Quotes and Witticisms, Fuel for the Thinking Man

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.

Robert Louis Stevenson


There are three ingredients to the good life; learning, earning, and yearning.

Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)


It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men will do when they don't have to.

Walter Linn


Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation, and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked always deserves respect or pity as the case may be.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)


You can't trade your freedom for security, because if you do, you're going to lose both.

Brandon Mayfield, Aloha, Ore


The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the
point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)


Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and
the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)


Promises are like the full moon: if they are not kept at once they diminish day by day.

German proverb


All know that the drop merges into the ocean but
few know that the ocean merges into the drop.

Kabir, reformer, poet (late 15th century)



The only industrial costs software companies have is the printing of serial numbers.

Ninety percent of the software gets written in 10 percent of the time. The next 9.5 percent takes 90 percent of the time. The last one-half percent never gets done, but the software still gets sold.

A consultant is someone who's called in when someone has painted himself into a corner. He's expected to levitate his client out of that corner.

Short-sightedness is a virtue when it comes to choosing a computer
system. Know what you need now -- not two years from now.

I believe in standards. Everyone should have one.

George Morrow, Quotations from Chairman Morrow, Morrow Design Press, 1984 (All 5 above 5 quotes)


America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter,
and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President (1809-1865)


Did you know that the worldwide food shortage that threatens up to five hundred million children could be alleviated at the cost of only one day, only ONE day, of modern warfare.

Peter Ustinov, actor, writer and director (1921-2004)


Money may be the husk of many things but not the kernel.
It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health;
acquaintance, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty;
days of joy, but not peace or happiness. -

Henrik Ibsen, playwright (1828-1906)


Home is not where you live but where they understand you.

-Christion Morgenstern, writer (1871-1914)


When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings.

William Clifford Roberts, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The American Journal of Cardiology


In questions of science, the authority of a thousand
is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)


I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only
thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.

Arthur Godfrey, television host, entertainer (1903-1983)


The highest exercise of charity is charity towards the uncharitable.

J.S.Buckminster, clergyman and editor (1784-1812)


Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)


Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)


The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.

Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)


Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something
to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Joseph Addison, writer (1672-1719)


One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)


Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

Will Rogers


The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968)



There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.

Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961)


When money speaks, the truth keeps silent.

Russian proverb


Life is like a library owned by an author. In it are a few books
which he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him.

Harry Emerson Fosdick, preacher and author (1878-1969)


Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

Jean-Paul Sartre, writer and philosopher (1905-1980)


In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)


No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's
not the same river and he's not the same man.

Heraclitus, philosopher (c. 540-470 BCE)


The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in
politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves.

Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)


If you are planning for one year, grow rice. If you are planning for
20 years, grow trees. If you are planning for centuries, grow men.

Chinese proverb


Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity

Hanlon's Razor


In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time
something like that happened in politics or religion.

Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)


You have to hold your audience in writing to the very end -- much more than in talking, when people have to be polite and listen to you.

Brenda Ueland, writer (1891-1985)


The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.

W. Somerset Maugham, writer (1874-1965)


What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

Crowfoot, Native American warrior and orator (1821-1890)


What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.

P.D. James, writer (1920- )


The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Alan Kay, inventor (1940- )


Black holes are where God divided by zero.

Steven Wright, comedian (1955- )


No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

John Donne, poet (1573-1631)


Sometimes my mind wanders.. other times it packs
it's suitcase and goes away for weeks at a time.


Latest survey shows that 3 out of 4 people make up 75 per cent of the world's population.


..it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want.

Douglas Adams, Author (1952-2001)


Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn
from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Douglas Adams, Author (1952-2001)


A common mistake that people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Douglas Adams, Author, Mostly Harmless


When nations grow old, the arts grow cold and commerce settles on every tree.

William Blake, poet, engraver, and painter (1757-1827)


Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

George Washington, 1st US president (1732-1799)


A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand.

Mark Abley, journalist (1955- )


Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.

William Arthur Ward, college administrator, writer (1921-1994)


He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak.

Michel De Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)


Why does no one confess his sins? Because he is yet in them.
It is for a man who has awoke from sleep to tell his dreams.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, writer and philosopher (BCE 3-65 CE)


Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)


We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)


Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks.

Phillips Brooks, bishop and orator (1835-1893)


Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)


Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.

Socrates, philosopher (469?-399 BCE)


Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.

Amschel Mayer Rothschild, banker (1743-1812)


They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)


A successful man is one who makes more money than a wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

Lana Turner, actress (1921-1995)


One can pay back the loan of gold, but one dies forever in debt to those who are kind.

Malayan Proverb


Intellectuals solve problems: geniuses prevent them.

Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)


Efficiency is intelligent laziness.

David Dunham


You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.

Meister Eckhart, theologian (c. 1260-1327)


Brasington's Ninth Law: A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned one will take only twice as long.


Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

Norman Cousins, author and editor (1915-1990)


The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.

Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)


Youth is the first victim of war - the first fruit of peace. It takes 20 years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only 20 seconds of war to destroy him.

Boudewijn I, King of Belgium (1934-1993


If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.

Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)


Trees are not known by their leaves, nor even by their blossoms, but by their fruits.

Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204)


I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.

Marshall McLuhan, cultural historian and communications theorist (1911-1980)


But man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep.

William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616)


To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations--such is a pleasure beyond compare.

Kenko Yoshida, essayist (1283-1352)


If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.

Lord Salisbury, British prime minister(1830-1903)


Assumptions are the termites of relationships.

Henry Winkler, actor (1945-)


A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

Robertson Davies, writer (1913-1995)


He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.

Confucius (c. 551-479? BC)


Learning is acquired by reading books; but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading man, and studying all the various editions of them.

Philip Dormer Stanhope, statesman and writer (1694-1773)


Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education.

Chuang-Tzu, philosopher (4th c. BCE)


Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)


Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-92)


I am not one of those who believe that a great army is the means of
maintaining peace, because if you build up a great profession those who form parts of it want to exercise their profession.

Woodrow Wilson, 28th US president, Nobel laureate (1856-1924)


A true measure of your worth includes all the benefits others have gained from your successes.

Cullen Hightower, salesman and writer (1923- )


He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.

Horace, poet and satirist (65-8 BCE)


To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)


You are never too old to be what you might have been.

George Eliot (MaryAnn Evans), novelist (1819-1880)


The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defence against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad.

James Madison, 4th US president (1751-1836)


What you get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.

Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist and writer (1825-1895)


After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

Fred Thompson, US senator, lawyer, writer, and actor (1942- )


It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

Arthur Conan Doyle, physician and writer (1859-1930)


I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.

Bjarne Stroustrup, computer science professor, designer of C++ programming language (1950- )


There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)


The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Thomas Huxley, biologist and writer (1825-1895)


Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge: fitter to bruise than polish.

Anne Bradstreet, poet (1612-1672)


A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

Thomas Mann, novelist, Nobel laureate (1875-1955)

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe themselves
sinners; the sinners who believe themselves righteous.

Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)


I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)


The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.

Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)


A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against its government.

Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)


If a triangle could speak, it would say, that God is eminently triangular, while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular.

Baruch Spinoza, philosopher (1632-1677)


He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)


"The information was correct, but the interpretations were not."

Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf AKA Bagdad Bob, 06-27-2003
(Former Iraqi Information Minister)


The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945)


An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.

Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)


If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)


Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more
uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."

H.L.Mencken


When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny.

Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)


If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and the
fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

Louis Dembitz Brandeis, lawyer, judge, and writer (1856-1941)


Perfect love is rare indeed - for to be a lover will require that you
continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain.

Leo Buscaglia, author, speaker and professor (1924-1998)


Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

Alfred Hitchcock, film-maker (1899-1980)


I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US president, architect and author (1743-1826)


A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

Henry Adams, historian and teacher (1838-1918)


Anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport.

Robert S. Wieder, journalist


The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him
absolutely no good.

Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)


Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also
deprive me of the possibility of being right.

Igor Stravinsky, composer (1882-1971)


The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)


I'm far more concerned about the threat from dihydrogen monoxide. Breathing in just a small amount of it can kill you! It can eat through metal! It's addictive! And it's everywhere!


There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.


The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616)


Only two things are infinite: the Universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not so sure about the former.

Albert Einstein


Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Hanlon's Razor


To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919)


Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

Franklin P. Jones, businessman (1887-1929)


The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

Robert Maynard Hutchins, educator (1899-1977)


Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Einstein, in his memoir


I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President (1809-1865)


If we don't turn around now, we just may get where we're going.

American Indian saying


Intelligence complicates. Wisdom Simplifies.

Mason Cooley


Tremble: your whole life is a rehearsal for the moment you are in now.

Judith Malina


It's imperative that we ... recognize that condoms no more cause sex than umbrellas cause rain.

Nicholas D. Kristof, NY Times, 01-10-2003


Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing;
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet (1807-1882)


Physical violence is the great destroyer; intellectual violence is the great creator. This dichotomy alone should be enough to show why one is evil and one is essential. Having intellectual violence is not the same as having a passion. It is, instead, being constantly filled with passion for everything. That which you like you care deeply for, and so will fight for, in word and if necessary fist. That which you dislike you hate and so will fight against as strongly. That which arouses no feelings is simply a waste of everyone's time.

Kali, Meaning and Transcendence in The Rebirth of Greatness by Alan Jamison ( http://www.intellectual-violence.com )


A common man marvels at uncommon things; a wise man marvels at the commonplace.

Confucius


Velleity (vuh-LEE-ity), n. A mere wish, unaccompanied by an effort to obtain it.


As F. Lee Bailey once said, the major flaw in the American justice system is that appeals focus only on procedural errors, and ones guilt or innocence is never again an issue after the original trial, even if that trial reached the wrong result.


The obscure we see eventually. The completely apparent takes a little while longer.

Edward R. Morrow


Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover


Beware the appearance of competence, for it will create the obligation to perform.

Mike Nicksic


A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

Gian Vincenzo Cravina


Faith - not wanting to know what is true.

??? Friedrich Nietzsche


A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays 1841


Nearly all men can stand adversity but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

Abraham Lincoln


After the game the king and the pawn go in the same box.

Italian proverb


Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

Eleanor Roosevelt


And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space, because that's exactly how much difference there is. :-)

Larry Wall in <10209@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>


Leaders should have some understanding of variation, including appreciation of a stable system, [and] some understanding of special causes of variation and common causes.

A fault in the interpretation of observations, seen everywhere, is to suppose that every event (defect, mistake, accident) is attributable to someone (usually the one closest at hand), or is related to some special event. The fact is that most troubles with service and production lie in the system and not the people.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming


Judge each day not by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.

Robert Louis Stevenson


I know that sounds like a firm grasp of the obvious, but it isn't.

Joe Burns, Ph.D., Web Design Goodies for April 19, 2001


It takes a genius to whine appealingly.

F. Scott Fitzgerald


If you would be so kind.. to help me find my mind..
I'd like to thank you in advance...
know this before you start, my world's been torn apart..,
I lost my mind in a wild romance.

Curtis Mayfield


These people are masters of the half truth and the implication and the insinuation.

Jim Bell, one five seven two A Q B F


Mathematics deals exclusively with the relations of concepts to each other without consideration of their relation to experience.

Albert Einstein


Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

Gandhi


You can fuck some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you are going to end up in a body bag or a pine box before you manage to fuck all of the people all of the time.

Carl Johnson


Prosecution does not represent an entity whose interests include winning at all costs; prosecutor's client is society, which seeks justice, not victory."

US v. Doe, 860 F2d (lst Cir. 1988)


If the government, police and prosecutors could always be trusted to do the right thing, there would have never been a need for the Bill of Rights.

Justice Leventhal US v. US District Court for the Central District of California 858 F2d 534 (9th Cir. 1988)


And Remember: The loudest sound created when you snap your fingers is not from your middle finger striking your thumb's pad, it's the air the middle finger pushes away actually striking the palm. Really. Try to make the same noise by simply slapping your fingers against your palm or thumb's pad. The sound is further amplified by the ring and small finger lying across the palm, the "sounding board." Again, try to make the same snapping sound while only slightly lifting those two fingers off of the palm. Listen to the pitch when you raise those two fingers. It'll be higher.

Joe Burns, Ph.D.


"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler


Ask not about things which, if made plain to you, may cause you trouble.

The Koran


Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clarke


I hold with whoever it was that said ‘The only thing shown by a proof that something is impossible is lack of imagination on the part of the prover.’ I'll make exceptions for violations of conservation laws or the laws of thermodynamics, but for little else. It is silly to stop development because one has not yet succeeded.

Albert G. Petschek


Your work is both true and original. Unfortunately, the parts that are true are not original, and the parts that are original are not true.

Edgar Allan Poe


When you have spirited people, whether you agree with them or not, it adds a little yeast to the dough. In your country club, your church and business, about 15 percent of the people are screwballs, lightweights and boobs and you would not want those people unrepresented in Congress.

Former Senator Alan K. Simpson, Republican from Wyoming


We cannot speak of democracy if we are not ready to play by its rules. The main aspect of democracy is the right of people to change a government if they do not like it.

Mohammad Khatami, President of Iran, August 28, 2002


If you have ever wondered if you are in hell, it has been said,
then you are on a well-traveled road of spiritual inquiry.


Never argue with an idiot, they will only drag you down to their level and beat you with years of experience.

Unknown (Dilbert's School of Thoughts ?)


Other Iraqi officials have said the declaration may run as long as 2,000 pages. At their news conference, Mr. Perricos, the United Nations weapons inspector, and Jacques Baute, a French nuclear physicist who leads the nuclear inspections team, said the sheer size of the task would mean that it might be "some time" - at least days - before anybody could determine whether anything in the information could be deemed a banned weapons program. When Mr. Perricos was asked what he meant when he said it would take "some time" to go through the declaration, he replied: "It's anybody's guess. `Some time' in Greek is any time from one day to 1,000 years."

Demetrius Perricos, Head of the team conducting the biological, chemical and missile inspections


Never underestimate the bandwidth of your Toyota Corolla speeding back from Blockbuster Video filled with VHS tapes and DVDs.

Brian Chase (classiccmp 12-13-2002)


The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

Voltaire, philosopher and writer (1694-1778)

Just what are the odds (that the FBI is telling the truth)?

The recent Brandon Mayfield incident in Portland explicitly exposes the FBI and the DOJ for the pack of deceitful liars they are. We are expected to believe that after a search of their fingerprint databases, which contain millions of fingerprints, Mr. Mayfield's fingerprint just happened to be the one which three FBI so-called "expert" examiners and a court-appointed examiner considered to be a "100 percent identification" and a match? Even though Spanish authorities almost immediately cast doubt on that judgment, the Justice Department sought Mr. Mayfield's detention anyway, based on the FBI's insistence that it had identified the right man. What a coincidence that Mr. Mayfield, a lawyer who practices immigration and family law, also:

Is an American citizen who converted to Islam in 1989

Married an Egyptian in 1989

Is is a member of and was seen driving from his home to the Bilal mosque, his regular place of worship

Had represented a man in a custody dispute who later pleaded guilty to conspiring to help Al Qaeda fight American forces in Afghanistan

Placed ads for his law firm in a "Muslim yellow page directory," which was administered by "Jerusalem Enterprises, Inc.," and registered to Farid Adlouni, a Portland resident who had business dealings with Osama bin Laden's former personal secretary, Wadih El Hage, who was convicted by a New York federal court of conspiring to murder U.S. citizens

Was connected to an alleged "telephonic contact" on September 11, 2002 placed between his home and a phone number assigned to Pete Seda, the director of a local Islamic Charity, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, who is on a federal terrorism watch list.

The United States attorney in Portland insists that religion had nothing to do with the investigation because Mr. Mayfield was not under suspicion when the FBI first analyzed the prints. It was the fingerprint match alone that led the FBI to Mr. Mayfield, prosecutors have asserted. Mr. Mayfield "was not under investigation and federal law enforcement authorities had no reason to believe that Mayfield had any information about the Madrid bombings."

What a bunch of bald face liars! FBI officials seemed so confident of the "100 percent" match that they never bothered to look at the original print while in Madrid on April 21 to meet with Spanish investigators. This meeting was necessary after "it became apparent that the preliminary findings of the forensic science division of the Spanish National Police concluded that the fingerprints were not consistent with those of the FBI laboratory", according to an affidavit used to support Mayfield's arrest. However, at the end of the Madrid meeting, FBI officials concluded, the Spaniards "felt satisfied" with the FBI's analysis.

After Mr. Mayfield's release on May 20, two FBI examiners traveled to Madrid to investigate the prints again. This time, after the agents returned, they concluded that the latent print originally linked to Mr. Mayfield was "of no value for identification purposes," and it withdrew its finding of a match.

Bureau officials have said that his status as a Muslim had nothing to do with the case against him. "The people in the lab looking at the fingerprint had no idea what Mr. Mayfield's background was," said an FBI official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "That had absolutely no role in any of this."

What bull. The lab people may not have known Mr. Mayfield's background, but others in the bureau certainly did. These officials, bureaucrats, and agents just cannot stop lying. They wanted to have a "closer look" at Mr. Mayfield and jumped at the chance to use a bogus fingerprint identification to obtain the warrants allowing covert and overt searches and Mr. Mayfield's detention as a material witness. Mr. Mayfield was a "person of interest" to the FBI before the Madrid bombings, and would have been high on the FBI's list of "persons to really investigate the first chance we get to have an excuse or plausible deniability".

It is time we true American's, the ones who really understand why this country is great, stop accepting the acts, lies and deceit that our Federal Government, and particularly this administration, dish out in the name of "fighting terrorism". It is time we stand up and speak out, "Were as mad as hell, and were not going to take it anymore!"

Mr. Mayfield has said it best, "You can't trade your freedom for security, because if you do, you're going to lose both."

Download Former Vice President Al Gore's May 26 Speech on Iraq (MP3)

Click here to download an MP3 of the speech courtesy of AlGoreDemocrats.com 01:04:24 15,115Kb

Link

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Al Gore, 10/26/2004:

In my religious tradition, I have been taught that "ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."


Amen

The full text of the speech is posted next below. How good it feels to finally be hearing from a very respected person what many have known as the truth for quite some time. I believe this speech truly highlights the difference between politicians and statesmen and will will one day be considered as the pivot upon which the tide of public opinion turned against the Bush monarchy.

Link

Al Gore speech 10/26/2004 in NYC

AL GORE LINKS ABU GHRAIB PRISON ABUSES TO DEEP FLAWS IN BUSH POLICY

Calls For Resignations Of Bush Team Members Responsible For Iraq Fiasco: Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas J. Feith, Stephen A. Cambone


Remarks by former Vice President Al Gore, May 26, 2004 at New York University, As Prepared :

George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.

He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.

Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.

How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.

To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by only one person, the President.

More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does.

Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens - sooner or later - to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.

One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded. We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud - the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.

Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire policy in Iraq. But in order understand the failure of our overall policy, it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we are as Americans? Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it's more complicated than that.

There is good and evil in every person. And what makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations more than the people any other nation.

Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation - especially the temptation to abuse power over others.

Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is needed in our constitution because every human being lives with an internal system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow citizens.

Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by specialist Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower. When Darby asked him to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love to make a groan man piss on himself."

What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances.

The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of September 11th.

There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name.

President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.] The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict " has arguable focused the energies and resources of Al Qaeda and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition." The ISS said that in the wake of the war in Iraq Al Qaeda now has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is swelling its ranks.

The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell doctrine of overwhelming force.

There was also in Rumsfeld's planning a failure to provide security for nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting.

Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake sales for body armor.

And the worst still lies ahead. General Joseph Hoar, the former head of the Marine Corps, said "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss."

When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word "abyss", then the rest of us damn well better listen. Here is what he means: more American soldiers dying, Iraq slipping into worse chaos and violence, no end in sight, with our influence and moral authority seriously damaged.

Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, who headed Central Command before becoming President Bush's personal emissary to the Middle East, said recently that our nation's current course is "headed over Niagara Falls."

The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Major General Charles H. Swannack, Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think strategically, we are." Army Colonel Paul Hughes, who directed strategic planning for the US occupation authority in Baghdad, compared what he sees in Iraq to the Vietnam War, in which he lost his brother: "I promised myself when I came on active duty that I would do everything in my power to prevent that ... from happening again. " Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles while losing the war, Hughes added "unless we ensure that we have coherence in our policy, we will lose strategically."

The White House spokesman, Dan Bartlett was asked on live television about these scathing condemnations by Generals involved in the highest levels of Pentagon planning and he replied, "Well they're retired, and we take our advice from active duty officers."

But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior General at the Pentagon as saying, " the current OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice." Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled to challenge their commander in chief in public.

The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, "Like a lot of senior Army guys I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush Administration. He listed two reasons. "I think they are going to break the Army," he said, adding that what really incites him is "I don't think they care."

In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe on the Bush team's incompetence early on. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war, and its later conduct," he writes, "I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption."

Zinni's book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to Bush -- including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was honored by Bush's father for his service in Iraq, and his former Domestic Adviser on faith-based organizations, John Dilulio, who said, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told Congress in February that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." But because Rumsfeld and Bush did not want to hear disagreement with their view that Iraq could be invaded at a much lower cost, Shinseki was hushed and then forced out.

And as a direct result of this incompetent plan and inadequate troop strength, young soldiers were put in an untenable position. For example, young reservists assigned to the Iraqi prisons were called up without training or adequate supervision, and were instructed by their superiors to "break down" prisoners in order to prepare them for interrogation.

To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the chain of command was criss-crossed between intelligence gathering and prison administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military and civilian contractor authority.

The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.

Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word - tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.

These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the President's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards over the objections of the uniformed military, just as the Judge Advocates General within the Defense Department were so upset and opposed that they took the unprecedented step of seeking help from a private lawyer in this city who specializes in human rights and said to him, "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" where the mistreatment of prisoners is concerned."

Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and giving assignments to private contractors

President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our allies."

George Bush promised to change the tone in Washington. And indeed he did. As many as 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in captivity, though the numbers are difficult to rely upon because in many cases involving violent death, there were no autopsies.

How dare they blame their misdeeds on enlisted personnel from a Reserve unit in upstate New York. President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush.

How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.

David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the famous verdict: "we were all wrong." And for many Americans, Kay's statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between Reality and all of the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building support for his policy of going to war.

Now the White House has informed the American people that they were also "all wrong" about their decision to place their faith in Ahmed Chalabi, even though they have paid him 340,000 dollars per month. 33 million dollars (CHECK) and placed him adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and embezzling 70 million dollars in public funds from a Jordanian bank, and escaped prison by fleeing the country. But in spite of that record, he had become one of key advisors to the Bush Administration on planning and promoting the War against Iraq.

And they repeatedly cited him as an authority, perhaps even a future president of Iraq. Incredibly, they even ferried him and his private army into Baghdad in advance of anyone else, and allowed him to seize control over Saddam's secret papers.

Now they are telling the American people that he is a spy for Iran who has been duping the President of the United States for all these years.

One of the Generals in charge of this war policy went on a speaking tour in his spare time to declare before evangelical groups that the US is in a holy war as "Christian Nation battling Satan." This same General Boykin was the person who ordered the officer who was in charge of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay to extend his methods to Iraq detainees, prisoners. ... The testimony from the prisoners is that they were forced to curse their religion Bush used the word "crusade" early on in the war against Iraq, and then commentators pointed out that it was singularly inappropriate because of the history and sensitivity of the Muslim world and then a few weeks later he used it again.

"We are now being viewed as the modern Crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world," Zinni said.

What a terrible irony that our country, which was founded by refugees seeking religious freedom - coming to America to escape domineering leaders who tried to get them to renounce their religion - would now be responsible for this kind of abuse..

Ameen Saeed al-Sheikh told the Washington Post that he was tortured and ordered to denounce Islam and after his leg was broken one of his torturers started hitting it while ordering him to curse Islam and then, " they ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive." Others reported that they were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol.

In my religious tradition, I have been taught that "ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

The President convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11th. But in truth he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The President convinced the country with a mixture of forged documents and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda, and that he was "indistinguishable" from Osama bin Laden.

He asked the nation , in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation. He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating prisoners.

In my opinion, John Kerry is dealing with this unfolding tragedy in an impressive and extremely responsible way. Our nation's best interest lies in having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new broom, and take office on January 20th of next year with the ability to make a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation's strategic position is as of the time the reigns of power are finally wrested from the group of incompetents that created this catastrophe.

Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country's, options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national nightmare is over.

Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America's approach to the Korean War when he was running for president in 1952.

When a business enterprise finds itself in deep trouble that is linked to the failed policies of the current CEO the board of directors and stockholders usually say to the failed CEO, "Thank you very much, but we're going to replace you now with a new CEO -- one less vested in a stubborn insistence on staying the course, even if that course is, in the words of General Zinni, "Headed over Niagara Falls."

One of the strengths of democracy is the ability of the people to regularly demand changes in leadership and to fire a failing leader and hire a new one with the promise of hopeful change. That is the real solution to America's quagmire in Iraq. But, I am keenly aware that we have seven months and twenty five days remaining in this president's current term of office and that represents a time of dangerous vulnerability for our country because of the demonstrated incompetence and recklessness of the current administration.

It is therefore essential that even as we focus on the fateful choice, the voters must make this November that we simultaneously search for ways to sharply reduce the extraordinary danger that we face with the current leadership team in place. It is for that reason that I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe that we are facing in Iraq.

We desperately need a national security team with at least minimal competence because the current team is making things worse with each passing day. They are endangering the lives of our soldiers, and sharply increasing the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the world, including here at home. They are enraging hundreds of millions of people and embittering an entire generation of anti-Americans whose rage is already near the boiling point.

We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team. Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and his intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should also resign. The nation is especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as Secretary of Defense.

Condoleeza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy, should also resign immediately.

George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have new leadership at the CIA immediately.

As a nation, our greatest export has always been hope: hope that through the rule of law people can be free to pursue their dreams, that democracy can supplant repression and that justice, not power, will be the guiding force in society. Our moral authority in the world derived from the hope anchored in the rule of law. With this blatant failure of the rule of law from the very agents of our government, we face a great challenge in restoring our moral authority in the world and demonstrating our commitment to bringing a better life to our global neighbors.

During Ronald Reagan's Presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the indictment was thrown out by the Judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" President Bush has now placed the United States of America in the same situation. Where do we go to get our good name back?

The answer is, we go where we always go when a dramatic change is needed. We go to the ballot box, and we make it clear to the rest of the world that what's been happening in America for the last four years, and what America has been doing in Iraq for the last two years, really is not who we are. We, as a people, at least the overwhelming majority of us, do not endorse the decision to dishonor the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights....

Make no mistake, the damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America's reputation and America's strategic interests, but also to America's spirit. It is also crucial for our nation to recognize - and to recognize quickly - that the damage our nation has suffered in the world is far, far more serious than President Bush's belated and tepid response would lead people to believe. Remember how shocked each of us, individually, was when we first saw those hideous images. The natural tendency was to first recoil from the images, and then to assume that they represented a strange and rare aberration that resulted from a few twisted minds or, as the Pentagon assured us, "a few bad apples."

But as today's shocking news reaffirms yet again, this was not rare. It was not an aberration. Today's New York Times reports that an Army survey of prisoner deaths and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanisatan "show a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.'

Nor did these abuses spring from a few twisted minds at the lowest ranks of our military enlisted personnel. No, it came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government. This was done in our name, by our leaders.

These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed directly from this administration's contempt for the rule of law. And the dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America - it is also an illusory goal in its own right.

Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.

A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al Qaeda, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.

Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward. Going it alone may satisfy a political instinct but it is dangerous to our military, even without their Commander in Chief taunting terrorists to "bring it on."

Our troops are stretched thin and exhausted not only because Secretary Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed the advice of military leaders on the size of the needed force - but also because President Bush's contempt for traditional allies and international opinion left us without a real coalition to share the military and financial burden of the war and the occupation. Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies of communications and travel. The emergence of a truly global civilization has been accompanied by the recognition of truly global challenges that require global responses that, as often as not, can only be led by the United States - and only if the United States restores and maintains its moral authority to lead.

Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest source of strength, and it is precisely our moral authority that has been recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations and mean compromises of conscience wagered with history by this willful president.

Listen to the way Israel's highest court dealt with a similar question when, in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to the security of its people:

"This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its strength."

The last and best description of America's meaning in the world is still the definitive formulation of Lincoln's annual message to Congress on December 1, 1862:

"The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise - with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history...the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation...We shall nobly save, or meanly lose the last best hope of earth...The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just - a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and, we are now learning, in many other similar facilities constructed as part of Bush's Gulag, in which, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 90 percent of the victims are totally innocent of any wrongdoing.

The same dark spirit of domination has led them to - for the first time in American history - imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush Admistration has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request - or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned.

They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the Congress to have information to how they are spending the public's money and the right of the news media to have information about the policies they are pursuing.

The same pattern characterizes virtually all of their policies. They resent any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power. Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new level of viciousness in partisan politics. It is that viciousness that led them to attack as unpatriotic, Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in combat during the Vietnam War.

The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn Rush Limbaugh - perhaps his strongest political supporter - who said that the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam."

This new political viciousness by the President and his supporters is found not only on the campaign trail, but in the daily operations of our democracy. They have insisted that the leaders of their party in the Congress deny Democrats any meaningful role whatsoever in shaping legislation, debating the choices before us as a people, or even to attend the all-important conference committees that reconcile the differences between actions by the Senate and House of Representatives.

The same meanness of spirit shows up in domestic policies as well. Under the Patriot Act, Muslims, innocent of any crime, were picked up, often physically abused, and held incommunicado indefinitely. What happened in Abu Ghraib was difference not of kind, but of degree.

Differences of degree are important when the subject is torture. The apologists for what has happened do have points that should be heard and clearly understood. It is a fact that every culture and every politics sometimes expresses itself in cruelty. It is also undeniably true that other countries have and do torture more routinely, and far more brutally, than ours has. George Orwell once characterized life in Stalin's Russia as "a boot stamping on a human face forever." That was the ultimate culture of cruelty, so ingrained, so organic, so systematic that everyone in it lived in terror, even the terrorizers. And that was the nature and degree of state cruelty in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

We all know these things, and we need not reassure ourselves and should not congratulate ourselves that our society is less cruel than some others, although it is worth noting that there are many that are less cruel than ours. And this searing revelation at Abu Ghraib should lead us to examine more thoroughly the routine horrors in our domestic prison system.

But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and fear generated by the attack of September 11th.

The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president's legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it; it is part of us. The important question now is, what will we do now about torture. Stop it? Yes, of course. But that means demanding all of the facts, not covering them up, as some now charge the administration is now doing. One of the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Samuel Provance, told ABC News a few days ago that he was being intimidated and punished for telling the truth. "There is definitely a coverup," Provance said. "I feel like I am being punished for being honest."

The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration.

To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above with the direct intention to violate US values it was to be upholding. It was the kind of policy we see - and criticize in places like China and Cuba.

Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners. And for that, this administration should pay a very high price. One of the most tragic consequences of these official crimes is that it will be very hard for any of us as Americans - at least for a very long time - to effectively stand up for human rights elsewhere and criticize other governments, when our policies have resulted in our soldiers behaving so monstrously. This administration has shamed America and deeply damaged the cause of freedom and human rights everywhere, thus undermining the core message of America to the world.

President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world - but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions. He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders. Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about justice under a rule of law in their own lands. Of course, the problem with all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold people accountable. And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and mistakes in the history of the United States of America.

He is willing only to apologize for the alleged erratic behavior of a few low-ranking enlisted people, who he is scapegoating for his policy fiasco.

In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.

I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every turn to frustrate accountability...

So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed as completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands.

I believe we have a duty to hold President Bush accountable - and I believe we will. As Lincoln said at our time of greatest trial, "We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility."

Link

Is George W. Bush the AntiChrist?

Google Search: george bush "the antichrist":
Results 1 - 10 of about 13,300 for george bush "the antichrist".

A whole lot of people seem to think so...

But man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep.

William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616)

Link

The Cluetrain Manifesto

The entire text of The Cluetrain Manifesto

Link

Hello World

This is my first blog. Sorry about the blandness.