States has embarked upon a faith-based foreign policy as distant from reality as the ranting of Osama bin Laden.

Ironically, the incomprehensible imagery in Revelation was borrowed from Babylonian (Iraqi) and Zoroastrian (Iranian) myth in the first place. Bush's flirtation with End Times rhetoric makes some suspect that he actually perceives himself as God's instrument. Many Europeans fear they're trapped between rival fundamentalist zealots whose messianic delusions threaten World War III.

Call me naïve, but I hold with hypocrisy. Everything known about Bush apart from his political rhetoric suggests belief in a conventional rich man's God. His idea of paradise is a country club golf course. His public religiosity is precisely calculated to enthrall fundamentalist Christians whose failure to turn out in 1992 led to his father's defeat - the only Armageddon Junior seriously anticipates.

By: Barry Schweid  

The commander who would lead the war against Iraq brought battle plans to the White House on Wednesday morning as the Bush administration pressed the 15 nations on the U.N. Security Council to "stand up and be counted" on using force to disarm Iraq.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin Powell told Russia's state-controlled television, in an interview parts of which aired Tuesday night, that the U.S. is ready to lead war against Iraq, with or without the U.N.

Powell said that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein "must be disarmed... and he will be disarmed - peacefully, hopefully - but if necessary, the United States is prepared to lead a coalition of the willing, a coalition of willing nations, either under U.N. authority or without U.N. authority, if that turns out to be the case, in order to disarm this man".

"Of course, I care what [the protestors] believe, and I've listened carefully. I've thought long and hard about what needs to be done, and obviously some people in Northern California do not see there's a true risk to the United States posed by Saddam Hussein, and we just have a difference of opinion."

- Dubya the Liar

5:51 AM 3/5/03

By: James Carroll  

What a difference a month makes. On Feb. 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell made the Bush administration's case against Iraq with a show of authority that moved many officials and pundits out of ambivalence and into acceptance. The war came to seem inevitable, which then prompted millions of people to express their opposition in streets around the globe. Over subsequent weeks, the debate between hawks and doves took on the strident character of ideologues beating each other with fixed positions. The sputtering rage of war opponents and the grandiose abstractions of war advocates both seemed disconnected from the relentless marshaling of troops. War was coming. Further argument was fruitless. The time seemed to have arrived, finally, for a columnist to change the subject.

And then the events of last week. Within a period of a few days, the war policy of the Bush administration suddenly showed signs of incipient collapse. No one of these developments by itself marks the ultimate reversal of fortune for Bush, but taken together, they indicate that the law of "unintended consequences", which famously unravels the best-laid plans of warriors, may apply this time before the war formally begins. Unraveling is underway...

By: Robert Scheer  

So the truth is out: George W. Bush lied when he claimed to be worried about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Otherwise, Iraq's stepped-up cooperation with the U.N. on disarmament would be stunningly good news, obviating the need to rush to war.

Instead, the U.N. weapons inspectors' verification of Iraq's destruction of missiles, private meetings with Iraqi weapons scientists, visits to locations where biological and chemical weapons were destroyed in 1991, and a series of unfettered flights by U2 spy planes have been met with a shrug and sneer in Washington. The White House line is that even if the Iraqis destroy all their slingshots, Goliath is still bringing his tanks and instituting "regime change". The arrogance is breathtaking. We have demanded that a country disarm - and even as it is doing so, we say it doesn't matter: it's too late; we're coming in. Put down your guns and await the slaughter.

"When we dug into the details of the FBI failures on the Phoenix Report from July of 2001 and the failure of the FBI to use the proper standard in seeking a warrant for Zacarias Moussaoui's computer, it was evident that - had this trail been followed, along with other evidence - that the tragedy of September 11th might well have been prevented."

- Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA)

6:01 PM 3/4/03

By: William Rivers Pitt  

George W. Bush is out of control.

I'm waiting for the black government cars to come squealing up in front of my house, for the thump of leather on my stairs, for the sound of knuckles on my door, for the feel of steel braceleting my wrists, for the smell of urine in some dank Federal holding cell as I listen to questions from men who no longer feel the constricting boundaries of constitutional law abutting their duties.

Crazy, right?

Ask Andrew J. O'Conner of Santa Fe, New Mexico if it sounds crazy. Mr. O'Conner, a former public defender from Santa Fe, was arrested in a public library and interrogated by Secret Service agents for five hours on February 13^th.

His crime?

He said "Bush is out of control" on an internet chat room, and was arrested for threatening the President.

If They Love America So Much, Why Are They Working Overtime to Destroy It?

By: Mark Zepezauer  

You know, it occurs to me that when rightwingers can't come up with a better argument than "you hate America", they might actually be projecting. After all, who was it that said that the 9/11 attacks allowed, quote: "the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve"? It wasn't any leftist, that's for sure. It was that jolly old moral majoritarian, the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

But if the right loves America so much, why do they keep subsidizing the corporations that foul our air, despoil our coasts, and clear-cut our forests? Just how patriotic is the Bush administration's new rule that allows mining companies to shear off the tops of our purple-mountain'd majesty and dump them into our streams? Don't you think we could express our love of country a little better by tightening up those fuel economy standards, instead of squeezing the Middle East for more fuel for our Hummers?

By: Doug Goodkin  

What cause for hope? Can things get any worse? Three dictators rule who were not put into power by the will of the people, who ignore the needs of their people, and who pose a grave danger to the rest of the world - Kim Jong II, Saddam Hussein, and George W. Bush. From his place of hiding, Osama Bin Laden sends terrorists out to wreak havoc, death, and destruction. From their place of hiding, World Bank leaders and corporate CEO's hold closed meetings and send out their public relations people, ad men, and businessmen to wreak their own form of havoc, destruction, and death. People educated in our elite universities use their training and intelligence to make smart bombs while schools dedicated to make smart children have their budgets cut out from under them.

In China, people are told to accept, obey, and don't ask questions. In the U.S., people are told to shop, watch TV, and don't ask questions. Add to the mix suicide bombers, global warming, ethnic purging, SUV's and Hummers, John Ashcroft, shooter video games, lingerie Barbie, teen porn, and penis enlargement spam on the Internet and only an idiot would think that there's any cause for the least shred of hope for the human experiment.

By: P.M. Carpenter  

The survival "kit" Ready.gov recommends in case of extreme emergency and prolonged deprivation is mostly a Martha Stewart reminder to the sensible homemaker: "Choose foods your family will eat." If you failed to figure that out on your own, your gene pool is rightly toast anyway, so good riddance.

As for the proper response to a "dirty bomb" - such as a stick of dynamite used "to spread radioactive materials over a targeted area" - you should know "the farther away you are from the blast... the lower your exposure". Take heed, courtesy our Department of Homeland Security: Anticipate dirty-bomb explosions and stay the hell away. Should you be so thick as not to pack "foods your family will eat", henceforth be advised that "if there is an explosion or other factor that makes it difficult to control the vehicle" you happen to be driving at the moment of an unanticipated ka-boom, "pull over" and "stop the car". After that, sit down to a bickering picnic with foods your family does not like.

Editorial from:  

The administration wants Congress to pass the tax cut - or, failing that, at least a budget resolution that etches a number for the tax cut in stone - before it shows its hand on the war. Then it can come forward with a supplemental spending request, after hostilities have started, that Congress will have to honor. There is more at stake here than whether lawmakers will allow themselves to be played for the fools that the administration apparently takes them to be. It's whether the country can afford what the President is proposing. The administration dismisses all questions of this sort by incanting the phrase "economic growth". But the administration's own economic models make clear that, whatever economic growth the tax cut may produce, it will not pay for itself. Tax cuts have a price. So do wars. Congress needs to take both into account before it acts.

"The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible."

- Justice Antonin Scalia

George W. Bush Can't Tell the Difference Between a Democracy and a Puppet Government

Editorial from:  

Terrorism is a subtle, difficult problem to battle. It needs a multi-faceted, resilient, well-thought-out strategy and a lot of sweat equity. What it doesn't need is platitudes about democracy that are really a war for oil and empire-building wrapped in the camouflage of "patriotic" language meant to pull at the heart strings of Americans. (The secondary purpose of the war is to drive domestic issues out of the news, so that the Bush Cartel won't be held responsible for an economy that has gone down the tubes and the extremist right wing social and environmental policies that it has implemented.)

It's not just the patriotic thing to oppose the opportunistic war and neo-colonial occupation that the Bush Cartel is about to undertake. It is a matter of self-survival. It is a matter of the survival of the American democracy. And once the war starts, as it will, because Bush and his fellow chicken hawks feel that it will make them real men (without having to actually do the difficult work of really battling terrorism), the true American patriots should not be cowed by the Bush Cartel threat that to protest a war is to undermine our troops.

"This is not a compromise, it's a hoax. It still forces seniors to abandon their family doctors to join HMO's to get the drug benefit they deserve. I hope the administration will go back to the drawing board and propose a benefit that works for seniors instead of just the insurance industry."

- Sen. Edward Kennedy, the leading Democrat on the Senate's health committee

In the President's version of reality, an invasion of Iraq brings democracy to the Middle East, a dividend-tax cut is a good idea, and Star Wars is a viable defense plan.

From:  

Republicans are counting on a quick military victory that will send the stock market soaring and restore President Bush's aura of invincibility. Democrats are also hoping for a short war - so short that it will be forgotten by the time the 2004 presidential election approaches 18 months from now and the economy is still in the tank. Whichever scenario triumphs, the politics of Capitol Hill will be reshaped.

Until the foreign war is resolved, the domestic political armies remain in place, ready to deploy once they see how much bounce Bush gets from conquering the Iraqi Army. The experience of his father in the aftermath of a successful war drives Bush. He doesn't want to be seen as frozen in indifference to the dormant economy. But right now he has almost no ability to attract Democrats to his economic agenda. Republicans are even balking at his proposal to eliminate dividend taxes. But the prowar wing of the GOP believes that Bush himself - along with his agenda - will be transformed by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, a dream deferred since the senior Bush left office.

By: Andrew Sarchus  

On January 20, 2005, a new administration will take power in the United States. It appears increasingly likely that the new presidency, and probably both houses of Congress, will no longer be controlled by neoconservatives of the Republican Party. As of early 2003, neoconservative foreign policy has positioned the United States for spectacular diplomatic failures in Iraq and North Korea. First NATO, then the U.N. will likely repudiate U.S. demands for war. By the end of this year, America may well be an international pariah. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy continues to deteriorate, our civil liberties are being diminished daily by neocons and religious right wingers in the Justice Department, and the rest of the Bush Cabinet wages perpetual war on every part of society save the super-rich and the military.

By 2005, the neocons will have failed both as managers of the economy and as promoters of a greater American reich. Yet neoconservative ideas are pernicious, and civil liberties, international cooperation, and world peace are threatened so long as these ideas catch the attention of Western leaders. Progressives must unite on a platform that will consign these ideas to history's dustbin, along with colonialism and Stalinism...

"Clinton worked his way to the top with brains and skill, while AWOLboy laid back and had everything handed to him by his rich, crooked daddy, including the presidency."

- BartCop

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