Uncovering the Last Bush Weapons of Mass Deception

 By Anthony Wade

With less than 25 days before the most important election of our lifetime, we will see the desperation tactics of the Bush Junta grow with increasing frequency, and lunacy. Before having to respond to new fanciful claims by the Bushies, it is important that we lay to rest some of the old tired lines that may still be confusing some would-be voters. Yesterday I dealt with and dismissed the notion that Kerry is trying to "run and hide from his record" and the "rain man"- like repeated claims by Bush, that Kerry has changed positions because he said "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, I'm an excellent driver, wrong war, wrong pla-- well you get the idea.

I realized there were a few other elephants in the room to deal with. The first is this fabrication that Kerry voted against funding the troops because of his protest vote against the 87 billion dollar supplemental. Let's set the stage with facts, not sound bites.

1) President Bush sent our kids to fight these wars without body armor or armor on Humvees necessary to properly protect them. This has led to unnecessary deaths and maiming of our soldiers. Parents have had to buy body armor at $1,500 each and fed-ex them to their children fighting. It took one year for Bush to correct this problem.

2) Within the 87 billion dollar bill was about $20 billion more for Halliburton. Considering Halliburton had already lost 1.8 billion they could not account for and they had been caught overcharging for meals they never served to our troops, some Senators, including Kerry thought the 20 billion should be removed and done separately for stricter accountability with our tax dollars.

3) Bush said he would veto the supplemental if the 20 billion had those accountability measures attached, siding with Halliburton over your kids.

4) Congressional Republicans took an anti-profiteering provision out of the $87 billion supplemental appropriation bill for Iraq . The Leahy-Feinstein-Durbin amendment would have penalized "war profiteering" -- meaning jail terms or fines for overcharging taxpayers for any good or service with the specific intent to excessively profit from the war or reconstruction. Once again, Bush siding with his corporate friends over the lives of your kids.

5) John Kerry supported a version of the bill that would repeal the tax break on the top 1%, in order to pay for the supplemental, since the deficit was so high already. He correctly understood that it was reckless to spend another 87 billion when we didn't have the money to pay for it and thought it would be reasonable to ask the billionaires of this country to sacrifice in a time of war.

6) Bush disagreed and said he would veto the supplemental if this caveat was in it. He sided yet again with his base of millionaires instead of the soldiers.

7) Because Bush controlled Congress, the version he wanted, with no accountability for Halliburton and no sacrifice from his affluent base, was the one that went to vote. 

8) Once Kerry confirmed that the supplemental had enough votes to pass, he cast a "no" vote, in protest.

This means that the very vote Bush criticizes Kerry for voting "no" for, he himself said he would have vetoed if it included any protections for our tax monies or sacrifices for the richest in this country. That is the height of hypocrisy. Additionally, it is fundamentally dishonest to then turn Kerry's vote of protest, cast only after he knew the bill would pass, into a referendum on his not supporting the troops. Especially considering that it was Bush that sent the troops out there without the protection they needed to start with.

The second area Bush uses as a weapon of mass confusion is his oft-repeated cry of tort reform! At the last debate he was asked how he would solve the healthcare crisis in this country. His only answer was tort reform. Factcheck.org, a favorite site of Dick Cheney, has reported that non-partisan agencies, Government Accountability Office and Congressional Budget Office, both conclude that any "savings from passage of limits on malpractice damages  --- if there are any savings at all -- would be relatively small". Stanford economists have concluded that there is, "no evidence that restrictions on tort liability reduce medical spending."

With the pretense stripped away from the lies of tort reform, president Bush's healthcare plan consists of depriving you of just compensation if you were injured due to negligence. There would be no cost savings, except for the corporate entities which benefit from your decreased ability to seek legal redress. It is not surprising that those very industries have paid astronomical financial support to Bush and the GOP. They have been bought, and it is you they are selling out.

The third area Bush uses to try  to frighten you into voting for him is the disreputable claim that the Kerry healthcare plan amounts to a government take over of healthcare. Once again, Factcheck.org, Cheney's bastion of unbiased news, reports that Bush's claim is nonsense. Specifically, the Lewin Group, a non-partisan health-care research firm concluded that an estimated 97% of Americans who now have health insurance will simply keep the plan they have now. The Lewin Group's vice president, John Sheils, disputes the Bush claim:

"I don't see how, in Kerry's plan, decisions on medical procedures would be made in Washington under any circumstances."

Yet another Bush lie exposed. Kerry wants to offer Americans the same insurance options available to members of Congress. Bush wants to stunt your legal right to sue if you have been wronged. See through the deception.

The fourth area of dishonesty is the scare tactic that says the Kerry tax rollback on the top two percent would tax 900,000 small business owners, as Bush is fond of spewing. While this has been debunked everywhere, I will stick with the Cheney-endorsed Factcheck.org who has correctly noted that Bush is counting ANY earnings from individuals, as being small business owners. In last night's debate Kerry correctly pointed out that Bush himself would count as a small business owner under this fuzzy math because of his small investment in a timber company that earned him a cool $84 in 2001. Bush pretended he did not know what Kerry was referring to but it was revealed after the debate that Bush does indeed own a slight percentage of a timber company that he claimed $84 in earnings on in 2001. These are the types of deceptions Bush routinely does not believe you will see through. To count $84 as a small business owner is intellectually dishonest. His number of 900,000 is highly inflated. If you think that people earning more than $200,000 per year are suffering and need to keep their tax breaks, then I guess you should vote for Bush. If you believe that it is a smokescreen to keep handing out 89 billion dollars per year to the richest 1% in this country, then you should vote for Kerry. Either way, don't buy the hype of 900,000 small businesses being affected. It is a lie, nothing more.

Other distortions from the second debate included:

What is with this repeated claim that Bush makes saying he has brought 75% of al Qaeda to justice? He has made this in both debates now and it seems that NO ONE wants to call him on it. The fact is that George Bush has ZERO convictions to date, so I am unclear how he is calculating the 75%. I assume maybe there were like only 4 people in al Qaeda to start with? I am amazed that the media does not demand how he is computing this number. We do now know that Bush was lying when he stated the network of Pakistan 's A.Q. Khan -- the founder of Pakistan 's nuclear program who was caught selling secrets on the global black market -- had been "brought to justice." You see, Khan was just pardoned by Pakistan , so I am unclear how Bush can call that "being brought to justice". I am sure that an honest assessment of how the 75% number was reached would result in yet another fairy tale.

Bush said Kerry raised taxes 98 times. This is a lie as Bush is including 43 votes for budget measures that merely set targets for taxes without actually legislating changes to the tax code. It also counts multiple votes on the same bills, including 16 votes on the 1993 Clinton package of tax increases and spending cuts which led to the greatest economic expansion of our lifetime. This dishonesty is rampant.

Bush claimed that he raised the child credit by $1,000, when he actually raised it $500.

Bush flat out said that he would not bring the draft back as long as he is president. This seems to fly in the face of logic however. He has indicated designs on invading Iran and Syria . He still has North Korea to worry about and he will need to be in Iraq for another 10-20 years according to John McCain. The military is stretched too thin now as soldiers are on three rotations. There already is a backdoor draft and Paul Bremer was quoted last week as saying that the number one problem the entire time has been not committing enough troops on the ground. Bush's promise last night, especially in light of the fact that Bush cannot run again and Cheney does not want to run in 2008, rings quite hollow. He cannot possibly continue to wage the war in Iraq without a serious increase in troops, let alone the other wars he wants to pursue. If re-elected I assume he will hit another "trifecta", smirk at us, and reinstitute the draft.

Perhaps the whopper of the night came at the end when Bush was asked to name three mistakes he has made in the past four years. Bush could not name one. I have never heard a more blatant lie. Be very wary as we head down the stretch in this election season. Bush will try some misdirection. He will astound you with tales of Kerry being unfit and that somehow it is Kerry who is running from his record. At least Kerry can recognize his record. Bush has used his weapons of mass deception so well and so often that I am afraid he has become collateral damage and actually believes them now. That is what is truly frightening.

Anthony Wade is co-administrator of a website devoted to educating the populace to the ongoing lies of President George W. Bush and seeking his removal from office. He is a 37-year-old independent writer from New York with political commentary articles seen on multiple websites.  A Christian progressive and professional Rehabilitation Counselor working with the poor and disabled, Mr. Wade believes that you can have faith and hold elected officials accountable for lies and excess.