It's The Corruption, Stupid
You'll remember that back on 9/15 we were reminiscing about all those loose ends on the Bush-Abramoff connections that never quite seemed to get tied up. Well, looks like our friends over at TPM Muckraker have been pulling on the threads:

"Hundreds of contacts between top White House officials and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates 'raise serious questions about the legality and actions' of those officials ... 485 contacts between White House officials and Abramoff and his lobbying team at the firm Greenberg Traurig from January 2001 to March 2004, with 82 of those contacts occuring in Rove's office, including 10 with Rove personally ..."

485 contacts in 39 months. That's basically a White House contact with felon Abramoff every other day, assuming they took the weekends off ... though corruption seems to be the one thing this administration never breaks from.

Secretary of State Lies That Kill Americans
"Condoleezza Rice's office gave final approval to the infamous Environmental Protection Agency press releases days after 9/11 claiming the air around Ground Zero was "safe to breathe" ... Early tests known to the EPA at the time had already found high asbestos levels ... But those results were omitted from the press releases because of 'competing priorities' such as ... 'opening Wall Street' ..."

Meanwhile ... "There is more evidence that the number of people sick with 9/11 related illnesses is growing dramatically. So much so - there's a name for it -- 'the World Trade Center cough'. And there is a waiting list for victims seeking medical help ... It is a warning sign of what's to come: more and more people seeking help for deteriorating lung problems and chronic coughs linked to their work at ground zero. The numbers appear to be growing and the long term diagnosis is not good."

The Cowardly Lion Liar
"You did not try.
You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.
You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.
Then, you blamed your predecessor.
That would be the textbook definition… Sir, of cowardice.

To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.
That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair — writing as George Orwell — gave us in the novel '1984.'

The 'free pass' has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush…
You did not act to prevent 9/11.
We do not know what you have done, to prevent another 9/11.
You have failed us — then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.
You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.
And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.
... Are yours the actions of a true American?"

Will The Real Don Rumsfeld Please Step Down
"Secretary Rumsfeld's dismal strategic decisions resulted in the unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women, our allies, and the good people of Iraq. He was responsible for America and her allies going to war with the wrong plan and a strategy that did not address the realities of fighting an insurgency. He violated fundamental principles of war ... set the conditions for Abu Ghraib and other atrocities that further ignited the insurgency ... constrained our commanders with an overly restrictive de-Ba'athification policy, and failed to seriously resource the training and equipping of the Iraqi security forces as our main effort. He does not comprehend the human dimension of warfare.
Major General John R.S. Batiste, US Army

"I don't appreciate the speculation about Don Rumsfeld; he's doing a fine job; I strongly support him ..."
"... when the final history is written on Iraq, (the deaths, torture and mutilation) will look like just a comma ..."
President George W. Bush, Deserter (a.k.a. "The Decider")

NIE Report: Bush Knew Iraq Adventure Would Spawn Islamofascist Jihadists
"A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks. The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document ...
... The estimate’s judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives." (emphasis added)

Apology From A Bush Voter (Expect Many More of These ...)
"This is painful to say, and I’m sure for many of you, painful to read. But it’s impossible to heal the country until we’re willing to acknowledge the truth no matter how painful. We have to wean ourselves off sugar coated partisan lies ... It may be decades before we have the full picture of how paranoid and contemptuous this administration has been ... I don’t say any of this lightly. I’ve thought about this for months and months. But eventually, the weight of evidence takes on a gravitational force of its own ... George W. Bush has taken us down a terrible road ... The United States of America is a gift to the world, but it has been badly abused and it’s rightful owners, We the People, had better step up to the plate and reclaim it before the damage becomes irreparable. So, accept my apology for allowing partisanship to blind me to an obvious truth; our President is incapable of the tasks he is charged with."