bloodycrackdown6

MISSION STILL NOT ACCOMPLISHED....DOUCHBAG!!!

Bush Gives America a Growing Credibility Gap, Not More Security!

Our troops and their families are making great and valiant sacrifices, but George W. Bush has not met his responsibility to make America safer. They have carried out their missions, but for George W. Bush, it is mission not accomplished. Instead of increasing our security, Bush has given America an increasing credibility gap including these five key discoveries the administration has yet to explain to the American people. What weve discovered in the last year:



BUSH WILDLY UNDERESTIMATED COST OF WAR.
Cost of Reconstruction of Iraq 10 Times What PredictedSo Far. On April 23, 2003, Andrew S. Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, laid out in a televised interview the costs to U.S. taxpayers of rebuilding Iraq. The American part of this will be $1.7 billion, he said. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this. That turned out to be off by orders of magnitude. The administration, which asked Congress for another $20 billion for Iraq reconstruction five months after Natsios made his assertion, has said it expects overall Iraqi reconstruction costs to be as much as $75 billion this year alone. [Washington Post, 3/19/04]


THE ADMINISTRATION DID NOT THEN, AND DOES NOT NOW, HAVE AN EXIT STRATEGYBUSHS STUBBORN INEPTNESS HAS MADE IT HARDER.

Bush Claimed 10 Months Ago Mission Accomplished, But Bush Policy Appears Adrift, Scrambling for an Exit Strategy. And far from setting a course for the region, Bush administration policy appears adrift. The diplomatic follow-up to the Iraq war, for instance, the so-called Roadmap to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, has hit a complete dead end. In Iraq itself, U.S. troops are struggling to beat back a bloody insurgency that Washington never anticipated. While vowing to stay the course, the Bush administration is scrambling for an exit strategy, constantly revising its slapdash plans for a transition to democracy next summer, bending to pressure from Iraq's ayatollahs and facing mounting protests in what used to be the quiet Shiite south of the country. [Newsweek, 1/26/04]

Alienation of Our Allies Has Made Solution to Control of Iraq More Difficult. The dilemma has produced an almost comical turn of events: the go-it-alone Bush Administration is desperately trying to lure the U.N. back into Iraq. Time was, the U.N. wanted Iraq, and we wouldn't give it away, says a State Department official. Now we can't give it away fast enough. Ask White House officials how things are progressing toward the June 30 deadline, and they sheepishly say they are waiting for the U.N. to take the lead. They're going to take over the process, and we're going to follow their recommendations, says a Bush aide. [Time, 3/15/04]

Military Currently Facing Back to Back Deployments. The Army is spread so thin around the globe that when it needs fresh combat troops for Iraq this fall it will have little choice but to call on the same soldiers who led the charge into Baghdad last spring. The 3rd Infantry Division already has been given an official "warning order" to prepare to return to Iraq as soon as Thanksgiving. When those soldiers flew home from Iraq last summer to their bases in Georgia, few of them could have known they were, in effect, on a roundtrip ticket. They are not alone in facing back-to-back deployments to Iraq. Some of the same Marines who teamed up with the 3rd Infantry to topple Baghdad are already assembling again in Kuwait, only a matter of months after returning home, and more Marines will go next year. [Associated Press, 3/13/04]

Troops Ordered to Smile At Bush Visit. Before Bush appeared, small U.S. flags were handed out, and an officer gave instructions to the troops on how to receive the commander in chief. "We're going to show him a lot of love by waving flags," the officer said. Telling the troops not to salute, he added: You're going to wave and clap and make a lot of noise. . . . You must smile. We are happy campers here. [Washington Post, 3/19/04]


BUSH AND CHENEY GAVE NO-BID CONTRACTS TO FRIENDS WHILE HIDING TRUE COST OF WAR.
Bush Administration Provided Windfall for Halliburton at Taxpayers Expense. After awarding a no-bid contract to Halliburton (Vice Presidents former employer who gave him a $20 million retirement package in 2000), the military found that the company overcharged for gas it imported into Iraq from Kuwait. US taxpayers and the United Nations oil-for-food program are paying Halliburton an average price of $2.64 per gallon, which is more than twice what others pay for Kuwait fuel. In March 2004, the military said it was withholding about $300 million from payments to a Halliburton subsidiary on a contract to feed soldiers in Iraq until auditors were certain that the government had not been overcharged. [Reuters, 12/11/03; New York Times, 12/10/03, 3/19/04; Associated Press, 11/5/03; Washington Post, 1/16/04, 12/31/04]

Auditors Warned of Systemic Cost Control Problems With Halliburton BEFORE Contract Awarded. Halliburton, the oil services company formerly headed by US vice-president Dick Cheney, was awarded a $1.2bn contract in Iraq just three days after Pentagon auditors warned about systemic problems in its cost controls. The warning was contained in a memo the Pentagons defense contract audit agency sent on January 13 to the US Army Corps of Engineers, citing deficiencies in Halliburtons contracting proposals and questioning the companys ability to supply fair and reasonable prices. We recommend that you contact us to ascertain the status of [Halliburtons] estimating system prior to entering into future negotiations, the memo warned. [Financial Times, 3/11/04]

Former Cheney Employee, Halliburton, Reaps Profits While Forcing Troops To Eat In Filthy Conditions. Halliburtons subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root [KBR] serves 110,000 soldiers in Iraq their meals. For that service, American taxpayers pay Halliburton $28 per soldier per day. But, according to NBC News, Pentagon inspections of mess halls run by KBR are finding a mess in some of themIn the main Baghdad dining facility where President Bush surprised the troops on Thanksgiving, inspectors found filthy kitchen conditions in each of the three previous months. Complaints filed in August, September and again in October report problems. Blood all over the floor of refrigerators, dirty pans, dirty grills, dirty salad bars, rotting meats and vegetables. In October, the inspector writes that Halliburton's previous promises to fix the problems have not been followed through and warns the company serious repercussions may result, due to improper handling and serving of food. [NBC News, 12/12/03, emphasis added]


KEY INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS HAVE CONTRADICTED THE REASONS BUSH ADMINISTRATION SAID WAR WAS NECESSARY
At Same Time, Bush Limiting Investigative Commission. After giving in to pressure to establish a commission on prewar intelligence, Bush expanded their responsibilities beyond looking at Iraq, and limited the scope of [the commissions] investigation to intelligence failures, not whether the administration exaggerated the case for war. [Agence France Presse, 2/7/04; Associated Press, 2/7/04]

Weapons of Mass Destruction Not Found.


MR. RUSSERT: The night you took the country to war, March 17th, you said this: Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: That apparently is not the case

PRESIDENT BUSH: Correct. [NBC, Meet the Press, 2/8/04]

Kay Said Leaders May Have Manipulated Data. Kay, the former CIA adviser for the Iraqi weapons search, has said he does not believe analysts were pressured. But he said Thursday that the commission should look into whether political leaders manipulated intelligence data. I think that is an important question that needs to be understood, he said Thursday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. [Associated Press, 2/6/04]

Bush Made Assertions About WMD BEFORE Report Completed; Tenet Said Administration Ignored Caveats and Qualifiers. In its fall 2002 campaign to win congressional support for a war against Iraq, President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons that CIA Director George J. Tenet defended Thursday. In fact, they made some of their most unequivocal assertions about unconventional weapons before the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was completed. [Washington Post, 2/7/04]

Tenet Has Had to Correct Cheney on Iraq-Al Qaeda Ties. Tenet conceded that he had not known until the eve of Tuesday's hearing about a specific reference Cheney made in a newspaper interview in support of his contention of an operational tie between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network. In a Jan. 9 interview with the Rocky Mountain News, Cheney had cited an article in The Weekly Standard magazine which was based in large part on a since-discredited - and classified - Defense Department document from the office of Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith. That document contended there was a relationship between Saddam and the al-Qaeda organization. Tenet revealed that the CIA went back to the Department of Defense, who subsequently retracted the document and submitted a correction to you (the Senate committee) because of our concerns with what the document said. When asked by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., about Cheney's assertion that the magazine article was the best source of information about the alleged connection, Tenet replied that he learned about his quote last night when I was preparing for this hearing. I was unaware he had said that, and I will talk to him about it. [Associated Press, 3/10/04]


THE ADMINISTRATION SENT OUR TROOPS TO WAR WHEN THEY WERENT READY
Troops Were Sent to War without Proper Equipment. Earlier this week, Vice President Cheney admitted they sent U.S. troops into Iraq without proper body armor when he said, Well the facts are that at the outset of the campaign there was only one factory producing the latest, newest state-of-the-art body armor. There are now 6--they are up and running... So the main problem had been just the sheer capacity to produce these items early on. House appropriators wrote in October 2003 that some active-duty soldiers and reservists are spending as much as $650 out of pocket to buy Interceptor Body Armor vests and Small Arms Protective Insert plates to replace the Vietnam-era flak vests issued when they arrive in Iraq. [FOX, 3/17/2004]

Army Secretary Said They Were Not Prepared for Prolonged Involvement in Iraq. When the Saddam Hussein government collapsed, U.S. troops in Iraq figured the war was over, except for some mopping up. But as the acting secretary of the Army, Les Brownlee, acknowledged to Congress, we simply were not prepared for the insurgency that developed in early summer, prolonging the war and taking the lives of hundreds of American soldiers. One 3rd Infantry soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Eric Wright, put it this way in Iraq last June: What was told to us was that we would fight and win and go home. It's not that simple. [Associated Press, 3/13/04]