The Proposition
| Prop | Version | Date | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 1 | 2007-07-15 | We must look back if we are to move forward. |
Submitted by - B Ruberton“Old News”Once again this week, as has happened many times before, George Bush declined to answer questions about his administration saying, "It's run its course, now we're going to move on." This was in reference to the Libby case, which he had always declined to talk about while the trial was in progress and now… it’s old news. This pattern of not allowing us to look back at his decisions has been in place since day one. It would seem though, at some point, if we are to learn from our mistakes we must look back with 20/20 vision and see what has gone wrong, and we must agree that things have gone wrong. Of course when the suggestion of not looking back hasn’t worked investigators have had “sand thrown in their face” to obscure the investigation, later to have the sand thrower commuted. And when that doesn’t work the wall of executive privilege is erected in our path. But in the end there are questions that must be answered if we are to avoid making the same mistakes. The Democratic majority seem to be unsure how far they should push to get the answers they would like. Indeed the short term of the offices they hold make it difficult to pursue the long struggle required to win the fight. But these questions must be asked, and answered, and people need to be held responsible and accountable before we can move forward. “The Elections” Perhaps the biggest question to be answered is “Should Bush/Cheney be in office?” Some excellent reporting from investigators like Greg Palast have shown that both the 2000 and 2004 elections appear to have been rigged and G. W. Bush should never have been crowned president. Recently Rep. John Conyers has taken up the cause, met with Mr. Palast, and started the long needed investigation. Until we can be sure that our essential right to vote is intact, our voice is all but silenced. Even before the general election, the fact that our choices in the last election were between two former members of the secretive Skull & Bones club should say a lot about the state of ‘free’ elections in this country. The ‘Total Recall’ vote of a duly elected governor in California who had opposed the energy cartel should say a lot about the control of the election process by the mass media in this country. We must have a choice if we are going to have a vote. We must look back at the mischief that went on during many recent elections and make the changes that are needed so that everyone’s vote is counted. “9/11” It is clear there are many unanswered questions about the attacks of September 11, 2001. The investigation, once finally agreed to by the administration, did not answer any of the questions. It just stated the facts. The 9/11 commission was tasked to avoid looking into the roots of the attack and placing blame. REP. LEE HAMILTON: Our mindset was focused on the future, not on the past. We did look back; we had to look back to try to understand how we could improve things, but we really took most seriously the responsibility to try to figure out how to prevent this from happening in the future. We believe that if we had looked back and said, okay, this figure, that figure was responsible for 9/11, it would just have created a firestorm, and we would have had no chance of putting forward recommendations that would be acceptable to the Congress and to the president and to the American people. We would have destroyed any chance of a bipartisan result here. Our principal task, as we saw it, was to try to help make the country more secure and looking back, and assigning blame to a person or even an agency wasn't the way to do it. Beyond the blame game, there are too many inconsistencies to let the questions be left unanswered. The fact that on that fateful day three high-rise buildings collapsed from fire for the first time in history and two jet airliners vaporized into thin air for the first time in history suggests more of an investigation than just a blame game. It suggests a cover-up. And without looking into these events more thoroughly, and without the government releasing the films shot near the Pentagon on that morning that were confiscated, and without the people in charge actually answering some serious questions we can never move beyond this event. After weeks of arm twisting to finally get the National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to testify about her failures to her duty, she said basically nothing at all and was then later promoted to Secretary of State for her marvelous performance. Leaving the questions unanswered to the publics’ satisfaction lays open the conspiracy theories that have followed the JFK assignation around for these many decades, and maybe with good reason. We know the stories of how the Lusitania may have been deliberately sunk to propel the US into WWI. We know the stories of how we provoked the Japanese into attacking the US in order to join in on WWII. We have heard the Johnson tapes and know how the Gulf of Tonkin was staged to push us into the Vietnam War. Why would we not assume that our government would either allow or participate in an attack against our people in order to once again enter into another war? “The War in Iraq” By now it is clear that all of the reasons given for the invasion of Iraq were fabricated. There were no nukes, only a forged letter that stated Sadam had tried to get uranium from Africa. But who forged this letter? The aluminum tubes in question could not have been used in a nuclear reactor, and we knew this well before the war. Who said they could be? Sadam was not involved with Bin Laden, who said he was? Perhaps the reason for invading Iraq was discussed in Cheney’s secret Energy Policy meetings, even before 9/11. Why is he so determined to keep them a secret? It would make sense. LBJ says he talked to NY bankers and important Texans before making his move into Vietnam. This country has been duped into many wars and until we learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. With support for the war in Iraq waning and with it proving hard to get traction on a war in Iran, Mr. Bush seems determined to poke at some beehives in our old foe Russia’s back yard and see what he can stir up there. What were the Bushes and Putin really talking about up in Maine recently? “Katrina” Nearly two years since the Katrina disaster there is still a lot of work to be done and a lot of questions to be answered. With over $1 billion in donations from the American people, where has all the money gone? The hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to politically connected companies like Halliburton, Fluor and Bechtel are not showing the required results. These companies are at the heart of the current administrations policies from Baghdad to New Orleans and, like the government, they must be held accountable for their actions and inactions if they are working on our behalf, with our money. At the end of the day, corporations only do what is best for their bottom line, not what is best for their customers. Unfortunately, many believe that after 1871, our very country became a corporation and therefore answerable only to the shareholders, not the customers, ‘We the People’. The inexorable movement of currency around the world is the driving force behind all of the actions of the ‘haves and have mores’, we are simply the enablers of their actions. “Conclusion” We the Lemmings have become so complacent that we have given up our responsibility to hold our public servants accountable for their actions and inactions. Without pressure from the governed to look into the misdeeds of the governing, the misdeeds will inspire more misdeeds with an ever increasing affect. Like many of the failed states our government has overthrown over many, many years, our country is, it seems, in the midst of a coup. The standard procedure of controlling the media, rigging the elections, installing a puppet dictator and then selling off the countries national resources has been used with great success by our government all over the world. Although we may not have agreed with this policy, it didn’t directly affect us and so we watched silently. Now, the ‘Have Mores’ have taken the policy too far by making our country the object of their coup. If this continues we will be left with a shell of a country and a very large debt for our children’s, children’s children. Catastrophes like 9/11 and Katrina cannot be ignored or forgotten. They must be studied and avoided. Given free reign, our government is obliged to serve the mighty dollar rather than the people, for the dollar speaks much louder to them. It is time for the people to be heard. Only if we talk louder to our representatives by mail, e-mail, phone or in person, can we get their attention away from the dollar. This country was once a country of laws not of men. We must hold our representatives accountable to those laws if we have any hope of fulfilling our forefather’s dreams. “Acknowledgments” These views were not derived from the mass media or the talking heads but mostly from books, good old fashioned books. Perhaps these views are skewed by the choice of books listed below. They were chosen to answer a very simple question: “What the hell is going on?” The answer is still unknown, the research continues. Armed Madhouse – Greg Palast Overthrow – Stephen Kinzer All the Shah’s Men – Stephen Kinzer The Assault on Reason – Al Gore The Audacity of Hope – Barak Obama Failed States – Noam Chomsky The Edge of Disaster – Stephen Flynn State of Denial – Bob Woodward Against All Enemies – Richard A. Clarke A Man Without a Country – Kurt Vonnegut The World is Flat – Thomas L. Friedman Freakonomics – Steven D. Levit American Dynasty – Kevin Phillips The Greatest Story Ever Sold – Frank Rich |
To Be Forwarded To:
| Senator Harry Reid 528 Hart Senate Office Bldg Washington DC 20510 |
| Speaker Nancy Pelosi Office of the Speaker H-232, US Capitol Washington DC 20515 |
The Debate
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