Just for the record, 2001 was left off because I couldn't find the transcript online.

couldnt be from all the Democrats who supported his war effort until they realized it was hurting their reelection chances could it? According to that ridiculous chart, some Democrats still "clap?" for him. At least you Democrats are on top of all of the important issues! Tell me how many people clap for you when you speak. While your counting on your notepad, i'll be wondering why the hell Bush hasnt vetoed every piece of legislature the Democrats managed to get to him

Michael,

Are we playing bingo tonight? I can see the same old words popping up in his speech...which have now become a sign of proven incompetence, corruption, and greed to all Americans.

Iran
insurgency
terris
the surge
success
Iran
don't mess with Texas
permanent tax cuts
globalization
trickle down
abortion
Reagan
Patriot Act/FISA
Iran
family values
What inflation?
fair tax; inheritance tax
Running up credit is good
gay marriage
Social Securtity "reform"
Iran
health care savings accounts
taxes are for little people
bi-partisan
Iran
support the troops
less regulation
the economy and Wall Street are strong
Bomb, bomb, bomb...bomb, bomb, Iran
Did you like my sword dance?
Reagan
Iran

When Limbaugh says he can't endorse any of the Republican candidates who are mouthing these same stupid GOP copy points as Bush, you know things are bad...and about to get a lot worse.

You got what you wanted, Rush...and now you are running away from it? Mercy me.

Don't stay home in November...vote for a woman or a bi-racial man...or a grown up with a Southern accent.

It's a chart of any applause, not a chart of Democratic applause.

Why so angry, GOP?

Posted by SandyH on January 28, 2008 at 12:35 PM

I've seen one Bingo card for the SOTU out there already (some newspaper, I think). I'm sure there will be plenty of others that people make.

I believe the folks in "Huckleberry Finn" showed up with rotten vegetables and dead cats when the Duke and King dared to sell tickets for another jackass performance.

Things could be worse, GOP.

A chart of any applause? Thats the best one i've heard in a while. (seriously no jk). I'm an not a bush defender because I don't beleive he has held to his Republican duties and responsibilites and has betrayed his party. Attention Democrats, you could win this next election, but if Obama spends half as much as he says he's going to, you will find that Republican in office in 2012. If Obama is as smart as he looks, then he wouldnt be a Democrat. I'm hoping he's just playing the game of politics to get elected, then brings on more Republican value than any of the candidates running for the Right right now. Then The Right wont care that theres a Democrat in office, and The Left wont care because theres a Democrat in office. Get it? Democrats just care about making Republicans look bad, and Republicans just want to be able to keep the money they make

Why so angry, GOP?

Posted by MichaelLink on January 28, 2008 at 12:36

Republicans are shrill!

O.K. The REAL questin is...

Will Lieberman be the first to leap to his feet again, and how many seconds into this malaprop fest will it be?

Posted by SandyH on January 28, 2008 at 12:35 PM

I can just about guarantee that the words "yellow cake uranium, from Africa..." won't be uttered.

GOP what a joke Like every other close-minded Limbaugh-listening right-wing freak who posts on a democratic website.

It has nothing to do with keeping the money you make. The morality of it is paying your way. The GOP likes your CHILDREN to pay your way.

Read a newspaper once in a while.

GOP is a joke. Like every other Limbaugh-listening right-wing close-minded freak who posts on a democratic website.

The morality is this GOP. If you can read...
The GOP wants to give you tax breaks.

And let your CHILDREN pay your way

GOP,

So even you guys are hoping someone from the Democratic Party can pull your ass back from the brink?

Why did you allow your party’s incompetents to spend and borrow so much? Why did you allow them to operate offshore without any scrutiny? Why did you let a bunch of wiz kids with video game computer programs to control your portfolios? Why did you trust so many foreigners?

Lazy, slacker ass Republicans. You trusted these "family values" perverts and their holy than thou pronouncements of faith to watch out for YOUR money? Incredible.

But never worry. We always clean up after your party's blunders. Reagan/Bush screwed up the economy big time, but we fixed it in the 1990's. We'll fix it again.

However, this time it might be a little harder. We don't even know yet where and how many bodies the Bush crime family has been hiding from us. All these hedge funds, derivatives, and multinational front groups have been operating under the radar for so long it's going to take a while to catch up with them.

We are worried about our money, too. Particularly our long-term investments and retirement accounts/pension funds. We'll get to the bottom of it and secure your money.

But nobody is going to be making any money to worry about keeping in the next few years if the Republican Party is allowed to continue running amuck with our economy.

It’s about time you gave Democrats the benefit of a doubt. We are not socialists. We like making money and holding on to it, too.

Do the Democrats control congress since 1 year ago or am I crazy? Is the Democrat ideology to get more money into the hands of these people at Washington that you hate, or do you not know what your party stands for? Don't small businesses and free enterprises do the trick for the economy? Why don't you stop reading the newspaper and start reading some of the ridiculous spending bills your party majority sends to congress. Of course I want Obama to win if he is more conservative than the Conservatives. But unfortunately he will probably spend more tax payer money than Bush ever has

Bush will also mention some actions that he can take without congressional approval, via executive orders or other administrative action, spokeswoman Perino said.

Perhaps Kucinich could hand Bush a copy of his Articles of Impeachment...and the House could vote on it right then and there?

Do the Democrats control congress since 1 year ago or am I crazy?

You're crazy, GOP.

We don't have a super majority in the Senate, so we can't stop Republican fillibusters or override Bush's vetoes. That's not control. It's impossible to stop the GOP pigs at the trough.

But it's going to change in 2009.

But unfortunately he will probably spend more tax payer money than Bush ever has

Nobody would be that stupid...except for the Republican-controlled Congress who for six years went along with Bush on every spend and borrow thing he asked for...and added a lot of Bridge to Nowhere pork of their own.

Tax and borrow and spend like a drunken sailor, GOP. You can't escape it, and you and I and our children and grandchildren will have to pay for it all.

How can you justify raising taxes $200 billion in 1 year (all proposed by the Dems)? With all that money, Americas problems should be solved. If there werent any Republicans around, this economy would have crashed a while ago. Please, instead of name calling and all the Bush hating stuff, give me something usefull to think about. And I don't listen to Limbaugh... I look at the whole picture, I don't ignore useful insight, I do ignore name calling (but it is funny because if you spent as much time studying, researching, and looking at politics from all angles, as you do thinking of ways to hate everything (whoops i guess i just mean Republicans), then we could talk politics instead of you channeling your hatred toward something you have very little knowledge about. Point being, do you get your news from Rosie O Donnell?)

Well, GOP. ONE day's worth of PROFIT from Exxon/Mobil would take care of A LOT of spending. Perhaps they should lose their tax break and FREE drilling rights? It's about time they started paying for something.

U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies

That number has been readjusted to at least 9.5 BILLION DOLLARS that should be going into the Treasury, but instead has never existed. In the meantime Exxon/Mobil saves the same amount and has tax breaks so they can write off even more than that amount.

You Pugs are nitwits. It's time to stop the Corporate welfare.

A couple of things... Can we get an official statement from somebody who says we can tax all of our problems until they go away? Then we can make that official Democrat-policy and move on. Next, that is the worst idea to try and get this country back on track. Republicans are not as (fill in the blank with your creativity) as you wish they were. Why does the energy bill proposed by Democrats not have any energy in it? Can I get a response from one of you Nancy Pelosi immitating Dependacrats?

Why is "Drill for more oil" the ONLY "plan" the Chimp has come up with in 7 years? Whatever happened to his "Switch grass" talking point from his State of the Union babble fest a few years ago" Did he smoke all of it?

The Dems will fix PUG problems once the Pugs go away. We don't mop the floor when the little puppies are still wandering around peeing on it. The sooner that Party of thieves is sent packing the better it will get for the entire country.

Posted by Grand_Old_Party on January 28, 2008 at 04:34 PM

Bigotry sort of rules you life doesn't it, GOP? Blame all the world's problems on others instead of taking responsibility for your own short comings.

The Republican party has had the reins for most of the last 40 years and look around you at the carnage. Your philosophy doesn't work. Your representatives won't even implement most of it when you have control.

Republicans are not competent. You don't know how to run or manage government because you don't believe in it. So step back and allow those who do to fix it for you.

In many ways Republicans act like the French aristocracy...childish adults who want their cake and to eat it, too. It cost money to run a civilized society. You have to tax people. If the burden is not shared equitably among the populace, the majority will revolt.

Or reality will come after you as crazed junkies who were forced to make their living committing crimes. What other choice do they have but to attack those that will not share the opportunity to participate in the economy any other way?

Grow up and pay your fair share and quit complaining. Things could be a lot worse. You have had at least 40 years of lower taxes and see what it's done for you. You're unhappy and frightened for the future.

We will take care of you. Mama will probably be very gentle when she gives you your Castor oil.

Get out of your castle and join the rest of the human race.

Why is tax us to death the only solution the Democrats can come up with? They dont offer any solutions, they just make it harder for american families to cope. SO once again, Miss Pelosi, can we get a solution from the left besides taxes?

Judiciary Committee Should Move to Impeach Bush and Cheney
By Elizabeth Holtzman
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Sunday 27 January 2008

Elizabeth Holtzman served in the US House of Representatives from 1973 to 1981.

Since mid-December, members of the House Judiciary Committee Robert Wexler (D., Fla.), Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.) and Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) have called for hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Cheney.

This should not be surprising, given the strength of the case for impeachment. What's surprising is that it took so long for members of this committee, normally tasked with holding impeachment proceedings, to call for them.

They face huge political resistance on Capitol Hill. But they aren't alone. Other Democratic members are joining them. Former senator and Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern recently published an op-ed demanding impeachment proceedings for both Bush and Cheney. Bruce Fein, a Republican who served in the Reagan Justice Department, and many other constitutional scholars also argue for impeachment.

There is more than ample justification for impeachment. The Constitution specifies the grounds as treason, bribery or "high crimes and misdemeanors," a term that means "great and dangerous offenses that subvert the Constitution." As the House Judiciary Committee determined during Watergate, impeachment is warranted when a president puts himself above the law and gravely abuses power.

Have Bush and Cheney done that?

Yes. With the vice president's participation, President Bush repeatedly violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court approval for presidential wiretaps. Former President Richard Nixon's illegal wiretapping was one of the offenses that led to his impeachment. FISA was enacted precisely to avoid such abuses by future presidents.

Bush and Cheney were involved in detainee abuse, flouting federal criminal statutes (the War Crimes Act of 1996 and the anti-torture Act) and the Geneva Conventions. The president removed Geneva protections from al-Qaeda and the Taliban, setting the abuse in motion, and may have even personally authorized them.

The president and vice president also used deception to drive us into the Iraq war, claiming Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were in cahoots, when they knew better. They invoked the specter of a nuclear attack on the United States, alleging Hussein purchased uranium in Niger and wanted aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment, when they had every reason to know these claims were phony or at least seriously questioned within the administration. Withholding and distorting facts usurps Congress' constitutional powers to decide on going to war.

Can a commander-in-chief disobey laws on wiretapping or torture to protect the country in wartime?

No. The Constitution requires the president to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." The Supreme Court ruled Harry S. Truman could not seize steel mills to prevent a strike, even during the Korean War. Nixon's claim of national security as a justification for illegal wiretaps was also rejected in impeachment proceedings against him.

What then is the justification for taking impeachment "off the table"? Congressional leaders don't defend the administration, nor do they contend that its actions are unimpeachable or less serious than Nixon's. Instead they argue there is no time, or that impeachment proceedings would distract the Congress from other work, or divide the country. The subtext seems to be fear that impeachment could undermine Democratic election prospects in 2008.

But even these "pragmatic" arguments are wrong. Let's take them one at a time:

Insufficient time. In the case of Nixon, the House officially instructed the Judiciary Committee to act in early February 1974. The committee finished voting on articles of impeachment July 29, less than six months later. No presidential impeachment proceeding had taken place for almost 100 years, so the committee had to start from scratch, analyzing the Constitution and developing procedures for the impeachment inquiry. Now that the relevant legal spade work is done and a road map for proper impeachment proceedings exists, Congress might conduct them even faster than in 1974.

Distraction. During Watergate, the impeachment inquiry didn't prevent Congress from getting its work done. In fact, the House Judiciary Committee also worked on other matters during impeachment, just as the Senate did during its impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton.

Divisiveness. True, President Clinton's impeachment was a highly partisan process that divided the country - because most Americans didn't support it. They believed his conduct was reprehensible, but not an impeachable offense. Impeachment therefore had negative repercussions for the Republicans who instigated it.

Nixon's impeachment united the American people. The process was bipartisan, demonstrating this wasn't just a Democratic ploy to undo an election. The fairness of the process, the seriousness of purpose, the substantial evidence - all gave the public confidence that justice had been done. This reinvigorated the shared value that the rule of law and preservation of democracy are more important than any president or party.

This value is again asserting itself in grassroots impeachment movements across America. The Vermont Senate, several state Democratic parties, and many municipal governments have adopted resolutions supporting impeachment. More state legislatures would have acted except for pressure from Washington. Many polls show a majority of Americans support impeaching Cheney (a Nov. 13 American Research Group poll says 70 percent of Americans believe he abused his office), and slightly less than a majority support impeaching Bush.

Stonewalling such widespread public sentiment is itself divisive, leading at least half the country to feel their concerns about upholding the Constitution are being ignored. Only a serious airing of evidence in hearings would heal the split.

Undermining election prospects. When the impeachment process began, Nixon had just been reelected in one of the largest landslides in history. Few, if any, worried about whether impeachment was a political winner for Congress or the Democrats. Public opinion simply forced Congress' hand when Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. After the Judiciary Committee conducted impartial hearings and voted on impeachment, Congress' approval ratings soared. Republicans were swamped in the November 1974 elections.

Whether or not they bring electoral rewards in 2008, impeachment proceedings are the right thing to do. They will help curb the serious abuses of this administration, and send a strong message to future administrations that no president or vice president is above the law.

Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman served on the House Judiciary Committee during proceedings toward Nixon's impeachment. She coauthored the 1973 special-prosecutor statute, and cowrote (with Cynthia L. Cooper) the 2006 book "The Impeachment of George W. Bush."

Judiciary Committee Should Move to Impeach Bush and Cheney
By Elizabeth Holtzman
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Sunday 27 January 2008

Elizabeth Holtzman served in the US House of Representatives from 1973 to 1981.

Since mid-December, members of the House Judiciary Committee Robert Wexler (D., Fla.), Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.) and Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) have called for hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Cheney.

This should not be surprising, given the strength of the case for impeachment. What's surprising is that it took so long for members of this committee, normally tasked with holding impeachment proceedings, to call for them.

They face huge political resistance on Capitol Hill. But they aren't alone. Other Democratic members are joining them. Former senator and Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern recently published an op-ed demanding impeachment proceedings for both Bush and Cheney. Bruce Fein, a Republican who served in the Reagan Justice Department, and many other constitutional scholars also argue for impeachment.

There is more than ample justification for impeachment. The Constitution specifies the grounds as treason, bribery or "high crimes and misdemeanors," a term that means "great and dangerous offenses that subvert the Constitution." As the House Judiciary Committee determined during Watergate, impeachment is warranted when a president puts himself above the law and gravely abuses power.

Have Bush and Cheney done that?

Yes. With the vice president's participation, President Bush repeatedly violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court approval for presidential wiretaps. Former President Richard Nixon's illegal wiretapping was one of the offenses that led to his impeachment. FISA was enacted precisely to avoid such abuses by future presidents.

Bush and Cheney were involved in detainee abuse, flouting federal criminal statutes (the War Crimes Act of 1996 and the anti-torture Act) and the Geneva Conventions. The president removed Geneva protections from al-Qaeda and the Taliban, setting the abuse in motion, and may have even personally authorized them.

The president and vice president also used deception to drive us into the Iraq war, claiming Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were in cahoots, when they knew better. They invoked the specter of a nuclear attack on the United States, alleging Hussein purchased uranium in Niger and wanted aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment, when they had every reason to know these claims were phony or at least seriously questioned within the administration. Withholding and distorting facts usurps Congress' constitutional powers to decide on going to war.

Can a commander-in-chief disobey laws on wiretapping or torture to protect the country in wartime?

No. The Constitution requires the president to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." The Supreme Court ruled Harry S. Truman could not seize steel mills to prevent a strike, even during the Korean War. Nixon's claim of national security as a justification for illegal wiretaps was also rejected in impeachment proceedings against him.

What then is the justification for taking impeachment "off the table"? Congressional leaders don't defend the administration, nor do they contend that its actions are unimpeachable or less serious than Nixon's. Instead they argue there is no time, or that impeachment proceedings would distract the Congress from other work, or divide the country. The subtext seems to be fear that impeachment could undermine Democratic election prospects in 2008.

But even these "pragmatic" arguments are wrong. Let's take them one at a time:

Insufficient time. In the case of Nixon, the House officially instructed the Judiciary Committee to act in early February 1974. The committee finished voting on articles of impeachment July 29, less than six months later. No presidential impeachment proceeding had taken place for almost 100 years, so the committee had to start from scratch, analyzing the Constitution and developing procedures for the impeachment inquiry. Now that the relevant legal spade work is done and a road map for proper impeachment proceedings exists, Congress might conduct them even faster than in 1974.

Distraction. During Watergate, the impeachment inquiry didn't prevent Congress from getting its work done. In fact, the House Judiciary Committee also worked on other matters during impeachment, just as the Senate did during its impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton.

Divisiveness. True, President Clinton's impeachment was a highly partisan process that divided the country - because most Americans didn't support it. They believed his conduct was reprehensible, but not an impeachable offense. Impeachment therefore had negative repercussions for the Republicans who instigated it.

Nixon's impeachment united the American people. The process was bipartisan, demonstrating this wasn't just a Democratic ploy to undo an election. The fairness of the process, the seriousness of purpose, the substantial evidence - all gave the public confidence that justice had been done. This reinvigorated the shared value that the rule of law and preservation of democracy are more important than any president or party.

This value is again asserting itself in grassroots impeachment movements across America. The Vermont Senate, several state Democratic parties, and many municipal governments have adopted resolutions supporting impeachment. More state legislatures would have acted except for pressure from Washington. Many polls show a majority of Americans support impeaching Cheney (a Nov. 13 American Research Group poll says 70 percent of Americans believe he abused his office), and slightly less than a majority support impeaching Bush.

Stonewalling such widespread public sentiment is itself divisive, leading at least half the country to feel their concerns about upholding the Constitution are being ignored. Only a serious airing of evidence in hearings would heal the split.

Undermining election prospects. When the impeachment process began, Nixon had just been reelected in one of the largest landslides in history. Few, if any, worried about whether impeachment was a political winner for Congress or the Democrats. Public opinion simply forced Congress' hand when Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. After the Judiciary Committee conducted impartial hearings and voted on impeachment, Congress' approval ratings soared. Republicans were swamped in the November 1974 elections.

Whether or not they bring electoral rewards in 2008, impeachment proceedings are the right thing to do. They will help curb the serious abuses of this administration, and send a strong message to future administrations that no president or vice president is above the law.

Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman served on the House Judiciary Committee during proceedings toward Nixon's impeachment. She coauthored the 1973 special-prosecutor statute, and cowrote (with Cynthia L. Cooper) the 2006 book "The Impeachment of George W. Bush."

I can't think of any other way to pay for government services besides taxes. You want to do a telethon? How about having Bush stand on a corner with a tin cup and sheepish grin begging for alms?

You want police and firemen protection, bridges and roads, infectious disease experts....but you think they should volunteer their services?

I said it before. Grow up or retreat to your castle and wait for the rabble to come for you.

You can't live without paying taxes in a civilization. If you want to create anarchy, I'm sure it will come to your door.

I'm sort of surprised you have survived as long as you have in this world. This much stupidity is usually rewarded by Nature with extinction.

"Laissez faire" people. get to know it. you might like it.

You libertarians amaze me. You completely ignore that our country has tanked and is going down for the third time? How can you act as though everything is peachy keen and throw out silly quips?

Are you that well heeled that you think you won't be drug down by what your incompetent Republican minions have set in motion?

SandyV.
I think your incompetent

935 Lies (and Counting): Study Documents Bush Admin’s False Statements Preceding Iraq War

A new study from the Center for Public Integrity has revealed President Bush and top administration officials made a total of 935 false public statements about Iraq’s alleged national security threat in the two years following the 9/11 attacks. President Bush made the most false statements-260. Colin Powell, his then-secretary of state, made 254 false statements. We speak with the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, Charles Lewis.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a new study from the Center for Public Integrity that’s revealed President Bush and top administration officials made a total of 935 false statements about Iraq’s alleged national security threat in the two years following the 9/11 attacks. President Bush made the most false statements-260. Colin Powell, his then-Secretary of State, made 254 false statements.

The authors of the study conclude, “The cumulative effect of these false statements-amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts-was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war.” On October 7, 2002, for example, Bush repeatedly lied about the threat posed by Iraq in a primetime speech in Cincinnati Ohio.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. It has given shelter and support to terrorism and practices terror against its own people. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today-and we do-does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons? We know that Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy: the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush, speaking October 7, 2002. Well, Charles Lewis joins us now from Washington, founder of the Center for Public Integrity. He created and directed the study called “Iraq: The War Card.” He is the president of the Fund for Independence in Journalism in Washington.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Chuck Lewis.

CHARLES LEWIS: Thanks. Nice to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about these findings.

CHARLES LEWIS: Well, we wanted to just look, now that we know-really since at least 2005, there have been a number of government reports, obviously, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that were no meaningful links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Now that that’s been firmly established, we wanted to see how often this was-this message was put out there and who said it the most and also when was it said and where was it said, how many venues. In other words, how did we get from this not being true to it being a war and what happened there?

So we systematically-and I do mean systematically -we took a two-year period, from September 11th forward, and we tracked eight officials, the folks you mentioned. And altogether, including two White House press secretaries, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and the President and the Vice President and Colin Powell, we looked at all their statements, and we wanted to-we also interlaced various fine and wonderful journalistic accounts, like Bob Drogin’s and others. We looked at government reports, Senate Intelligence Committee reports, the Duelfer Report, the-you name it, we have all those reports in there. We have whistleblower accounts, the most credible ones, Richard Clarke, of course, and many others. And we wove that into the chronology, so you know what they’re saying at the time, and you know what privately they are actually discussing and hearing and thinking behind the scenes. And it’s very useful, because then you get to put it all in context.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain that.

CHARLES LEWIS: This is basically a historic record.

AMY GOODMAN: Chuck, explain that-

CHARLES LEWIS: Well, basically-

AMY GOODMAN: -what they knew behind-the-scenes and what they were saying publicly, because in that case, aren’t you talking about lies?

CHARLES LEWIS: I am talking about them choosing certain information over other information. We know that within twenty-four hours of 9/11, of course, from Richard Clarke’s account, that the President wanted to go into Iraq. And then, within a few days, the government begins the war-planning process for Iraq, and they also acknowledge they don’t have the evidence, and so they decide to focus attention on Afghanistan. I know all this is known to many of your listeners and viewers, but the public has never really seen all this woven together. Most people don’t read this. We felt it was useful for the public to know.

What is unclear is the process inside the White House, where this campaign-how this campaign was orchestrated. As you know, millions of emails from the White House may now apparently have been destroyed. And there’s not been any hearings so far about the process in the White House, about what they knew and when they knew it and what they thought and what they were saying. I mean, this is not-this is a beginning step, in my view at least, to creating a historic record for posterity that will be a working document, and every new thing that comes out like, Scott McClellan’s book in a couple months, where he apparently says he was lied to by the President and the Vice President on the Valerie Plame matter, as these things start to tumble out, we’re going to start to understand better what occurred in the White House. Maybe the Senate Intelligence Committee can shed light on that in a few months, when they have hearings about their long-awaited report.

But, you know, we just laid out what we called false information. It was simply not-there was no basis in fact; it was erroneous. We did not interview any of these people, and we don’t have access to internal communications that they had. And as you know, Karl Rove-they also had a separate email system through the Republican Party, which is not accessible. So until those things emerge…

You know, I’m a records guy, and right now the record, to make a blunt, you know, assertion, it certainly does-when you make 935 false statements, obviously that’s strange credulity, to put it charitably. Yes, it does. But did some people actually believe this? In other words, ethicists, who are experts on lying, do make a distinction between-it doesn’t mean it’s any less morally offensive or tragic. What it means is, did they consciously say today, “I’m going to go out and lie some more today,” or do they believe it down to their toes, and if you gave them a polygraph they would pass? What we don’t know is, which of the eight-where did this come from exactly? I mean, I think we all have some ideas what that might be, but we actually don’t know.

AMY GOODMAN: Chuck Lewis, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino was asked about your study on Wednesday.

REPORTER: Any reaction to that study out from the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, where they did what they called a count of hundreds of false statements made by the President and top administration officials regarding the threat posed by Iraq-and they counted during the two years after 9/11?

DANA PERINO: I hardly think that the study is worth spending any time on. It is so flawed in terms of taking anything into context or including-they only looked at members of the administration, rather than looking at members of Congress or people around the world, because, as you’ll remember, we were part of a broad coalition of countries that deposed a dictator based on a collective understanding of the intelligence.

AMY GOODMAN: Chuck Lewis, your response?

CHARLES LEWIS: Well, you know, just to make an observation, this is the press secretary who didn’t know about the Cuban Missile Crisis until a few months ago.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain.

CHARLES LEWIS: Well, she made a reference that she had-actually didn’t know about the Cuban Missile Crisis back in the ’60s. For a White House press secretary to say that is astonishing to me.

So, anyway, her comment is, of course, predictable. At least she didn’t call this a third-rate burglary. If my administration, that I’m the flack for, made 935 false statements, I would want to say, “Go do another study and take ten years and look at the world and Congress.” The fact is, the world was rallied, as was the compliant Congress, into doing exactly what the administration wanted. And the bottom line is, she didn’t say that they were not false statements. Basically, they acknowledged they were false statements without her saying it. They have essentially said, “Gosh, I guess there weren’t any WMDs in Iraq,” in other statements they’ve made, “it’s all bad intelligence.”

Well, the fact is, we did provide context, 400,000 words of context, weaving in all of this material, not just what they said at the time, but what has transpired and what has tumbled out factually in the subsequent six years. So we actually have as much context so far as anyone has provided in one place. It’s searchable for all citizens in the world and for Congress and others that want to deal with this from here on.

But her comment is slightly laughable. I mean that she didn’t really address it, of course, and she’s going to really have an interesting time in a couple months.

AMY GOODMAN: Chuck Lewis, I want to keep you with us-

CHARLES LEWIS: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: -as we continue to talk about the lies that led up to the Iraq war. We’re joined by Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Drogin, who’s author of the new book Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War. The book examines how a former Iraqi taxi driver helped build the Bush administration’s case for war by making false claims about Saddam Hussein’s alleged biological and chemical weapons programs.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Bob Drogin.

BOB DROGIN: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you back. You make this case, how the CIA leveraged and the Bush administration used this guy Curveball’s false allegations to provide a pretext for war. Explain who he was and how the administration used him.

BOB DROGIN: Sure. Yeah, I think this is sort of the defining case of how we got led down the rabbit hole in Iraq. Curveball is the codename of an Iraqi-Rafiq Alwan is his name-who was a chemical engineer who defected to Germany, fled to Germany in 1999 and told the German intelligence authorities that Saddam-that he had helped mastermind a scheme to build biological weapons for Saddam Hussein. That information was never confirmed. It was never vetted. It was just sort of put out there and handed over to the Americans.

And after 9/11, the CIA literally just pulled it out of a safe, and within three weeks, the classified documents showed that all of the caveats that had existed before that period, where the questions of Saddam’s WMD was viewed as possible, probable, could be, may be, someday, suddenly were viewed in a totally different light. And his information-that is, the information from this one individual-rose higher and higher until the fall of 2002, when President Bush is citing it. It appears in a document known as the National Intelligence Estimate, which is the gold standard of US Intelligence, it forms the strongest part of that. The President cites his information in the State of the Union speech in 2003. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, makes it the absolute highlight of his speech, when he goes up to the UN Security Council in February before the war. He shows pictures or drawings of trucks.

What they don’t say at that point is that US authorities had never interviewed this man, had never confirmed his information, had never vetted his background, didn’t even know his name before the war. They had ignored warnings from the German intelligence authorities, who repeatedly had sent warnings over saying he was a single source, they couldn’t confirm his information, he was-he had had a nervous breakdown, they didn’t know what to make of him, he might be a fabricator. There had been a bitter fight inside of the CIA between the clandestine service-that is, the operatives who go out and steal secrets but who deal with informants and defectors like this-and the analysts. The analysts were utterly championing-sorry, they were pushing his story.

And three days after Powell went to the United Nations, the UN weapons inspectors went to all of the sites, every single one of the sites that Curveball had told them about, where these weapons supposedly were being produced. And they not only didn’t find the evidence, they proved that it couldn’t be true. They found a variety of things that showed his story was wrong. All of that was ignored, was overruled, was pushed aside. And obviously we went to war on false pretenses.

So I find his story-and those people who tried to bring that truth to power, who tried to stop this train wreck from happening, were not only pushed aside-one guy I write about is-came back and, you know, discovered that his desk, you know, had been boxed up, and this was at CIA, and he was being sent off to the visitors’ center. And then someone else, you know, put at the end of a hallway filled with construction material and no access to classified computers. The CIA was very vindictive.

So I found this case fascinating as I tried to sort of drill down and peel back the layers of what had happened here, this idea of these bureaucracies made up of people who are trained to lie, cheat and steal, that at every possible juncture there was rival-bureaucratic rivalries and really tawdry ambitions get in the way and, frankly, spineless leadership that just absolutely refused to stand up.

What you had, in the end, this man was a con man. He was trying to get a visa to Germany to get political asylum. But the CIA heard what it wanted to hear. It conned itself. It saw what it wanted to see, and it gave the White House totally what it wanted to hear.

AMY GOODMAN: And Cheney’s role in this?

BOB DROGIN: Dick Cheney’s role is not as large. I mean, to me, you know, the idea-there were two things happening, as you know, before the war. There was the WMD question, and then there was the role of-the question of Saddam’s alleged support for terrorism. And on the WMD side, the CIA was not whispering this, you know, to Dick Cheney or something; it was coming in through the front door. George Tenet and the rest of the CIA, you know, was briefing the President, was briefing the Vice President, was briefing senior members of Congress. They were putting out these reports, all of which, you know, proved to be totally wrong.

So, to me, the great-in my view, the greater scandal is not that there were three or four guys over at the Pentagon sort of whispering in the Vice President’s ear and, you know, feeding him false information about one thing or another; it’s that the entire intelligence community got this so devastatingly wrong. When you go back and you look at Colin Powell’s speech-we’re coming up to the fifth anniversary of it next month-and you go back and you read it now, and it’s entirely based on this document that the CIA put out a couple months earlier, this National Intelligence Estimate, it’s wrong on almost every single level. And that’s based on what the CIA gave him. So, you know, I don’t think it-to me, it’s not the issue of a couple of guys, it’s that this system was so utterly corrupt.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to put this question to you and then to Chuck Lewis, and that’s the issue of the media. Many people would have believed President Bush if he had simply said it, but not that many. It took the media repeating this over and over again. And even to this day, the concern about saying the word “lie,” do you think the President lied? I mean, this study says more than 900 times this false allegation was repeated, the quote “false statements.” What do you think, Bob Drogin?

BOB DROGIN: Well, I think, on the issue of Saddam’s alleged ties to 9/11 or the claims that Saddam was tied to 9/11 and al-Qaeda, they clearly ignored warnings from the CIA and others that that evidence was sketchy at best. So there was a deliberate attempt or a political decision made that they were going to make that case. Now, if you want to-you know, however you want to describe that is-whatever. They made that their political decision.

On the WMD side, it’s a lot harder to find, I think, you know, a difference between what they were saying and what the CIA was telling them.

This issue of lying, I have to say, Amy, I’ve never quite understood it. I mean, it’s sort of like asking, to me, whether they, you know, forgot to put their turn signal on before they drove off a bridge. I mean, they took us into the midst of a-you know, a terrible, a horrific, tragic war, and they did it on the basis of ponied-up false intelligence. And sort of where they pushed the evidence here or there is sort of-to me, is sort of secondary. The fact is, they got it absolutely wrong on every single quarter.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Chuck Lewis, finally, we only have about thirty seconds, but if you could respond to that issue, the media’s role in this, amplifying the charges?

CHARLES LEWIS: Well, I mean, you know, the media, particularly in Washington, listens to officialdom, and if all these officials are all saying these things across the board-and we only looked at eight. Just imagine it was twenty-five to fifty on Capitol Hill and throughout the administration. That goes into millions and millions and millions of words in the airwaves, on the web, in newspapers. And so, it was very hard-as I call it, an “impenetrable din”-to break through that.

But the other thing-and the intelligence is really interesting. It was mixed. At every level, there were people saying “Don’t do this.” And at every level, the politicization of the intelligence community, they would put it in as “Bob is saying…”-and these folks were making speeches, the President and the Vice President, before they-

AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.

CHARLES LEWIS: -had a National Intelligence Estimate. So, anyway, this story is going to keep rolling out. It’s incredibly interesting. It’s horrendous, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Chuck Lewis, thanks very much for joining us, founder of Center for Public Integrity. We will link to the study. And Bob Drogin, author of Curveball.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/24/935_lies_and_counting_study_counts

935 Lies (and Counting): Study Documents Bush Admin’s False Statements Preceding Iraq War

A new study from the Center for Public Integrity has revealed President Bush and top administration officials made a total of 935 false public statements about Iraq’s alleged national security threat in the two years following the 9/11 attacks. President Bush made the most false statements-260. Colin Powell, his then-secretary of state, made 254 false statements. We speak with the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, Charles Lewis.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a new study from the Center for Public Integrity that’s revealed President Bush and top administration officials made a total of 935 false statements about Iraq’s alleged national security threat in the two years following the 9/11 attacks. President Bush made the most false statements-260. Colin Powell, his then-Secretary of State, made 254 false statements.

The authors of the study conclude, “The cumulative effect of these false statements-amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts-was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war.” On October 7, 2002, for example, Bush repeatedly lied about the threat posed by Iraq in a primetime speech in Cincinnati Ohio.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. It has given shelter and support to terrorism and practices terror against its own people. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today-and we do-does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons? We know that Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy: the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush, speaking October 7, 2002. Well, Charles Lewis joins us now from Washington, founder of the Center for Public Integrity. He created and directed the study called “Iraq: The War Card.” He is the president of the Fund for Independence in Journalism in Washington.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Chuck Lewis.

CHARLES LEWIS: Thanks. Nice to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about these findings.

CHARLES LEWIS: Well, we wanted to just look, now that we know-really since at least 2005, there have been a number of government reports, obviously, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that were no meaningful links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Now that that’s been firmly established, we wanted to see how often this was-this message was put out there and who said it the most and also when was it said and where was it said, how many venues. In other words, how did we get from this not being true to it being a war and what happened there?

So we systematically-and I do mean systematically -we took a two-year period, from September 11th forward, and we tracked eight officials, the folks you mentioned. And altogether, including two White House press secretaries, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and the President and the Vice President and Colin Powell, we looked at all their statements, and we wanted to-we also interlaced various fine and wonderful journalistic accounts, like Bob Drogin’s and others. We looked at government reports, Senate Intelligence Committee reports, the Duelfer Report, the-you name it, we have all those reports in there. We have whistleblower accounts, the most credible ones, Richard Clarke, of course, and many others. And we wove that into the chronology, so you know what they’re saying at the time, and you know what privately they are actually discussing and hearing and thinking behind the scenes. And it’s very useful, because then you get to put it all in context.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain that.

CHARLES LEWIS: This is basically a historic record.

AMY GOODMAN: Chuck, explain that-

CHARLES LEWIS: Well, basically-

AMY GOODMAN: -what they knew behind-the-scenes and what they were saying publicly, because in that case, aren’t you talking about lies?

CHARLES LEWIS: I am talking about them choosing certain information over other information. We know that within twenty-four hours of 9/11, of course, from Richard Clarke’s account, that the President wanted to go into Iraq. And then, within a few days, the government begins the war-planning process for Iraq, and they also acknowledge they don’t have the evidence, and so they decide to focus attention on Afghanistan. I know all this is known to many of your listeners and viewers, but the public has never really seen all this woven together. Most people don’t read this. We felt it was useful for the public to know.

What is unclear is the process inside the White House, where this campaign-how this campaign was orchestrated. As you know, millions of emails from the White House may now apparently have been destroyed. And there’s not been any hearings so far about the process in the White House, about what they knew and when they knew it and what they thought and what they were saying. I mean, this is not-this is a beginning step, in my view at least, to creating a historic record for posterity that will be a working document, and every new thing that comes out like, Scott McClellan’s book in a couple months, where he apparently says he was lied to by the President and the Vice President on the Valerie Plame matter, as these things start to tumble out, we’re going to start to understand better what occurred in the White House. Maybe the Senate Intelligence Committee can shed light on that in a few months, when they have hearings about their long-awaited report.

But, you know, we just laid out what we called false information. It was simply not-there was no basis in fact; it was erroneous. We did not interview any of these people, and we don’t have access to internal communications that they had. And as you know, Karl Rove-they also had a separate email system through the Republican Party, which is not accessible. So until those things emerge…

You know, I’m a records guy, and right now the record, to make a blunt, you know, assertion, it certainly does-when you make 935 false statements, obviously that’s strange credulity, to put it charitably. Yes, it does. But did some people actually believe this? In other words, ethicists, who are experts on lying, do make a distinction between-it doesn’t mean it’s any less morally offensive or tragic. What it means is, did they consciously say today, “I’m going to go out and lie some more today,” or do they believe it down to their toes, and if you gave them a polygraph they would pass? What we don’t know is, which of the eight-where did this come from exactly? I mean, I think we all have some ideas what that might be, but we actually don’t know.

AMY GOODMAN: Chuck Lewis, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino was asked about your study on Wednesday.

REPORTER: Any reaction to that study out from the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, where they did what they called a count of hundreds of false statements made by the President and top administration officials regarding the threat posed by Iraq-and they counted during the two years after 9/11?

DANA PERINO: I hardly think that the study is worth spending any time on. It is so flawed in terms of taking anything into context or including-they only looked at members of the administration, rather than looking at members of Congress or people around the world, because, as you’ll remember, we were part of a broad coalition of countries that deposed a dictator based on a collective understanding of the intelligence.

AMY GOODMAN: Chuck Lewis, your response?

CHARLES LEWIS: Well, you know, just to make an observation, this is the press secretary who didn’t know about the Cuban Missile Crisis until a few months ago.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain.

CHARLES LEWIS: Well, she made a reference that she had-actually didn’t know about the Cuban Missile Crisis back in the ’60s. For a White House press secretary to say that is astonishing to me.

So, anyway, her comment is, of course, predictable. At least she didn’t call this a third-rate burglary. If my administration, that I’m the flack for, made 935 false statements, I would want to say, “Go do another study and take ten years and look at the world and Congress.” The fact is, the world was rallied, as was the compliant Congress, into doing exactly what the administration wanted. And the bottom line is, she didn’t say that they were not false statements. Basically, they acknowledged they were false statements without her saying it. They have essentially said, “Gosh, I guess there weren’t any WMDs in Iraq,” in other statements they’ve made, “it’s all bad intelligence.”

Well, the fact is, we did provide context, 400,000 words of context, weaving in all of this material, not just what they said at the time, but what has transpired and what has tumbled out factually in the subsequent six years. So we actually have as much context so far as anyone has provided in one place. It’s searchable for all citizens in the world and for Congress and others that want to deal with this from here on.

But her comment is slightly laughable. I mean that she didn’t really address it, of course, and she’s going to really have an interesting time in a couple months.

AMY GOODMAN: Chuck Lewis, I want to keep you with us-

CHARLES LEWIS: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: -as we continue to talk about the lies that led up to the Iraq war. We’re joined by Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Drogin, who’s author of the new book Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War. The book examines how a former Iraqi taxi driver helped build the Bush administration’s case for war by making false claims about Saddam Hussein’s alleged biological and chemical weapons programs.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Bob Drogin.

BOB DROGIN: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you back. You make this case, how the CIA leveraged and the Bush administration used this guy Curveball’s false allegations to provide a pretext for war. Explain who he was and how the administration used him.

BOB DROGIN: Sure. Yeah, I think this is sort of the defining case of how we got led down the rabbit hole in Iraq. Curveball is the codename of an Iraqi-Rafiq Alwan is his name-who was a chemical engineer who defected to Germany, fled to Germany in 1999 and told the German intelligence authorities that Saddam-that he had helped mastermind a scheme to build biological weapons for Saddam Hussein. That information was never confirmed. It was never vetted. It was just sort of put out there and handed over to the Americans.

And after 9/11, the CIA literally just pulled it out of a safe, and within three weeks, the classified documents showed that all of the caveats that had existed before that period, where the questions of Saddam’s WMD was viewed as possible, probable, could be, may be, someday, suddenly were viewed in a totally different light. And his information-that is, the information from this one individual-rose higher and higher until the fall of 2002, when President Bush is citing it. It appears in a document known as the National Intelligence Estimate, which is the gold standard of US Intelligence, it forms the strongest part of that. The President cites his information in the State of the Union speech in 2003. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, makes it the absolute highlight of his speech, when he goes up to the UN Security Council in February before the war. He shows pictures or drawings of trucks.

What they don’t say at that point is that US authorities had never interviewed this man, had never confirmed his information, had never vetted his background, didn’t even know his name before the war. They had ignored warnings from the German intelligence authorities, who repeatedly had sent warnings over saying he was a single source, they couldn’t confirm his information, he was-he had had a nervous breakdown, they didn’t know what to make of him, he might be a fabricator. There had been a bitter fight inside of the CIA between the clandestine service-that is, the operatives who go out and steal secrets but who deal with informants and defectors like this-and the analysts. The analysts were utterly championing-sorry, they were pushing his story.

And three days after Powell went to the United Nations, the UN weapons inspectors went to all of the sites, every single one of the sites that Curveball had told them about, where these weapons supposedly were being produced. And they not only didn’t find the evidence, they proved that it couldn’t be true. They found a variety of things that showed his story was wrong. All of that was ignored, was overruled, was pushed aside. And obviously we went to war on false pretenses.

So I find his story-and those people who tried to bring that truth to power, who tried to stop this train wreck from happening, were not only pushed aside-one guy I write about is-came back and, you know, discovered that his desk, you know, had been boxed up, and this was at CIA, and he was being sent off to the visitors’ center. And then someone else, you know, put at the end of a hallway filled with construction material and no access to classified computers. The CIA was very vindictive.

So I found this case fascinating as I tried to sort of drill down and peel back the layers of what had happened here, this idea of these bureaucracies made up of people who are trained to lie, cheat and steal, that at every possible juncture there was rival-bureaucratic rivalries and really tawdry ambitions get in the way and, frankly, spineless leadership that just absolutely refused to stand up.

What you had, in the end, this man was a con man. He was trying to get a visa to Germany to get political asylum. But the CIA heard what it wanted to hear. It conned itself. It saw what it wanted to see, and it gave the White House totally what it wanted to hear.

AMY GOODMAN: And Cheney’s role in this?

BOB DROGIN: Dick Cheney’s role is not as large. I mean, to me, you know, the idea-there were two things happening, as you know, before the war. There was the WMD question, and then there was the role of-the question of Saddam’s alleged support for terrorism. And on the WMD side, the CIA was not whispering this, you know, to Dick Cheney or something; it was coming in through the front door. George Tenet and the rest of the CIA, you know, was briefing the President, was briefing the Vice President, was briefing senior members of Congress. They were putting out these reports, all of which, you know, proved to be totally wrong.

So, to me, the great-in my view, the greater scandal is not that there were three or four guys over at the Pentagon sort of whispering in the Vice President’s ear and, you know, feeding him false information about one thing or another; it’s that the entire intelligence community got this so devastatingly wrong. When you go back and you look at Colin Powell’s speech-we’re coming up to the fifth anniversary of it next month-and you go back and you read it now, and it’s entirely based on this document that the CIA put out a couple months earlier, this National Intelligence Estimate, it’s wrong on almost every single level. And that’s based on what the CIA gave him. So, you know, I don’t think it-to me, it’s not the issue of a couple of guys, it’s that this system was so utterly corrupt.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to put this question to you and then to Chuck Lewis, and that’s the issue of the media. Many people would have believed President Bush if he had simply said it, but not that many. It took the media repeating this over and over again. And even to this day, the concern about saying the word “lie,” do you think the President lied? I mean, this study says more than 900 times this false allegation was repeated, the quote “false statements.” What do you think, Bob Drogin?

BOB DROGIN: Well, I think, on the issue of Saddam’s alleged ties to 9/11 or the claims that Saddam was tied to 9/11 and al-Qaeda, they clearly ignored warnings from the CIA and others that that evidence was sketchy at best. So there was a deliberate attempt or a political decision made that they were going to make that case. Now, if you want to-you know, however you want to describe that is-whatever. They made that their political decision.

On the WMD side, it’s a lot harder to find, I think, you know, a difference between what they were saying and what the CIA was telling them.

This issue of lying, I have to say, Amy, I’ve never quite understood it. I mean, it’s sort of like asking, to me, whether they, you know, forgot to put their turn signal on before they drove off a bridge. I mean, they took us into the midst of a-you know, a terrible, a horrific, tragic war, and they did it on the basis of ponied-up false intelligence. And sort of where they pushed the evidence here or there is sort of-to me, is sort of secondary. The fact is, they got it absolutely wrong on every single quarter.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Chuck Lewis, finally, we only have about thirty seconds, but if you could respond to that issue, the media’s role in this, amplifying the charges?

CHARLES LEWIS: Well, I mean, you know, the media, particularly in Washington, listens to officialdom, and if all these officials are all saying these things across the board-and we only looked at eight. Just imagine it was twenty-five to fifty on Capitol Hill and throughout the administration. That goes into millions and millions and millions of words in the airwaves, on the web, in newspapers. And so, it was very hard-as I call it, an “impenetrable din”-to break through that.

But the other thing-and the intelligence is really interesting. It was mixed. At every level, there were people saying “Don’t do this.” And at every level, the politicization of the intelligence community, they would put it in as “Bob is saying…”-and these folks were making speeches, the President and the Vice President, before they-

AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.

CHARLES LEWIS: -had a National Intelligence Estimate. So, anyway, this story is going to keep rolling out. It’s incredibly interesting. It’s horrendous, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Chuck Lewis, thanks very much for joining us, founder of Center for Public Integrity. We will link to the study. And Bob Drogin, author of Curveball.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/24/935_lies_and_counting_study_counts

GOP:

The real dependocrats is the parasitic GOP.

Chimp Chimp Chimpy's last SOTU. Thank goodness. The air pollution was becoming quite bad.

Lets go Democrats, get your act together

Here is 2001:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/02/20010228.html

According to the transcript, 90 interruptions for applause.

Last night's State of the Union speech was full of more "Horsehockey". I'll admit that this president must have a secret organization that has been supplying his horsehockey for the past seven years.
Last night he went so far as to say "for the people" in his speech. I immediatly got a wiff of some "BULL-S_it" when he used "for the people". His "PEOPLE" has a bare minimum of 7 digets in their bank accounts, and "CEO" in their titles.
When he talks about the military and supporting the troops, it could be so simple to pull most of or troops out today. But, HE keeps sending our troops to fight Iraq's fights. He has no concern for what he is doing TOO our troops. HE'S had five years to get the Iraqi government ready take care of their own country. Our troops spend about six months in training and GWB sends them into combat. HE DON'T GIVE A DAMN!!!

We find our selves chosing a path,great changes with daring agendas a calling for strong bipartisan support , or hard work, with small victories that little by little will improve the lives of the average american. Bill Clinton performed the smaller miracle for the American people and all our lives improved.Our mistake was a failure to hold on to a simple majority. Even with all our succeses.This time will we gamble on the Republican's putting aside their long held views so our democratic leaders can perform their sweeping changes and prove the value of their ideas.It hasn't worked so well in trying to end the war, trying to institute immigration reform, ethics reform,healthcare reform, or college tuition reform. We are in for a long fight and great sweeping changes will be hard to find.

Here's how I see the address. If BOOS were allowed. What applause there was was mostly coming from the Republican Party. Boos would probably have overidden the applause many times.
Protol calls for no disrespectful reactions. But, lets remember that 'RESPECT' is something that has to be earned by an individual. The office of the Presidenty does not mention the individual's 'RIGHT' to respect, yet the 'POSITION' does.
When a person, like GWB, projects and presents actions of total disrespect for the people of this country, the Constituion, our rights, we have no duty what-so-ever to fake respect toward this person or persons involved.