Small Price!! Boehner the only thing that is small is the matter between your ears!!

$9,813,000,000,000.00 in debt!! Next years interest only payment on $9.813 Trillion in debt calculated at 4.25% interest is $413 Billion!!!

War cost $1.3 Trillion in debt!! Interest on that money calculated at 4.25% is $55.25 Billion.

Example if this was a business loan!!

Bush and the Republican dead beats have not been paying the interest due to the Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid Trust Fund. These dead bead republicans have effectively suspended payment and is added the interest accrued to the principle, we must assume near default rating; that’s junk bond status. Simple calculation that business people can understand based on a small business loan than the terms would look like:

1) Prime Rate Interest + Rating% = 7.5% + 6% = 13.5% (Very Simplified Rating Interest Adder - AAA = 1%, AA=2%, A=3%, BBB=4%, BB=5%, B=6%)
2) Typical business loan on a B junk rated company most favored terms, 3 years balloon, 10 year amortization.

Let us figure out what a business with Bush and Republican track record will have to pay back based on standard practices.

Interest = 13.5%
Loan Amortization Schedule = 10 years
Loan Pay Back Time = 3 year Balloon

Annual payment = $1.844 Trillion dollars for 3 years

The problem is $1.8 Trillion is almost the entire tax receipt of USA government!! That means the USA government is bankrupt!!

Amazing;

The repugnicans preach "fiscal responsibility" "smaller government" "pay your own way".

What a bunch of self-serving hypocrites. Nothing the republicans stand for has anything to do with anything other than self-interest.

Whackjob bush was handed a budget surplus when he was selected president. Where is it now??

What is wrong with the Republicans. I think all of them that support Bush's War are crazy! Continuing this outragous War for no reason. Bush just wanted to get the oil from Iraq and look what it has cost and will continue to cost as long as we stay there. The USA could have bought the oil for less money than this War is costing, not even considering breaking the Military... And weakening our Nation. How in the World can we get rid of this Cracy Bunch and set our Nation free? I mean now instead of waiting for the elections?

ONLY $16,500?
Let's see, that could get a decent used car that isn't a gas hog.
Go a long way to putting in a more efficient heating plant and insulation in a house.
Eliminate maybe 2 years of student loans, depending on the college.
$1.3 Trillion could do much more in a lump sum, Given to a school system, it would keep music, and art programs available to students, and help the schools meet the demanding but underfunded "Every Child Left Behind" programs.
Used to fund medical care for the poor, and keep many inner city emergency rooms from closing.
Used to fund a really good program to get doctors into inner city and rural areas.
Help a lot of homeless vets, and fund a review process for less than honorably discharged veterans with other than honorable discharges, so they can get proper care and counseling.
AND many many other things that are too numerous to list.
The Republicans are stealing from the people of this country.
IMPEACH BUSH/CHENEY NOW!!!
GET THAT IMPEACHMENT OUT OF COMMITTEE AND START THE PROCESS!!! NOW, IF NOT SOONER!!!!
SAVE OUR COUNTRY!!!!!

I would not mind paying the $16,500 if it was for a war with a purpose, a war such as WWII where we were preventing Hitler from taking over the World. Unfortunately, President Bush's Iraq war was based on greed (in my opinion).

What really was the purpose of the Iraq War? Was it because Corporations pressured President Bush to help give the economy a lift? Was it the Contractors wanting billion dollar contracts from the US? Was it Bush's ties to oil. Ties that perhaps allowed this war to cause fear of supply resulting in higer barrel prices, which has jumped from $22 to $97 a barrel. Resulting in the gallon of gas going from $1.64 during Clinton's service to the current rate of $2.84, causing a family with two cars using up 20 gallons of gas per car to spend an extra $17,472 in increased costs during the seven years of Bush's reign? This rise in oil prices have allowed oil companies soaring profits with their CEOs making 20+ million dollars in yearly salaries.

Personally, I believe Americans need to start learning more about the contributions the Republican members have received from companies prospering from the war. For example, just one company, Halliburton, or where Dick Cheney held the CEO position, had its stock rise from $6.50 per share to $36.97 per share (with 10,655,400 shares being traded) in only five years because of the war contracts they received. The money Halliburton received from President Bush's non-competitive contract is approximately $11 billion dollars. That's where the $16,500 has gone to, to help line the pockets of Corporations.

God Bless our Troops. They are working really hard and I hope President Bush will start giving them the treatment they deserve when they come back such as good jobs, health care, and all the love from us that they deserve.

You said it, Bear!

I don't understand why the democrats run a platform of antiwar, now control both chambers, yet do nothing? This is the ONLY reason that I'm jumping ship. The rupublicans suck! Small business my @$$. Don't take my word for it, please research it for yourself!! Ron Paul is the only one who consistently votes against these wars and I'm supporting him.

This entire war is a fiasco. We'll wind up further in the hole than we are now if this continues and that's saying a lot. The White House said this report is politicaly motivated but they didn't say it was wrong. Makes you wonder.

Your math must be wrong. Didn't Cheney tell us this war would pay for itself through oil revenues?

How about if the Democratic party stops funding the war? You are not representing me in stupidly continuing to give this moronic monkey in the white house funds for an illegal invasion of a soverign country. I'll support the Democratic party when they demonstrate they are democrats.

I am afraid you fell for the obvious lies.

In America, we do not all pay the same total taxes. It is a direct lie to claim that the family will pay [ or owe ] $16,000.

In reality, the richest 5% of American will pay 95% of the cost of the war. Most of us won't pay a dime towards it. How about we demand that Representative Jefferson donate that $90,000 bribe money found in his freezer to the war effort? That will pay off your family's and my family's share, with plenty left over for other families.

Oh, and by the way, they also included the cost in Afghanistan and other locations.

I am not sure how/why the rest of you voted.

But *I* voted last year to ensure we pull out US troops from Iraq immediately. I took Pelosi's and others words to heart. I wanted to see Murtha personally hand over to President Bush a bill defunding the entire war in Iraq, forcing the troops to be withdrawn. Every death and dollar spent since the oath of office in January is now on the Democrat's hands [ since Bush will never be held accountable for his actions ]

But meh.

What do you expect from the Culture of Corruption in Congress?

If the Republicans had allowed more nuclear power, drilling in ANWAR & offshore, more refineries to be constructed, wind mills off the coast of Mass., etc. maybe we could ignore the fanatics of the MiddleEast.

I find it absolutely disgusting that you consider saving some money more important than ensuring freedom and liberty in every corner of the globe. How do people like you actually look in the mirror? Thank god your ilk were not around in 1941 to try to calculate whether or not it was fiscally responsible to rid the world of tyranny and fascism. You know hat though? I'm willing to bet that if we cut back on all the social programs like welfare and cash assistance for illegal aliens (not undocumented citizens) we would have a hell of a lot more $ to go around. Maybe if Nancy Pelosi didn't demand such an expensive airplane. Maybe if the Democrats did not continually vote themselves more and more pay increases. Maybe if politicians actually paid for their own health insurance.

You people have a lot of nerve.

Freedom and Liberty are not American Rights.

They are Human Rights.

This is why I left the Democratic Party.

You people have no sense of reality.

This President and reputed Republican fiscal nightmare of the past 6 years has offered Gold. By veto of even the most modest items for Middle-class families, Bush has steadied a remarkable contrast to Democratic advantage. Fiscal responsibility to this President, and these 6 year spendthrift Republicans have demonstrated the only FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY by their definition is to export nearly two trillion dollars to oil nations.

Bravo Republicans. Hopefully your time in governance is nearly over. Of course, the D-party is infamous for flunking at critical moments by trying to be decent in an obviously Talk-Radio driven behavioriolistic Republican grand play. Good luck to our Majority of the moment.

Democrats - keep peeling away the fiscal conservatives from the R-party. I've watched it first hand. They may have a short memory, but they know what happened over the past 7 years now. Keep reminding them.

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY to Republicans means the only proper, appropriate spending, and lots of it, is to send and spend our hard earned tax dollars to filthy rich Oil Barons overseas. The only "proper" budget for Bush is hundreds of billions in money quickly exported to foreign money to feed our terrorism. In return, Bush will promise to repeatedly VETO as fiscally irresponsible even a dime for Americans needs. Bravo Mr. President. Now, a question. Who is on the side of terrorists? Follow the money.

This insane war and the murdering of people for oil and power has to stop. They say the people of the USA are kind and loving people. Well you can prove it by how people have voted for republicans. When are the people of this country going to learn that all the republicans do is build up the military, and only care about oil and power. And why yes they have family values don't they?? Is that why they do not care about social programs that help people. The only people that they want health care for is there rich friends. Republicans do not give a Damm about anybody but the rich. This country is going to hell and the people are going to let it happen because they will believe the lies from the republicans again and again about how weak the democrats are on defence. All this country cares about is guns and taking care of number one. And thats just right where the asshole republicans want you.
If you hate then your a good republican.

As an Iraqi war veteran I have seen the ignorance and wasted money first hand. It's about time the Democrats step up and do something. You could have stopped this war a year ago but are too scared to stop the money. Its simple: Don't give Bush the money. If he vetos keep sending the same bill, eventually he'll run out of money and he'll have to bring the troops home. Quit using the soldiers as pawns in your political war game and actually do somthing.

wow - geogibso

We hear from an Iraq war veteran firsthand.

Seems to me he is saying "support the troops - BRING THEM HOME"

Why isn't anybody listening? Dennis Kucinich seems to be the only one running for president now on the Democratic side that has been consistent in his refusal to support the war in funding.

Everytime the Democrats fear being painted "anti-soldier" by the prowar repugnicans, they play right into their hands and give them what they want

Here is a game plan:
1 Refuse funding
2 Tell the American people it was time to stop
the needless war and the only way to do it
was by pulling the purse strings.
3 The American public, overwhelmingly against
this war, responds by supporting democrats
who finally took a stand.

Republicans are not "pro-war" any more than they are "pro-life" or "pro-family". "Pro-life" and "Pro-family are belied by the emphasis placed on war and on the opposition to medical care for children, the "Pro-family" is not only belied by the same lack of response to the aforementioned bills, but on the lack of support for working poor families who have to have both parents working in order to make ends meet.
Those are all slogans to hide the lies the Republicans are telling behind false concepts.
This "war" is not only an illegal conflict but it is the occupation of a foreign country whose population wants us out of there.
Talk about needing a reality check!

The greatest problem facing Democrats is the Democratic leadership.

Rather than:
1) Keeping their promises to end the occupation of Iraq if elected (and PLEASE stop calling it a war - it’s not. It’s every bit as much an occupation as when the British occupied India) or,
2) Honoring their sworn oath to uphold the Constitution by exercising their clear duty to investigate the apparent widespread high crimes and misdemeanors (from lying to Congress about the threat posed by pre-invasion Iraq to illegal and unwarranted wiretaps…even before 9/11 to torture to dissolution of habeas corpus)
Democratic leadership has decided to co-conspire in the continued occupation (and resultant astronomic national debt) while hoping that their complicity in illegal activities allows them the luxury of avoiding a controversy.

If the Party is to be reclaimed from cowards and lobbyist shills, a clear message must be sent… and soon. When the likes of Pelosi and Reed face recall elections for ignoring the mandate that gave them power, they will likely respond. If they don’t “get it”, they should be given the boot.

Republicans make better Republicans than Democrats do. Leadership should stop trying to play the part. It’s sad and pathetic.

Thank You JohnPitt that was exactly what I was saying.

I'm a senior at Canyon Springs HS and I'm just curios about this issue.

I believe that there is a great deal of truth in that if there is another Republican elected there will be no end to this war. With all the conflict going on in congress it doesn't look like there will be a resolution any time soon. The funds going towards the war have more than surpassed their limits and its leaving us with nothing for support. We simply get the backlash of Bush's decision which is less money for education and even less for health care.

Some people oppose calling the war in Iraq a "war", so why does the president refer to it as such. It doesn't make sense that he calls it that while most people think its not.

My family and I don't owe anything for this occupation. We were against it. Let the top 3% and all those who voted for Bush this last election ante up.

Acanyon08:
Ever read Orwell's 1984?
The government in the book would change the definitions of words as a tool to get the people to do their bidding. They called it "newspeak".
If you listen to Bush, Cheney and a lot of other Republicans, they are doing the same thing.
By using the word "war" to mean an occupation of a country, they think they are fooling the American people into believing that the Iraqis that we are fighting are some kind of enemy, when the majority of the Iraqis just want us out of there so they can build their country their way.
"Democracy" and "freedom" are two other words that the Republicans have played with to change the definitions. The Republcans claim to be bringing "democracy" to Iraq, when they are actually trying to dictate to the Iraqi government how the country should be run, and demanding concessions for outfits like Blackwater which demand "get out of jail free" cards for their murdering employees.
"Freedom" is what the Republicans keep claiming they are protecting, all the while using the excuse of "protecting freedom" to chip away at our Constitution and out Bill of Rights which the Founding Fathers wrote to protect out real freedoms.
Republicans have proven to be hypocrites, and by their re-definitions of words into an Orwellian newspeak, have proven themselves to be liars as well.

What's really sad is that there are only a small amount of Democrats that are really serious in ending the Iraq war. The recent bill to continue funding the Iraq war with a non binding plan to be out by December of 2008 is just a bunch of hot air. How stupid to these people in office think the American people really are? This was all for political show and Democrats can't keep saying it's because they don't have the votes because if the majority were really serious about ending the war they would use the power of the purse, it's that simple. I'm not fooled or impressed at all by this political show. I'm tired of talk, I want to see action. We were promised change and an end to the Iraq war and nothing has changed.

Republicans complain about "pork" added to bills that would help American communities,like the Alaskan bridge to nowhere, and continue to provide pork payments to the Middle East. Congress can agree with Republicans to spend pork money in America, and agree with the President to veto such payments to basically hilal eating countries.

republicans...

This war has already made our nation poor. This president doesn't care because he will live happly in Texas after he leaves office, while we pay for his war. We need to get a Democrady in the White House this eletion because we can't take a another 4 years of the other party.

"The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America’s Future”

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/16/1419245

Investigative journalist Craig Unger is the author of the new book “The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America’s Future.” The book examines how neoconservatives secretly forged an alliance with the Christian Right during the Bush presidency and helped make the case for war in Iraq.

* Craig Unger, investigative journalist and author is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and author of the New York Times bestseller “House of Bush, House of Saud.” His new book is called “The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America’s Future.

Investigative journalist Craig Unger joins us now in Washington.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to investigative journalist Craig Unger in Washington, D.C., here with Democracy Now! He is author of the new book The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future. The book examines how neoconservatives secretly forged an alliance with the Christian Right during the Bush presidency and helped make the case for war in Iraq. Craig Unger is the contributing editor at Vanity Fair, also author of the book House of Bush, House of Saud.

Craig, welcome to Democracy Now!

CRAIG UNGER: Thanks for having me, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Why don't you start off by laying out the thesis of this book.

CRAIG UNGER: Well, I think when most people look at the Middle East conflict today, they frame it in terms of Islam versus the West. I want to try looking at a new paradigm, and that is, I want to examine fundamentalisms, and by that I mean not just Islamic fundamentalism, but Christian and Jewish fundamentalism, as well. And I really throw in neoconservatism as sort of a secular form of fundamentalism, which are in conflict with a modern post-Enlightenment world. And I think that’s a larger conflict that has gotten us into trouble today in the Middle East.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about President Bush, President George W. Bush's relationship with George H.W. Bush, a central theme that runs through The Fall of the House of Bush.

CRAIG UNGER: Right. Well, you may have seen there have been a raft of stories recently that they have a very congenial relationship. Last summer, the New York Times had them playing horseshoes out in Kennebunkport, Maine. And on the surface, I think that’s the case. I interviewed Bob Strauss, for example, who had been chairman of the National Democratic Party. He was a friend of Bush Sr.’s and had been ambassador to Moscow when the elder George Bush was president. And he said that when he had dinner with the two men, they would just be gossiping, talking about, “Oh, how’s Susie doing in Midland, Texas?” and so on.

But under the surface, I think there’s a real very deep conflict that has affected millions of lives, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and they represent almost polar opposite points of view. I call the first chapter in my book “Oedipus Tex.” And if you look at the current Bush administration, you realize he has put together an administration consisting of some of his father's worst enemies. For example, his father was a very congenial man, had very few bitter enemies, but one of them was certainly Donald Rumsfeld. In addition, his father had very little -- was not terribly fond of the Christian Right, and at one point he called them the “extra chromosome crowd,” a remark for which he had to apologize.

And finally, his father had been doing battle with the neoconservatives as early as 1976. If you go back to that period, Bush Sr. was then head of the CIA, and you see the young neocons then had put together what was known as Team B, and they began to challenge the CIA’s intelligence on the Cold War. This was the era of detente. They were saying the CIA was a bunch of liberals who were being soft on the Soviet Union. And they tried to come up -- they began to politicize intelligence and distort it and come up with a much tougher line. And in there I think you see a lot of the foreshadowing of the events we're going through today.

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about how President Bush and Vice President Cheney made the case for war in Iraq, I want to turn to comments made by Dick Cheney in September of 1992. At the time, he was President George H.W. Bush's Secretary of Defense. During an address at the Economic Club of Detroit, Cheney was asked why the United States didn’t bury Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. This is how he responded close to fifteen years ago.

DICK CHENEY: At the end of the war in the Gulf, when we made the decision to stop, we did so because we had achieved our military objectives -- that is, when we decided to halt military operations. Those objectives were twofold: to liberate Kuwait and, secondly, to strip Saddam Hussein of his offensive military capability, of his capacity to threaten his neighbors. And we had done that.

There is no doubt in my mind, but what we could have gone on to Baghdad and taken Baghdad, occupied the whole country. We had the 101st Airborne up on the Euphrates River Valley about halfway between Kuwait and Baghdad. And I don’t think, from a military perspective, that it would have been an impossible task. Clearly, it wouldn’t, given the forces that we had there.

But we made a very conscious decision not to proceed for several reasons, in part because as soon as you go to Baghdad to get Saddam Hussein, you have to recognize that you’re undertaking a fairly complex operation. It’s not the kind of situation where we could have pulled up in front of the presidential palace in Baghdad and said, “Come on, Saddam. You’re going to the slammer.” We would have had to run him to ground. A lot of places he could have gone to hide out or to resist. It would have required extensive military forces to achieve that.

But let's assume for the moment that we would have been able to do it, we got Saddam now and maybe we put him down there in Miami with Noriega. Then the question comes, putting a government in place of the one you’ve just gotten rid of. You can’t just sort of turn around and away; you’ve now accepted the responsibility for what happens in Iraq. What kind of government do you want us to create in place of the old Saddam Hussein government? You want a Sunni government or a Shia government, or maybe it ought to be a Kurdish government, or maybe one based on the Baath Party, or maybe some combination of all of those.

How long is that government likely to survive without US military forces there to keep it propped up? If you get into the business of committing US forces on the ground in Iraq to occupy the place, my guess is I’d probably still have people there today, instead of having been able to bring them home.

We would have been in a situation, once we went into Baghdad, where we would have engaged in the kind of street-by-street, house-to-house fighting in an urban setting that would have been dramatically different from what we were able to do in the Gulf, in Kuwait in the desert, where our precision-guided munitions and our long-range artillery and tanks were so devastating against those Iraqi forces. You would have been fighting in a built-up urban area, large civilian population, and much heavier prospects for casualties.

You would have found, as well, I think, probably the disintegration of the Arab coalition that signed on to support us in our efforts to eject the Iraqis from Kuwait, but never signed on for the proposition that the United States would become some kind of quasi-permanent occupier of a major Middle Eastern nation.

And the final point, with respect to casualties, everybody, of course, was tremendously impressed with the fact that we were able to prevail at such a low cost, given the predictions with respect to casualties in major modern warfare. But for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it was not a cheap or a low-cost conflict. The bottom-line question for me was: How many additional American lives is Saddam Hussein worth? The answer: Not very damn many. I think the President got it right both times, both when he decided to use military force to defeat Saddam Hussein’s aggression, but also when he made what I think was a very wise decision to stop military operations when we did.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Dick Cheney, speaking in September of 1992 at the Economic Club of Detroit. Our guest is investigative journalist Craig Unger. Pretty astounding, Craig.

CRAIG UNGER: It’s an extraordinary tape. And Cheney made statements like that again and again between ’92 and 1994. And he really forecasted all the problems we’re encountering today. It’s a shame he didn’t look at them again. But, if anything, to me, it shows his duplicity.

At about the same time -- remember, he was Secretary of Defense back then, and under him he had some of the key neoconservatives who became architects of the Iraq war today. He had Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Zalmay Khalilzad. And about the same time, they had just written what was known as the Defense Policy Guidance paper, sometimes known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine. And this was a paper that became -- that outlined our current strategy. It was a radical new vision for overhauling the Middle East. You see the seeds of the Iraq war in it.

When it was leaked to the New York Times, it was -- it caused a great outrage. And then-President Bush, the elder President Bush, rejected it out of hand. He thought it was far too radical and rightwing. But Cheney secretly liked it a lot, and he told Khalilzad, for example, “You’ve come across a new rationale for American security.” This was a vision to create American dominance throughout the new century, as just after the end of the Cold War.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Bob Strauss, his position and his observations about the two, knowing them very well, George Sr. and Jr. -- well, not exactly “Jr.” since he doesn’t have the “H,” but forty-three and forty-one, as you put it.

CRAIG UNGER: Right. Well, he said one thing that was -- he had only a few comments, but they were both very acute. One is, he said Bush Sr. doesn’t know how to strut; George W., Jr., doesn’t know how not to strut. I also asked him if there was one word that described the current president, and he said he was “incurious.” He was just too incurious to be president. And so you see this battle, the conflict between two George Bushes, evolve over a series of years.

George W. Bush was not the favorite son in the family. His older brother, Jeb Bush, really was. And in 1994, the two men were running for governor of Florida and Texas, respectively. And Jeb was favored to win; George W. was favored to lose in Texas. In fact, exactly the opposite happened. And at that point, George W. Bush became the leading sort of -- began to win the Oedipal sweepstakes in the family, and he became frontrunner to become a presidential candidate.

AMY GOODMAN: George W. Bush’s comments about “cut and run,” a direct cut at his father?

CRAIG UNGER: I think it was. And what you see then -- this was during the buildup to the Iraq war -- he said he was reflecting back to 1991, when his father was president during the first Gulf War and had been criticized by the neocons. Now, the normal etiquette between former and sitting presidents is they don’t criticize each other, and here he had made a public comment that seemed to be a slap at his father.

I interviewed people who had been talking to the elder President Bush at that time, and Bush said, “You know what? I’m going to have Brent Scowcroft talk to him.” And what you see in my book is Brent Scowcroft as an intermediary between the two generations, between the two George Bushes.

If there’s a hero in the book, it is Scowcroft. He’s in a very delicate position. He’s a very close friend of the elder President Bush. He has a condo in Kennebunkport, Maine, for example. And he wants to sustain that friendship. So when he talks out publicly, he is talking with the assent of the elder President Bush. And as early as October of 1991, you see him begin -- he sees it coming. He sees the neoconservatives taking over, and he starts to speak out. And you see him writing in the Wall Street Journal and other places, in the Washington Post and so on, saying that we should not go on and attack Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to talk about one of the main stories in your book, and that is this point you made at the top of the show, that it wasn’t a failure of intelligence, the Iraq war; in fact, it was the success. Talk about it.

CRAIG UNGER: Right, well, a lot -- I think everyone knows about the Valerie Plame Wilson affair and Joe Wilson. What people -- and it’s sometimes referred to as Nigergate. People sometimes forget the source was what is known as the Niger documents. Now, these were documents that grew out of a robbery that took place in the Niger embassy over the last weekend in the year of 2000 and January 1, 2001.

Now, remember, the timing is very important. George W. Bush has not taken office yet, but the neocons know they have a friend in the office -- coming into the White House. So they have had this strategy in development for many years, going back to as early as 1992, you see it begin to take shape. Now, finally, they have an opportunity to begin to try to implement it. And as early as 1998, they had begun going down to Austin. You see Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams going down to Austin, where George W. Bush is governor.

Bush Sr. has been trying to educate his son, in terms of foreign policy. He thinks the old-line realists will prevail. By that, I mean Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft and, one had thought, Condoleezza Rice, James Baker, for example. But, in fact, a radical group of neocons have been going down there, and they’ve sort of been indoctrinating George W. Bush. The first review of my book, Radar magazine calls it “the greatest brainwashing since the Manchurian Candidate.”

So when the Niger embassy break-in takes place, it’s in the Niger embassy in Rome. I actually went there for Vanity Fair. It’s a terribly unprepossessing building. If the Watergate burglary is sometimes described as a third-rate burglary, well, this is a fourth-rate one, and almost nothing of value is taken, just a few documents and some stationary. But these documents were used as the basis for forgeries of documents that said that Saddam Hussein was going to buy 500 tons of yellow cake uranium from the Republic of Niger. It’s a very poor African company -- country. Its only real export is uranium.

These documents then became circulated, though there are many, many, many unanswered questions about them. Everyone agrees on one thing, and that is that they were forgeries. They were phony. And I discovered, as I began to trace them, I discovered that they had been discredited on at least fourteen separate occasions by various government agencies, by the CIA, by the intelligence arm of the State Department, and so forth. Yet they still manage to be inserted in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address, and therefore in that speech they became a causis belli, a cause for war.

AMY GOODMAN: And the role of Dick Cheney in the manufacture -- well, you call it a PSYOPS operation, psychological operations?

CRAIG UNGER: Right. Well, in terms of the Niger documents, I’m not sure I do have a direct link with Dick Cheney, but what you see, you see Stephen Hadley says that he forgot that they had been discredited. Now, it’s hard to believe, if you think about vetting a presidential address, not just a presidential address, but a State of the Union address, one that is calling for war, that this is -- you know, it sort of defies imagination that the government can forget this on fourteen different occasions.

But with regard to Cheney, you see him playing a remarkable role overall in putting together a team of neocons and assembling extraordinary amounts of executive power. What we really see going on here is the putting together of sort of an alternative national security apparatus. We have a $40 billion intelligence apparatus, when you put together the CIA and the various intelligence units in the State Department and the Pentagon and so on. What Cheney was was a brilliant master of the bureaucracy. You can trace him and Rumsfeld back to the Gerald Ford administration. There, they executed a brilliant bureaucratic coup that seemed to oust Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, head of the CIA William Colby, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger. And so, they had a real mastery of the bureaucracy. They knew how to bring the bureaucracy to a halt, how to grease the wheels when necessary. They were able to put in people like John Bolton in the State Department to keep an eye on Colin Powell.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Craig Unger. His book is just out this week; it’s called The Fall of the House of Bush. You write about the significance of Pat Robertson, especially significant now with his endorsement of Rudolph Giuliani, and you go through his history, back to -- well, talk about Pat Robertson's father.

CRAIG UNGER: Well, he was a United States senator himself, and he comes from a very well-off family. Pat Robertson had put together quite a fortune in broadcasting. And yet, he’s really an unusual character, I mean, in the sense that he was one of the first leaders of the Christian Right who had enormous political clout. At the same time, I think he’s a little too extreme to have won public office. He speaks in tongues. It’s hard to imagine practices like that going on in the Oval Office.

Yet, in the Iowa primary of 1988, you see a great turning point, where Vice President Bush is then running for office. He’s the sitting vice president for an extremely popular president, Ronald Reagan. And he seems to be a strong favorite to win the next presidency. But in the Iowa primary, he comes in third behind Pat Robertson. And that’s the headline that you see the power of the Christian Right there, and he realizes he has to turn to his son, George W. Bush, to help bring the Christian Right into his campaign.

AMY GOODMAN: And Robertson was very careful there. He had a very deliberate strategy, kept reporters out of his meetings, his rallies, wanting to stay under the media radar screen so that the underestimates of his popularity would lead to big headlines when he actually organized to the point where he had such a high standing in the poll.

CRAIG UNGER: Absolutely. This is the birth of what’s sometimes called “dog-whistle politics.” And you see the Christian Right is broadcasting one message to their base, and the general electorate doesn’t seem to get it. George Bush and Karl Rove became masters of this in their campaign. And, for example, you would see George W. Bush campaigning with Roger Staubach. To the general public, that meant he was campaigning with a Super Bowl football star, but to the Christian Right, that meant he was campaigning with one of the faithful, that he was one of them.

AMY GOODMAN: One of the points you make is the people who are under attack in this current administration -- George H.W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell -- they all have these military records, and the people who attack them -- Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Khalilzad -- did not fight.

CRAIG UNGER: Right. Those are the so-called “chicken hawks.” And, you know, it’s interesting, when you go around the country talking about this stuff, how rightwing talk show hosts will sometimes say this is a leftwing book. But in truth, the hero is Brent Scowcroft, who is an extremely moderate Republican who speaks out again and again, even though he’s in a very delicate position because of his friendship with Bush Sr. And most of my sources are really Republicans. There are a lot -- at one point, I have nine military and intelligence officials speaking out. They’re lifelong members of the military. Most of them are lifelong Republicans, as well.

And they have seen their party seized. Today, the Republican Party is basically a function of the Christian Right or the neoconservatives. In another world, someone like Chuck Hagel would be a serious candidate in the Republican Party. Today, a moderate like Hagel is marginalized within the party. And I think you'll see in the next election, whoever is the Republican candidate is almost certain to be committed to the current policies of George W. Bush.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk, Craig Unger, about American evangelism in this book. You talk about George Bush’s religion. And you talk about Tim LeHay, as well as the new right’s multibillion-dollar effort bankrolled by billionaire philanthropists to completely reframe the national debate. Talk about -- begin with George W. Bush and his religion and his story of his conversion with Billy Graham, which he says isn’t true.

CRAIG UNGER: Right. Well, the widespread story -- and he wrote about it, or at least it was ghostwritten, in his campaign autobiography for 2000, A Charge to Keep -- it’s a story George Bush has told again and again, that in 1985 Billy Graham was in Kennebunkport, Maine with him and his parents, and the two men went for a long walk, and it was at that moment that he began to accept Christ.

Well, Billy Graham himself says he has absolutely no memory of it. But more than that, I talked to Mickey Herskowitz, who’s a Houston sportswriter and a close friend of Bush Sr., and he was hired to ghostwrite that campaign autobiography, A Charge to Keep. And as he was ghostwriting it, during that process, he had about twenty sit-down interviews with George W. Bush in Austin, and he very specifically asked Bush what conversation took place with Billy Graham. At the time, Bush had absolutely no memory of the conversation himself. So Herskowitz sort of prodded him, and he said, “Well, would he have said something like, ‘Are you right with Jesus?’” And Bush said, “No, he wouldn’t have said that.” Well, at a certain point, Herskowitz gave the tapes to Karen Hughes, who was Bush’s communications director, and in the course of finishing the book, Herskowitz's words were put in Billy Graham's mouth.

Now, I later went back, and I found a guy named Arthur Blessitt. And it turns out that even earlier, it was Blessitt who really converted Bush to Jesus. In 1984, he had made a trip to Midland, Texas and then met at a Holiday Inn. There were three people present at the meeting: Bush, a member of his Bible studies group named Jim Sale -- I talked to Jim Sale -- and Arthur Blessitt himself, who I also interviewed.

And Blessitt is most famous for carrying a twelve-foot cross of Jesus around the world. He’s been to more than 300 countries, walked 30,000 miles. And he had a Jesus Coffee House in Los Angeles, where he was most famous for what was called the toilet baptism. His congregation consisted mostly of Hell’s Angels people, bikers and so forth, and they would dump their drugs in the toilet, flush it down the toilet and embrace Jesus.

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s who you say influenced George W. Bush, converted him?

CRAIG UNGER: Right. He actually seems like a very nice man. He’s not quite as distinguished a figure as Billy Graham, however, and I think it plays better politically. But, you know, in addition, this -- I think the secular world has basically misunderstood the Christian Right and doesn’t quite understand the depth of this as a movement.

And I traveled undercover with Tim LeHay, who is the prophet of the "Left Behind" series. His books have sold an astonishing 63 million copies. I traveled with him to the battlefield of Armageddon, where they believe the final conflict would take place. And I also did research, and I began to trace it back to its roots, the roots of the Christian Right. And we often talk about the battle of the blue states or the red states or the cultural wars in America. I think it’s actually a much more profound division of faith versus science.

AMY GOODMAN: Craig Unger, with the story, this undercover tour you took, walking where Jesus walked, with LeHay, and the scene that you describe touring the ancient fortress city of Megiddo?

CRAIG UNGER: Yes. Megiddo is -- from Megiddo, we get the term Armageddon, where the final conflict will take place. “Har” means “hill” in Hebrew, and “Har Megiddo” is how we get the word “Armageddon.” And in the Book of Revelations, this is where the final conflict will take place.

And I was walking up the hill with LeHay and about ninety of his followers, and as you look over this spectacularly beautiful pastoral valley, you see a valley that, in their view, won’t be so -- they see a vision that is not so bucolic. They see that it will be filled with blood, the blood of as many as two billion people. And I talked with them about that, and they say there will be a river of blood, 200 miles long, about four-and-a-half feet deep. And I asked one of them when all this would take place. And they said, “Very soon, but not soon enough. Any day now.” So they see this fantasy is taking place, and this is sort of one of the horrific visions that is spelled out in the Book of Revelation.

AMY GOODMAN: Filled with the blood of the more than two billion people who did not accept Jesus Christ as their savior.

CRAIG UNGER: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: And Tim LeHay’s relationship with George W. Bush?

CRAIG UNGER: Well, LeHay is one of the founders of the Council for National Policy. Now, this is a not-very-well-known group, but it’s an umbrella group that oversees dozens of Christian Right groups, like Focus on the Family, which is James Dobson’s group. The Moral Majority was part of it, and so on. And within it was a much smaller group called the Arlington Group, of about fifty religious leaders. Now, they were in regular contact with Karl Rove. And what you have in the Christian Right is as many as 80 million adult evangelicals. You have about 200,000 pastors, and they operate almost as precinct captains did in the labor unions for the Democratic Party. So this is a vast populist movement that operates as part of the Christian Republican Party, and they have regular contact with the White House.

AMY GOODMAN: Craig Unger, I want to thank you very much for joining us. The book has just come out this week. It’s called The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future.

**********************************************

Let us not forget that Karl Rove, the engineer of this Republican Movement against the common populations of the United States and the World, is an admitted atheist.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Common Causes War
http://www.namguardianangel.org

Death because they served, PTSD
Several videos to check out:
http://www.namguardianangel.blogspot.com

Women Veterans
There are more than you think
Women Veteran Stress Disorder Treatment
and a great deal more
Some wounds can only be seen with your heart
Numerous videos to see as well . . .
http://woundedtimes.blogspot.com

Suicide Epidemic Among Veterans
A CBS News Investigation Uncovers A Suicide Rate For Veterans Twice That Of Other Americans

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/main3496471.shtml

I understand that some of the American people want to get out of Iraq, but I am confused. Being a democrat myself, I don’t think that getting out now is the best thing. I have visited Iraq and what the United States is getting done is amazing. The Iraq people are now starting to help weed out the problems.

I feel that if we get out now, the problems will escalate and that will give the terrorist the momentum to continue to fight. Then the terrorist will come to the United States and we will have to fight them on US land.

The question is “Is the cost of fight them in Iraq better or due we want to fight them in North America?”

Fight them over here?

Sounds like somebody has been buying into the 'fear factor' that bush-cheney have been selling for the past 5-plus years.

Studies show that we have created MORE terrorists in Iraq by our presence there.

Until we start to respect the sovereignty of other nations, and the culture of other people, we will continue to foster hatred and resentment of the United States around the world. Bush is creating the terrorists.

President Bush in his arrogance has plunged this country into another Vietnam. The same lies we were being told then we are being told now. If we don't fight them over there we will have to fight them here. The liberal news media is twisting the truth about our success in Iraq. If we allow (Vietnamization) to take hold then we can pull out. John Kerry tried to tell the country that all the lessons we should have learned in Vietnam have been lost on this President. He has totally destabilized the entire region. Since the Republicans can't run on their record or acomplishments they have to resort to swift boating whoever the Democrat is. They succeeded in making the War hero a coward, and the coward a war hero.

Don't give me that right wing garbage about Iraq, I don't even believe you're a Democrat because you're sounding just like Bush/Cheney listening and talking about the politics of fear. The same old crap it's better to fight to them there instead of over here, well newsflash, Tony Blair use to repeat that same nonsense and look at the horribe events that took place with the London bombings. If anything the war in Iraq has made the world less safe because it has now become a haven for terrorists and it wasn't like that before. Not only that the Bush administrations fails to mention that there are over 1 million Christians in Iraq, many of them forced to leave there because to this day nothing has been done to protect their religios freedoms, they have been in constant danger from radicals threatening them to convert and some have even been killed yet not one thing was ever done about this, it's still not safe for them to this day. How can we call Iraq a young democracy when religios freedoms aren't even being protected? Not only that there's still violence in Iraq and the Iraqi government is still corrupt. It's not a military problem in Iraq it's a political problem and this President has no plan to win the peace over there and no exit plan, instead our troops our left there in the middle of a civil war which is not fair to them. This administration is going to go down as the worst in the history of the country!

I AM OUTRAGED THAT REPUBLICAN PARTY LEADERSHIP IS WAGING TWO SENSATIONALIZED ACCUSATIONS THAT DEMOCRATIC PARTY LEADERSHIP WON’T BOTH QUIT FUNDING THE WAR BUT WON’T GIVE THEM THE APPROPRIATE AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR THE WAR EITHER.

Yesterday the Senate Appropriations Committee held a press conference carried by C-Span 2 on the Iraq war funding showing that both those accusations are not true.

The Appropriation Committee Chairman said that there was $50,000 billion dollars still available to the President for this years fiscal funding of the war and all the President has to do is call and ask for it. Then, the Senate chairman gave the number for the President to call...

Representative John Murtha and the Committee Chairman both said that the only thing the President needs to do to acquire next years fiscal funding from the Congress is to agree to three fiscal government responsibilities. One to grant some of the money to the troops, equipment and their families. Two, to agree that no forms of torture will be allowed in the Iraq war, and three, give a plan to end the Iraq war by the end of the next fiscal year. Well I don’t think those are far out expectations of the Democratic, do you? (I mean then can the pres. and the Republican elect instead then give us ‘any’ credible reasons to even ‘stay’ in the war until the end of the next fiscal year, anyway? (Other than their saying that only 39 soldiers died last month in Iraq instead of the 139 that died before that matter-but-don’t-matter to the Republican Party elected? One U.S. Soldier and one Iraqi civilian killed in the crossfire matters, just as two soldiers dragged through the streets of Somalia matters.)

GET THAT PARTY'S LEADERSHIP OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE AND FORCE THEIR PARTY LEADERSHIP TO CLEAN UP THEIR ACT!

The President thinks the Congress will give him America’s money without him documenting how the President and the government are going to spend it? Do business CEO’s give money to affiliate companies with no strings attached with what the money should be allotted for? Do banks give CEO‘s loans for no reason without showing credibility? (This is the party who claims their selves the party of businesses?)

All the Democratic Congress needs is nine votes from Congressional Republican’s on top of the number of Democrats in the Senate to push the President’s veto out of the way, let alone get America somewhere with this war, either way, win or lose as the Republican politicians say...

kickingass I don't know if you are responding to my post or not. But if you are I didn't make myself plain enough, or you are mis-understanding what I say. Because I totally agree with you.

The surge is a success and we have reached a turning point in Iraq. The al Qaeda insurgency has been routed out of Baghdad and is now leaderless and fragmented. I realize none these successes would have been possible if the policies advocated by the Democratic Party had been implemented and I won't forget that fact next November.

These narrow minded right wing Republicans never cease to amaze me. No matter how bad the hypocrite party screws up they expect all the problems to be solve the day after the Dems get control of the House and Senate even though we only have a few votes majority not enough to over ride a Veto. If we can get back the White House and increase our majority we still have a long and hard road ahead of us. This will require another Hurculean effort like Bill Clinton gave us.

The same lies we were told in Vietnam. When we pulled out of South Vietnam the Country fell within a week. When we pull out of Iraq this year or 10 years from now the country will erupt in Civil War. While I agree Sadam was a tyrant. He actually allowed more freedoms than the Saudis. There are Christian churches in Iraq, and I beleive a syndigog. You will find no such thing in most Arab countries. Bush has destabilized the entire region.

AMERICANS!
SUPPORT HILLARY CLINTON!

HILLARY CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT!

SHE IS THE BEST!
SHE WILL RESTORE TRUST TO AMERICA!
SHE WILL RESTORE DEMOCRACY!
SHE WILL END THE MESS IN IRAQ!
SHE SUPPORT THE MIDDLE CLASS!
THINK AND VOTE!
VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON IN 2008!

Hello

I think that in the long run Americans will gain even more from the war in Iraq, once the control over the natural resources in the MIddle East is obtained, and the money spent will be brought back to the American economy and bring lots of wealth to the future generations. One wont gain if one does not spend.