The main reason we went to war with Iraq

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2. TRUTH. He is more truthful than the O. I didn't hear him waver much from what he has been saying through the whole campaign, while O has changed his mind a few times.

3. AMERICA. He believes in this country and its freedoms. O wants to curb our freedom.

4. "MAVERICK". He does cross party lines and buck the system. O will vote specifically with the dems all the time,,, and I really hate the word Maverick.

5. SAFETY. He will keep us safer. O would rather talk. Talking gets you nowhere with the radicals in the world today. The radicals give their word and the next day will kill.

6. I believe he will TRY to cut government spending. This one is iffy since it depends on who runs the house and senate, but I believe he will try his darndest to get this done.

There are so many more reasons why I chose McC and those include those in the below posts.

The Downing Street memos have brought into focus an essential question: on what basis did President George W. Bush decide to invade Iraq? The memos are a government-level confirmation of what has been long believed by so many: that the administration was hell-bent on invading Iraq and was simply looking for justification, valid or not.

Despite such mounting evidence, Bush resolutely maintains total denial. In fact, when a British reporter asked the president recently about the Downing Street documents, Bush painted himself as a reluctant warrior. "Both of us didn't want to use our military," he said, answering for himself and British Prime Minister Blair. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

Yet there's evidence that Bush not only deliberately relied on false intelligence to justify an attack, but that he would have willingly used any excuse at all to invade Iraq. And that he was obsessed with the notion well before 9/11�indeed, even before he became president in early 2001.

In interviews I conducted last fall, a well-known journalist, biographer and Bush family friend who worked for a time with Bush on a ghostwritten memoir said that an Iraq war was always on Bush's brain.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said, 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He went on, 'If I have a chance to invade�, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.'"

Bush apparently accepted a view that Herskowitz, with his long experience of writing books with top Republicans, says was a common sentiment: that no president could be considered truly successful without one military "win" under his belt. Leading Republicans had long been enthralled by the effect of the minuscule Falklands War on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's popularity, and ridiculed Democrats such as Jimmy Carter who were reluctant to use American force. Indeed, both Reagan and Bush's father successfully prosecuted limited invasions (Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War) without miring the United States in endless conflicts.

Herskowitz's revelations illuminate Bush's personal motivation for invading Iraq and, more importantly, his general inclination to use war to advance his domestic political ends. Furthermore, they establish that this thinking predated 9/11, predated his election to the presidency and predated his appointment of leading neoconservatives who had their own, separate, more complex geopolitical rationale for supporting an invasion.

Herskowitz�a longtime Houston newspaper columnist�has ghostwritten or co-authored autobiographies of a broad spectrum of famous people, including Reagan adviser Michael Deaver, Mickey Mantle, Dan Rather and Nixon cabinet secretary John B. Connally. Bush's 1999 comments to Herskowitz were made over the course of as many as 20 sessions together. Eventually, campaign staffers�expressing concern about things Bush had told the author that were included in the manuscript�pulled the project, and Bush campaign officials came to Herskowitz's house and took his original tapes and notes. Bush communications director Karen Hughes then assumed responsibility for the project, which was published in highly sanitized form as A Charge to Keep.

The revelations about Bush's attitude toward Iraq emerged during two taped sessions I held with Herskowitz. These conversations covered a variety of matters, including the journalist's continued closeness with the Bush family and fondness for Bush Senior�who clearly trusted Herskowitz enough to arrange for him to pen a subsequent authorized biography of Bush's grandfather, written and published in 2003.

I conducted those interviews last fall and published an article based on them during the final heated days of the 2004 campaign. Herskowitz's taped insights were verified to the satisfaction of editors at the Houston Chronicle, yet the story failed to gain broad mainstream coverage, primarily because news organization executives expressed concern about introducing such potent news so close to the election. Editors told me they worried about a huge backlash from the White House and charges of an "October Surprise."

But today, as public doubts over the Iraq invasion grow, and with the Downing Street papers adding substance to those doubts, the Herskowitz interviews assume singular importance by providing profound insight into what motivated Bush�personally�in the days and weeks following 9/11. Those interviews introduce us to a George W. Bush, who, until 9/11, had no means for becoming "a great president"�because he had no easy path to war. Once handed the national tragedy of 9/11, Bush realized that the Afghanistan campaign and the covert war against terrorist organizations would not satisfy his ambitions for greatness. Thus, Bush shifted focus from Al Qaeda, perpetrator of the attacks on New York and Washington. Instead, he concentrated on ensuring his place in American history by going after a globally reviled and easily targeted state run by a ruthless dictator.

The Herskowitz interviews add an important dimension to our understanding of this presidency, especially in combination with further evidence that Bush's focus on Iraq was motivated by something other than credible intelligence. In their published accounts of the period between 9/11 and the March 2003 invasion, former White House Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke and journalist Bob Woodward both describe a president single-mindedly obsessed with Iraq. The first anecdote takes place the day after the World Trade Center collapsed, in the Situation Room of the White House. The witness is Richard Clarke, and the situation is captured in his book, Against All Enemies.

Similarly, Bob Woodward, in a CBS News 60 Minutes interview about his book, Bush At War, captures a moment, on November 21, 2001, where the president expresses an acute sense of urgency that it is time to secretly plan the war with Iraq. Again, we know there was nothing in the way of credible intelligence to precipitate the president's actions.

Bush wanted a war so that he could build the political capital necessary to achieve his domestic agenda and become, in his mind, "a great president." Blair and the members of his cabinet, unaware of the Herskowitz conversations, placed Bush's decision to mount an invasion in or about July of 2002. But for Bush, the question that summer was not whether, it was only how and when. The most important question, why, was left for later.

Eventually, there would be a succession of answers to that question: weapons of mass destruction, links to Al Qaeda, the promotion of democracy, the domino theory of the Middle East. But none of them have been as convincing as the reason George W. Bush gave way back in the summer of 1999.

in this household. Sure, we could lose our jobs, however, we are quite prepared for something like that. We have an emergency fund in place that would last at least a year (a year's worth of mortgage and utilility payments), we don't have a car payment, all credit cards are paid off and we have CDs, retirement funds, etc. It's called planning for the future and planning for the unexpected. We have paid into unemployment, so of course we would take it if we had to.

Former Head Of Star Wars Program Says Cheney Main 9/11 Suspect
Official version of events a conspiracy theory, says drills were cover for attacks

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | April 4 2006

The former head of the Star Wars missile defense program under Presidents Ford and Carter has gone public to say that the official version of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory and his main suspect for the architect of the attack is Vice President Dick Cheney.

Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam. He is the recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President�s Medal of Veterans for Peace, the Society of Military Engineers Gold Medal (twice), six Air Medals, and dozens of other awards and honors. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech. He chaired 8 major international conferences, and is one of the country�s foremost experts on National Security.

Bowman worked secretly for the US government on the Star Wars project and was the first to coin the very term in a 1977 secret memo. After Bowman realized that the program was only ever intended to be used as an aggressive and not defensive tool, as part of a plan to initiate a nuclear war with the Soviets, he left the program and campaigned against it.

In an interview with The Alex Jones Show aired nationally on the GCN Radio Network, Bowman (pictured below) stated that at the bare minimum if Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were involved in 9/11 then the government stood down and allowed the attacks to happen. He said it is plausible that the entire chain of military command were unaware of what was taking place and were used as tools by the people pulling the strings behind the attack.

Bowman outlined how the drills on the morning of 9/11 that simulated planes crashing into buildings on the east coast were used as a cover to dupe unwitting air defense personnel into not responding quickly enough to stop the attack.

The exercises that went on that morning simulating the exact kind of thing that was happening so confused the people in the FAA and NORAD....that they didn't they didn't know what was real and what was part of the exercise, said Bowman

I think the people who planned and carried out those exercises, they're the ones that should be the object of investigation.

Asked if he could name a prime suspect who was the likely architect behind the attacks, Bowman stated, If I had to narrow it down to one person....I think my prime suspect would be Dick Cheney.

Bowman said that privately his military fighter pilot peers and colleagues did not disagree with his sentiments about the real story behind 9/11.

Bowman agreed that the US was in danger of slipping into a dictatorship and stated, I think there's been nothing closer to fascism than what we've seen lately from this government.

Bowman slammed the Patriot Act as having, Done more to destroy the rights of Americans than all of our enemies combined.

Bowman trashed the 9/11 Commission as a politically motivated cover-up with abounding conflicts of interest, charging, The 9/11 Commission omitted anything that might be the least bit suspicious or embarrassing or in any way detract from the official conspiracy so it was a total whitewash.

There needs to be a true investigation, not the kind of sham investigations we have had with the 9/11 omission and all the rest of that junk, said Bowman.

Asked if the perpetrators of 9/11 were preparing to stage another false-flag attack to reinvigorate their agenda Bowman agreed that, I can see that and I hope they can't pull it off, I hope they are prevented from pulling it off but I know darn good and well they'd like to have another one.

A mainstay of the attack pieces against Charlie Sheen have been that he is not credible enough to speak on the topic of 9/11. These charges are ridiculed by the fact that Sheen is an expert on 9/11 who spends hours a day meticulously researching the topic, something that the attack dogs have failed to do, aiming their comments solely at Sheen's personal life and ignoring his invitation to challenge him on the facts.

In addition, from the very start we have put forth eminently credible individuals only for them to be ignored by the establishment media. Physics Professors, former White House advisors and CIA analysts, the father of Reaganomics, German Defense Ministers and Bush's former Secretary of the Treasury, have all gone public on 9/11 but have been uniformly ignored by the majority of the establishment press.

Will Robert Bowman also be blackballed as the mainstream continue to misrepresent the 9/11 truth movement as an occupation of the fringe minority?

Bowman is currently running for Congress in Florida's 15th District.

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http://www.prisonplanet.com/article...mainsuspect.htm

Houston: Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

�He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,� said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. �It was on his mind. He said to me: �One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.� And he said, �My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.� He said, �If I have a chance to invade�.if I had that much capital, I�m not going to waste it. I�m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I�m going to have a successful presidency.�

Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father�s shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. �Suddenly, he�s at 91 percent in the polls, and he�d barely crawled out of the bunker.�

That President Bush and his advisers had Iraq on their minds long before weapons inspectors had finished their work � and long before alleged Iraqi ties with terrorists became a central rationale for war � has been raised elsewhere, including in a book based on recollections of former Treasury Secretary Paul O�Neill. However, Herskowitz was in a unique position to hear Bush�s unguarded and unfiltered views on Iraq, war and other matters � well before he became president.

In 1999, Herskowitz struck a deal with the campaign of George W. Bush about a ghost-written autobiography, which was ultimately titled A Charge to Keep : My Journey to the White House, and he and Bush signed a contract in which the two would split the proceeds. The publisher was William Morrow. Herskowitz was given unimpeded access to Bush, and the two met approximately 20 times so Bush could share his thoughts. Herskowitz began working on the book in May, 1999, and says that within two months he had completed and submitted some 10 chapters, with a remaining 4-6 chapters still on his computer. Herskowitz was replaced as Bush�s ghostwriter after Bush�s handlers concluded that the candidate�s views and life experiences were not being cast in a sufficiently positive light.

According to Herskowitz, who has authored more than 30 books, many of them jointly written autobiographies of famous Americans in politics, sports and media (including that of Reagan adviser Michael Deaver), Bush and his advisers were sold on the idea that it was difficult for a president to accomplish an electoral agenda without the record-high approval numbers that accompany successful if modest wars.

The revelations on Bush�s attitude toward Iraq emerged recently during two taped interviews of Herskowitz, which included a discussion of a variety of matters, including his continued closeness with the Bush family, indicated by his subsequent selection to pen an authorized biography of Bush�s grandfather, written and published last year with the assistance and blessing of the Bush family.

Herskowitz also revealed the following:

-In 2003, Bush�s father indicated to him that he disagreed with his son�s invasion of Iraq.

-Bush admitted that he failed to fulfill his Vietnam-era domestic National Guard service obligation, but claimed that he had been �excused.�

-Bush revealed that after he left his Texas National Guard unit in 1972 under murky circumstances, he never piloted a plane again. That casts doubt on the carefully-choreographed moment of Bush emerging in pilot�s garb from a jet on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 to celebrate �Mission Accomplished� in Iraq. The image, instantly telegraphed around the globe, and subsequent hazy White House statements about his capacity in the cockpit, created the impression that a heroic Bush had played a role in landing the craft.

-Bush described his own business ventures as �floundering� before campaign officials insisted on recasting them in a positive light.

Throughout the interviews for this article and in subsequent conversations, Herskowitz indicated he was conflicted over revealing information provided by a family with which he has longtime connections, and by how his candor could comport with the undefined operating principles of the as-told-to genre. Well after the interviews�in which he expressed consternation that Bush�s true views, experience and basic essence had eluded the American people �Herskowitz communicated growing concern about the consequences for himself of the publication of his remarks, and said that he had been under the impression he would not be quoted by name. However, when conversations began, it was made clear to him that the material was intended for publication and attribution. A tape recorder was present and visible at all times.

Several people who know Herskowitz well addressed his character and the veracity of his recollections. �I don�t know anybody that�s ever said a bad word about Mickey,� said Barry Silverman, a well-known Houston executive and civic figure who worked with him on another book project. An informal survey of Texas journalists turned up uniform confidence that Herskowitz�s account as contained in this article could be considered accurate.

One noted Texas journalist who spoke with Herskowitz about the book in 1999 recalls how the author mentioned to him at the time that Bush had revealed things the campaign found embarrassing and did not want in print. He requested anonymity because of the political climate in the state. �I can�t go near this,� he said.

According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush�s beliefs on Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House � ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. �Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.�

Bush�s circle of pre-election advisers had a fixation on the political capital that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher collected from the Falklands War. Said Herskowitz: �They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at [Thatcher] and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches.�

Republicans, Herskowitz said, felt that Jimmy Carter�s political downfall could be attributed largely to his failure to wage a war. He noted that President Reagan and President Bush�s father himself had (besides the narrowly-focused Gulf War I) successfully waged limited wars against tiny opponents � Grenada and Panama � and gained politically. But there were successful small wars, and then there were quagmires, and apparently George H.W. Bush and his son did not see eye to eye.

�I know [Bush senior] would not admit this now, but he was opposed to it. I asked him if he had talked to W about invading Iraq. �He said, �No I haven�t, and I won�t, but Brent [Scowcroft] has.� Brent would not have talked to him without the old man�s okaying it.� Scowcroft, national security adviser in the elder Bush�s administration, penned a highly publicized warning to George W. Bush about the perils of an invasion.

Herskowitz�s revelations are not the sole indicator of Bush�s pre-election thinking on Iraq. In December 1999, some six months after his talks with Herskowitz, Bush surprised veteran political chroniclers, including the Boston Globe�s David Nyhan, with his blunt pronouncements about Saddam at a six-way New Hampshire primary event that got little notice: �It was a gaffe-free evening for the rookie front-runner, till he was asked about Saddam�s weapons stash,� wrote Nyhan. �I�d take �em out,� [Bush] grinned cavalierly, �take out the weapons of mass destruction�I�m surprised he�s still there,� said Bush of the despot who remains in power after losing the Gulf War to Bush Jr.�s father�It remains to be seen if that offhand declaration of war was just Texas talk, a sort of locker room braggadocio, or whether it was Bush�s first big clinker. �

The notion that President Bush held unrealistic or na�ve views about the consequences of war was further advanced recently by a Bush supporter, the evangelist Pat Robertson, who revealed that Bush had told him the Iraq invasion would yield no casualties. In addition, in recent days, high-ranking US military officials have complained that the White House did not provide them with adequate resources for the task at hand.

Herskowitz considers himself a friend of the Bush family, and has been a guest at the family vacation home in Kennebunkport. In the late 1960s, Herskowitz, a longtime Houston Chronicle sports columnist designated President Bush�s father, then-Congressman George HW Bush, to replace him as a guest columnist, and the two have remained close since then. (Herskowitz was suspended briefly in April without pay for reusing material from one of his own columns, about legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden.)

In 1999, when Herskowitz turned in his chapters for Charge to Keep, Bush�s staff expressed displeasure �often over Herskowitz�s use of language provided by Bush himself. In a chapter on the oil business, Herskowitz included Bush�s own words to describe the Texan�s unprofitable business ventures, writing: �the companies were floundering�. �I got a call from one of the campaign lawyers, he was kind of angry, and he said, �You�ve got some wrong information.� I didn�t bother to say, �Well you know where it came from.� [The lawyer] said, �We do not consider that the governor struggled or floundered in the oil business. We consider him a successful oilman who started up at least two new businesses.� �

In the end, campaign officials decided not to go with Herskowitz�s account, and, moreover, demanded everything back. �The lawyer called me and said, �Delete it. Shred it. Just do it.� �

�They took it and [communications director] Karen [Hughes] rewrote it,� he said. A campaign official arrived at his home at seven a.m. on a Monday morning and took his notes and computer files. However, Herskowitz, who is known for his memory of anecdotes from his long history in journalism and book publishing, says he is confident about his recollections.

According to Herskowitz, Bush was reluctant to discuss his time in the Texas Air National Guard � and inconsistent when he did so. Bush, he said, provided conflicting explanations of how he came to bypass a waiting list and obtain a coveted Guard slot as a domestic alternative to being sent to Vietnam. Herskowitz also said that Bush told him that after transferring from his Texas Guard unit two-thirds through his six-year military obligation to work on an Alabama political campaign, he did not attend any Alabama National Guard drills at all, because he was �excused.� This directly contradicts his public statements that he participated in obligatory training with the Alabama National Guard. Bush�s claim to have fulfilled his military duty has been subject to intense scrutiny; he has insisted in the past that he did show up for monthly drills in Alabama � though commanding officers say they never saw him, and no Guardsmen have come forward to accept substantial �rewards� for anyone who can claim to have seen Bush on base.

Herskowitz said he asked Bush if he ever flew a plane again after leaving the Texas Air National Guard in 1972 � which was two years prior to his contractual obligation to fly jets was due to expire. He said Bush told him he never flew any plane � military or civilian � again. That would contradict published accounts in which Bush talks about his days in 1973 working with inner-city children, when he claimed to have taken some of the children up in a plane.

In 2002, three years after he had been pulled off the George W. Bush biography, Herskowitz was asked by Bush�s father to write a book about the current president�s grandfather, Prescott Bush, after getting a message that the senior Bush wanted to see him. �Former President Bush just handed it to me. We were sitting there one day, and I was visiting him there in his office�He said, �I wish somebody would do a book about my dad.� �

�He said to me, �I know this has been a disappointing time for you, but it�s amazing how many times something good will come out of it.� I passed it on to my agent, he jumped all over it. I asked [Bush senior], �Would you support it and would you give me access to the rest of family?� He said yes.�

That book, Duty, Honor, Country: The Life and Legacy of Prescott Bush, was published in 2003 by Routledge. If anything, the book has been criticized for its over-reliance on the Bush family�s perspective and rosy interpretation of events. Herskowitz himself is considered the ultimate �as-told-to� author, lending credibility to his account of what George W. Bush told him. Herskowitz�s other books run the gamut of public figures, and include the memoirs of Reagan aide Deaver, former Texas Governor and Nixon Treasury Secretary John Connally, newsman Dan Rather, astronaut Walter Cunningham, and baseball greats Mickey Mantle and Nolan Ryan.

After Herskowitz was pulled from the Bush book project, the biographer learned that a scenario was being prepared to explain his departure. �I got a phone call from someone in the Bush campaign, confidentially, saying �Watch your back.� �

Reporters covering Bush say that when they inquired as to why Herskowitz was no longer on the project, Hughes intimated that Herskowitz had personal habits that interfered with his writing � a claim Herskowitz said is unfounded. Later, the campaign put out the word that Herskowitz had been removed for missing a deadline. Hughes subsequently finished the book herself � it received largely critical reviews for its self-serving qualities and lack of spontaneity or introspection.

So, said Herskowitz, the best material was left on the cutting room floor, including Bush�s true feelings.

�He told me that as a leader, you can never admit to a mistake,� Herskowitz said. �That was one of the keys to being a leader.�

URL: http://www.gnn.tv/articles/article.php?id=761

Germany didn't attack us in World War II, either; Japan did. Who did we go after first, though? The evil was the same and had to be dealt with, regardless of which country attacked us. It really boggles my mind as to why you think the people in Iraq are less deserving of being freed from the grips of a brutal tyrant than the people in Bosnia and Yugoslavia? If you think Saddam and his epitomy-of-evil sons didn't commit atrocities, what news outlets have you been getting your information from? You would have to be living in la-la land not to know these facts. Our troops have uncovered thousands of dead bodies buried in mass graves since going to Iraq, victims of Saddam's cruel and outright savage regime. As far as President Clinton and Bosnia, I supported his going to free those oppressed people from that brutal dictator they were under. I'm a humanitarian and a patriot and don't believe in playing politics during war like you democrats do. By the way, Clinton promised when he sent our troops to Bosnia that they would all be home by Christmas of that year, but guess what? We still have troops there and he had several years to bring them back but didn't. As far as our troops being deployed all over the world under Clinton, he had our troops spread so thin, and he did this himself and did not inherit the problem, that we didn't even have enough troops here at home to support us if we were attacked. This is per the military themselves, not my report.

The problem with you democrats is that you are being fed talking points from a group of news media outlets so biased they are about to fall over the cliff from leaning left. You are being lied to by them, and I admonish you to get the facts, not their talking points. Don't let them do your thinking for you. Research and get the truth for yourself. The media outlets you listen to have an agenda - to make this country lose this war against terror, but mainly to make this country into a socialist nation. This has been their agenda for years and years and you are being dumbed-down by them because of your gullibility. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, wake up!!

By the way, there were over 100,000 terrorists prior to our going to war against them, so 17,000 is quite an achievement I would say. Do you want them living in your neighborhood, having access to the schools, shopping malls, and supermarkets in your neighborhood, because that's what you'll have if we don't win this war.

I agree that he is arrogant and I've never seen this in my lifetime. It sets a new precedence [sic] (I'm tired) for this to happen every election. What I really like about him is the way he "wiggles" when he takes questions and you can see him just trying to find the correct words to fit the question without answering it.

Only time will tell...and for you bashers, this is my opinion. I am going to "sort of" give him a try but the first itsy bitsy mistake he makes, I'll be all over it with glee.

CORONADO, Calif. -- President Bush answered growing antiwar protests
yesterday with a fresh reason for US troops to continue fighting in
Iraq: protection of the country's vast oil fields, which he said
would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists.

The president, standing against a backdrop of the USS Ronald Reagan,
the newest aircraft carrier in the Navy's fleet, said terrorists
would be denied their goal of making Iraq a base from which to
recruit followers, train them, and finance attacks.

''We will defeat the terrorists, Bush said. ''We will build a free
Iraq that will fight terrorists instead of giving them aid and
sanctuary.

Appearing at Naval Air Station North Island to commemorate the
anniversary of the Allies' World War II victory over Japan, Bush
compared his resolve to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's in the
1940s and said America's mission in Iraq is to turn it into a
democratic ally just as the United States did with Japan after its
1945 surrender. Bush's V-J Day ceremony did not fall on the actual
anniversary. Japan announced its surrender on Aug. 15, 1945 -- Aug.
14 in the United States because of the time difference.

''Democratic Presidents Roosevelt and Truman led America to victory
in World War II because they laid out a clear plan for success to the
American people, America's allies, and America's troops, said Howard
Dean, Democratic Party chairman. ''President Bush has failed to put
together a plan, so despite the bravery and sacrifice of our troops,
we are not making the progress that we should be in Iraq. The troops,
our allies, and the American people deserve better leadership from
our commander in chief.

The speech was Bush's third in just over a week defending his Iraq
policies, as the White House scrambles to counter growing public
concern about the war. But the devastation wrought by Hurricane
Katrina in the Gulf Coast drew attention away; the White House
announced during the president's remarks that he was cutting his
August vacation short to return to Washington, D.C., to oversee the
federal response effort.

After the speech, Bush hurried back to Texas ahead of schedule to
prepare to fly back to the nation's capital today. He was to return
to the White House on Friday, after spending more than four weeks
operating from his ranch in Crawford.

It has been an especially deadly month there for US troops, with the
number of those who have died since the invasion of Iraq in March
2003 now nearing 1,900.

The growing death toll has become a regular feature of the slightly
larger protests that Bush now encounters everywhere he goes -- a
movement boosted by a vigil set up in a field down the road from the
president's ranch by a mother grieving the loss of her soldier son in
Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan arrived in Crawford only days after Bush did, asking
for a meeting so he could explain why her son and others are dying in
Iraq. The White House refused, and Sheehan's camp turned into a hub
of activity for hundreds of activists around the country demanding
that troops be brought home.

This week, the administration also had to defend the proposed
constitution produced in Iraq at US urging. Critics fear the impact
of its rejection by many Sunnis, and say it fails to protect
religious freedom and women's rights.

At the naval base, Bush declared, ''We will not rest until victory is
America's and our freedom is secure from Al Qaeda and its forces in
Iraq led by Abu Musab alZarqawi.

''If Zarqawi and [Osama] bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would
create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks, Bush
said. ''They'd seize oil fields to fund their ambitions. They could
recruit more terrorists by claiming a historic victory over the
United States and our coalition.

Like GT so eloquently wrote below, she has nothing to do with my request that you leave our board. The only person who has anything to do with it is YOU.

You and every single one of your *friends* are rude, crude, abrasive, insulting, and continually lie, lie, LIE. You are the kind of people I would choose NOT to associate with in real life because you have no values and you have a gang mentality, but most of all, you're just deplorable human beings, as you yourselves have demonstrated through your posts.

You have your own board. Would you please just go back there? You are offensive to many on this board. This is the liberal board. You clearly don't belong here any more than I don't belong on your board, where you and you *friends* indeed constantly gang up on anyone who disagrees with you. If that's how you want to conduct yourselves on your own board, that's fine. It's your board, and if you choose to turn it into a filthy sewer, that's your option. But you don't have the right do that on the liberal board. I'm very close to writing to the administrator and complaining about you all before I leave, as well. You don't contribute anything of value to this board, and all you morons do is chase kind, loving and intelligent people away.

As GT says in her posts, you are clearly obsessed with her, and I don't understand why, but you're becoming psychotic about it, and you're showing that psychosis to anyone who reads this board. You paint her to be a terrible person, and from what I read in her posts, she is NOT a terrible person. She is loving and caring and intelligent..all traits that not ONE of you posseses. You are way out of your limited ignorant hateful league on this board. Please. JUST GO AWAY.

I don't want government involved in my health care. The VA is a joke and our veterans do not get the care that they need and deserve. If heroes like that aren't taken care of by our government....what in the he11 makes us think that the government will take care of us?

Maybe people who are struggling to afford healthcare, fill up their gas tanks and feed their families just happen to agree with his VIEWS on the issues.

ever called you a kool-aid drinker is because you constantly post about rhetoric. When will you wake up and realize that even democrat politicians say one thing and do another. You can't get much more obvious about than the Obama administration and yet you continue to sing his praise. You are blinded by your own political party.

Obama...the man who said he would sign no bill with pork in it and then did without batting an eyelash.

The man who said he would pull troops out of Iraq and has extended the time frame to keep troops in Iraq longer and to deploy more in Afghan. He ridiculed McCain for not wanting a time line but I guess a time line is okay as long as you can push it back whenever you feel the need, huh?

A man who promised tax cuts on 95% of the American people and yet he wants cap and trade which will tax everyone A LOT.

Gay rights activists sing his praise and yet Obama himself isn't for same sex marriage.

He wants people to have the right to choose to carry a child or abort it and yet he takes the rights away from hospitals and doctors by not allowing them to refuse to perform that procedure. You complain about taking the rights away from people but yet you have no problem taking rights away from people with a different view point than yourself.

Yet all you ever come back with is that we are a bunch of babies who need to grow some balls and how ignorant we are for watching Fox News even though Fox has higher ratings than the crap you watch.

The channels you profess to tell the truth aren't even covering the tea parties. I personally feel that thousands and thousands of Americans protesting is a big deal and should be reported on whether or not a channel agrees with the reason behind it. Picking and choosing what to report is not telling the truth. It is being very one sided. Any open minded person would realize that.

marriage would not still be limited to two people (of whatever flavor) at a time. Bygamy would still be bygamy.

You're right. Think what men with half a dozen legal wives and a couple of dozen kids could do to any medical plan, let alone our system for deducting dependents from income tax.

On the other hand, I have a same-sex housemate who is disabled, unemployed and uninsured. We are not gay, but if same-sex marriage were legal, I could marry her and get her insured under my plan. Many marriages involve no sex. Maybe they didn't start out that way but over time they evolve in that direction. We would simply be skipping the honeymoon part.

The main reason we went to war with Iraq

Exclusive: Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000