Say what you will, free speech is alive and kicking in the USA. However, veteran Washington-based journalist Doug Thompson, who launched Capitol Hill Blue, the first political website on the internet in 1994, is pushing the envelope. (See below.) He may receive a friendly visit from the U.S. Secret Service, just as a precaution. My only criticism is that Bush-bashing misses the mark. It is easy to bash G.W. Bush, especially now. He certainly deserves it. But such excoriations of POTUS 43 do not accurately describe the problem or explain what happened. Dumping all the blame on Bush is counter-productive. It transforms Bush into an all-purpose, convenient punching bag, and it gives the Democrats and the whole Washington Establishment a free pass.

They certainly do not want it revealed that the destruction of Iraq was a joint project, which commenced with the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998" which declared that the policy of the United States was to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power. Bill Clinton and the Democrats supported that position then and the Democratic leadership in Congress voted to authorize Wolfowitz's War in 2002. You see the results.

Bush has been programmed. By himself, he is of no consequence. His ideas, such as they are, and his outlook with respect to foreign policy, specifically as regards the Middle East, have been drummed into him by Dick Cheney and Cheney's gang of "neocons", and by Dr. Condoleezza Rice, and by that insufferable bubble head, Karl Rove, a.k.a., "Bush's Brain". Bush was a nobody, a mediocre student and a frat house boozer, who became Governor of Texas. Bush may have done a decent job as Governor. He should have stayed in Texas. It is no crime to be a poor student and a boozer. But Bush had no business running for President.

Bush remained supremely ignorant and a tabula rasa with respect to foreign affairs, having never traveled outside the United States. The first time he did, it was for purely political reasons--to take a helicopter ride over Israel with Ariel Sharon. This trip was considered a necessity by Rove before Bush ran for President. Get the picture?

Rove's political strategy--based on the realities of Ex America, where both political parties are bought by campaign contributions from special interest groups--perfectly meshed with the "neocon" Middle East agenda. The ultimate concern for the "neocons" was to advance whatever strategic objective Sharon and his associates in Tel Aviv had at any moment in time. For them, the 9/11 atrocity was a godsend.

Condoleezza Rice was not a "neocon", but her fatuous talk has served the "neocon" program and the Israel Lobby in every respect. Dr. Rice loves to hear herself talk. It is all hogwash which she apparently believes. The public still swallows it. She is a complete waste of time. As for Dick Cheney, the man who has been running the show from the start, it remains an authentic mystery why, and at what point in the proceedings, Cheney lost his judgment, if not his mind--but lost it he has. The danger came from what we did not see and could not imagine.

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Capitol Hill Blue...

The real crimes against humanity

DOUG THOMPSON / December 30, 2006 / Capitolhillblue.com

With the brutal hanging of Saddam Hussein in the pre-dawn hours Saturday, the transformation of the United States of America from world power to international exporter of terror is complete.

While one can argue that Hussein deserved to die for his many crimes against humanity, the question that history will ask is whether or not he deserved to die at the hands of a nation that invaded his country without provocation and orchestrated a trial to fulfill a political agenda of an American President who, himself, may be both a madman and greater threat to world peace.

The blood from Hussein's death, along with the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and nearly 3,000 Americans who have died since the illegal and lies-based invasion of Iraq stains forever the hands of President George W. Bush and, because of his position, this nation.

We did not invade Iraq to defend our shores. We did not invade to avenge the terrorist attacks of 9/11. We invaded to serve a personal and political agenda of one man who used lies and demagoguery to launch a war that should have him on trial for crimes against humanity.

Saddam Hussein may have died for his war crimes but the man who orchestrated his death - George W. Bush - is no less a war criminal and his criminal action will haunt this nation and the world long after Hussein becomes just a footnote in history.

Iraq today spirals deeper and deeper into uncontrollable civil war, a nation that stands as a battle-ravaged shell of its former self. Millions of Iraqis spend days without power, hungry from a shortage of food and fearful of the bloody violence that has become a normal part of their lives - lives shattered not by Saddam Hussein but by George W. Bush.

It is ironic that Bush, the young coward who hid out in the Texas Air Guard to avoid service in Vietnam, now uses the National Guard and Reserves to fight a war for him in Iraq. He has sent more Guardsmen and Reservists to their death than any President in modern history.

Perhaps it is fitting that Bush and his wife hid out from a tornado, stashed away in a military armored vehicle while the Iraqi puppet government of the United States led Hussein to the gallows in Baghdad. Once again, the man who has no qualms about sending others to their deaths hid while others carried out his bidding and more Americans died in his bloody war.

Like most despots and war criminals, Bush is a coward, a cardboard cowboy who lives an illusionary life surrounded by his own fantasies, He began planning his invasion of Iraq before assuming the Presidency on January 20, 2001, and used the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to invade.

If this nation and the world survive the lunacy of his actions, history will no doubt prove the real crimes originated not in a palace in Baghdad but in the Oval Office of the White House. And that same history may conclude the wrong man swung at the end of a rope on this last Saturday of 2006.

Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue