An open letter to George W. Bush
Dear Mr. Bush:
I know you’re a busy guy, what with running the world and everything, but in light of today’s tragedy, I’m feeling a little vulnerable and insecure and I wanted to ask you if you would do one small thing for me:
Please, tell me again.
Tell me again about the weapons of mass destruction.
Tell me again how invading Iraq has made me safer from al-Qaeda.
Tell me again about how we were greeted as liberators, with flowers and smiles.
Tell me again how major combat operations over there have ended.
Tell me again how the mission was accomplished.
Tell me again how we have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.
Tell me again how a volunteer force that no one wants to volunteer for, armed with equipment they have to buy themselves, is winning a war against an enemy that is everywhere and nowhere.
Tell me again how Burger Kings and spas in a heavily fortified Green Zone in the middle of chaos and destruction are making the people of Iraq feel less like taking their poverty and frustration out on Americans and their allies.
Tell me again about how funneling my tax money to Haliburton instead of to the soldiers in the field is making their job easier.
Tall me again how mercenaries being paid ten times what the troops in uniform get are improving morale among the troops.
Tell me again how curtailing my liberties here at home is making me safer.
Tell me again how making it look like you’re making me safer instead of making me safer, is making me safer.
Tell me about how a second Patriot Act is going to make things better.
Tell me about how what happened this morning in the London transit system couldn’t have happened to King County Metro Transit, or the New York subway, or the Atlanta Metro, or the MET system in Billings, Montana.
Tell me again how my friends and I caused all this.
And tell me about how, if you and your friends are allowed to stay the course we’re on, it’s all going to get better.
Please, sir?
Just one more time?
You know how I love a good story.
More out of habit than anything else, though. I just really had to get that off my chest this morning.
Signed,
Omir the Ranter
One of your best stories! And it’s all true too!
but I think of this one as being true in sort of the same way that the negative to a photograph is.
Thanks, Susan! Maybe I should change to doing Sunday Griot in the middle of the week, right after Bush says something stupid. 🙂
I feel the same way. Thank you.
As often happens, something I read got me started. For “Tell me again, George” it was “My rage at Tony Blair.”
I’m glad your mother is going to be okay. I just hope we’re all going to be okay. Well, as OK as any of us are likely to get as long as The Lie That Walks Like A Man is in office.
someting has entered my mind when I think of all of this. I see this little man called bush with this thing he is carrying around with him ..it is called a lie and that lie is growing and growing. Much bigger then he is and he soon will be grounded by this lie. I hope it flattens him to a pulp. The lie is getting much bigger than I think he ever thought it would be.
Bushnocchio?
🙂
How Porter Goss knows where Osama is, but doesn’t feel it is important to get jim.
Tell me a new one, about how your Supreme Court Nominee must be pushed through without dissent to make us all safer.
Osama who? Omir I would like you to make this into an official letter to the president and open it up for signatures. I am serious. What can I do to convince you? I would love to sign it too!
And building on this,
Omir? Would you mind us borrowing your questions, and the others added since in our own LTEs?
You don’t even have to tell anyone where you got it. Just let me know if you use it, and if it gets published, who published it and when.
absolutely, thanks for the diary and the permission.
Omir, I had to edit it down to 200 words and then I submitted it to the St. Paul Pioneer Press as an LTE. I doubt they will publish it. They tend to be pretty bland to conservative on their editorial page, but I’ll let you know if they do. Thanks for being so generous. I just loved it!!
…and tie it in with the DSM too. It is all just lie afer lie.
If you want to send this to the President, be my guest. If you want to use it at an anti-war rally, I’m all for it. If you can get it read into the Congressional Record, I’ll be ecstatic. As far as I’m concerned, the more people who see this, the better.
Like I said below in my reply to Johnny Gentle Famous Crooner, though, I expect that if you do send this to the President, if he replies at all it’ll be more of the same. Stay the course! Buy stuff! Freedom is on the march! It’s all you’ll get because it’s all he knows.
Tell me why terrorists who kill innocent people are any more evil than politicians who kill 100,000 innocent people.
Tell me why it is ok to fight terrorism with terrorism.
“Sure, not a problem! Here goes…”
Because you have to repeat things a lot to kinda set the propaganda.
because he’s a one-trick pony. Telling this story is all he knows. It’s kind of sad, really; kind of like the trick pony Buffalo Bill gave to Sitting Bull that was trained to rear up when it heard a gunshot, and it is said that when Sitting Bull was shot and killed, the pony performed to the fatal shot.
“Actually, it’s not at all like that one-trick pony story…that has nothing to do with anything! But it does remind me of the story about fighting the terrorists there instead of here, and keeping america safe, and finding wmd…”
Tell me about how different Saddam’s torture chambers are from torture chambers run by the United States.
Tell me howIraqis who are kidnapped in the night, tortured and dumped by Negroponte’s death squads are different from Iraqis tortured and killed by Saddam’s death squads and secret police… then tell me how much gentler our own secret police will be.
in case you want to direct friends, enemies, total strangers or random barnyard animals to my little rant, enhanced with contributions from you all (and thank you all for them).
http://tellmeagaingeorge.blogspot.com
.
A Strategy of Lies: How the White House Fed the Public a Steady Diet of Falsehoods
WASHINGTON November 7, 2003 — Colonel Sam Gardiner (USAF, Ret.) has identified 50 false news stories created and leaked by a secretive White House propaganda apparatus. Bush administration officials are probably having second thoughts about their decision to play hardball with former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Joe Wilson is a contender. When you play hardball with Joe, you better be prepared to deal with some serious rebound.
Gardiner’s dogged research identified a long list of stories that passed through Rumsfeld’s propaganda mill. According to Gardiner, “there were over 50 stories manufactured or at least engineered that distorted the picture of Gulf II for the American and British people.” Those stories include:
● The link between terrorism, Iraq and 9/11
● Iraq’s possession of chemical and biological weapons.
● Iraq’s purchase of nuclear materials from Niger.
● Saddam Hussein’s development of nuclear weapons.
● Aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons
● The existence of Iraqi drones, WMD cluster bombs and Scud missiles.
● Iraq’s threat to target the US with cyber warfare attacks.
● The rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch.
● The surrender of a 5,000-man Iraqi brigade.
● Iraq executing Coalition POWs.
● Iraqi soldiers dressing in US and UK uniforms to commit atrocities.
● The exact location of WMD facilities
● WMDs moved to Syria.
Audition in Afghanistan
The techniques that proved so successful in Operation Iraqi Freedom were first tried out during the campaign to build public support for the US attack on Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld hired Rendon Associates, a private PR firm that had been deeply involved in the first Gulf War. Founder John Rendon (who calls himself an “information warrior”) proudly boasts that he was the one responsible for providing thousands of US flags for the Kuwaiti people to wave at TV cameras after their “liberation” from Iraqi troops in 1991.
The White House Coalition Information Center CIC was set up by Karen Hughes in November 2001. (In January 2003, the CIC was renamed the Office for Global Communications.) The CIC hit on a cynical plan to curry favor for its attack on Afghanistan by highlighting “the plight of women in Afghanistan.” CIC’s Jim Wilkinson later called the Afghan women campaign “the best thing we’ve done.”
Gardiner is quick with a correction. The campaign “was not about something they did. It was about a story they created… It was not a program with specific steps or funding to improve the conditions of women.”
The coordination between the propaganda engines of Washington and London even involved the respective First Wives. On November 17, 2001, Laura Bush issued a shocking statement: “Only the terrorists and the Taliban threaten to pull out women’s fingernails for wearing nail polish.” Three days later, a horrified Cherie Blaire told the London media, “In Afghanistan, if you wear nail polish, you could have your nails torn out.”
Misleading via Innuendo Time and again, US reporters accepted the CIC news leaks without question. Among the many examples that Gardiner documented was the use of the “anthrax scare” to promote the administration’s pre-existing plan to attack Iraq.
[Very enlightening to read all of it! Bold emphasis is mine – Ed]
PART 3 – A chapter on false documents to embarrass MP Galloway in 2003
GOEBBELS: “We came from the people, we remain part of the people, and see ourselves as the executor of the people’s will.”
Army gives $5 bln of work to Halliburton
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military has signed on Halliburton to do nearly $5 billion in new work in Iraq under a giant logistics contract that has so far earned the Texas-based firm $9.1 billion, the Army said on Wednesday. Linda Theis, a spokeswoman for U.S. Army Field Support Command in Rock Island, Illinois, said the military signed the work order with Halliburton unit Kellogg Brown and Root in May.
The new deal, worth $4.97 billion over the next year, was not made public when it was signed because the Army did not consider such an announcement necessary, she said.
USA WELCOME: Make Yourself Known @BooMan Tribune and add some cheers!
Everytime “Bushieboy” opens his mouth we should all shudder. Mr “Bring It On” hasn’t any clue about protecting us. Or he doesn’t want to, cause it sure helps when his poll numbers go down to have a Al Queida threat.
My sympathies for all of the innocents who were hurt.
That was excellent – but tough to read through tears…
Send this to all our Senators and Representatives.
(thank dog for Boxer)
OMIR, I made this my hockey signature 🙂
“Tell me again how our torture chambers are better than their torture chambers.” Tell Me Again
“tell me again” has the link to your blog.
Thank you for reassuring this family every day that we’re not alone.
although $DEITY knows it feels like it sometimes.
I think one of the big secrets to the reactionary right’s success is that they’ve been able to keep us feeling alone and isolated, and therefore powerless. If the people of this country ever realize that it’s their country, not the ruling elite’s . . . well, if you’ve ever heard the phrase “may you live in interesting times,” those will be the interesting times.
Just now printing this puppy out for a dear friend who doesn’t have a computer.
He’s an alternative health care advocate and a NOT a Bush Supporter. He’ll do cartwheels over this 🙂
Omir,
thanks for this. It is a great post. I read it and it has stayed in my mind most of the day. Since it is Friday and the summer, I could not think of anything but your post so I crossposted it at our local party blog in Tennessee.
Here it is at hamdems. http://hamdems.org
Once again
thanks for a good story
Wow, thanks. I’m glad you liked it enough to spread it around.