I don’t mean to pull your quote out of context, because I understand what you mean … but I’ve heard this before and I feel like addressing it.
Honestly, I’m confused (and a tad irked) by the suggestion that just talking about this latest in a loooooong line of BushCo’s mini- and maxi-scandals means that liberals & Democrats aren’t discussing the issues.
I mean … aren’t we? Haven’t we brought up an awful lot of major topics, even right here at the SDMB? Stuff like …
[ul]
[li]The lies/obfuscations/bad intelligence (whatever the explanation du jour is) that led Bush, Rumsfeld & Cheney to claim that they knew there were definitely WMDs in Iraq. [/li]
[li]The “highly placed” administration official (hi, Karl!) who “outted” CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame to a host of journalists in order to get revenge on her husband Joe Wilson – the man who took Bush to task for false claims about Iraqi purchases of WMD ingredients. This administration’s egregious display of maliciousness not only cost Plame’s ability to do her job (rather ironic, since she was involved in routing out illegal weapons) but also could have put her in danger. Sadly this was only one of their increasingly predictable, spiteful attacks on anyone, even former allies, who dares to speak against them. [/li]
[li]The administration’s handing over Iraq contracts without bidding to Halliburton, the company formerly chaired by VP Cheney – the same company that still pays Cheney thousands of dollars in dividends or severence or whatever. (Not to mention Halliburton’s price gouging the Pentagon during a war.) [/li]
[li]And speaking of conflicts of interest, howsabout Cheney going on a good ol’ hunting expedition with his close buddy Antonin Scalia, aka one of the 9 Supreme Court justices who’re presiding over a case in which the defendent is … yep, you guessed it, Cheney himself. More about this case below.[/li]
[li]The embarrassing, disgraceful intelligence failures prior to 9-11, for which no one has lost his/her job. Or how about Bush’s sitting around reading about goats even after he’d heard that the country was under attack? Or Rumsfeld’s command on 9-11 to his underlings to find a reason to target Saddam? We Dems are talking about it. [/li]
[li]Bush’s long financial history with the Bin Laden family, going back decades. And his perpetual attempts to link Saddam to Osama/al Qaeda, when in fact the two are of diametrically opposite ideologies? (Osama being a raving fundamentalist loon who demands a country ruled by religion, whereas Saddam’s dictatorship was staunchly secular.)[/li]
[li]Bush diverting $700 million from funds specifically allocated by the Congress for the assault on the Taliban in Afghanistan (you know, the real “war on terror”) and instead using the moolah for preparations for his pet project, Operation Desert Oil, aka Iraq. Oh yeah, and he apparently did this without informing Congress of his actions, making it an illegal (and, please God, a potentially impeachable) act.[/li]
[li]Along similar lines, let’s not forget that Bush shrugged off the strong language in the Congress’s Iraqi War Resolution, which stated that the authorization for Bush to use force was being granted on the provision that he must first exhaust every last possible diplomatic option. And that the IWR language required Bush to get Congress’s approval before starting an attack. Um, neither of which Bush bothered to do. [/li]
[li]How about Rummy showing confidential “For Your Eyes Only” potential battle plans for the upcoming Iraq war (a war that Bush claimed he was doing everything to avoid) to Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador? And telling Bandar – three months before Bush “decided” to go to war – that Bandar could “take it to the bank” that Saddam was gonna be history?[/li]
[li]Then there’s the administration’s Clean Skies Initiative that makes our skies more polluted, the No Child Left Behind Act that leaves plenty of kids behind because Bush didn’t include any funding for it in his budget, his “I love our brave boys” facade while clamping down on Veterans’ benefits/not providing Iraqi-bound soldiers with proper armor, his assuring us that “this idn’t a war on Muslims” while calling for a “Crusade,” and finally his desire for a twisted Constitutional amendment to ensure that people have fewer rights. Mendacious much, Mr. President?[/li]
[li]Ooh, this one’s for my fellow New Yorkers: the pressure that the Bush administration put on the Environmental Protective Agency to change its report and falsely assure us that it was safe to go back to work in the Ground Zero/WTC area, even though as it turns out, it was pretty damn toxic?[/li]
[li]Going back to Cheney for a moment, remember the kafuffle about his strangely secretive Energy Task Force (allegedly consisting of energy corporations/lobbyists), and the members he refused to identify to the General Accounting Office? The GAO is now taking Cheney to court because of his continued stonewalling. That’s the Supreme Court case I mentioned above. Hope that hunting trip with Justice Scalia paid off for ya, Dick! [/li]
[li]The chairman of Diebold (the manufacturer of the electronic voting machines that are to be installed in many states) who is an unabashed Bush supporter, and in fact openly pledged at a fundraiser his determination “to deliver Ohio” for George W. Bush. [/li]
[li]The relationship between the push to attack Iraq and the gang of Republicans (including Cheney, Bush, and Richard Perle) who planned for this years ago via something akin to a strategy for world domination under the almost amusingly sinister name “Project for a New American Century.”[/li]
[li]The administration’s tasteless, morbid plans for a fun little money-making futures scheme – where people could gamble for/against acts of terror – shortly after 9-11. (Gee, too bad they didn’t go through with it. Anyone betting on the longshot target of “Madrid” would’ve cleaned up.)[/li]
[li]Bush/Cheney’s obsessive, increasing hunger for secrecy in government, including their stonewalling of the 9-11 investigations, including redacting of documents prior to turning them over even to highly placed members of the 9-11 committee. [/li][/ul]
WHEW! That’s a lot of stuff. (Scary thing is, I know I’m forgetting dozens more.)
In any event, these ARE real issues that ARE being discussed – in books, on message boards/blogs, on the radio (now that we have the wonderful Air America!) and yes, right here at the Dope. These issues are NOT getting ignored by Democrats. The people who aren’t discussing them are those who are either uninformed as yet (not necessarily their own fault, since the media sucks ass) … or are willfully ignoring them … or are dismissing them every time they’re brought up, with rolled eyes and comments such as “oh, can’t you talk about something ELSE?”
Well, NO, frankly. Jesus Christ, people. How much corruption, mendacity, secrecy and hypocrisy can one administration have before the country wises up?
Because of Bush and Cheney’s administration, thousands of our soldiers and Iraqi civilians are being killed and mangled, our jobs are shuttled overseas, our deficit continues to expand, our hard-won freedom and rights are being abridged, and our children are being under-educated while we fob off our debt onto their backs.
So … yeah, you’re right, Libertarian – in the scheme of things, does it matter if the U.S. Treasury is adding a paragraph that practically states “you must choose between the righteous brilliance of President Dubya or the evil high-taxin’ baby-killin’ bastard John “Frenchy” Kerry” to a document that’s supposed to be merely informative, not partisan? Nah, I admit it doesn’t.
But no one seems to give a rat’s ass about all the BIG subjects. Maybe it’s these little ones that will finally get people to wake the fuck up.