… just six months after 9/11, Bush suggested in a press conference that Bin Laden was not a top priority for his administration. Asked whether Bush thought capturing Bin Laden was important, Bush scolded those who cared about Bin Laden for not “understand[ing] the scope of the mission” because Bin Laden was just “one person,” whom Bush said:

Who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not. We haven’t heard from him in a long time. The idea of focusing on one person really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission. Terror is bigger than one person. He’s just a person who’s been marginalized. … I don’t know where he is. I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.

… On the morning of September 11, 2001, she was ordered by her supervisor to go directly to work at the Pentagon, before dropping off her ten-week-old son Elisha at day care.

Amazingly, the infant was given immediate security clearance upon arrival.

The instant Gallop turned on her computer an enormous explosion blew her out of her chair, knocking her momentarily unconscious.

Escaping through the hole reportedly made by Flight 77, she saw no signs of an aircraft – no seats, luggage, metal, or human remains.  Her watch (and other clocks nearby) had stopped at 9:30-9:31 a.m., seven minutes before the Pentagon was allegedly struck at 9:38 a.m.

The 9/11 Commission reported that “by no later than 9:18 a.m., FAA centers in Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Washington were aware that Flight 77 was missing and that two aircraft had struck the World Trade Center.”

Why then were there no anti-aircraft defenses, Gallop asks, or alarm warnings inside the Pentagon?

Gallop was briefed by officials not to tell her story in public; she also received an email from a Fox News reporter who had been told by the Pentagon not to interview her.

Gallop now believes that officials within the Bush Administration conspired to destroy the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and WTC 7 – the third building brought down at 5:20 p.m. that day – with pre-placed explosives detonated after the planes hit.

On April 5th, 2011, at 11 a.m., at the Federal Courthouse at 141 Church Street in New Haven, Connecticut, the case of Gallop v. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Myers will be heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit…

Blogger TruthMakesPeace posts this update from the trial at 911Blogger.com:

April’s attorney William Veale gave a radio interview with Kevin Barrett after the hearing on his No Lies Radio Show…

Summary: William Veale can be heard about 23 minutes into the interview. He discusses his suspicion that Judge John M. Walker, one of the three on the panel is potentially related to George Walker Bush. During the hearing, Veale did not have access to Wikipedia* to check, but thought “You take a look at him, and he’s a Bush.”

He filed a motion to disqualify Walker, but the Court denied it. He moved for a Continuance (postponement) to review that denial, but it was denied. He then made his prepared arguments for the appeal. “There it is, we did the best we could.” He says the Court asked him a lot of “impertinent and demeaning questions” such as whether he is authorized to practice law in the area.

Apparently no actual decision came from the proceeding as of now. Veale says a federal judge can decide whatever he wants, whenever he wants, even years from now. He sadly predicts they will affirm the judgement of the lower court and deny the appeal. Veale discussed other avenues for appeal he can take. Veale states, around the 43 minute point, “I know that there was a conspiracy…inside job, that’s a fact.” **

Issues:

• Judge Walker was chosen to be a judge for a case involving his cousin.
• He did not recuse himself from a case with an obvious conflict of interest.
• He sat there, all the while knowing he is a cousin, heard William Veale’s objection to his being a potential relative, said nothing to about it, and just denied the objection.
• Judge John M. Walker Jr. is now judging the appeal of a case involving the administration of his cousin George Walker Bush…

Mr. Blair (left) and Mr. Bush

There was a British television drama a few years ago that had ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair being sent for war crimes prosecution at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Apparently ex-President George W. Bush doesn’t think that’s so far-fetched and is avoiding Switzerland for fear of being arrested, according to Reuters:

Former President George W. Bush has canceled a visit to Switzerland, where he was to address a Jewish charity gala, due to the risk of legal action against him for alleged torture, rights groups said on Saturday.

Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod’s annual dinner on February 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.

Criminal complaints against Bush alleging torture have been lodged in Geneva, court officials say.

Human rights groups said they had intended to submit a 2,500-page case against Bush in the Swiss city on Monday for alleged mistreatment of suspected militants at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. naval base in Cuba where captives from Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts in the so-called War on Terror were interned…

[continues at Reuters]

Before I attempt to fill these pages with my disgust, which the odd reader who knows me will surely expect, I am obliged to address a preliminary concern, which that same odd reader may safely ignore. Some time has passed since I last raised my voice to the multitude, and whereas literary taste does not seem to have advanced much in the interim, and I assume is still arrayed so as to engage only the weak-minded and dull, I find that I am no longer able to discern with any accuracy where the bounds of simple human decency lie. This would bother me even less than does the taste issue were it not for the fact that ground gained or lost in the theater of decency tends now and then to affect the law, and it has long been a personal goal of mine to avoid capture and imprisonment.

I am therefore led to wonder what the common citizen is allowed to “say” anymore, in print or otherwise, and still feel reasonably sure that some indignant team of G-men, or else a pair of gung-ho local screws, will not drag him away to a detention center, there to act out, with the detainee as a prop, that familiar scene in which one hero cop or another is patriotically unable to resist certain outbursts against the detainee and what were once imagined to be the detainee’s constitutional rights. Because I am loath to violate whatever fresh new mores the people have agreed upon, or have been told they agree upon, and because I do not care to have my ass kicked repeatedly in a holding cell while I beg to see a lawyer, I almost hesitate to ask the following question. I will ask it, though, out of what used to be called simple human decency:

Am I allowed to write that I would like to hunt down George W. Bush, the president of the United States, and kill him with my bare hands?

Let me be clear that I have no wish to perform such a deed in fact, nor do I want anyone else to destroy bodily what is, at least in the technical sense, a fellow human being. (Let me be equally clear that the above qualification, although true, is intended primarily as a legal ploy and should in no way be attributed to my claimed pacifism, which today’s prosecutor might find a way to use against me. I would also like excused from the proceedings my personal feelings for George W. Bush, embarrassment and rage, as they could probably be turned to my disadvantage as well.) In truth, I bring neither a message nor a promise of violence. I seek only to gauge what level of discourse is still acceptable in this country by asking, in the hope that I might someday participate in that discourse, whether I am free to posit that it would probably be great fun, and a boon to all mankind, if I were to slaughter the president of the United States with my bare hands.

Almost au courant, isn’t it?  It gets better (or should I say worse?).  Read the rest here before making comparisons to Olbermann, Beck, Limbaugh, or anyone else.

Back in the halcyon days following George W Bush’s inauguration, detractors and opponents of many stripes referred to W and his administration as Nazi’s. Even before the days of borderline fascist government policies like the PATRIOT ACT or warrantless wiretapping and torture apologists, lefties and others handed out poorly Xeroxed pamphlets featuring W’s face with a Hitler mustache.

Now, the jack boot is on the left foot, with hard line right wing conservatives dropping the Nazi card when referring to all things not Right as some form or another of Nazism. Most recently, Fox News chief Roger Ailes called the top brass at NPR “the left wing of Nazism” and said they have a “Nazi attitude.” Allies’ comments refer to the firing of NPR news analyst Juan Williams, after he told Bill O’Reilly that Muslims make him “nervous.”

It seems somewhere along the line the word “Nazi” devolved to something of a schoolyard insult like “dork” or “geek” on the political playground. The fetish American partisan politics has for labeling the opposition party didn’t just show up around the year 2000. Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Reagan all had their detractors shouting “Nazi.”

Read the full post at Diatribe Media

For the full set of clips from the interview go to the Today Show site. Lauer and Bush will talk live on the Today Show on Wednesday, November 10th.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern published a brilliant and damning piece regarding former President Bush’s upcoming memoir, Decision Points. In his essay, McGovern points out W’s little talked about “damn right” remarks he made when authorizing the waterboarding of terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Not only did W sign off on the form torture as an acceptable practice, but added “damn right” and asserted that the torture saved lives.

McGovern not only points out the glaring falsehood in that assertion, but shows exactly how the torture of prisoners became a recruiting tool for insurgents in Iraq. In addition, he rightly states that the under-reporting of the torture issue in the media, coupled with plenty of support (or shoulder shrugging) of the American public at large implicates us all. The essay comes on the heels of Bush’s related comments regarding the “lowest point” in his presidency, when Kanye West hurt his feelings by saying he didn’t care about black people during Hurricane Katrina.

Read the full post at Diatribe Media

ANSWER: Never!

President George W. Bush says that when he heard Kanye West say, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” “it was one of the most disgusting moments in my presidency.”

Bush has taped an interview with Matt Lauer that will air on a special prime-time Matt Lauer Reports on NBC Nov. 8. It’s to promote his forthcoming book, Decision Points. The subjects of the interview are wide-ranging, but the former president is very passionate on the subject of West’s criticism of the way Bush handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. NBC has released some quotations from the interview.

“He called me a racist,” Bush tells Lauer. “And I didn’t appreciate it then. I don’t appreciate it now. It’s one thing to say, ‘I don’t appreciate the way he’s handled his business.’ It’s another thing to say, ‘This man’s a racist.’ I resent it, it’s not true.”

Lauer quotes from Bush’s new book: “Five years later I can barely write those words without feeling disgust.” Lauer adds, “You go on: ‘I faced a lot of criticism as president. I didn’t like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all-time low.’

Read More in Entertainment Weekly

“It was a simple question, ‘Can you remember the last day you didn’t have a drink?’”

So begins President George W. Bush in the opening chapter ["Quitting"] from the most anticipated book of the season, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal. With Decision Points set for release November 9, Bush pulls back the curtain with a strikingly personal work that takes very few shots at his critics.

The former president even stays clear of Obama!

From 911’s “Day of Fire” to “Katrina” to “Financial Crisis”, Bush explains how he returned to his faith, time and time again.

And the faith of others.

The president details how he bonded with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia — and a magical bird!

Arriving angry at Bush’s Texas ranch over the president’s position on Israel and Ramallah, Abdullah quickly decided he wanted to leave.

But the prince spots a turkey on the road — and takes it as a good omen, a sign from Allah!

**

The president reveals he gave the order to shoot down planes on September 11 — and at first thought the plane in PA had been shot down.

**

In the chapter “Stem Cells”, Bush describes receiving a letter from Nancy Reagan detailing a “wrenching family journey”.

But ultimately, Bush writes: “I did feel a responsibility to voice my pro-life convictions and lead the country toward what Pope John Paul II called a culture of life.” …

[continues at Drudge Report]

UK Current threat level

A US terror alert issued this week about al-Qaida  plots to attack targets in western Europe was politically motivated and not based on credible new information, senior Pakistani diplomats and European intelligence officials have told the Guardian.

The non-specific US warning, which despite its vagueness led Britain, France and other countries to raise their overseas terror alert levels, was an attempt to justify a recent escalation in US drone and helicopter attacks inside Pakistan that have “set the country on fire”, said Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the high commissioner to Britain.

Hasan, a veteran diplomat who is close to Pakistan’s president, suggested the Obama administration was playing politics with the terror threat before next month’s mid-term congressional elections, in which the Republicans are expected to make big gains.

He also claimed President Obama was reacting to pressure to demonstrate that his Afghan war strategy and this year’s troop surge, which are unpopular with the American public, were necessary.

“I will not deny the fact that there may be internal political dynamics, including the forthcoming mid-term American elections. If the Americans have definite information about terrorists and al-Qaida people, we should be provided [with] that and we could go after them ourselves,” Hasan said.

“Such reports are a mixture of frustrations, ineptitude and lack of appreciation of ground realities. Any attempt to infringe the sovereignty of Pakistan would not bring about stability in Afghanistan, which is presumably the primary objective of the American and Nato forces.”

Dismissing claims of a developed, co-ordinated plot aimed at Britain, France and Germany, European intelligence officials also pointed the finger at the US, and specifically at the White House. “To stitch together [the terror plot claims] in a seamless narrative is nonsensical,” said one well-placed official.

Read more here.

For a couple of years, it was the love that dared not speak his name. In 2008, Republican candidates hardly ever mentioned the president still sitting in the White House. After the election, the G.O.P. did its best to shout down all talk about how we got into the mess we’re in, insisting that we needed to look forward, not back. And many in the news media played along, acting as if it was somehow uncouth for Democrats even to mention the Bush era and its legacy.

The truth, however, is that the only problem Republicans ever had with George W. Bush was his low approval rating. They always loved his policies and his governing style — and they want them back. In recent weeks, G.O.P. leaders have come out for a complete return to the Bush agenda, including tax breaks for the rich and financial deregulation. They’ve even resurrected the plan to cut future Social Security benefits.

But they have a problem: how can they embrace President Bush’s policies, given his record? After all, Mr. Bush’s two signature initiatives were tax cuts and the invasion of Iraq; both, in the eyes of the public, were abject failures. Tax cuts never yielded the promised prosperity, but along with other policies — especially the unfunded war in Iraq — they converted a budget surplus into a persistent deficit. Meanwhile, the W.M.D. we invaded Iraq to eliminate turned out not to exist, and by 2008 a majority of the public believed not just that the invasion was a mistake but that the Bush administration deliberately misled the nation into war. What’s a Republican to do?…

[continues in the New York Times]

Seven years ago today, in a speech on the Iraq war, Sen. Ted Kennedy fired the first shot in an all-out assault on President George W. Bush’s integrity. “All the evidence points to the conclusion,” Kennedy said, that the Bush administration “put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth.” Later that day Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle told reporters Mr. Bush needed “to be forthcoming” about the absence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Thus began a shameful episode in our political life whose poisonous fruits are still with us.

The next morning, Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry and John Edwards joined in. Sen. Kerry said, “It is time for a president who will face the truth and tell the truth.” Mr. Edwards chimed in, “The administration has a problem with the truth.”

The battering would continue, and it was a monument to hypocrisy and cynicism. All these Democrats had said, like Mr. Bush did, that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD. Of the 110 House and Senate Democrats who voted in October 2002 to authorize the use of force against his regime, 67 said in congressional debate that Saddam had these weapons. This didn’t keep Democrats from later alleging something they knew was false—that the president had lied America into war…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

The growing accountability movement got a major shot in the arm recently when it learned that on April 19, an Argentinian judge sentenced the last of Argentina’s dictators, Reynaldo Bignone, age 83, to 25 years in prison. Bignone’s crime: kidnapping and torturing 56 victims in a concentration camp during the reign of terror known as the “dirty war” that gripped Argentina from 1976-1983. This is huge, surpassing the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in his hospital bed back in 1998. (Pinochet died before justice could be done). The conviction of a former head of state for crimes he committed while in office sends a powerful message to all those suspected war criminals still on the loose, including some of the top leaders of the Bush administration.

George W. Bush, who lied our country into war resulting in the deaths of over 4,000 American troops, heads the list. He, former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld also authorized waterboarding of prisoners seized in Afghanistan, violating U.S. and international law against torture in the process…

The publisher of former President George W. Bush’s book “Decision Points” on Sunday set a Nov. 9 release date, unveiled its cover design and announced new details about it.

Bush has said he is not writing a traditional memoir but an account of key decisions in his life. The cover features a photo of then-President Bush alone with his thoughts, standing in the Rose Garden Colonnade, wearing a dark suit and holding a briefing book, his head turned slightly from the camera.

According to Crown Publishers, “Decision Points” will offer “gripping, never-before-heard detail” on such historic events as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the 2000 presidential election along with Bush’s decision to quit drinking, his relationship with his family and other personal details.

“Since leaving the Oval Office, President Bush has given virtually no interviews or public speeches about his presidency,” Crown said in a statement. “Instead, he has spent almost every day writing ‘Decision Points,’ a strikingly personal and candid account revealing how and why he made the defining decisions in his consequential presidency and personal life.”

A publishing industry source familiar with the book said that Bush had completed a first draft and was editing the manuscript on a computer at his office in Dallas…

[continues at AP]

A man named Splitting the Sky, tried to arrest former President George W. Bush for war crimes. He crossed police lines on one of President Bush’s visits to Canada and was arrested. He now faces criminal charges in court, the trial began today.

Apparently someone really DOES miss Dubya.

Items featuring a smiling former President George Bush and the question, “Miss Me Yet?” are doing a brisk business as sales of pro-President Obama items lag, reports the Web shopping site CafePress.

Demand for the items spiked after a billboard featuring the ex-commander in chief appeared alongside a rural Minnesota highway last week, stirring up buzz.

CafePress spokeswoman Jenna Martin said sales of Bush-related products virtually disappeared after Obama replaced him.

But last week, she said, 10 of the firm’s top-selling 100 designs were “Miss Me Yet?” items, moving to the tune of up to 500 orders a day…

[continues in the Daily News]

Internet chatter had led to speculation that it might be an urban myth — nothing more than clever digital trickery spreading via the Web.

But our friend Bob Collins at Minnesota Public Radio assures us he’s seen it with his own eyes:

There is a billboard along I-35 near Wyoming, Minn., with a huge photo of former president George W. Bush and this question: “Miss Me Yet?”

Now, the push is on to find out who paid to have it put up.

Bob says there’s no readily apparent claim of ownership on the billboard, so he’s heading back to the scene to see if he can find out who’s behind the message. He’s also got some local politicos looking into it. He’ll keep us posted…

In an extended interview, award-winning journalist and activist Allan Nairn looks back over the Obama administration’s foreign policy and national security decisions over the last twelve months. “I think Obama should be remembered as a great man because of the blow he struck against white racism,” Nairn says. “But once he became president … Obama became a murderer and a terrorist, because the US has a machine that spans the globe, that has the capacity to kill, and Obama has kept it set on kill. He could have flipped the switch and turned it off … but he chose not to do so.” He continues, “In fact, as far as one can tell, Obama seems to have killed more civilians during his first year than Bush did in his first year, and maybe even than Bush killed in his final year.”

Listen/Watch the Allan Nairn interview on Democracy Now!

He begins with:

10. Stagnating worker wages and the emergence of a new monied aristocracy. Of all the income growth of the entire country of the United States in the Bush years, the richest 1 percent of the working population, about 1.3 million persons, grabbed up over two-thirds of it.

9. Health and food insecurity increased for ordinary Americans. Health care costs skyrocketed. About 49 million Americans, one in six of us, worried about having enough food to eat at some points in that year, and resorted to soup lines, food stamps, or dietary shortcuts.

Almost a century and a half ago, Senator Stephen Douglas told Abraham Lincoln, who had just defeated him for the presidency, “Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism. I’m with you, Mr. President, and God bless you.” Well, in that same spirit, I say to President-Elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country.

— Vice President Al Gore’s concession speech on December 13, 2000, after the Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore, effectively ending his hopes of becoming the 43rd president of the U.S.

Full text of Vice President Al Gore’s concession speech here.

Looking forward to 2016 or so, George P. could run for office and help the G.O.P. shed its old-white-guy image; he’s half Latino. A partner in a real estate investment firm, he has been “compared to JFK Jr. due to his effortless public charisma.” Other than incident in which he burglarized the home of an ex-girlfriend at age 18 and drove his Ford Explorer across her front lawn, “P” seems to be putting together a strong package.

The Get Motivated seminar is, according to its website, “world famous for its energizing, action-packed, star-studded, fun-filled, spectacular stage show.” The all-day event will be held next week at the Fort Worth Convention Center Arena. Besides Bush, speakers include Rudy Giuliani (”America’s mayor”), Terry Bradshaw (”legendary NFL Hall of Fame quarterback), Rick Belluzzo (”legendary president of Microsoft”) and Tamara Lowe (”top sales expert and author of Get Motivated!”). Get yer tix now.