The Vietnam Analogy By PAUL KRUGMAN, NYTimes

Vietnam shook the nation’s confidence not just because we lost, but because our leaders didn’t tell us the truth. Last September Gen. Anthony Zinni spoke of ”Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies,” and asked his audience of military officers, ”Is it happening again?” Sure enough, the parallels are proliferating. Gulf of Tonkin attack, meet nonexistent W.M.D. and Al Qaeda links. ”Hearts and minds,” meet ”welcome us as liberators.” ”Light at the end of the tunnel,” meet ”turned the corner.” Vietnamization, meet the new Iraqi Army. … Remember the domino theory?

And there’s one more parallel: Nixonian politics is back.

What we remember now is Watergate. But equally serious were Nixon’s efforts to suppress dissent, like the ”Tell It to Hanoi” rallies, where critics of the Vietnam War were accused of undermining the soldiers and encouraging the enemy. On Tuesday George Bush did a meta-Nixon: he declared that anyone who draws analogies between Iraq and Vietnam undermines the soldiers and encourages the enemy.

The Gun Group: N.R.A. Opens an All-Out Drive for Bush and Its Views By JAMES DAO, NYTimes

When the National Rifle Association opens its annual meeting here on Friday, it will do more than celebrate hunting, weaponry and the Second Amendment. It will also kick off a vigorous campaign to whip up support among its nearly four million members for President Bush’s re-election.

Before tens of thousands of gun owners at the Pittsburgh Convention Center, the association’s leadership plans to label Mr. Bush’s likely Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, as a liberal threat to gun ownership. It is a message they will repeat again and again until Election Day, using the Internet, mailings, television advertising and their formidable nationwide network of gun clubs.

”What you see in John Kerry,” Wayne LaPierre, the association’s executive vice president said in an interview this week, ”is a politician that spent his life voting against the Second Amendment. What I see is the same thing I saw in Michael Dukakis and Al Gore. It’s an elitist arrogance.”

[I’d call it ”elitist arrogance” to believe you know exactly what the founders (and Jesus) think. mjh]

It is no accident, N.R.A. officials said, that this year’s convention is being held in Pittsburgh. Two-thirds of the attendees are expected to come from within a 100-mile radius that spans three battleground states: Pennsylvania, which voted for Mr. Gore in 2000, and Ohio and West Virginia, which voted for Mr. Bush.

”These are states where the N.R.A. can make a difference,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Keystone Poll at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.

At the convention, the association also plans to unveil plans for an N.R.A. news company that would produce programs for the Internet, radio and possibly television, Mr. LaPierre said. A daily Internet news talk show featuring a conservative host will begin broadcasting online on Friday. The association hopes to announce acquisition of a radio station within two months, he said. …

The president has said he would sign legislation renewing the 1994 law that bans 19 types of semiautomatic weapons. That almost certainly will not happen this year because of opposition to the legislation in the Republican-controlled House. Many conservatives consider the bill a deep infringement of their rights under the Second Amendment, which they contend gives individual Americans the right to own firearms.

”Gun owners who know the issues know that Bush is all talk,” said Angel Shamaya, executive director of KeepAndBearArms.com, which is encouraging gun owners to vote for anyone but Mr. Bush. ”He’s turned out to be a phony in so many ways, I’m embarrassed I voted for him in 2000.”

The Bush campaign has begun trying to mend fences with gun groups by meeting with members and appointing liaisons to the groups in almost every state. A 27,000 member Sportsmen for Bush group has reactivated. And the president met with leaders of the N.R.A. and an array of hunting and fishing groups at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., last week.

But the White House’s biggest move has been to dispatch Vice President Dick Cheney, a popular figure among gun owners, to the convention, where he will deliver the keynote speech on Saturday …

Clearly, the Bush administration values the rifle association’s help. At last year’s N.R.A. convention in Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother, told members, ”If it were not for your active involvement, it is safe to say that my brother would not have been elected president.” …

For its part, the rifle association will try to paint Mr. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who says he has been a lifelong hunter, as a Kennedy-style liberal who supports strong gun restrictions — a “gun grabber,” in the group’s lingo. …

Mr. Kerry intend[s] to present himself as “a lifelong hunter and gun owner” who believes in protecting the Second Amendment but also supports “common sense” laws restricting military-style assault weapons and requiring gun-safety locks.

If you want to own a gun, you can have a gun. If you want to own 100 guns, you can have 100 guns. The awful liberals don’t really care. But, if you want an assault rifle, bazooka, grenade-launcher, flame-thrower, if your entire life revolves around lead and steel, if you believe you are free and it’s because you own a gun, you may need to have your head examined. mjh

Claim vs. Fact: Condoleezza Rice’s Opening Statement – Center for American Progress

CLAIM: ”We increased funding for counterterrorism activities across several agencies.”

FACT: Upon taking office, the 2002 Bush budget proposed to slash more than half a billion dollars out of funding for counterterrorism at the Justice Department. In preparing the 2003 budget, the New York Times reported that the Bush White House ”did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators” and ”proposed a $65 million cut for the program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants.” Newsweek noted the Administration ”vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism.” [Sources: 2001 vs. 2002 Budget Analysis; NY Times, 2/28/02; Newsweek, 5/27/02] …

CLAIM: “When threat reporting increased during the Spring and Summer of 2001, we moved the U.S. Government at all levels to a high state of alert and activity.”

FACT: Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush Administration “did not give terrorism top billing in their strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI.” Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until Oct. 1, 2001, said during the summer, terrorism had moved “farther to the back burner” and recounted how the Bush Administration’s top two Pentagon appointees, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, “shut down” a plan to weaken the Taliban. Similarly, Gen. Don Kerrick, who served in the Bush White House, sent a memo to the new Administration saying “We are going to be struck again” by al Qaeda, but he never heard back. He said terrorism was not “above the waterline. They were gambling nothing would happen.” [Sources: Washington Post, 3/22/04; LA Times, 3/30/04]

”Watch what we do, not what we say.” — John Mitchell, Dick Nixon’s Attorney General, another disgraced and incarcerated conservative

This is a composite photo using photos of American service men and women killed in Iraq. The creator is Joe at American Leftist (see April 4 and 7 entries). Images can also be found at Photo Matt » Moving Image

[By way of NewMexiKen (thanks!)]

Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings
Reports Preceded August 2001 Memo
By Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writer

By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001, President’s Daily Brief headlined ”Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US,” the president had seen a stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda’s intentions. So had Vice President Cheney and Bush’s top national security team, according to newly declassified information released yesterday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community headlined some of those reports ”Bin Laden planning multiple operations,” ”Bin Laden network’s plans advancing” and ”Bin Laden threats are real.” …

Without knowing when, where or how the terrorists would strike, the CIA ”consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil,” according to one of two staff reports released by the panel yesterday.

”Reports similar to these were made available to President Bush in the morning meetings with [Director of Central Intelligence George J.] Tenet,” the commission staff said.

”The system was blinking red,” Tenet told the commission in private testimony, the panel’s report noted.

Ashcroft’s Efforts on Terrorism CriticizedBy Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writers

The former acting director of the FBI testified yesterday that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft rejected any further briefings on terrorist threats in the weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and did not view combating al Qaeda as ”a top item on his agenda.”

Thomas J. Pickard, who ran the FBI for several months before the attacks, also told the commission investigating the terrorist strikes that Ashcroft rejected a plea that summer for an extra $58 million to combat al Qaeda. Pickard testified that he received the formal denial on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the attacks. …

The allegations came during another day of dramatic and often tense testimony before the panel. They prompted an aggressive defense from Ashcroft, who denied barring Pickard from offering him threat reports and said he was highly focused on the dangers posed by terrorists that summer.

Ashcroft sought to blame the Clinton administration for many of the shortcomings in counterterrorism strategies before the attacks….

One day after telling the Senate that combating terrorist attacks was his highest priority, Ashcroft issued a memo on May 10, 2001, outlining the Justice Department’s strategic goals that contained no mention of counterterrorism. Dale Watson, the FBI’s terrorism chief at the time, told the commission staff that he “almost fell out of his chair” when he read it.

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: The 9-11 Commission Staff statements from the hearing are available online in PDF format.

Media access limited during Scalia’s speeches By Antoinette Konz

While U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spoke to high school students on Wednesday about the importance of protecting the rights provided by the Constitution, the recording devices of two reporters were confiscated by a federal marshal.

”You may wonder what makes our Constitution so special. I am here to persuade you that our Constitution is something extraordinary, something to revere,” Scalia told students at Presbyterian Christian High School in Hattiesburg.

During Scalia’s speech at the high school, U.S. Marshal Melanie Rube demanded that a reporter with The Associated Press erase a tape recording of the justice’s remarks. Rube also took a tape recording made by a reporter with the Hattiesburg American.

Rube said Scalia had asked that his appearance not be recorded. But there was no prior announcement that electronic recordings of Scalia’s speech were prohibited.

At an earlier appearance at William Carey College, Scalia talked about the religion clauses contained in the Constitution. At a reception honoring the Supreme Court justice, television reporters with WDAM-Channel 7 were told by Scalia to leave and newspaper photographers were initially not allowed to take photographs. …

Scalia, named to the high court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, has long barred television cameras from his speeches, but does not always forbid newspaper photographers and tape recorders. …

Last year, Scalia was criticized for refusing to allow television and radio coverage of an event in Ohio in which he received an award for supporting free speech.

[Originally published Thursday, April 8, 2004]

Scalia continues to show his hypocrisy and contempt for real freedom. If Bush is elected in November, Scalia will become the Chief Justice of the United States and will poison the land for a generation. Impeach Scalia! mjh

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