...'Saw', suxorz, John Kerry, Growler's, Dimitro power-trip, & Erich is insane...

Tonight is the night. We go see the eagerly anticipated Saw. Kick ass. 7:40 showing, baby, for those of you who didn’t already know. Kenrick 8 Cine. Watson Rd. Be there. Or don’t…

I’m a firm believer in beating a dead horse, especially if it’s for my own, personal amusement. As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. So…SUXORZ! (If you have to ask, don’t worry about it.)

@Heather: I love you, baby. Have a wonderful Friday at work!

Here’s a compelling interview that Rolling Stone did with John Kerry:

John Kerry: The Rolling Stone Interview

Usually when I make a political argument, I try to refrain from too much anti-Bush stuff, to keep it fair. In all seriousness, the only good president for the next four years is John Forbes Kerry. It HAS to be Kerry. I hate Bush. I hate him with every fiber of my being. He’s fucked this country in EVERY WAY like Beaver in a 50-cent brothel. If there is a God, he’ll allow Kerry to win this election.

The Halloween party is tomorrow. Growler’s Pub is also tomorrow. I haven’t been to Growler’s in awhile, so I’m looking forward to it. I am going to get that fucking mug…

Joe Dimitro is playing his “power” card on the Council – he has demanded that I be restricted to one political post per day. This is, of course, a reasonable request, which is why I concede to it. Just an explanation: Joe is an administrator on that forum, meaning that IF he felt so inclined, he could edit my posts and the posts of others, out-right delete my postings, and even remove MY admin status or even delete me from the Council completely. I have this ability as well, but thus far I have not abused it, nor would I. Time will tell whether Joe will. Given his animosity towards me, I have a suspicion that he might just do that. Some people just can’t have power and act responsibly with it. Fortunately, I can. Unfortunately, since I usually have several articles that I like to post, I’m now forced to string them all together, back-to-back, in one post; which makes the posts uber-long. Oh well – it was his idea.

Apparently, I’m still an asshole. Beaver asked Erich if it was okay for me to come to the bachelor party. Erich said it was cool, as long as “Steve doesn’t start shit.” Okay. Sure. I wonder what he would say if he knew Scott didn’t want him over this past Tuesday, and that I was the one that convinced Scott to give him a chance due to ‘friendship tenure’; that if it wasn’t for me, there would be very little lobbying on his behalf at all in BugJuice; that I’m probably the only person that still gives him chances. Perhaps someday, he’ll wake the fuck up. But after too much longer, I won’t be there. I’m seriously getting tired of being Erich’s “asshole” nemesis. I feel like Spiderman over here, with all the bad press about me…

I’m attending a Kerry event this Saturday on Lindbergh. Go on over to the John Kerry site, linked to your right, for details if you want to attend.

Quilled Tunes: “Jump Right In” – The Urge

Quote of the Blog: “Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may." - Mark Twain

...movies, Halloween, I LOVE MY WIFE, a rumor debunked, concert, hobbit-people(?!), DVD & CD clubs, & addressing of several people/situations...

Damn. That's a long title for a blog post...

Friday we go see Saw. No, not see-saw. Saw, the movie. I’ve been looking forward to this movie. Once I see that, and The Grudge, I’ll be one happy puppy.

Saturday is Halloween. Well, at least for us. We’re having the “official” Halloween party at Joe’s place. It will be fun.

I hate saying things out of anger. Heather and I got into an argument that started last night and continued this morning. I said some things out of anger to her before she left this morning that I just did not mean. And I realized that in the world we live in, anything could happen; which means that you should never say anything out of anger and leave someone angry. Because you never know if that time will be the last time you get to say, “I love you.” I would hate to have the last thing I ever say to Heather be anything BUT that.

@Heather: I love you, and I’m sorry. I’m also sorry for what I said, and I’m sorry we fought.

Rumor Control: Jay and Lissan are not engaged. Apparently, whoever is calling Francesca and making threats is also spreading lies like the engagement thing.

Fear Factory is fast approaching. I have no idea who all is going to be attending the show. So far, it's just me, Hizzy, and Dave, and Dave and I still need to buy our tickets.

Apparently, there has been a discovery of hobbit-like people that existed at one time, adding a crucial piece of the puzzle to human evolution. If only they knew of Beaver’s hairy Frodo-feet, they would realize the answer was right there all along…(sorry Dan; it’s not a diss to you at all, you just have feet like are hobbit-like.) Where does this fit with anything else? It doesn't. Deal.

BTW, I successfully joined Columbia House DVD and BMG Music Club. The CDs are still on their way (perhaps they’ll be waiting for me when I get home); the DVDs I’ve had for awhile now:

The Rundown, The Matrix, Matrix Reloaded, Gladiator, The Last Samurai. Those are the DVDs that I got for 49 cents a pop. Sweet nuts.

And now, some props and addresses:

@Campo: I'm glad you made it into California safe and sound. Have fun on your cruise; comment on my blog when you can...
@Scott: I don't know what the deal with Jess/Nix is either; I told her the same thing you did.
@Nix: Love the Meatloaf treatment so far, bud. We've had some good conversations, too. Also, IMO, I wouldn't involve myself with the fire-bird until shit got sorted out, but that's just me.
@Jess: I would sort my shit out before anything else. If you need advice, ask.
@Justin: Congratulations of passing the Crucible first attempt, man! You one tough motherfucker! Also, don't kill Jess or Nix, despite rumors and what it looks like. (Even though he doesn't read this.)
@Hizzy: Thank you for the autographed Scarlet Whore CD.
@Joe B.: Thank you for your continuing work on the Megasite; thank you still for all the time and effort put in on my computer; congratulations on your relationship with Francesca.
@Francesca: Congratulations of your relationship with Joe. Fuck Jay, don't even think about him. Yes; you know my wife, Heather. You also know her sister, Becky. (Even though I have no idea if she reads this or not.)
@Jay: You'll never learn. Cheating motherfucker...
@Lissan: Why in the holy fuck are you back with JAY, of all people?! He played you once already, and he cheated WITH you on his last girlfriend. I understand you're happy, and congratulations on your happiness, but my suggestion: don't set yourself up like that, you're going to get burned. Jay is a player (sorry, but it's the way he's always been). (Even though she probably doesn't read this.)
@Josh (Voice): I can see your point about not liking the million-mile articles. Just click on the links and circumvent them; I just post them on there because I think they hold interesting information.
@Beaver: Hi. Now you won't feel like I left you out. :)

Quilled Tunes: “Imagine” – A Perfect Circle (Hey, I never SAID I hated it.)

Quote of the Blog: “It's a funny thing that when a man hasn't anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married." - Robert Frost

War Bin Laden Wanted/Iraqi Vets Speak Out

These are two articles I found on the war in Iraq that I thought were interesting. Please, give them a read through…

(Found @ http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102604E.shtml)

The War Bin Laden Wanted
By Paul W. Schroeder
The American Conservative

Monday 25 October 2004

How the U.S. played into the terrorist’s plan.
George W. Bush’s re-election campaign rests on three claims, distinct but always run together: that the United States is at war against terror, that it is winning the war, and that it can ultimately achieve victory but only under his leadership.

The second and third propositions are hotly debated. Critics of Bush contend that the U.S. is losing the struggle against terror on the most important fronts and that only new leadership can bring victory, but except for a few radicals, no one denies that the struggle against international terrorism in general and groups like al-Qaeda in particular constitutes a real war. The question comes up in the campaign only when Republicans such as Vice President Cheney charge that Democrats view terrorists as mere criminals and do not recognize that the country is at war. The charge, though false - no Democratic leader would commit political suicide by even hinting this - is effective politically.

Some experts on international law and foreign policy object to calling the struggle against terrorism a war, pointing for example to the legal problem of whether under international law a state can declare war on a non-state movement and claim the rights of war, or arguing that terrorism constitutes a tactic and that no one declares war against a tactic. Both arguments indicate the sloppy thinking that pervades the rhetoric of the War on Terror. The first point, moreover, has important practical consequences for such questions as the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere, and for our relations with allies, other states, and the UN. Yet these kinds of arguments seem too academic to matter. The general public can hardly understand them, much less let them influence their votes.

Other reasons, however - different, more powerful, highly practical, and astonishingly overlooked - argue against conceiving of the struggle as a war and, more important still, waging it as such. The reasons and the logic behind them are somewhat complicated, but the overall conclusion is simple: by conceiving of the struggle against international terrorism as a war, loudly proclaiming it as such, and waging it as one, we have given our enemies the war they wanted and aimed to provoke but could not get unless the United States gave it to them.

This conclusion is not about semantics or language but has enormous implications. It points to fundamentally faulty thinking as one of the central reasons that America is currently losing the struggle, and it means that a change in leadership in Washington, though essential, will not by itself turn the course of events. What is required is a new, different way of thinking about the struggle against terrorism and from that a different way of waging it.

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda repeatedly and publicly declared war on the United States and waged frequent attacks against its property, territory (including embassies abroad), and citizens for years before the spectacular attack on 9/11. This admission would seem to destroy my case at the outset and end the discussion. If bin Laden and al-Qaeda declared war on the United States and committed unmistakable acts of war against it, then obviously the U.S. had no choice but to declare war in reply, just as it had to do so against Japan after Pearl Harbor.

No, not really. Some other obvious facts also need consideration. First, states frequently wage real, serious wars of the conventional sort against other states without declaring war or putting their countries on a war footing. In the latter 20th century, this practice became the rule rather than the exception. Korea and Vietnam are only two of many examples. Second, revolutionary and terrorist organizations and movements have for centuries declared war on the governments or societies they wished to subvert and overthrow. Yet even while fighting them ruthlessly, states rarely made formal declarations of war against such movements. Instead, they treated these groups as criminals, revolutionaries, rebels, or tools of a hostile foreign power, not as organizations against which a recognized legitimate government declares and wages war.

The reasons are obvious. A revolutionary or terrorist movement has much to gain from getting a real government to declare war upon it. This gives the movement considerable status, putting it in some sense in the same league with the government with which it is now recognized as at war. No sensible government wishes to give such quasi-legitimacy to a movement it is trying to stamp out. Consider Napoleon’s treatment of the insurrection in Spain from 1808 to 1813. The insurgents had powerful claims to belligerent status and even legitimacy. They maintained a government in a small corner of Spain, represented the former legitimate Bourbon government Napoleon had overthrown, included the regular Spanish army, and were supported and recognized by a major power, Great Britain. But Napoleon always insisted they were nothing but brigands, used this designation as justification for the brutal campaign he waged against them, and acknowledged a state of war with them only when, defeated in Spain and on other fronts, he decided to cut his losses, evacuate Spain, and make peace with them and the Bourbon regime.

Other reasons further explain why legitimate governments have not declared war on terrorist or revolutionary organizations that waged war against them - for example, the fact that when one declares war one has to operate under the prevailing laws of war, and these can be constricting for a legitimate government, as the United States is currently finding out in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Thus declaring a war on terrorism and waging it as a genuine war has to be justified as an exception to a powerful rule, not accepted as the obvious response to a terrorist attack.

Readers may find this an impractical, academic argument and respond, "So what? This is a unique situation. Our country never faced a threat just like this before. Besides, what difference does it make what you call a campaign against terrorism if in fact you intend to wage an all-out fight to exterminate terrorist organizations with every weapon at your command? In practical terms, that is war, whatever name you use for it, and it is good for the American public, the world, and the enemy to face it."

Again, not so fast. The issue is not whether the American public after 9/11 needed squarely to face the fact that the United States had been attacked by a dangerous enemy and had to fight back. It still needs to understand this - and does. Neither is the issue whether in fighting back the U.S. had a right to use military force against that enemy anywhere (though only where) it was sensible and practical to do so. Those points are not in dispute. The relevant, practical questions instead are, first, whether it was necessary to declare war on that enemy in order to confront the attack and fight back with every useful means, including military force. As just indicated, the historical and practical answer to that question is no. Second, was a public declaration of war against terrorism in general needed to prepare psychologically for a serious campaign against the enemy? The reaction of the American public and virtually every other government and people to the 9/11 attack and the subsequent American counterattack makes clear that for this purpose a formal declaration was unnecessary. The support in America and abroad for a powerful campaign against al-Qaeda was overwhelming.

The only question left is the one central to the argument: did the American government, by constantly and solemnly declaring the nation at war against terrorism and repeatedly summoning the rest of the world to join up or else be ranked among America’s enemies actually help or hurt the campaign against the terrorist enemy?

The natural response might be, "How could the declarations of war possibly have hurt? Even if they were not strictly necessary, they served to unite the American people and gird them for possible sacrifices and losses and to rally the rest of the world behind the American effort. What harm did they supposedly do?"

It was never in dispute that Osama bin Laden deliberately, repeatedly, and in the most spectacular way possible provoked a war with the United States. What should that tell us? Why did he do this? What was he after?

Once again this looks like an intellectual befogging the issue and ignoring the obvious. Osama bin Laden did this because America is his enemy. He hates America and its ideals, America stands in the way of his creating the kind of world he is fanatically determined to bring about, and so he declared war on America and tried to destroy it and kill as many Americans as possible. This interpretation is perfectly understandable and defensible from a moral and emotional standpoint. Unfortunately, it is counterproductive from the standpoint of rational analysis and policymaking.

Two vital principles in foreign-policy thinking are, first, know the enemy - this means doing one’s best to enter into his thought world and decision-making processes, to think from his presuppositions and standpoint - and second, expect a hidden agenda and look for it. Assume that the enemy’s decisions and actions have a purposive rationality behind them, that he hopes to achieve by them some concrete result that is rational in terms of his goals and worldview, however fanatical, irrational, or simply evil his actions may seem.

Apply these two principles to the question here. Take for granted that Osama bin Laden is an evil fanatic, totally determined to pursue his goals and wholly unscrupulous in the means he is willing to use to reach them. But assume also that he is highly intelligent, shrewd, patient, and focused in his strategy. Supposing this and knowing that he is the leader of a relatively small, highly secret terrorist organization, strong in devotion to its cause but weak in both numbers and weapons in comparison to the resources available to any major state, much less the world’s one superpower, ask yourself: why would he go out of his way to challenge that superpower with its awesome array of resources and weapons, deliberately provoking it into declaring war to the death upon him and his organization? The enormous risks are obvious. What were the potential gains?

Any serious and unemotional consideration of this question makes it apparent that the answer "He hates America and wants to destroy it" will not do. If that were his concrete strategy and end, that would make him a fool, which he is not. Any fairly intelligent person would know that an attack like that of 9/11, or even ten such attacks, would not suffice to defeat the United States or make it give up the struggle against terrorism and accept the unhindered spread of radical revolutionary Islam in the world. Any intelligent person would instead expect the attack on the American homeland to have precisely the political, psychological, and military effects it actually had - to mobilize the government, the American public, and many of its allies around the globe for an all-out struggle against al-Qaeda and international terrorism. Anyone with intelligence would also have anticipated the huge risks to himself and his organization from the inevitable counterattack - a military campaign by an overwhelmingly superior foe against his political base and secret camps in Afghanistan, blows to his cells wherever they could be found, international police, intelligence, and financial measures against his organization on a vastly increased scale, heavy pressure on regimes that had secretly supported or tolerated his activities to crack down on them, the imprisonment or death of anyone in al-Qaeda’s ranks from bottom to top - in short, all the measures that the Bush administration carried out and has trumpeted as successes in the War on Terror. Why would bin Laden knowingly risk all this for the sake of an attack, however spectacular, that he knew would not seriously damage the United States as a nation?

Two replies frequently offered need to be considered before getting to the real answer. Each, though superficially more plausible than "He did it because he’s evil," is fundamentally no more satisfactory. The first is that bin Laden did it to demonstrate the power, bravery, skill, and fanatical resolve of his organization and thereby gain new recruits and allies. This is undoubtedly true in a sense but far too vague. As just noted, the overwhelming surface probability was that the attack would result in gravely weakening and threatening al-Qaeda. That is certainly what the Bush administration confidently promised. Why precisely did bin Laden expect, against all probabilities, that the attack would eventually expand and strengthen his organization and cause?

The second reply is that the 9/11 operation was intended as only one step in a long campaign against the United States, a kind of dress rehearsal for worse blows, perhaps with weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, biological, or chemical. Once again, this argument makes no sense. If one intends to start a long campaign to destroy the enemy, one does not begin with an action that can be expected to galvanize rather than cripple the enemy and make him more prepared to anticipate, prevent, and counter new attacks. It would be as if Japan in 1941, having decided to fight the United States and needing first of all to cripple American naval power in the Pacific, chose to attack by bombing buildings in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The only sensible answer, once the foolish and inadequate ones are discarded, is that Osama bin Laden anticipated the American reaction and wanted it. His purpose in attacking the United States directly in its homeland was to get the American government to do what it had not done in response to his previous attacks: to declare an all-out war against him and al-Qaeda and a worldwide War on Terror led and organized by the United States, with every other country in the world summoned to follow and support or be considered an enemy. That seems to deepen the puzzle. Why thus deliberately multiply the ranks of his enemies and organize their efforts under the leadership of a single, powerful, aroused country?

The answer, if one thinks about it free from emotion and preoccupation with oneself, is clear. Deliberately provoking the United States into open, declared war against him, his forces, radical Islamism, and worldwide terrorism was bin Laden’s way of expanding a struggle he was already waging but losing, one he could not win on account of its insoluble contradictions, into a larger war free from internal contradictions that he could hope ultimately to win. To put it in a nutshell, Osama bin Laden needed the United States as a declared enemy to enable him to win his war against his primary enemies and thus achieve his goals.

To understand this, we need once again to take bin Laden’s fanatical ideology and his hatred for the United States and the West for granted and concentrate on his situation and the purposive rationality behind his tactics. Consider his central goal - a Muslim world ruled by true Islamic law and teaching, purged of all evil, materialist, secular, infidel, and heretical influences. Of course he regards the West, especially the United States, as the source of many of the evils corrupting and oppressing Islam and would like ideally to destroy it, but the immediate obstacles to achieving his vision and the main foes to be overcome have always lain within the Muslim world itself. (There is a good parallel here with 16th-century Europe. The Ottoman Turks were the great military and religious threat to Christendom, but the most bitter quarrels and wars were between Christians of different creeds, churches, rulers, and countries.) The obstacles he faced consisted of the divisions in sects, beliefs, and world visions within Islam; hostile governments ruling in Islamic countries, virtually all of whom regarded his kind of Islamic radicalism as a threat to their rule and were determined to repress it; and the attitude of most Muslims, loyal to their creed but unwilling to sacrifice what security and well-being they had in his kind of jihad. Osama bin Laden tried to overcome these obstacles and foes directly but the struggle, besides being difficult, dangerous, and largely unsuccessful, was inherently divisive and counterproductive. It meant pitting Muslim against Muslim, alienating more followers and potential recruits to the movement than it attracted, and giving free rein to the spread within Islam of infidel influences from outside while Muslims fought each other.

There was, however, one good way to overcome these obstacles - that is, to unite Muslims of divergent beliefs, sects, and visions against a single foe; to discredit, paralyze, and possibly overthrow secular Muslim governments; and to galvanize more believers into that suicidal zeal that al-Qaeda and its kindred organizations need as a baby needs its mother’s milk. That way was to make the United States, already the Great Satan in much of the Muslim world for a variety of reasons - its support of Israel against the Palestinians, its support of corrupt dictatorships and secular regimes, its encouragement of Iraq’s war against Iran and toleration of Saddam Hussein’s atrocities, its later conquest, humiliation, and ongoing punishment of the Iraqi people through sanctions, its long record of imperialism, its greed for Arab oil, its military occupation of sacred Muslim soil, its penetration of Muslim societies with its decadent culture and values - declare open war on him and his followers united in a true, heroic Islamic resistance movement.

The solution, further, was if possible to provoke the U.S. into actually attacking Muslim countries, using its awesome weapons against pitifully outmatched Muslim forces, destroying and humiliating them, killing and wounding civilians and destroying much property, occupying more Muslim land, and miring itself in an attempt to control what it had conquered and to impose its secular values and institutions on Arab and Muslim societies. From this would arise the chance to demonstrate that faithful Muslims under leaders and movements like bin Laden and al-Qaeda could be David to America’s Goliath. If they could not immediately slay the oppressor, they could survive its onslaught, grow and spread despite it, and gradually reduce it to a helpless giant, isolated from its former friends, trapped in an interminable occupation of hostile territory and peoples, with its armed forces stretched thin and its awesome weapons unusable, while al-Qaeda and similar groups could continue to launch even bolder attacks against it or anyone still associated with it.

That, I believe, is a reasonable rendition of Osama bin Laden’s hopes and strategy. It was a tremendous gamble, of course, and he could not possibly have predicted exactly how it would turn out. But it is beyond doubt that his gamble succeeded, that for more than three years after 9/11 things have generally been going his way, and that he could not have achieved this huge, improbable victory without indispensable American help. In declaring and waging a War on Terror with al-Qaeda as its initial announced focus and the United States as its self-acclaimed World Leader, America gave bin Laden precisely the war he needed and wanted.

One can anticipate at least three reactions to this conclusion (three that are printable, that is). Starting with the least important, they are:

1. This is all hindsight, Monday - morning quarterbacking.

2. Given the circumstances, there was nothing else the United States could have done.

3. Even if this is all true, it is water under the bridge, useless in deciding what to do now.

The first is easy to answer. Hindsight is a good exercise in politics, especially for the public at election time - but this is not that. Quite a few observers warned about these dangers at the time, and I was among them. In an article written just after 9/11 and published in November 2001 ("The Risks of Victory," The National Interest, Winter 2001/2002) I argued, among other things, against allowing a necessary and justified military campaign in Afghanistan to draw us into leading a general War on Terror in the wider Middle East and the world. More warnings were included in my "Iraq: The Case Against Preventive War," appearing in this journal in October 2002. Mine was only one voice in a steady, growing chorus, though one always drowned out by crowds of raucous hawks.

The second objection has a little more substance. Certainly 9/11 required strong action including military measures against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and the natural, inevitable war psychology pervading the country had to be reckoned with. Yet as was pointed out earlier, these needs required actions like those taken initially more than words. As far as the public rhetoric and justification was concerned, nothing hindered the administration from conceiving and explaining the undertaking differently both to the American public and the world, especially the Arab-Muslim world that was Osama bin Laden’s real target.

There is little point now in drafting the kind of address Bush should have delivered to Congress and the public. But one can readily imagine an American president (though not Bush) persuasively making the two cardinal points. First, the United States intended to pursue al-Qaeda with all the weapons at its command on grounds of legitimate self-defense and, while respecting the rights of other countries, would allow no one to interfere with these actions. It would not, however, dignify al-Qaeda’s atrocious crimes by calling them acts of war or give Osama bin Laden and his fellow criminals what they obviously wanted, a pretext to portray themselves as soldiers in a holy war against the United States. Instead, it would pursue them ruthlessly the way civilized nations had always pursued criminal organizations, as international outlaws and pirates, enemies of all governments and of civilization itself, and it expected other countries to co-operate in this struggle.

Second, the United States recognized that though it was the direct target of this attack and that in one sense it represented al-Qaeda’s final enemy and target, it was not the country most menaced by the current threat from al-Qaeda and international terrorism generally. As bin Laden well knew, neither this attack nor possible future ones, tragic though the individual deaths and losses were, could really hurt the United States, much less deter it from its purpose of hunting down the criminals behind the atrocities. The attack instead had already had just the opposite effect. It had strengthened the country and united Americans and their friends throughout the world for a long struggle against him and his fellow terrorist criminals. America’s government, institutions, and civil society were rock solid. It had no homegrown terrorist organizations to fear or ethnic and religious differences for terrorists to exploit. Its relatively small Muslim population was well integrated and overwhelmingly loyal to the United States, thankful for its blessings and freedoms.

Many other countries in the world could not say this, especially the Arab and Muslim countries that Osama bin Laden wanted to subvert and revolutionize as he had already done in Afghanistan. These countries and governments had the most to fear from al-Qaeda and international terrorism; they and not the United States were the real targets of the 9/11 attack. Even America’s European allies and friends, sound though their countries and institutions were for the most part, had more to fear directly from terrorism than the United States, given their large unassimilated Muslim populations and their proximity to the Middle East. The United States was, of course, vitally concerned with the general problem of international terrorism. It had interests around the world to protect, including those in the Middle East and other threatened regions. Nonetheless, this was not first and foremost America’s problem, nor was it America’s place primarily to provide the solution. The terrorists wanted to make the United States appear an imperialist Great Satan imposing its will and its solutions on others and forcing them to follow its lead. America would not fall into that trap. The U.S. had a particular right and duty to its citizens and the world to pursue al-Qaeda and exterminate it as a criminal organization. It would help, advise, support, and even where specifically desired lead others in the global struggle against terrorism. But it would not try to force others who had an even greater and more immediate stake in that struggle to do what their own self-interest ought to compel them to do, nor would it try to dictate the kinds of internal measures and reforms they needed to take to combat the common enemy.

That kind of language would have done everything language can do both to free the United States to attack al-Qaeda and to put pressure on other governments, especially in the Middle East, to confront their own problems and responsibilities and seek help if necessary from the United States, rather than hiding behind it. It also would have undercut the al-Qaeda strategy of making the United States into the main enemy, helped place responsibilities where they belonged, and galvanized genuine world support in the struggle against terrorism. What is more, it would have been entirely consistent with the campaign against terrorism the United States actually waged at the outset. That was very much an international effort, a largely proxy war directed but not mainly fought by the U.S. and focused strictly on destroying al-Qaeda’s organization and governmental base - until this focus was foolishly abandoned to attack Iraq.

To heighten the irony, this kind of language would have conformed to the actual wartime policies the administration has followed. Let us be honest: the "War on Terror" in America is basically a sham, a charade. While great, even ultimate sacrifices have been demanded of relatively few, chiefly those in the armed forces, for the overwhelming majority of Americans having the country at war has meant massive tax cuts, exhortations to spend and consume, enormous deficits, politics and government spending as usual - in short, no wartime sacrifice at all. The rest of the world knows this and sees the hypocrisy, if we do not.

As for the last reply, that this argument now represents water under the bridge, useless for current or future policy, if that were true, it would constitute the most devastating indictment of the Bush strategy possible. It would mean that the administration had so ruined America’s position that nothing could now remedy it. But it is not true. This administration’s policy deserves harsh condemnation for the reckless incompetence that has made the way out now much more painful and costly, but a way out still lies in recognizing that the United States needs to abandon not the struggle against international terrorism but the conception of that struggle as a war fought and led mainly by the United States, making itself the chief target of the enemy.

This is a change only a new administration could make, though obviously not during the electoral campaign, when it would be suicidal. Once in office, however, it could claim that it had found things to be even worse than it knew and could make the kind of 180-degree turn Bush executed after his election. A gradual disengagement from Iraq and re-concentration on Afghanistan and Pakistan in the pursuit of al-Qaeda, a devolution of tasks onto the UN and NATO on the grounds that even the best meant efforts of the United States are frustrated by the fact that it is seen as the enemy by too many in the region, a willingness to admit past mistakes and agree to focus co-operatively on other problems as well - all this would become possible, though not easy, if only the current American war mentality and psyche gave way to a saner one. This still could happen - but of course not under Bush.




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Iraq Veterans Open Up on Mishandling of War
By Les Chappell
The Daily Cardinal

Friday 22 October 2004

Soldiers returning from Iraq offered firsthand accounts of the war's turmoil Thursday. Sponsored by the College Democrats, the panel met to discuss service obstacles as well as dangerous trends in military policy.

"You know so much about supporting the troops, especially since the election's taking place," said David Boetcher, a Gulf War veteran headed for Iraq in January. "Our job is to get to the issues behind the rhetoric."

Boetcher presented the audience with statistics showing how veterans are losing service benefits at a rapid rate. With lowered funding for support programs and the rising trend of soldiers being reactivated for a second tour of duty, there is little incentive to remain in the service.

Rather than being reassured, however, soldiers have begun to receive rude awakenings through a "Fed Ex letter" strategy. "You get a package, and you have to show up [for service] two days later," Boetcher said. "The military has a plan for action and it's not getting told."

Jennifer Giese of the 826th Ordinance experienced this firsthand; she came home and found orders to report to Ohio's Fort Campbell. After spending 68 days on base due to confusion over troop deployment, she was sent to Tikrit and stationed at an abandoned Iraqi airbase.

While the unit suffered no fatalities in Iraq, they were plagued the entire time by supply chain glitches. The unit never received body armor, and had to resort to stealing scrap metal for vehicle armor. Bottled water had to be rationed due to shortages, but Giese later filled a swimming pool for a general's use.

"This was a complete, chaotic mess," Giese said. "In my opinion there was no plan ... no one knew where we were going."

Abie Pickett of the 229th Combat Support Equipment division agreed; she said by the time her unit arrived in Kuwait there was no space, save a building with shoulder-high debris.

According to Brenda Bickel-Bonds, whose husband Michael is serving in Iraq, soldiers also suffer from detachment due to the stretched manpower. She said her husband was taken away from his unit and stationed in Puerto Rico despite the fact he spoke no Spanish. Adding insult to injury, time served there did not count toward his total.

Boetcher said moves like this have lowered enrollment and confidence among armed forces, creating a serious issue in the military.

"The problem with this war is it's not dying down," Boetcher said. "There's got to be something done, because it's [the military's] not going to last."

...Campo, a SCARY tale, Anti-Bush fun, and Cardinals...

Last night was Campo/T-Bob’s party deal. Heather and I were not in attendance at the haunted house, but I returned to Scott’s for a time afterward (Heather had to sleep).

@Campo: I don’t know what to say, man…we’ve been friends for a long time, and I’m really sorry to see you move so far away. Keep in touch, call us, email us, come visit when you can; and good luck in California, Dan. I’ll keep you in my thoughts. Remember, you have family here in St. Louis, so don’t be a stranger.

Here's a story about a possessed box. Words can't explain, you just NEED to read about this! Click on the link below and prepare for one of the most freaky and bizzare real-life ghost stories I've heard!

Dibbuk Box

Here are some really fun and informative anti-Bush websites:

Move On PAC: Leave No Voter Behind

Capital Hill Blue

Independent Report

Not Bush

DubyaD40

Bushflash

Democratic Underground

The Misleader

See Ya George

Anyone But Bush

The Bush Record

Buzzflash

Bush Greenwatch

Bush Report

Democrats

Dubyaspeak

Intervention Magazine

Bush Watch

Smirking Chimp

America Held Hostile

Media Matters

Re-Defeat Bush

Truth Out

In other news, we're just one loss away from the Cards out-right losing the World Series in a 4-nothing suck-fest. Looks like I may have TWO reasons to wear black in the same two week period here. Dammit. Come on, Cards, pick it the fuck up!

Quilled Tunes: “Bring It” – Soulfly

...Meatloaf...

Production on the Meatloaf movie project is still driving forward. The first draft of the film is finished and now we will start the cleaning up process. We’re also going to play around with the ordering of scenes and start to discuss possible dialogue. We’re also going to be having a budget/funding meeting soon. I will say this: with Nix writing/directing/cinematography, Scott and Joe doing film edit/sound production/DVD production, Scott as assistant executive producer, and me doing stunts/executive producing/initial concept…this film will most definitely kick major ass. Everyone will have an equal part in this movie; if you’re not Dave, you get killed; if you ARE Dave, you get meat thrown at you, covered in fake blood, and get your ass kicked in very horrible ways. This movie is the great equalizer where even if humanity wins, Bug Juice/Wildflower Productions staff still loses…

I can’t divulge too much information other than the above about the movie, for obvious reasons. That’s only ONE of several things happening with Bug Juice right now. The Megasite is coming soon; the Claire-Bitch DVD WILL be happening (we’re just waiting for Joe to get his system back up to par/speed); and Meatloaf, which is a major business relationship between us and T-Bob’s “Wildflower Productions”. I know you guys don’t believe any of this is happening, but understand it takes a lot of time and work to put CBP on DVD, to film Meatloaf the way we envision it, and to revamp the Megasite to where we envision it to be; and we do all have lives and jobs to balance with that. Keep the faith.

Quilled Tunes: “I’m With Stupid” – Static-X

Quote of the Blog: “Every great film should seem new every time you see it.” – Roger Ebert

...something(s) to look forward to...

This is going to be a busy, busy week.

Tuesday: Campo/Nix (Robert) party @ Scott’s/Haunted Houses
Friday: “Saw”
Saturday: Growler’s/Halloween Party @ Joe’s

Ok, so maybe it’s not THAT busy. Shut up.

November 8th is the Fear Factory concert. So far as I know, Hizzy and Dave are going to be there as well. Fear Factory is synonymous with violent, awesome pits. Last time I was at a FF show, the pit was unbelievable; and for the most part, I was flying solo, with no backup in the pit as I usually have. On top of all that, Dave will be involved. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to it. It’s a chance to show off some newly acquired techniques…and, finally pen my legacy; the legacy of the Almighty Quill. Dave, this will be fun; against you, I don’t have to worry about letting loose.

*UPDATE* I went to McDonald's today to cash in a free large sandwich discount ticket. The manager there was the manager of one of the Arnold stores when I was working at McD in Walmart. She recognized and remembered me. I don't know whether to be flattered or what; apparently, I'm some sort of unforgettable person? Even to a manager who knew MY manager at a job I haven't worked for the last five years??

Quilled Tunes: “Fear” – Disturbed

...a day of losing...

Yesterday was Michelle's parents' Halloween party. It was a really good time.

It was also a day of sports for me. We played a game of baseball, 8 rounds of washers, tennis, and went out on a spider-infested paddle boat. It was also the first game of the 2004 World Series between the Cards and the Red Sox.

I will say this - there are three things that I excell at sports-wise: swords, running, and weight lifting. None of these three things gave me any advantage yesterday. I lost all day long, literally. Ben and I came really, really close a few rounds of washers, but we lost that as well, due to Heather's brother, Jeremy. Jeremy is like a messiah of sports; seriously. I've never seen a person as good at varying kind of sports as him. From baseball to tennis, he's a god among men. To top that off, the Cards lost 11-9 to the Red "Sux". We'll battle back.

That's all I have to report. A full day of doing nothing but phsyical actively feels great...until the next day. But to be honest with you, I missed the 'after soreness' that one gets after killing themselves like that. I must be sick in the head. LOL!

@Scott: Dude, I can completely understand being sick of politics. That's why if I'm going to post anything political, I usually post it before a normal post like this one. So those that don't want to read, don't have to.

...Jason, CARDINALS, and other stuff...

The Friday Box Set is pretty fucking awesome so far. Quill like.

As I stated in my last post, GO-FUCKING-CARDS! I know some people don’t care; I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve been disenfranchised with baseball since the strike years ago; but when I was a kid, I was Card-crazy, and have been seriously getting into it this season. Now, OUR team…the team of the Lou…is going to the World Series. That’s pretty fucking sweet, if you ask me. I haven’t been this proud of St. Louis since I discovered bands like Gravity Kills and Die Symphony.

I am going to be organizing a party to watch the World Series. I will post/email/inform on details as soon as I know.

@Hizzy: Sorry about the Yak/Hizzy fight on Juice Wars. My intention was not to offend you.
@Scott: Hang in there man, you’re almost home.
@Everyone At Karaoke Last Night: Sorry I didn’t show up. I had other things to take care of; I will be there next week for sure.
@Heather: I really miss Spanky’s…I can’t believe we have to wait another year! NOOO! I love you.

The post right below this one is an explanation of why I'm so election-crazed lately. I wrote it, there is no copying and pasting involved. I ask all of you to at least read through it. Thank you.

Quilled Tunes: “Concept Of Grief” – Fragile Porcelain Mice

Quote of the Blog: “Baseball is drama with an endless run and an ever-changing cast.” – Joe Garagiola

Joke of the Blog:
A fellow came into a bar and ordered a martini. Before drinking it, he removed the olive and carefully put it into a glass jar. Then he ordered another martini and did the same thing. After an hour, when he was full of martinis and the jar was full of olives, he staggered out.
"Well," said a customer, "I never saw anything as peculiar as that!"
"What's so peculiar about it?" the bartender said. "His wife sent him out for a jar of olives."

...explanation from Quill (this one I ask that you all read)...

I know some people aren’t too thrilled with all the political postings that I have been making as of late. I thank each of you for bearing with me. I feel some explanation about my true stance on this election is clearly overdue and in order:

As you have noticed, I have no real love for George W. Bush, or his administration. Believe it or not, I was behind Bush in the days after September 11th, after we were attacked. It is my belief that at that moment, he was exactly the type of man we needed in office; someone who wasn’t going to pussy out, who was going to take this fight to our enemies and show them that they had made the worst mistake ever.

However, since then, I have sat back and watched this man make every colossal mistake a president could possibly make. Our health-care system is crappier than it’s EVER been; the Patriot Act side-steps several rights of individuals (and no, I’m not just saying that because of that stupid Fahrenheit movie); I’ve watched him lie and appear to be probably the dumbest C.I.C. we’ve ever had; although the numbers on paper look good for our economy, the job market for the middle/lower class is unbelievably shitty; I’ve seen him take us into war in Iraq.

About Iraq: I agree that Saddam was, simply put, an evil fucker, and he needed to be taken down. I’ve believed that since we DIDN’T finish things the first time, since Bush Sr. dropped the ball. However, Bush’s reasons for going to war weren’t true; the truth is, he DID lie to the American people. And sure, Saddam was TRYING to get those weapons; but at the very least, we could have delayed doing this for about a year before it because a desperate situation. Bush just got us into this war too fast; he rushed it.

Because of Bush’s decision, there have been many more casualties than were necessary. Think about that for just a second. A president’s JOB is to act in the best interests of his people; and there is no bigger judgment for a president to make than how to go into a war situation. Bush didn’t act in the best interest of our troops, and he clearly doesn’t have the proper judgment about war. For all the good in the world that’s resulting from it, the hard fact of the matter is that people, like Shark, and dying when they don’t necessarily need to, had Bush just had us go in there PREPARED. It’s good that Iraq has hope now; but was that hope worth the 1000 plus brave souls that have died for this cause, died when they might not have had to? Dammit, if we had just gotten allies, if we had the proper equipment out there…and on top of it all, those were things Bush PROMISED and SAID he was going to do, and he didn’t. The soldiers that are fighting in Iraq right now are in a greater level of danger than they would have been if we hadn’t rushed into this.

My main reason for believing so strongly in this is our job market and the economy. I graduated with a bachelor of science in construction management from SMSU in December of 2002. I didn’t get a job in my field until mid-July of 2004. That’s nearly TWO YEARS. And it wasn’t because of laziness on my part. It was not because I didn’t have an impressive enough resume, or because I don’t know how to interview. It’s because the job market, and our economy, sucked for jobs. When I finally landed my position with LaClair, it was a right-place, right-time situation. It helps that my resume and interviewing skills and portfolio is top-notch, but for the most part, in THIS job market we’re in, I got lucky. For nearly two years I struggled, battling both the shitty state of the market and my own internal struggle. There were times that I felt like just curling up into a ball and dying, it was so hard; and by nature I am one of the most optimistic and positive people you will meet, EVER. I don’t ever need to go to hell, because I’ve already lived through it, guys. I went through doubts about my own abilities to wondering if I was ever going to make it through this tough time. I suffered through Radio Shack, being on unemployment for a time, having to swallow every bit of pride I’ve ever had and more. Starting about Christmas of 2003, when I got FIRED (yes, fired) from Radio Shack because they had to let someone go, I was operating solely on the belief that I had to keep my hope alive for just one more day. That if I could just make it through ONE more day, tomorrow might just produce something. I did that for the remainder of my days before being saved by LaClair.

The whole job market thing is my personal story in all of this; like so many others, I’ve experienced, tasted, first hand what this president has allowed to happen to our country’s economy. Now, he’s begun to outsource jobs, making an already flailing job market/economy even worse.

Why do I care so much? Why do I beat this issue into the ground? I don’t want anyone to have to go through the hell that I did. I don’t want my friends who are getting out of college in a year or two to have to struggle like I did. I don’t want anyone else to die for a war in which we were ill prepared to go into. I have my issues with Shark; but I don’t wish him to die. Phoenix’s husband, Cyclops, is going to be a marine in just a few short weeks, and he quite possibly could be sent off right away. There are 1000 people, people with families, even people that some of you KNEW, that are dead that might not have died under safer circumstances.

My reasons for fighting tooth and nail on this election are not selfish; I have my job now, I don’t necessarily have an uber-personal bid for our market anymore. I think of my friends; I think of my family; I think of the families of those thousand plus soliders that were put in more danger than they needed to be. I think of the future of our country in this.

Bush has made a fucking mess of things. I can’t deny that there’s no guarantee that Kerry can do any better; but there’s a pretty clear picture of why Bush definitely isn’t good for this country. Is the worth of Bush’s resilience in this whole “War on Terror” really equal to thousands of lives? Does it balance out the way he’s let our health system turn to complete shit, or how the school systems are rapidly disintegrating in his administration’s wake? Do the ends of his methods in Homeland Security justify the means by which he accomplishes them, namely by stomping on rights that have existed since the U.S. began? How many middle class families are struggling just to make ends meet while tax breaks are given to the richest in our country, as a result of his doing? I mean, wake the fuck up…do you guys honestly think that if Bush has done this for the part FOUR YEARS that another four with him in office will get any better?! He’s had four years to do anything for our country, and the only thing he did of any worth was to go after the 9/11 terrorists, which looking back at it, I think any president would have done as well. Would Clinton have let it slide? Would Reagan? I don’t think they would have.

With every new president we’ve ever had, there’s been a 50/50 chance that they’d just fuck everything up. With politicians, you can never predict if they’ll be good or bad; you can only listen to what they say and hope you make the right choice. Kerry does have some bad points about him. I’m not talking about the ‘flip-flop’ issue, because we all know that’s bullshit, tripe slung around to make Kerry look bad, a.k.a. the politics game; Bush ‘flip-flops’ on things as well. And I’m not even talking about the so-called “shady” war record. The way I look at it, Kerry went to war and fought for his country; Bush did not. Kerry got wounded in war, thus he received the Purple Heart three times; it shouldn’t matter how wounded he was or how deep the bullet went into him. If you fight in a war, and you get wounded as a result of that fighting, you deserve whatever the military deems fit to decorate you with. Bush would understand all of this, had he gone to war himself. I would have come home from Vietnam and protested the war, too; history has shown us that Vietnam was a mistake for us. We got our asses handed to us in that war, and it was a situation that we shouldn’t have gotten into in the first place.

Bush has proven that he is not a good president. I could cite a million different examples of this and some still wouldn’t accept it. Personally, I think you’d have to be blind not to see how terrible he’s done in office. Voting for Bush won’t change anything about the current state of our country. Voting for Kerry might change things. It comes down to voting for things to be crap for the next four years and voting for a chance, a shot, that things might get better.

Bush is a man of great faith; he believes in Jesus and the Bible. He believes that life is precious. He believes what a lot of religious, faithful people can get behind. He believes what people who are pro-life can get behind. But there’s more at stake here than abortion rights and religion. There’s an entire world of issues outside of this, and they affect everyone, whether you realize it or not. Just as an example, some people say, “I don’t care about health care issues; Bush is pro-life and I’m voting for him.” To this person I confidently say, “You are blind to the world around you, and it is people like you that allow people like Bush to fuck things up for everyone.” It blows my mind that some people would rather stick with what they know rather than take a chance with Kerry, given what Bush has done and the state of our country in general.

Bottom line: I don’t care if we have a democrat, republican, independent, hell, even a chinchilla with mange and an overbite in office, as long as things are good in our country. I’m a split-ticket voter; I go for the best man for the job, regardless of political affiliation. Bush is not good for our country. Kerry may not be the BEST choice for president, but he’s a league better than Bush. And the only way to get Bush out of office, due to our current political system, is to vote for John Kerry.

...bet you didn't know Quill liked the Cards, did ya?...

HELL-FUCKING-YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ST. LOUIS CARDINALS GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES!!

UP YOURS, HOUSTON ASTROS: 4 OUT OF 7 GAMES; 5-2 SCORE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE NINTH!!!

QUILLED TUNE: "WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS" - QUEEN

(Because we ARE!!!) GO CARDS!!!

...on forgiveness vs. holding your ground...

Tonight is karaoke. I don't know who will be there for sure, but I know Joe will, possibly Scuba, and I know Fran is gonna be there because Joe is going. Should be fun. Maybe Erich will go.

@Heather: Hold on, lemme check...yep, I still love you more than ever! :)

I don't have much of substance to report lately...I do have this little philosophical item I also posted on the Council:

Faith VS. Proof

I’ve heard a lot of advocating towards forgiveness and second chances lately (and not just on the Council, mind you). This brings up a very odd question in my mind; what is required to do that?

Well, it’s certainly not a simplistic matter of just ‘forgiving’ someone. The process is easy for some, not so easy for others, but the level of difficulty does not change what is entailed. Let’s talk about what we know:

Proof: It occurs to me that while people change, they generally retain much of the traits and mannerisms that they developed early on. In short, yes people change, but they never change COMPLETELY. Just as an example, James S. was an asshole when I met him; whether he’s still to this day AS MUCH of an asshole, I couldn’t tell you since I haven’t seen him. However, I have talked to someone that has, and he certainly didn’t seem to have changed very much. The chances I gave this guy were numerous, and he proved my wrong at every turn, to the point where I just...dropped the guy, completely. I believe that if you observe someone long enough, and interact with that person enough, you can gain a pretty clear understanding of what they’re all about. You can then deem whether said person is ‘worthy’ of repeated chances to make amends for certain things, or whether you just want to drop this person like a sack of dirt. In the case of James, I wouldn’t hang with him if you PAID me at this point…

Faith: …which brings us to the faith point of all this. Faith is a very good thing, intrinsically good, in fact. Even if you have ‘proof’ that someone is a certain way, giving a second chance, a third chance, and so on, requires faith that the controls are wrong, that this person CAN change in such a huge and altering way.

Now, I’m not saying that just because you ‘knew’ someone years ago that you have a solid handle of what they’re all about in the present. It doesn’t even follow that you really ‘knew’ said person completely to begin with. But, for this we use the example of the rat and the cheese. A rat is faced with a choice: a block of cheese or to resist hunger. The cheese is wired so that if the rat tries to eat it, he receives a nasty shock. After awhile, the rat is more likely to choose to not trust the cheese, given that the shock took place so many times. Now, that’s a very broad example, but it does make my point: we become conditioned, by experiences and interactions with certain people, to not trust them. To override this kind of conditioning, it would take an overwhelming amount of faith, something that our little rat friend would not have benefit of.

Here’s my view: I’m a strong believer in the good in a person. It’s very hard for me to truly hate another. So I have a large amount of blind faith, even after a few ‘shocks’ to my trust meter. This, unfortunately, gets me shocked more often than not, however. I believe that a healthy, reasonable amount of faith is good for a person. But I also believe that the proof does hold much salt; and when I say ‘proof’, I don’t mean that being ‘wronged’ or ‘betrayed’ is a solid fact of the person. What I mean is, in a social interaction, if you get burned, forgive, get burned again, forgive again, get burned yet again…eventually, the pattern just cannot be denied. And I do realize that people change, that’s the main X-factor in all of this, the idea that a person’s actions and mannerisms toward others can do a 180…however, ask yourselves this question: is there anyone if YOUR lives that you couldn’t forgive if you tried? Can you think of anyone that has wronged you in such an extreme way, that even if this person came back, started doing things that seem legitimate, there would still be mistrust there? This is the reason why some friendships fail, and cannot return to original status.

The point of all this?

Too much ‘faith’ greatly opens the possibility that history will repeat itself; it is because of this that some people always get betrayed.

Too much ‘proof’ increases the chances that you will be too unfair; it is because of this that some people never get the chances to legitimately make right on things.

What is ultimately needed, from everyone, is an objective mix of ‘faith’ and ‘proof’:

Give people a chance; hear them out. They might surprise you. Everybody makes mistakes, everyone is human. Compassion is one of the things that separate us from the animals; forgiveness IS divine.

But also, don’t leave yourself open to stabs in the back; trust is a privilege that YOU personally give to another individual, it is NOT a right that they are entitled to. One of the major problems in our society today is that people believe there should be a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ mentality; that view is not conducive to a proper, trust-filled relationship. There SHOULD be consequences for certain actions, and the lack of belief in consequences for things done is a growing problem in today’s world.

Quilled Tunes: "Sober" - Tool

Quote of the Blog: "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." - Mohandas Gandhi

...ki ki ki; ma ma ma...

I have finally purchased the Friday the 13th Box Set. It is now mine. The Happy Quill dance will soon ensue.

Halloween is fast approaching. I am going as Jason Voorhees, but I’m not getting in full costume. The way I have it, it’s too inconvenient to wear the motherfucker…I have to take off half of it to eat or drink anything. Next year, that won’t be the case, and the costume will be even better! You’ll see what I mean…

@Heather: I hope you are having a great day at work. I love you.

*UPDATE*@Everyone: I know some of you don't like all the uber-long posts about Bush or Kerry; or hate all the political posts I make; or the links I send out. This election, I feel, is probably the most important thing right now, that effects all of us, that will pave the way of life we have for the next FOUR YEARS. So yeah, it's kind of a big deal. Bear with me.

Below this blog, I posted an uber-long list of quotes from our ever-moronic President Bush. I know some of you hate marathon posts, but give it a scroll through at least; some of that stuff is hilarious, others scary and disturbing when you consider that this jack-off runs our nation. If you want to get to a past post to check comments, but don’t want to scroll through the Bush post, just click on the links to your right, you’ll go right to the post you want.

Oh, and check THESE out:

GeorgeSoros.com

S.O.N. - Save Our Nation

Quilled Tunes: “Spiderweb” – Jimmie’s Chicken Shack

Quote of the Blog: “The only way round is through.” – Robert Frost

Bushisms: George W. Is A Moron

(Posted in the comment section of the topic “...WMD's - a 'never happened' situation...” on the Council Chambers, Monday, October 11, 2004, from Quill to Dante.)

***********“On top of that, he's [Kerry’s] a president we can depend on to speak and act with intelligence. You quoted President Bush saying the following: President George W. Bush: "In Response To Question 18 President Bush Criticized Kerry's Vote Against The $87 Billion. “He complains about the fact our troops don't have adequate equipment, yet he voted against the $87 billion supplemental I sent to the Congress and then issued one of the most amazing quotes in political history: "I actually did vote for $87 billion before I voted against it.” (President George W. Bush, Second Presidential Debate, St. Louis, MO, 10/8/04)"

...that's a direct quote from YOUR post, and from Bush himself (I watched the debate, too).

Do you realize just how many "amazing quotes" Bush has made over the course of his ENTIRE presidency?! It's because of his 'skill' (and I SO use that term sarcastically) in public speaking that is solely responsible for the wide-spread opinion that he's missing a few cans from his 24-pack. He's rather an embarrassment to our country in that aspect.”*************

I thought I would post some Bushisms to both further illustrate that point and provide some laughs for us all. NOTE: These are things that our President Bush actually said. I’m not posting the whole thing all at once; instead, I will post by year, and I won’t post them all in one day, to keep down on length and not dominate the Council with it. Let’s have a laugh at things said by the guy we all currently call ‘leader’, shall we?

Bushisms from 2004

"After standing on the stage, after the debates, I made it very plain we will not have an all-volunteer army." —George W. Bush, Daytona Beach, Fla., Oct. 16, 2004

"I heard there's rumors on the Internets that we're going to have a draft." —George W. Bush, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

"The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were the president of the United States, and the world would be a lot better off." —George W. Bush, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

"When a drug comes in from Canada, I wanna make sure it cures ya, not kill ya... I've got an obligation to make sure our government does everything we can to protect you. And one — my worry is that it looks like it's from Canada, and it might be from a third world." —George W. Bush, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

"We all thought there was weapons there, Robin. My opponent thought there was weapons there." —George W. Bush, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

"Let me see where to start here. First, the National Journal named Senator Kennedy the most liberal senator of all." —George W. Bush, referring to Sen. Kerry, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

"Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights. That's a personal opinion. That's not what the constitution says. The constitution of the United States says we're all — you know, it doesn't say that. It doesn't speak to the equality of America." —George W. Bush, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

"The enemy understands a free Iraq will be a major defeat in their ideology of hatred. That's why they're fighting so vociferously." —George W. Bush, first presidential debate, Coral Gables, Fla., Sept. 30, 2004

"You know, it's hard work to try to love her as best as I can, knowing full well that the decision I made caused her loved one to be in harm's way." —George W. Bush, first presidential debate, Coral Gables, Fla., Sept. 30, 2004

"I saw a poll that said the right track/wrong track in Iraq was better than here in America. It's pretty darn strong. I mean, the people see a better future." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 23, 2004

"I'm not the expert on how the Iraqi people think, because I live in America, where it's nice and safe and secure." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 23, 2004

"It's the Afghan national army that went into Najaf and did the work there." —George W. Bush, referring to Iraqi troops during a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, Washington, D.C., Sept. 23, 2004

"The CIA laid out several scenarios and said life could be lousy, life could be OK, life could be better, and they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like." —George W. Bush, New York City, Sept. 21, 2004

"Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 17, 2004

"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." —George W. Bush, Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004 (Watch video clip)

"We will make sure our troops have all that is necessary to complete their missions. That's why I went to the Congress last September and proposed fundamental — supplemental funding, which is money for armor and body parts and ammunition and fuel." —George W. Bush, Erie, Pa., Sept. 4, 2004

"Had we to do it over again, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success, being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day." —George W. Bush, telling Time magazine that he underestimated the Iraqi resistance

"They've seen me make decisions, they've seen me under trying times, they've seen me weep, they've seen me laugh, they've seen me hug. And they know who I am, and I believe they're comfortable with the fact that they know I'm not going to shift principles or shift positions based upon polls and focus groups." —George W. Bush, interview with USA Today, Aug. 27, 2004

"I hope you leave here and walk out and say, 'What did he say?'" —George W. Bush, Beaverton, Oregon, Aug. 13, 2004

"So community colleges are accessible, they're available, they're affordable, and their curriculums don't get stuck. In other words, if there's a need for a certain kind of worker, I presume your curriculums evolved over time." —George W. Bush, Niceville, Fla., Aug. 10, 2004

"Let me put it to you bluntly. In a changing world, we want more people to have control over your own life." —George W. Bush, Annandale, Va, Aug. 9, 2004

"As you know, we don't have relationships with Iran. I mean, that's — ever since the late '70s, we have no contacts with them, and we've totally sanctioned them. In other words, there's no sanctions — you can't — we're out of sanctions." —George W. Bush, Annandale, Va, Aug. 9, 2004

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004 (Watch video clip)

"Tribal sovereignty means that; it's sovereign. I mean, you're a — you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 6, 2004 (Watch video clip)

"I cut the taxes on everybody. I didn't cut them. The Congress cut them. I asked them to cut them." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 6, 2004

"I wish I wasn't the war president. Who in the heck wants to be a war president? I don't." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 6, 2004

"We stand for things." —George W. Bush, Davenport, Iowa, Aug. 5, 2004

"Give me a chance to be your president and America will be safer and stronger and better." —Still-President George W. Bush, Marquette, Michigan, July 13, 2004

"I mean, if you've ever been a governor of a state, you understand the vast potential of broadband technology, you understand how hard it is to make sure that physics, for example, is taught in every classroom in the state. It's difficult to do. It's, like, cost-prohibitive." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., June 24, 2004

"And I am an optimistic person. I guess if you want to try to find something to be pessimistic about, you can find it, no matter how hard you look, you know?" —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., June 15, 2004

"I want to thank my friend, Senator Bill Frist, for joining us today. You're doing a heck of a job. You cut your teeth here, right? That's where you started practicing? That's good. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me." —George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., May 27, 2004

"I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 25, 2004

"Like you, I have been disgraced about what I've seen on TV that took place in prison." —George W. Bush, Parkersburg, West Virginia, May 13, 2004

"My job is to, like, think beyond the immediate." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 21, 2004

"This has been tough weeks in that country." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 13, 2004

"Coalition forces have encountered serious violence in some areas of Iraq. Our military commanders report that this violence is being insticated by three groups." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 13, 2004

"Obviously, I pray every day there's less casualty." —George W. Bush, Fort Hood, Texas, April 11, 2004

"Earlier today, the Libyan government released Fathi Jahmi. She's a local government official who was imprisoned in 2002 for advocating free speech and democracy." —George W. Bush, citing Jahmi, who is a man, in a speech paying tribute to women reformers during International Women's Week, Washington, D.C., March 12, 2004

"The march to war hurt the economy. Laura reminded me a while ago that remember what was on the TV screens — she calls me, 'George W.' — 'George W.' I call her, 'First Lady.' No, anyway — she said, we said, march to war on our TV screen." —George W. Bush, Bay Shore, New York, Mar. 11, 2004

"God loves you, and I love you. And you can count on both of us as a powerful message that people who wonder about their future can hear." —George W. Bush, Los Angeles, Calif., March 3, 2004

"Recession means that people's incomes, at the employer level, are going down, basically, relative to costs, people are getting laid off." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Feb. 19, 2004

"The march to war affected the people's confidence. It's hard to make investment. See, if you're a small business owner or a large business owner and you're thinking about investing, you've got to be optimistic when you invest. Except when you're marching to war, it's not a very optimistic thought, is it? In other words, it's the opposite of optimistic when you're thinking you're going to war." —George W. Bush, Springfield, Mo., Feb. 9, 2004

"But the true strength of America is found in the hearts and souls of people like Travis, people who are willing to love their neighbor, just like they would like to love themselves." —George W. Bush, Springfield, Mo., Feb. 9, 2004

"In my judgment, when the United States says there will be serious consequences, and if there isn't serious consequences, it creates adverse consequences." —George W. Bush, Meet the Press, Feb. 8, 2004

"There is no such thing necessarily in a dictatorial regime of iron-clad absolutely solid evidence. The evidence I had was the best possible evidence that he had a weapon." —George W. Bush, Meet the Press, Feb. 8, 2004

"The recession started upon my arrival. It could have been — some say February, some say March, some speculate maybe earlier it started — but nevertheless, it happened as we showed up here. The attacks on our country affected our economy. Corporate scandals affected the confidence of people and therefore affected the economy. My decision on Iraq, this kind of march to war, affected the economy." —George W. Bush, Meet the Press, Feb. 8, 2004

"My views are one that speaks to freedom." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2004

"See, one of the interesting things in the Oval Office — I love to bring people into the Oval Office — right around the corner from here — and say, this is where I office, but I want you to know the office is always bigger than the person." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2004

"More Muslims have died at the hands of killers than — I say more Muslims — a lot of Muslims have died — I don't know the exact count — at Istanbul. Look at these different places around the world where there's been tremendous death and destruction because killers kill." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2004

"Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our children are appalling." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004

"Just remember it's the birds that's supposed to suffer, not the hunter." —George W. Bush, advising quail hunter and New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, Roswell, N.M., Jan. 22, 2004

"I want to thank the astronauts who are with us, the courageous spacial entrepreneurs who set such a wonderful example for the young of our country." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C. Jan. 14, 2004

"I was a prisoner too, but for bad reasons." —George W. Bush, to Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, on being told that all but one of the Argentine delegates to a summit meeting were imprisoned during the military dictatorship, Monterrey, Mexico, Jan. 13, 2004

"One of the most meaningful things that's happened to me since I've been the governor — the president — governor — president. Oops. Ex-governor. I went to Bethesda Naval Hospital to give a fellow a Purple Heart, and at the same moment I watched him—get a Purple Heart for action in Iraq — and at that same — right after I gave him the Purple Heart, he was sworn in as a citizen of the United States — a Mexican citizen, now a United States citizen." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 9, 2004

"And if you're interested in the quality of education and you're paying attention to what you hear at Laclede, why don't you volunteer? Why don't you mentor a child how to read?" —George W. Bush, St. Louis, Mo., Jan. 5, 2004

"So thank you for reminding me about the importance of being a good mom and a great volunteer as well." —George W. Bush, St. Louis, Mos., Jan. 5, 2004

Bushisms from 2003

"I want to remind you all that in order to fight and win the war, it requires an expenditure of money that is commiserate with keeping a promise to our troops to make sure that they're well-paid, well-trained, well-equipped." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 15, 2003

"See, without the tax relief package, there would have been a deficit, but there wouldn't have been the commiserate — not 'commiserate' — the kick to our economy that occurred as a result of the tax relief." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 15, 2003

"[T]he Iraqis need to be very much involved. They were the people that was brutalized by this man." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 15, 2003

"[T]he best way to find these terrorists who hide in holes is to get people coming forth to describe the location of the hole, is to give clues and data." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 15, 2003

"Justice was being delivered to a man who defied that gift from the Almighty to the people of Iraq." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 15, 2003

"This very week in 1989, there were protests in East Berlin and in Leipzig. By the end of that year, every communist dictatorship in Central America had collapsed." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Nov. 6, 2003

"[A]s you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Oct. 28, 2003

"The ambassador and the general were briefing me on the — the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Oct. 27, 2003

"[W]hether they be Christian, Jew, or Muslim, or Hindu, people have heard the universal call to love a neighbor just like they'd like to be called themselves." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., October 8, 2003

"See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction." —George W. Bush, Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 3, 2003

"Washington is a town where there's all kinds of allegations. You've heard much of the allegations. And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it. And that would be people inside the information who are the so-called anonymous sources, or people outside the information — outside the administration." —George W. Bush, Chicago, Sept. 30, 2003

"[W]e've had leaks out of the administrative branch, had leaks out of the legislative branch, and out of the executive branch and the legislative branch, and I've spoken out consistently against them, and I want to know who the leakers are." —George W. Bush, Chicago, Sept. 30, 2003

"I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 21, 2003

"I'm so pleased to be able to say hello to Bill Scranton. He's one of the great Pennsylvania political families." —George W. Bush, Drexel Hill, Penn., Sept. 15, 2003

"We had a chance to visit with Teresa Nelson who's a parent, and a mom or a dad." —George W. Bush, Jacksonville, Florida, Sept. 9, 2003

"As Luce reminded me, he said, without data, without facts, without information, the discussions about public education mean that a person is just another opinion." —George W. Bush, Jacksonville, Florida, Sept. 9, 2003

"I'm a follower of American politics." —George W. Bush, Crawford, Texas, Aug. 8, 2003

"[T]hat's just the nature of democracy. Sometimes pure politics enters into the rhetoric." —George W. Bush, Crawford, Texas, Aug. 8, 2003

"We had a good Cabinet meeting, talked about a lot of issues. Secretary of State and Defense brought us up to date about our desires to spread freedom and peace around the world." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 1, 2003

"Security is the essential roadblock to achieving the road map to peace." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., July 25, 2003

"Our country puts $1 billion a year up to help feed the hungry. And we're by far the most generous nation in the world when it comes to that, and I'm proud to report that. This isn't a contest of who's the most generous. I'm just telling you as an aside. We're generous. We shouldn't be bragging about it. But we are. We're very generous." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., July 16, 2003

"It's very interesting when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America, because of their steadfast and their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America." —George W. Bush, Dakar, Senegal, July 8, 2003

"My answer is bring them on."—On Iraqi militants attacking U.S. forces, George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., July 3, 2003

"You've also got to measure in order to begin to effect change that's just more — when there's more than talk, there's just actual — a paradigm shift." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., July 1, 2003

"I urge the leaders in Europe and around the world to take swift, decisive action against terror groups such as Hamas, to cut off their funding, and to support — cut funding and support, as the United States has done." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., June 25, 2003

"Iran would be dangerous if they have a nuclear weapon." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., June 18, 2003

"Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history—revisionist historians is what I like to call them." —George W. Bush, Elizabeth, N.J., June 16, 2003

"I am determined to keep the process on the road to peace." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., June 10, 2003

"The true strength of America happens when a neighbor loves a neighbor just like they'd like to be loved themselves." —George W. Bush, Elizabeth, N.J., June 16, 2003

"We are making steadfast progress." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., June 9, 2003

"I'm the master of low expectations." —George W. Bush, aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003

"I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things." —George W. Bush, aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003

"I recently met with the finance minister of the Palestinian Authority, was very impressed by his grasp of finances." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 29, 2003

"Oftentimes, we live in a processed world — you know, people focus on the process and not results." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 29, 2003

"I've got very good relations with President Mubarak and Crown Prince Abdallah and the King of Jordan, Gulf Coast countries." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 29, 2003

"All up and down the different aspects of our society, we had meaningful discussions. Not only in the Cabinet Room, but prior to this and after this day, our secretaries, respective secretaries, will continue to interact to create the conditions necessary for prosperity to reign." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 19, 2003

"First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 19, 2003

"We've had a great weekend here in the Land of the Enchanted." —George W. Bush, Albuquerque, N.M., May 12, 2003 (New Mexico's state nickname is "Land of Enchantment")

"I think war is a dangerous place." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 7, 2003

"We ended the rule of one of history's worst tyrants, and in so doing, we not only freed the American people, we made our own people more secure." —George W. Bush, Crawford, Texas, May 3, 2003

"We've got hundreds of sites to exploit, looking for the chemical and biological weapons that we know Saddam Hussein had prior to our entrance into Iraq." —George W. Bush, Santa Clara, Calif., May 2, 2003

"I don't bring God into my life to — to, you know, kind of be a political person." —George W. Bush, interview with Tom Brokaw aboard Air Force One, April 24, 2003

"You're free. And freedom is beautiful. And, you know, it'll take time to restore chaos and order — order out of chaos. But we will." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 13, 2003

"Perhaps one way will be, if we use military force, in the post-Saddam Iraq the U.N. will definitely need to have a role. And that way it can begin to get its legs, legs of responsibility back." —George W. Bush, the Azores, Portugal, March 16, 2003

"Now, we talked to Joan Hanover. She and her husband, George, were visiting with us. They are near retirement — retiring — in the process of retiring, meaning they're very smart, active, capable people who are retirement age and are retiring." —George W. Bush, Alexandria, Va., Feb. 12, 2003

"[The Space Shuttle] Columbia carried in its payroll classroom experiments from some of our students in America." —George W. Bush, Bethesda, Md., Feb. 3, 2003

"And, most importantly, Alma Powell, secretary of Colin Powell, is with us." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 30, 2003

"The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself." —George W. Bush, Grand Rapids, Mich., Jan. 29, 2003

"When Iraq is liberated, you will be treated, tried and persecuted as a war criminal." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 22, 2003

"One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 8, 2003

Bushisms from 2002

"The goals for this country are peace in the world. And the goals for this country are a compassionate American for every single citizen. That compassion is found in the hearts and souls of the American citizens." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2002

"I think the American people — I hope the American — I don't think, let me — I hope the American people trust me." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 18, 2002

"There's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to hug and that's me and I know what it's like." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2002.

"In other words, I don't think people ought to be compelled to make the decision which they think is best for their family." —George W. Bush, on smallpox vaccinations, Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2002

"Sometimes, Washington is one of these towns where the person — people who think they've got the sharp elbow is the most effective person." —George W. Bush, New Orleans, Dec. 3, 2002

"The law I sign today directs new funds and new focus to the task of collecting vital intelligence on terrorist threats and on weapons of mass production." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Nov. 27, 2002

"I'm the commander — see, I don't need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president." —George W. Bush, as quoted in Bob Woodward's "Bush at War"

"I know something about being a government. And you've got a good one." —George W. Bush, campaigning for Gov. Mike Huckabee, Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 4, 2002

"These people don't have tanks. They don't have ships. They hide in caves. They send suiciders out." —George W. Bush, speaking about terrorists, Portsmouth, N.H., Nov. 1, 2002

"I need to be able to move the right people to the right place at the right time to protect you, and I'm not going to accept a lousy bill out of the United Nations Senate." —George W. Bush, South Bend, Ind., Oct. 31, 2002

"John Thune has got a common-sense vision for good forest policy. I look forward to working with him in the United Nations Senate to preserve these national heritages." —George W. Bush, Aberdeen, S.D., Oct. 31, 2002

"Any time we've got any kind of inkling that somebody is thinking about doing something to an American and something to our homeland, you've just got to know we're moving on it, to protect the United Nations Constitution, and at the same time, we're protecting you." —George W. Bush, Aberdeen, S.D., Oct. 31, 2002

"I was proud the other day when both Republicans and Democrats stood with me in the Rose Garden to announce their support for a clear statement of purpose: you disarm, or we will." —George W. Bush, speaking about Saddam Hussein, Manchester, N.H., Oct. 5, 2002

"Let me tell you my thoughts about tax relief. When your economy is kind of ooching along, it's important to let people have more of their own money." —George W. Bush, Boston, Oct. 4, 2002

"We need an energy bill that encourages consumption." —George W. Bush, Trenton, N.J., Sept. 23, 2002

"People say, how can I help on this war against terror? How can I fight evil? You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in's house and say I love you." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2002

"You see, the Senate wants to take away some of the powers of the administrative branch." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2002

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002 (Click for video)

"See, we love — we love freedom. That's what they didn't understand. They hate things; we love things. They act out of hatred; we don't seek revenge, we seek justice out of love." —George W. Bush, Oklahoma City, Aug. 29, 2002

"There's no cave deep enough for America, or dark enough to hide." —George W. Bush, Oklahoma City, Aug. 29, 2002

"President Musharraf, he's still tight with us on the war against terror, and that's what I appreciate. He's a — he understands that we've got to keep Al Qaeda on the run, and that by keeping him on the run, it's more likely we will bring him to justice." —George W. Bush, Ruch, Ore., Aug. 22, 2002

"I'm a patient man. And when I say I'm a patient man, I mean I'm a patient man. Nothing he [Saddam Hussein] has done has convinced me — I'm confident the Secretary of Defense — that he is the kind of fellow that is willing to forgo weapons of mass destruction, is willing to be a peaceful neighbor, that is — will honor the people — the Iraqi people of all stripes, will — values human life. He hasn't convinced me, nor has he convinced my administration." —George W. Bush, Crawford, Texas, Aug. 21, 2002

"I'm thrilled to be here in the bread basket of America because it gives me a chance to remind our fellow citizens that we have an advantage here in America — we can feed ourselves." —George W. Bush, Stockton, Calif., Aug. 23, 2002

"The federal government and the state government must not fear programs who change lives, but must welcome those faith-based programs for the embetterment of mankind." —George W. Bush, Stockton, Calif., Aug. 23, 2002

"I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here." —George W. Bush, speaking at the President's Economic Forum in Waco, Texas, Aug. 13, 2002

"Tommy (Thompson) is a good listener, and he's a pretty good actor, too." —George W. Bush, apparently confusing his Health and Human Services secretary with Sen. Fred Thompson, Waco, Texas, Aug. 13, 2002

"There may be some tough times here in America. But this country has gone through tough times before, and we're going to do it again." —George W. Bush, Waco, Texas, Aug. 13, 2002

"The trial lawyers are very politically powerful. … But here in Texas we took them on and got some good medical — medical malpractice." —George W. Bush, Waco, Texas, Aug. 13, 2002

"I firmly believe the death tax is good for people from all walks of life all throughout our society." —George W. Bush, Waco, Texas, Aug. 13, 2002

"I love the idea of a school in which people come to get educated and stay in the state in which they're educated." —George W. Bush, Milwaukee, Wis., Aug. 14, 2002

"The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur." —George W. Bush, discussing the decline of the French economy with British Prime Minister Tony Blair

"There was no malfeance involved. This was an honest disagreement about accounting procedures. ... There was no malfeance, no attempt to hide anything." —George W. Bush, White House press conference, Washington, D.C., July 8, 2002

"I also understand how tender the free enterprise system can be." —George W. Bush, White House press conference, Washington, D.C., July 8, 2002

"Over 75 percent of white Americans own their home, and less than 50 percent of Hispanos and African Americans don't own their home. And that's a gap, that's a homeownership gap. And we've got to do something about it." —George W. Bush, Cleveland, Ohio, July 1, 2002

"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace." —George W. Bush, June 18, 2002

"I'd rather have them sacrificing on behalf of our nation than, you know, endless hours of testimony on congressional hill." —George W. Bush, Fort Meade, Maryland, June 4, 2002

"We hold dear what our Declaration of Independence says, that all have got uninalienable rights, endowed by a Creator." —George W. Bush, to community and religious leaders in Moscow, May 24, 2002

"We're working with Chancellor Schröder on what's called 10-plus-10-over-10: $10 billion from the U.S.,$10 billion from other members of the G7 over a 10-year period, to help Russia securitize the dismantling — the dismantled nuclear warheads." —George W. Bush, Berlin, Germany, May 23, 2002

"After all, a week ago, there were — Yasser Arafat was boarded up in his building in Ramallah, a building full of, evidently, German peace protestors and all kinds of people. They're now out. He's now free to show leadership, to lead the world." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 2, 2002

"The public education system in America is one of the most important foundations of our democracy. After all, it is where children from all over America learn to be responsible citizens, and learn to have the skills necessary to take advantage of our fantastic opportunistic society." —George W. Bush, May 1, 2002

"Do you have blacks, too?" —George W. Bush, to Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, Nov. 8, 2001, as reported in an April 28, 2002, Estado Sao Pauloan column by Fernando Pedreira, a close friend of President Cardoso

"This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating." —George W. Bush, as quoted by the New York Daily News, April 23, 2002

"It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 10, 2002

"And so, in my State of the — my State of the Union — or state — my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation — I asked Americans to give 4,000 years — 4,000 hours over the next — the rest of your life — of service to America. That's what I asked — 4,000 hours." —George W. Bush, Bridgeport, Conn., April 9, 2002

"Sometimes when I sleep at night I think of (Dr. Seuss's) 'Hop on Pop.'" —George W. Bush, in a speech about childhood education, Washington, D.C., April 2, 2002

"We've tripled the amount of money — I believe it's from $50 million up to $195 million available." —George W. Bush, Lima, Peru, March 23, 2002

"We've got pockets of persistent poverty in our society, which I refuse to declare defeat — I mean, I refuse to allow them to continue on. And so one of the things that we're trying to do is to encourage a faith-based initiative to spread its wings all across America, to be able to capture this great compassionate spirit." —George W. Bush, O'Fallon, Mo., Mar. 18, 2002

"I understand that the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002

"There's nothing more deep than recognizing Israel's right to exist. That's the most deep thought of all. ... I can't think of anything more deep than that right." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002

"My trip to Asia begins here in Japan for an important reason. It begins here because for a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific." —George W. Bush, who apparently forgot about a little something called World War II, Tokyo, Feb. 18, 2002

"Ann and I will carry out this equivocal message to the world: Markets must be open." —George W. Bush, at the swearing-in ceremony for Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, March 2, 2001

"He [Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi] said I want to make it very clear to you exactly what I intend to do and he talked about non-performing loans, the devaluation issue and regulatory reform and he placed equal emphasis on all three." —George W. Bush, who had meant to say "the deflation issue" rather than "the devaluation issue," and accidentally sent the Japanese Yen tumbling, Tokyo, Feb. 18, 2002

Bushisms from 2001

"But all in all, it's been a fabulous year for Laura and me." —George W. Bush, summing up his first year in office, Washington, D.C., Dec. 20, 2001

"I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah." —George W. Bush, at a White House Menorah lighting ceremony, Washington, D.C., Dec. 10, 2001

"We need to counter the shockwave of the evildoer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates." —George W. Bush, Oct. 4, 2001

"I am here to make an announcement that this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Oct. 3, 2001

"We are fully committed to working with both sides to bring the level of terror down to an acceptable level for both." —George W. Bush, after a meeting with congressional leaders, Washington, D.C., Oct. 2, 2001

"The folks who conducted to act on our country on September 11th made a big mistake. They underestimated America. They underestimated our resolve, our determination, our love for freedom. They misunderestimated the fact that we love a neighbor in need. They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the Commander-in-Chief, too." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 26, 2001

"When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C. Sept. 19, 2001

"The suicide bombings have increased. There's too many of them." —George W. Bush, Albuquerque, N.M., Aug. 15, 2001

"One of the interesting initiatives we've taken in Washington, D.C., is we've got these vampire-busting devices. A vampire is a — a cell deal you can plug in the wall to charge your cell phone." —George W. Bush, Denver, Aug. 14, 2001

"There's a lot of people in the Middle East who are desirous to get into the Mitchell process. And — but first things first. The — these terrorist acts and, you know, the responses have got to end in order for us to get the framework — the groundwork — not framework, the groundwork to discuss a framework for peace, to lay the—all right." —George W. Bush, referring to former Sen. George Mitchell's report on Middle East peace, Crawford, Texas, Aug. 13, 2001

"My administration has been calling upon all the leaders in the — in the Middle East to do everything they can to stop the violence, to tell the different parties involved that peace will never happen." —George W. Bush, Crawford, Texas, Aug, 13, 2001

"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it." —George W. Bush, July 27, 2001

"You saw the president yesterday. I thought he was very forward-leaning, as they say in diplomatic nuanced circles." —Goerge W. Bush, referring to his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, July 23, 2001

"I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe — I believe what I believe is right." —George W. Bush, in Rome, July 22, 2001

"It is white." —George W. Bush, asked by a child in Britain what the White House was like, July 19, 2001

"It's my honor to speak to you as the leader of your country. And the great thing about America is you don't have to listen unless you want to." —George W. Bush, speaking to recently sworn in immigrants on Ellis Island, July 10, 2001

"Well, it's an unimaginable honor to be the president during the Fourth of July of this country. It means what these words say, for starters. The great inalienable rights of our country. We're blessed with such values in America. And I — it's — I'm a proud man to be the nation based upon such wonderful values." —George W. Bush, visiting the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C., July 2, 2001

"I want to thank you for coming to the White House to give me an opportunity to urge you to work with these five senators and three congressmen, to work hard to get this trade promotion authority moving. The power that be, well most of the power that be, sits right here."—George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., June 18, 2001

"We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease." —George W. Bush, at a news conference in Europe, June 14, 2001

"It's amazing I won. I was running against peace, prosperity, and incumbency." —George W. Bush, June 14, 2001, speaking to Swedish Prime Minister Goran Perrson, unaware that a live television camera was still rolling.

"I haven't had a chance to talk, but I'm confident we'll get a bill that I can live with if we don't." —George W. Bush, referring to the McCain-Kennedy patients' bill of rights, June 13, 2001

"Can't living with the bill means it won't become law." —George W. Bush, referring to the McCain-Kennedy patients' bill of rights, June 13, 2001

"Anyway, I'm so thankful, and so gracious — I'm gracious that my brother Jeb is concerned about the hemisphere as well." —George W. Bush, June 4, 2001

"It's important for young men and women who look at the Nebraska champs to understand that quality of life is more than just blocking shots." —George W. Bush, in remarks to the University of Nebraska women's volleyball team, the 2001 national champions, May 31, 2001

"So on behalf of a well-oiled unit of people who came together to serve something greater than themselves, congratulations." —George W. Bush, in remarks to the University of Nebraska women's volleyball team, the 2001 national champions, May 31, 2001

"If a person doesn't have the capacity that we all want that person to have, I suspect hope is in the far distant future, if at all." —George W. Bush, May 22, 2001

"For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it." —George W. Bush, May 14

"There's no question that the minute I got elected, the storm clouds on the horizon were getting nearly directly overhead." —George W. Bush, May 11, 2001

"But I also made it clear to (Vladimir Putin) that it's important to think beyond the old days of when we had the concept that if we blew each other up, the world would be safe." —George W. Bush, May 1, 2001

"First, we would not accept a treaty that would not have been ratified, nor a treaty that I thought made sense for the country." —George W. Bush, on the Kyoto accord, April 24, 2001

"It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more trade, there's more commerce." —George W. Bush, at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, April 21, 2001

"Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican." —George W. Bush, declining to take reporters' questions during a photo op with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, April 21, 2001

"It is time to set aside the old partisan bickering and finger-pointing and name-calling that comes from freeing parents to make different choices for their children." —George W. Bush, on "parental empowerment in education," April 12, 2001

"I think we're making progress. We understand where the power of this country lay. It lays in the hearts and souls of Americans. It must lay in our pocketbooks. It lays in the willingness for people to work hard. But as importantly, it lays in the fact that we've got citizens from all walks of life, all political parties, that are willing to say, I want to love my neighbor. I want to make somebody's life just a little bit better." —George W. Bush, April 11, 2001

"This administration is doing everything we can to end the stalemate in an efficient way. We're making the right decisions to bring the solution to an end." —George W. Bush, April 10, 2001

"It would be helpful if we opened up ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). I think it's a mistake not to. And I would urge you all to travel up there and take a look at it, and you can make the determination as to how beautiful that country is." —George W. Bush, at a White House Press conference, March 29, 2001

"I've coined new words, like, misunderstanding and Hispanically." —George W. Bush, speaking at the Radio & Television Correspondents dinner, March 29, 2001

"A lot of times in the rhetoric, people forget the facts. And the facts are that thousands of small businesses — Hispanically owned or otherwise — pay taxes at the highest marginal rate." —George W. Bush, speaking to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, March 19, 2001

"But the true threats to stability and peace are these nations that are not very transparent, that hide behind the—that don't let people in to take a look and see what they're up to. They're very kind of authoritarian regimes. The true threat is whether or not one of these people decide, peak of anger, try to hold us hostage, ourselves; the Israelis, for example, to whom we'll defend, offer our defenses; the South Koreans." —George W. Bush, in a media roundtable discussion, March 13, 2001

"I do think we need for a troop to be able to house his family. That's an important part of building morale in the military." —George W. Bush, speaking at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, March 12, 2001

"I suspect that had my dad not been president, he'd be asking the same questions: How'd your meeting go with so-and-so? … How did you feel when you stood up in front of the people for the State of the Union Address—state of the budget address, whatever you call it." —George W. Bush, in an interview with the Washington Post, March 9, 2001

"Ann and I will carry out this equivocal message to the world: Markets must be open." —George W. Bush, at the swearing-in ceremony for Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, March 2, 2001

"My pan plays down an unprecedented amount of our national debt." —George W. Bush, in his budget address to Congress, Feb. 27, 2001

"I have said that the sanction regime is like Swiss cheese — that meant that they weren't very effective." —George W. Bush, during a White House press conference, Feb. 22, 2001

"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.'' —George W. Bush, Feb. 21, 2001

"It's good to see so many friends here in the Rose Garden. This is our first event in this beautiful spot, and it's appropriate we talk about policy that will affect people's lives in a positive way in such a beautiful, beautiful part of our national — really, our national park system, my guess is you would want to call it."—George W. Bush, Feb. 8, 2001

"We're concerned about AIDS inside our White House — make no mistake about it." —George W. Bush, Feb. 7, 2001

"There's no such thing as legacies. At least, there is a legacy, but I'll never see it." —George W. Bush, speaking to Catholic leaders at the White House, Jan. 31, 2001

"I appreciate that question because I, in the state of Texas, had heard a lot of discussion about a faith-based initiative eroding the important bridge between church and state." —George W. Bush, speaking to reporters, Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2001

"I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2001

"Then I went for a run with the other dog and just walked. And I started thinking about a lot of things. I was able to — I can't remember what it was. Oh, the inaugural speech, started thinking through that." —George W. Bush, in a pre-inaugural interview with U.S. News & World Report

"Redefining the role of the United States from enablers to keep the peace to enablers to keep the peace from peacekeepers is going to be an assignment." —George W. Bush, Jan. 14, 2001

"I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure." —George W. Bush, Jan. 18, 2001

"The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants." —George W. Bush, Jan. 14, 2001

"If he's — the inference is that somehow he thinks slavery is a — is a noble institution I would — I would strongly reject that assumption — that John Ashcroft is a open-minded, inclusive person."—George W. Bush, Jan. 14, 2001

"She's just trying to make sure Anthony gets a good meal — Antonio." —George W. Bush, on Laura Bush inviting Justice Antonin Scalia to dinner at the White House, Jan. 14, 2001

"I want it to be said that the Bush administration was a results-oriented administration, because I believe the results of focusing our attention and energy on teaching children to read and having an education system that's responsive to the child and to the parents, as opposed to mired in a system that refuses to change, will make America what we want it to be — a more literate country and a hopefuller country." —George W. Bush, Jan. 11, 2001

"It'll be hard to articulate." —George W. Bush, anticipating how he'll feel upon assuming the presidency, Jan. 2001

"I do remain confident in Linda. She'll make a fine labor secretary. From what I've read in the press accounts, she's perfectly qualified." —George W. Bush, commenting on Linda Chavez, Jan. 8, 2001

"I mean, these good folks are revolutionizing how businesses conduct their business. And, like them, I am very optimistic about our position in the world and about its influence on the United States. We're concerned about the short-term economic news, but long-term I'm optimistic. And so, I hope investors, you know—secondly, I hope investors hold investments for periods of time — that I've always found the best investments are those that you salt away based on economics." —George W. Bush, Austin, Texas, Jan. 4, 2001

"The person who runs FEMA is someone who must have the trust of the president. Because the person who runs FEMA is the first voice, often times, of someone whose life has been turned upside down hears from." —George W. Bush, Austin, Texas, Jan. 4, 2001

Bushisms from 2000

"Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods." —George W. Bush, Dec. 20, 2000

"I am mindful of the difference between the executive branch and the legislative branch. I assured all four of these leaders that I know the difference, and that difference is they pass the laws and I execute them." —George W. Bush, Dec. 20, 2000

"I also have picked a secretary for Housing and Human Development. Mel Martinez from the state of Florida." —George W. Bush, Dec. 20, 2000

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier — so long as I'm the dictator." —George W. Bush, Dec. 19, 2000

"Dick Cheney and I do not want this nation to be in a recession. We want anybody who can find work to be able to find work." —George W. Bush, 60 minutes II, CBS, December 5, 2000

"I knew it might put him in an awkward position that we had a discussion before finality has finally happened in this presidential race." —George W. Bush, describing a phone call to Sen. John Breaux. Crawford, Texas, Dec. 2, 2000

"The great thing about America is everybody should vote." —George W. Bush, Austin, Texas, Dec. 8, 2000

"As far as the legal hassling and wrangling and posturing in Florida, I would suggest you talk to our team in Florida led by Jim Baker." —George W. Bush, Crawford, Texas, Nov. 30, 2000

"The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law." —George W. Bush, Austin, Texas, Nov. 22, 2000

"They misunderestimated me." —George W. Bush, Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000

"If you don't stand for anything, you don't stand for anything!" —George W. Bush, Bellevue Community College, Nov. 2, 2000

"They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program." —George W. Bush, Nov. 2, 2000

"Laura and I are proud to call John and Michelle Engler our friends. I know you're proud to call him governor. What a good man the Englers are." —George W. Bush, Nov. 2000

"That's a chapter, the last chapter of the 20th, 20th, the 21st century that most of us would rather forget. The last chapter of the 20th century. This is the first chapter of the 21st century. " —George W. Bush, on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000

"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet." —George W. Bush, Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000

"I don't want nations feeling like that they can bully ourselves and our allies. I want to have a ballistic defense system so that we can make the world more peaceful, and at the same time I want to reduce our own nuclear capacities to the level commiserate with keeping the peace." —George W. Bush, Des Moines, Iowa, Oct. 23, 2000

"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." —George W. Bush, LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

"If affirmative action means what I just described, what I'm for, then I'm for it." —George W. Bush, during the third presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., October 18, 2000

"It's your money. You paid for it." —George W. Bush, LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

"Mr. Vice President, in all due respect, it is — I'm not sure 80 percent of the people get the death tax. I know this: 100 percent will get it if I'm the president." —George W. Bush, during the third presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., October 18, 2000

"I mean, there needs to be a wholesale effort against racial profiling, which is illiterate children." —George W. Bush, second presidential debate, Oct. 11, 2000

"Our priorities is our faith." —George W. Bush, Greensboro, N.C., Oct. 10, 2000

"I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions. I can't answer your question." —George W. Bush, in response to a question about whether he wished he could take back any of his answers in the first debate. Reynoldsburg, Ohio, Oct. 4, 2000

"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." —George W. Bush, Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000

"One of the common denominators I have found is that expectations rise above that which is expected." —George W. Bush, Los Angeles, Sept. 27, 2000

"I will have a foreign-handed foreign policy." —George W. Bush, Redwood, Calif., Sept. 27, 2000

"It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas." —George W. Bush, Beaverton, Ore., Sep. 25, 2000

"I am a person who recognizes the fallacy of humans." —George W. Bush, Oprah, Sept. 19, 2000

"A tax cut is really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness." —George W. Bush, The Edge With Paula Zahn, Sept. 18, 2000

"The idea of putting subliminable messages into ads is ridiculous." —George W. Bush, Sept. 2000

"The woman who knew that I had dyslexia — I never interviewed her." —George W. Bush, responding to a magazine article claiming he suffered from dyslexia, Orange, Calif., Sept. 15, 2000

"The best way to relieve families from time is to let them keep some of their own money." —George W. Bush, Westminster, Calif., Sept. 13, 2000

"They have miscalculated me as a leader." —George W. Bush, Westminster, Calif., Sept. 13, 2000

"I don't think we need to be subliminable about the differences between our views on prescription drugs." —George W. Bush, Orlando, Fla., Sept. 12, 2000

"This is what I'm good at. I like meeting people, my fellow citizens, I like interfacing with them." —George W. Bush, outside Pittsburgh, Sept. 8, 2000

"Listen, Al Gore is a very tough opponent. He is the incumbent. He represents the incumbency. And a challenger is somebody who generally comes from the pack and wins, if you're going to win. And that's where I'm coming from." —George W. Bush, Detroit, Sept. 7, 2000

"We'll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers." —George W. Bush, Houston, Texas, Sept. 6, 2000

"We don't believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans." —George W. Bush, Scranton, Pa., Sept. 6, 2000

"I regret that a private comment I made to the vice presidential candidate made it through the public airways." —George W. Bush, on his "major league asshole" remark, Allentown, Pa., Sept. 5, 2000.

"Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it, that's trustworthiness." —George W. Bush, in a CNN online chat, Aug. 30, 2000

"I don't know whether I'm going to win or not. I think I am. I do know I'm ready for the job. And, if not, that's just the way it goes." —George W. Bush, Des Moines, Iowa, Aug. 21, 2000

"We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile.'' —George W. Bush, Des Moines, Iowa, Aug. 21, 2000

"I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together." —George W. Bush, Bartlett, Tenn., Aug. 18, 2000

"Unfairly but truthfully, our party has been tagged as being against things. Anti-immigrant, for example. And we're not a party of anti-immigrants. Quite the opposite. We're a party that welcomes people." —George W. Bush, Cleveland, July 1, 2000

"There's not going to be enough people in the system to take advantage of people like me." —George W. Bush, on the coming Social Security crisis, Wilton, Conn., June 9, 2000

"Actually, I — this may sound a little West Texas to you, but I like it. When I'm talking about — when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking about me." —George W. Bush, Hardball, MSNBC, May 31, 2000

"I'm gonna talk about the ideal world, Chris. I've read — I understand reality. If you're asking me as the president, would I understand reality, I do." —George W. Bush on abortion, MSNBC's "Hardball," May 31, 2000

"I think we agree, the past is over." —George W. Bush, on his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000

"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it." —George W. Bush, Reuters, May 5, 2000

"The fact that he relies on facts — says things that are not factual — are going to undermine his campaign." —George W. Bush on Al Gore, New York Times, March 4, 2000

"Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis." —George W. Bush, CNBC, April 15, 2000

"I was raised in the West. The West of Texas. It's pretty close to California. In more ways than Washington, D.C., is close to California." —George W. Bush, in Los Angeles as quoted by the Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2000

"I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating." —George W. Bush, U.S. News & World Report, April 3, 2000

"Reading is the basics for all learning." —George W. Bush, announcing his "Reading First" initiative in Reston, Va., March 28, 2000

"I don't want to win? If that were the case, why the heck am I on the bus sixteen hours a day, shaking thousands of hands, giving hundreds of speeches, getting pillared in the press and cartoons and still staying on message to win?" —George W. Bush, Newsweek, Feb. 28, 2000

"I thought how proud I am to be standing up beside my dad. Never did it occur to me that he would become the gist for cartoonists." —George W. Bush, Newsweek, Feb. 28, 2000

"It is not Reaganesque to support a tax plan that is Clinton in nature.'' —George W. Bush, Los Angeles, Feb. 23, 2000

"I don't have to accept their tenants. I was trying to convince those college students to accept my tenants. And I reject any labeling me because I happened to go to the university." —George W. Bush, Today, Feb. 23, 2000

"I understand small business growth. I was one." —George W. Bush, New York Daily News, Feb. 19, 2000

"The senator has got to understand if he's going to have — he can't have it both ways. He can't take the high horse and then claim the low road." —George W. Bush, on Sen. John McCain, speaking to reporters in Florence, S.C., Feb. 17, 2000

"If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign." —George W. Bush, Hilton Head, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000

"We ought to make the pie higher." —George W. Bush, South Carolina Republican Debate, Feb. 15, 2000

"Put the 'off' button on." —George W. Bush, February 14, 2000, giving advice to parents troubled by the graphic fare on television

"I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth to the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth." —George W. Bush, Nashua, N.H., as quoted by Gail Collins in the New York Times, Feb. 1, 2000

"The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case." —George W. Bush, Pella, Iowa, as quoted by the San Antonio Express-News, Jan. 30, 2000

"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" —George W. Bush, Concord, N.H., Jan. 29, 2000

"This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve." —George W. Bush, speaking during "Perseverance Month" at Fairgrounds Elementary School in Nashua, New Hampshire, Jan. 28, 2000

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." —George W. Bush, Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000

"When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there." —George W. Bush, Iowa Western Community College, Jan 21, 2000

"What I am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think vulcanize society. So I don't know how that fits into what everybody else is saying, their relative positions, but that's my position.'' —George W. Bush, as quoted by Molly Ivins, the San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 21, 2000

"The administration I'll bring is a group of men and women who are focused on what's best for America, honest men and women, decent men and women, women who will see service to our country as a great privilege and who will not stain the house." —George W. Bush, Des Moines Register debate, Iowa, Jan. 15, 2000

"Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" —George W. Bush, Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

"If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow." —George W. Bush, Jan. 2000

"One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures." —George W. Bush

"It was just inebriating what Midland was all about then." —George W. Bush, reflecting in 1994 about growing up in Midland, Texas

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*whew* That’s a lot of funny stuff right there! Now, guys, I realize that everyone says extremely dumb things sometimes…me, you, the guy next to you – yeah, I’m talking about YOU – and that this is certainly NOT a reason not to vote for someone. That wasn’t the point of this post. The point is this:

1) It’s hilarious some of the things that come out of this guy’s mouth/brain. He’s the LAST person that should be talking about making “amazing quotes” throughout political history.
2) It’s just damned funny. LOL & LMAO funny x999, in fact…

In short, don’t vote against Bush because of his flawed speeches or quotes. Judge Bush by his track record in office, the failed way he’s run our country. But keep in mind that the man who has made so many colossal, idiotic comments is the man who also rushed us into a war ill-prepared; who has run our economy to ruin; who’s made it a living hell for the middle class; who’s made so MANY mistakes during his four years in office so far.
(taken from http://politicalhumor.about.com/)