A view from the left side of the fence.

[Old-Navy]

I found this kind of interesting.  It's a long read.  I didn't write it so don't flame me, okay??   




Where Bush's Arrogance Has Taken Us

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown.

An illegal war, a long list of eroded rights, and a country run by and for the benefit of corporate campaign donors -- all courtesy of the imperial presidency.

During his gubernatorial days in Texas, George W let slip a one-sentence thought that unintentionally gave us a peek into his political soul. In hindsight, it should've been loudly broadcast all across our land so people could've absorbed it, contemplated its portent?and roundly rejected the guy's bid for the presidency. On May 21, 1999, reacting to some satirical criticism of him, Bush snapped: "There ought to be limits to freedom."

Gosh, so many freedoms to limit, so little time! But in five short years, the BushCheneyRummy regime has made remarkable strides toward dismembering the genius of the Founders, going at our Constitution and Bill of Rights like famished alligators chasing a couple of poodles.

Forget about such niceties as separation of powers, checks and balances (crucial to the practice of democracy), the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and open government-these guys are on an autocratic tear. Whenever they've been challenged (all too rarely), they simply shout "war on terror," "commander-in-chief," "support our troops," "executive privilege," "I'm the decider," or some other slam-the-door political phrase designed to silence any opposition. Indeed, opponents are branded "enemies" who must be demonized, personally attacked, and, if possible, destroyed. Bush's find-the-loopholes lawyers assert that a president has the right to lie (even about going to war), to imprison people indefinitely (without charges, lawyers, hearings, courts, or hope), to torture people, to spy on Americans without court or congressional review, to prosecute reporters who dare to report, to rewrite laws on executive whim?and on and on.

Here, we are pleased to give you a sense of the enormity of what Bush & Company are doing under the cloak of war and executive privilege in a handy-dandy poster format.

The War President

"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., August 2004

Number of Americans killed in Bush's Iraq war as of August 2006: 2577
What Bush press flack Tony Snow said the day the total number of American dead reached 2,500: "It's a number"
Number of Americans killed since Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" on May 1, 2003: 2,438
Number of Americans wounded (a vague term that includes such horrors as brain damage, limb blasted off, eyes blown out, psyche shattered, etc.) in Bush's war:
Official count: 18,777
Independent count: up to 48,000
Estimated number of Iraqi civilians (men, women, and children) killed in Bush's war since Saddam Hussein was ousted: 38,960
For Iraqis, the bloodiest month of the war so far: June 2006 more than 100 civilians killed per day
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit's advice to Iraqis who see TV reports of innocent civilians being killed by occupying troops: "Change the channel."
Percent of Iraqis who want American troops to leave: 82
Stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction found in Iraq since Bush committed Americans to war in 2003 on the basis that Saddam had and was about to use WMDs: 0
Number of nations in the world: 192
Number that joined Bush's "Coalition of the Willing" (COW) to invade Iraq: 48
(The list includes such military powers as Angola, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Latvia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Romania, Solomon Islands, and Uganda.)
Number of COW nations that actually sent any troops to Iraq: 39
(Of these, 32 sent fewer than 1,000 troops. Many sent no fighting units, deploying only engineers, trainers, humanitarian units, and other noncombat personnel.)
Number of the 39 COW nations contributing troops that have since withdrawn them: 17
(An additional 7 have announced plans to withdraw all or part of their contingents this year.)
Number of COW troops in Iraq: 150,000
Number of these that are U.S. troops: 139,000
Number of White House officials and cabinet members who have any of their immediate family in Bush's war: 0
Follow the Money

We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
-"Howling Paul" Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, in testimony to Congress, March 2003

The official White House claim before the invasion of what the war and occupation would cost U.S. taxpayers: $50 billion
As of July 2006, the total amount appropriated by Congress for Bush's ongoing war and occupation: $295,634,921,248
Current Pentagon spending per month in Iraq: $8 billion (or $185,185.19 per minute)
Assuming all troops return home by 2010, the projected "real costs" for the war: More than $1 trillion
(includes veterans' pay and medical costs, interest on the billions Bush has borrowed to pay for his war, etc.)
Bonus Stat!

Annual salary of Stuart Baker, hired by the Bush!tes to be the White House "Director for Lessons Learned": $106,641
Number of lessons that Bush appears to have learned: 0
The Imperial Presidency

"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 the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
George W., August, 2002.

Signing Statements

When signing a particular congressional act into law, a few presidents have occasionally issued a "signing statement" to clarify their understanding of what Congress intended. These have not had the force of law and have been used discreetly in the past.

Very quietly, however, Bush has radically increased both the number and reach of these statements, essentially asserting that the president can arbitrarily decide which laws he will obey.

Number of signing statements issued by Bush as of July 2006: more than 800
(This is more than the combined total of all 42 previous presidents.)
A few examples of congressionally passed laws he has effectively annulled through these extralegal signing statements:

a ban against torture of prisoners by the U.S. military
a requirement that the FBI periodically report to Congress on how it is using the Patriot Act to search our homes and secretly seize people's private papers
a ban against storage in military databases of intelligence about Americans that was obtained illegally
a directive for the executive branch to transmit scientific information to Congress "uncensored and without delay" when requested
Provision of the Constitution clearly stating that Congress alone has the power "to make all laws": Article 1, Section 8
Provision of the Constitution clearly stating that the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed": Article 2, Section 3
Name of the young lawyer in the Reagan administration who wrote a 1986 strategy memo on how to pervert the use of signing statements in order to concentrate more power in the executive branch, as Bush is now doing: Samuel Alito, named to the U.S. Supreme Court by Bush this year
National Security Letters

These are secret executive writs that the infamous 2001 Patriot Act authorizes the FBI to issue to public libraries, internet firms, banks, and others. Upon receiving an NSL, the institution or firm is required to turn over any private records it holds on you, me, or whomever the agents have chosen to search.

Who authorizes the FBI to issue these secret writs? The FBI itself.

Surely the agents have to get a search warrant, a grand jury subpoena, or a court's approval? No
But to issue an NSL, an agent must show probable cause that the person being searched has committed some crime, right? No
Well, don't officials have to inform citizens that their records are being seized so they can defend themselves or protest? No
Number of NSLs issued by various FBI offices last year alone: 9,254
NSA Eavesdropping

In 2001, Bush issued a secret order for the National Security Agency to begin vacuuming up massive numbers of telephone and internet exchanges by U.S. citizens, illegally seizing this material without any judicial approval or informing Congress, as required by law.

Number of Americans who have had their phone and internet communications taken by NSA: Just about everyone!
(NSA is tapping into the entire database of long-distance calls and internet messages run through AT&T and probably other companies as well.)
In May of this year, the Justice Department abruptly halted an internal investigation that was trying to uncover the name of the top officials who had authorized NSA's warrantless, unconstitutional program. Who killed this probe, which was requested by Congress? George W himself! (He directed NSA simply to refuse security clearances for the department's legal investigators.)
What happened to NSA Director Michael Hayden, who was the key architect of Bush's illegal eavesdropping program and the one who would've formally denied clearances to Justice Department investigators? In May, Bush promoted him to head the CIA.
This past May, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales warned that journalists who report on NSA's spy program could be prosecuted under the antiquated Espionage Act of 1917.
Times in U.S. history this act has been used to go after the press: 0
Margin by which the U.S. House in 1917 voted down an amendment to make the Espionage Act apply to journalists: 184-144
Interesting Fact:

The New York Times reported this June that Bush was running another spy program. This one was snooping through international banking records, including millions of bank transactions done by innocent Americans. George reacted angrily to the exposure, branding the Times report "disgraceful" and declaring that revelation of his spy program "does great harm to the United States." The White House and its right-wing acolytes promptly launched a "Hate-the-Times" political campaign.

Name the guy who was the first to reveal that such a bank-spying program was in the works: George W. Bush! At a September 2001 press conference, he announced that he'd just signed an executive order to monitor all international bank transactions.

Watch Lists

From the Bush!tes' ill-fated Total Information Awareness program (meant to monitor all of our computerized transactions) to the robust efforts by Rumsfeld's Pentagon to barge into the domestic surveillance game, America under Bush has fast become "The Watched Society."

Number of data-mining programs being run secretly on us by the federal government: Nearly 200 separate programs at 52 agencies
Number of "local activity reports" submitted to the Pentagon in 2004 under the "Threat and Local Observation Notice" program (TALON), which directed military officers throughout our country to keep an eye on suspicious activities by civilians: More than 5,000
(They included such "threats" as peace demonstrators and 10 activists protesting outside Halliburton's headquarters.)
Number of official "watch lists" maintained by the feds: More than a dozen run by 9 different agencies
Number of Americans on the Transportation Security Administration's "No- Fly" list: That's a secret.
(TSA concedes that it's in the tens of thousands. In 2005 alone, some 30,000 people called TSA to complain that their names were mistakenly on the list.)
Most famous citizen who is on the No-Fly list and has been repeatedly pulled aside by TSA for additional screenings at airports: Sen. Ted Kennedy
How can you get your name removed from TSA list? That's a secret.
Name That Guy!

In 1966, a young Republican congressman stood against his party's elders to cosponsor the original Freedom of Information Act, valiantly declaring that public records "are public property." He said that FOIA "will make it considerably more difficult for secrecy-minded bureaucrats to decide arbitrarily that the people should be denied access to information on the conduct of government."

Who was that virtuous lawmaker? Donald Rumsfeld!

Only eight years later, Gerald Ford's chief of staff strongly urged him to veto the continuation of FOIA. Who was that dastardly staffer? Donald Rumsfeld!

Who is now one of the chief "secrecy-minded bureaucrats" who routinely violates OIA's principles? Right, him again!

Regime of Secrecy

"Democracies die behind closed doors."
-- Appeals court judge Damon Keith, ruling in a 2002 case that the Bush!tes cannot hold deportation hearings in secret

Increase in the number of government documents marked "secret" between 2001 and 2004: 81 percent
Number of government documents stamped "secret" in 2001: 8.6 million
Number of government documents stamped "secret" in 2004: 15.6 million (a new record)
Cost to taxpayers of classifying and securing documents in 2004: $7.2 billion ($460 per document)
Number of previously declassified documents that the CIA tried to reclassify as "secret" under a 2001 secret agreement with the National Archives, even though many had already been published and some date back to the Korean War: 25,315
Number of different "official designations" the government now has to classify nonsecret information so it still is kept out of the public's reach: Between 50 and 60
(They include such stamps as CBU: Controlled But Unclassified, SBU: Sensitive But Unclassified, and LOU: Limited Official Use Only.)
The only vice-president in history who has claimed that he, like the president, has the inherent authority to mark "secret" on any document he chooses: "Buckshot" Cheney
Number of documents Cheney has classified: That's a secret.
(He claims he does not have to report this to anyone -- not even the president.)
Of the 7,045 advisory committee meetings held by the Bush!tes in 2004, percentage that were completely closed to the public, contrary to the clear intent of the Federal Advisory Committee Act: 64 percent (a new record)
Number of times from 1953 to1975 (the peak of the Cold War) that presidents invoked the "state secrets" privilege, which grants them unilateral power in extraordinary instances literally to shut down court cases on the grounds they could reveal secrets that the president doesn't want disclosed: 4
Number of times the same privilege was invoked between 2001 and 2006: At least 24
Under Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno issued an official memo instructing agencies to release as much information as possible to the public. In October 2001, AG John Ashcroft issued a memo canceling Reno's approach, expressly instructing agencies to look for reasons to deny the public access to information and pledging to support the denials if the agencies were sued.
2005 FOIA requests still awaiting a response at year's end: 31 percent
(a one-third increase over the 2004 backlog)
Median waiting time to get an answer on FOIA request from Bush's justice department: 863 days
Halliburton

"Halliburton is a unique kind of company."
-- Dick Cheney, September 200

Total value of contracts given to Halliburton for work in the Bush-Cheney "War on Terror" since 2001: More than $15 billion
Amount that Halliburton pays to the Third World laborers it imports into Iraq to do the work in its dining facilities, laundries, etc.: $6 per 12-hour day (50 cents an hour)
Amount that Halliburton bills us taxpayers for each of these workers: $50 a day
Amount that Halliburton bills U.S. taxpayers for:
A case of sodas: $45
Washing a bag of laundry: $100
Halliburton's campaign contributions in Bush-Cheney election years:
In 2000: $285,252 (96 percent to Republicans)
In 2004: $145,500 (89 percent to Republicans)
Plus $365,065 from members of its board of directors (99 percent to Republicans)
Increase in Halliburton's profits since Bush-Cheney took office in 2000: 379 percent
Halliburton's 2005 profit: $1.1 billion
(highest in the corporation's 86-year history
"Since leaving Halliburton to become George Bush's vice-president, I've severed all of my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind."
Former CEO Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, September 2003

Annual payments that Cheney has received from Halliburton since he's been vice-president:
2001: $205,298
2002: $162,392
2003: $178,437
2004: $194,852
2005: $211,465
Cash bonus paid to Cheney by Halliburton just before he took office: $1.4 million
Retirement package he was given in 2000 after only 5 years as CEO: $20 million
Number of times in the past two years that Republicans have killed Sen. Byron Dorgan's amendment to set up a Truman-style committee on war profiteering to investigate Halliburton: 3
Naughty word Cheney used during a Senate photo session in 2004 to assail Sen. Patrick Leahy, who had criticized Cheney's ongoing ties to Halliburton: "Go #@! percent yourself.

[docbyers]

...and from the other side of the fence:

It seems the Bush administration — being a group of sane, informed adults — has been secretly tapping Arab terrorists without warrants.

During the CIA raids in Afghanistan in early 2002 that captured Abu Zubaydah and his associates, the government seized computers, cell phones and personal phone books. Soon after the raids, the National Security Agency began trying to listen to calls placed to the phone numbers found in al-Qaida Rolodexes.

That was true even if you were "an American citizen" making the call from U.S. territory — like convicted al-Qaida associate Iyman Faris who, after being arrested, confessed to plotting to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge. If you think the government should not be spying on people like Faris, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

By intercepting phone calls to people on Zubaydah's speed-dial, the NSA arrested not only "American citizen" Faris, but other Arab terrorists, including al-Qaida members plotting to bomb British pubs and train stations.

The most innocent-sounding target of the NSA's spying cited by the Treason Times was "an Iranian-American doctor in the South who came under suspicion because of what one official described as dubious ties to Osama bin Laden." Whatever softening adjectives the Times wants to put in front of the words "ties to Osama bin Laden," we're still left with those words — "ties to Osama bin Laden." The government better be watching that person.

The Democratic Party has decided to express indignation at the idea that an American citizen who happens to be a member of al-Qaida is not allowed to have a private conversation with Osama bin Laden. If they run on that in 2008, it could be the first time in history a Republican president takes even the District of Columbia.

On this one, I'm pretty sure Americans are going with the president.

If the Democrats had any brains, they'd distance themselves from the cranks demanding Bush's impeachment for listening in on terrorists' phone calls to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. (Then again, if they had any brains, they'd be Republicans.)

To the contrary! It is Democrats like Sen. Barbara Boxer who are leading the charge to have Bush impeached for spying on people with Osama's cell phone number.

That's all you need to know about the Democrats to remember that they can't be trusted with national security. (That and Jimmy Carter.)

Thanks to the Treason Times' exposure of this highly classified government program, admitted terrorists like Iyman Faris are going to be appealing their convictions. Perhaps they can call Democratic senators as expert witnesses to testify that it was illegal for the Bush administration to eavesdrop on their completely private calls to al-Zarqawi.

Democrats and other traitors have tried to couch their opposition to the NSA program in civil libertarian terms, claiming Bush could have gone to the court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and gotten warrants for the interceptions.

The Treason Times reported FISA virtually rubber-stamps warrant requests all the time. As proof, the Times added this irrelevant statistic: In 2004, "1,754 warrants were approved." No one thought to ask how many requests were rejected.

Over and over we heard how the FISA court never turns down an application for a warrant. USA Today quoted liberal darling and author James Bamford saying: "The FISA court is as big a rubber stamp as you can possibly get within the federal judiciary." He "wondered why Bush sought the warrantless searches, since the FISA court rarely rejects search requests," said USA Today.

Put aside the question of why it's so vitally important to get a warrant from a rubber-stamp court if it's nothing but an empty formality anyway. After all the ballyhoo about how it was duck soup to get a warrant from FISA, I thought it was pretty big news when it later turned out that the FISA court had been denying warrant requests from the Bush administration like never before. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the FISA court "modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than from the four previous presidential administrations combined."

In the 20 years preceding the attack of 9/11, the FISA court did not modify — much less reject — one single warrant request. But starting in 2001, the judges "modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration." In the years 2003 and 2004, the court issued 173 "substantive modifications" to warrant requests and rejected or "deferred" six warrant requests outright.

What would a Democrat president have done at that point? Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack. Also, perhaps as a gesture of inclusion and tolerance, hold an Oval Office reception for the suspected al-Qaida operatives. After another terrorist attack, I'm sure a New York Times reporter could explain to the victims' families that, after all, the killer's ties to al-Qaida were merely "dubious" and the FISA court had a very good reason for denying the warrant request.

Every once in a while the nation needs little reminder of why the Democrats can't be trusted with national security. This is today's lesson.

[docbyers]

Coup is right, of course.  Mr. Hightower uses his numbers like a drunkard uses a lamppost- for support rather than illumination.  His numbers are mostly wrong, though (like on the number of WMDs found, for example), so his credibility is gone...  My brother-in-law has a photo of himself standing next to a big-ass Iraqi missle; he tells me these missles were used to deliver biological weapons, and could easily be converted for the serious stuff.  I guess Mr. Hightower never saw the photograph...

[Old-Navy]

Hey.. I just posted that stuff!  I NEVER said I went along with it!   Can't stand the s.o.b. personally

[Old-Navy]

Well.. after getting NRTS'd for it, you can rest assured I won't be doing that AGAIN!  hahahahahaha..

[dallanta]

  I am no fan of Bush.  Then again, I am no fan of just about all the politicians we do have.
  I am so far left I am right, or so far right I am left, hell I dont know.
  Elect me President, I will make me happy, at least untill I am killed.

[docbyers]

I'm not 100% behind the President, either.  His domestic policies (like immigration) make me wonder what the heck he's thinking.  On the other hand, I'm totally behind him in his approach to the war on terror.  I firmly believe he's doing the right thing, and that the Democrats would put our country in grave danger if they were in charge of things...

I have fundamental disagreements with most of the tenets of the Democratic Party (abortion, capital punishment, gay marriage, taxes, defense, the environment, U.N. support, foreign policy, etc., etc., etc...  So, I'll continue to vote for candidates that best represent my values, whatever party they're from.  They're mostly Republican, but I don't vote for them just because there's a (R) next to their name on the ballot.

[cobychuck]

    And now they've really topped it off. (more saving the guilty)  Gitmo detainees will now have protection under the Geneva Convention.  Which means they'll get some bulls*** ACLU lawyer who will twist and spin the truth until the gulible masses believe that they are just victims of Bush's "unjust" war. 
    And a note about the liberal acedemia, several professors have given credit to several conspiracy theories, most notably that the 9-11 attacks were orchestrated from inside the White House.  Of course, only the nutjobs in this country would put any real stock in this crap.  It's all just one more thing to discredit the good that Bush has done from the attack.
    To continue the left's lunacy, a member of the Clinton administration is attacking the mini-series that ABC will air that dramatizes the events leading up to 9-11.  What do you think they said?  They blasted the validity of everything shown about the Clinton policies and actions but when it came to the stuff shown about Bush, they said it was accurate.  Now, I know that it will not be completely accurate but their refusal to accept their failures in handeling the Islamic threat is getting rediculous. 

[docbyers]

It seems the Bush administration — being a group of sane, informed adults — has been secretly tapping Arab terrorists without warrants.

During the CIA raids in Afghanistan in early 2002 that captured Abu Zubaydah and his associates, the government seized computers, cell phones and personal phone books. Soon after the raids, the National Security Agency began trying to listen to calls placed to the phone numbers found in al-Qaida Rolodexes.

That was true even if you were "an American citizen" making the call from U.S. territory — like convicted al-Qaida associate Iyman Faris who, after being arrested, confessed to plotting to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge. If you think the government should not be spying on people like Faris, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

By intercepting phone calls to people on Zubaydah's speed-dial, the NSA arrested not only "American citizen" Faris, but other Arab terrorists, including al-Qaida members plotting to bomb British pubs and train stations.

The most innocent-sounding target of the NSA's spying cited by the Treason Times was "an Iranian-American doctor in the South who came under suspicion because of what one official described as dubious ties to Osama bin Laden." Whatever softening adjectives the Times wants to put in front of the words "ties to Osama bin Laden," we're still left with those words — "ties to Osama bin Laden." The government better be watching that person.

The Democratic Party has decided to express indignation at the idea that an American citizen who happens to be a member of al-Qaida is not allowed to have a private conversation with Osama bin Laden. If they run on that in 2008, it could be the first time in history a Republican president takes even the District of Columbia.

On this one, I'm pretty sure Americans are going with the president.

If the Democrats had any brains, they'd distance themselves from the cranks demanding Bush's impeachment for listening in on terrorists' phone calls to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. (Then again, if they had any brains, they'd be Republicans.)

To the contrary! It is Democrats like Sen. Barbara Boxer who are leading the charge to have Bush impeached for spying on people with Osama's cell phone number.

That's all you need to know about the Democrats to remember that they can't be trusted with national security. (That and Jimmy Carter.)

Thanks to the Treason Times' exposure of this highly classified government program, admitted terrorists like Iyman Faris are going to be appealing their convictions. Perhaps they can call Democratic senators as expert witnesses to testify that it was illegal for the Bush administration to eavesdrop on their completely private calls to al-Zarqawi.

Democrats and other traitors have tried to couch their opposition to the NSA program in civil libertarian terms, claiming Bush could have gone to the court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and gotten warrants for the interceptions.

The Treason Times reported FISA virtually rubber-stamps warrant requests all the time. As proof, the Times added this irrelevant statistic: In 2004, "1,754 warrants were approved." No one thought to ask how many requests were rejected.

Over and over we heard how the FISA court never turns down an application for a warrant. USA Today quoted liberal darling and author James Bamford saying: "The FISA court is as big a rubber stamp as you can possibly get within the federal judiciary." He "wondered why Bush sought the warrantless searches, since the FISA court rarely rejects search requests," said USA Today.

Put aside the question of why it's so vitally important to get a warrant from a rubber-stamp court if it's nothing but an empty formality anyway. After all the ballyhoo about how it was duck soup to get a warrant from FISA, I thought it was pretty big news when it later turned out that the FISA court had been denying warrant requests from the Bush administration like never before. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the FISA court "modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than from the four previous presidential administrations combined."

In the 20 years preceding the attack of 9/11, the FISA court did not modify — much less reject — one single warrant request. But starting in 2001, the judges "modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration." In the years 2003 and 2004, the court issued 173 "substantive modifications" to warrant requests and rejected or "deferred" six warrant requests outright.

What would a Democrat president have done at that point? Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack. Also, perhaps as a gesture of inclusion and tolerance, hold an Oval Office reception for the suspected al-Qaida operatives. After another terrorist attack, I'm sure a New York Times reporter could explain to the victims' families that, after all, the killer's ties to al-Qaida were merely "dubious" and the FISA court had a very good reason for denying the warrant request.

Every once in a while the nation needs little reminder of why the Democrats can't be trusted with national security. This is today's lesson.

[docbyers]

After making the capture of Osama bin Laden their sole objective in the war on terrorism, now Democrats expect us to believe they would have been fighting every other Muslim jihadist on the planet like mad -- just not one of the main sponsors of Islamic terrorism, Saddam Hussein. But they'd be merciless with every other mass-murdering, Islamic terror-sponsoring lunatic.

Israel's recent tussle with Hezbollah reminds us how absurd the Democrats' fixation on Osama is. America has been under attack from Muslim extremists for nearly 30 years. Not just al Qaeda and certainly not just Osama bin Laden.

Here's the highlights reel for anyone still voting for the Democrats:

-- November 1979: Muslim extremists (Iranian variety) seized the U.S. embassy in Iran and held 52 American hostages for 444 days, following Democrat Jimmy Carter's masterful foreign policy granting Islamic fanaticism its first real foothold in the Middle East.

-- 1982: Muslim extremists (mostly Hezbollah) began a nearly decade-long habit of taking Americans and Europeans hostage in Lebanon, killing William Buckley and holding Terry Anderson for 6 1/2 years.

-- April 1983: Muslim extremists (Islamic Jihad or possibly Hezbollah) bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 16 Americans.

-- October 1983: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) blew up the U.S. Marine barracks at the Beirut airport, killing 241 Marines.

-- December 1983: Muslim extremists (al-Dawa) blew up the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, killing five and injuring 80.

-- September 1984: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) exploded a truck bomb at the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut, killing 24 people, including two U.S. servicemen.

-- December 1984: Muslim extremists (probably Hezbollah) hijacked a Kuwait Airways airplane, landed in Iran and demanded the release of the 17 members of al-Dawa who had been arrested for the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, killing two Americans before the siege was over.

-- June 14, 1985: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) hijacked TWA Flight 847 out of Athens, diverting it to Beirut, taking the passengers hostage in return for the release of the Kuwait 17 as well as another 700 prisoners held by Israel. When their demands were not met, the Muslims shot U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem and dumped his body on the tarmac.

-- October 1985: Muslim extremists (Palestine Liberation Front backed by Libya) seized an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, killing 69-year-old American Leon Klinghoffer by shooting him and then tossing his body overboard.

-- December 1985: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed airports in Rome and Vienna, killing 20 people, including five Americans.

-- April 1986: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed a discotheque frequented by U.S. servicemen in West Berlin, injuring hundreds and killing two, including a U.S. soldier.

-- December 1988: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 on board and 11 on the ground.

(Then came an amazing, historic pause in Muslim extremists' relentless war on America after Ronald Reagan won the Cold War by doing the opposite of everything recommended by Democrats, depriving Islamic terrorists of their Soviet sponsors. This confuses liberals because they don't understand the concept of terror sponsors, whether it's the Soviet Union or Iraq.)

-- February 1993: Muslim extremists (al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, possibly with involvement of friendly rival al Qaeda) set off a bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center, killing six and wounding more than 1,000.

-- Spring 1993: Muslim extremists (al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the Sudanese Islamic Front and at least one member of Hamas) plot to blow up the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the U.N. complex, and the FBI's lower Manhattan headquarters.

-- November 1995: Muslim extremists (possibly Iranian "Party of God") explode a car bomb at U.S. military headquarters in Saudi Arabia, killing five U.S. military servicemen.

-- June 1996: Muslim extremists (13 Saudis and a Lebanese member of Hezbollah, probably with involvement of al Qaeda) explode a truck bomb outside the Khobar Towers military complex, killing 19 American servicemen and injuring hundreds.

-- August 1998: Muslim extremists (al Qaeda) explode truck bombs at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 and injuring thousands.

-- October 2000: Muslim extremists (al Qaeda) blow up the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole, killing 17 U.S. sailors.

-- Sept. 11, 2001: Muslim extremists (al Qaeda) hijack commercial aircraft and fly planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 Americans.

America's war with Islamic fanaticism didn't start on 9/11, but it's going to end with 9/11 -- as long as Americans aren't foolish enough ever to put a Democrat in the White House.

[flew-da-coup]

So what are you saying? We should be learyof Muslims?