7. Bringing Them To Justice In his very first rebuttal, Bush bragged that "the A.Q Khan network has been brought to justice." For those of you not familiar with A.Q Khan, he's a Pakistani nuclear physicist who back in February of this year admitted to exporting nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya.
Want to know how the Bush administration brought Khan to justice? Well, after owning up to his crimes, he was pardoned by President Musharraf. A month later, during a visit to Islamabad, Colin Powell designated Pakistan a major non-NATO ally - which allows them to purchase a wide array of U.S. weaponry - and refused to criticize Musharraf for letting Khan off the hook.
Why? According to the New Republic (or see Idiots 163), because the Bush administration was at the time putting heavy pressure on Pakistan to capture or kill "High Value Targets" - Al Qaeda leaders - before the election. Specifically, "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July."
Those dates, of course, happily coincided with the Democratic National Convention.
So now you know how the Bush administration brought A.Q. Khan to justice - by letting him go free so that the Pakistani government would announce terrorist captures on dates which were politically convenient for George W. Bush.
Fortunately, even the Bush administration couldn't be this brazen, and the plan never came to fruition. Well, unless you count Pakistan's subsequent capture of a top Al Qaeda terrorist, which just happened to be announced the day of John Kerry's acceptance speech at the Convention. But that was probably just a coincidence.
This is a "team" blog. We are a bunch of
Americans, whose rising distress
in our leader's decisions brought us together to make this site.
As Bush said, he's a "uniter." Many of us have never even met.
That's the internet for you.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the
president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is
not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American people."
- Teddy Roosevelt
"Government has a final responsibility for the well-being of
its citizenship. If private cooperative endeavor fails to provide work
for willing hands and relief for the unfortunate, those suffering
hardship from no fault of their own have a right to call upon the
Government for aid; and a government worthy of its name must make
fitting response."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions, but laws must and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
- Thomas Jefferson
"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain
degree."
- James Madison
"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves." - John F. Kennedy
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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