AL-Jazeerah, According to a new poll, the Bush administration can only fool approximately 25% (one out of four) of the people, “all of the time”! Karl Rove (Bush's Brain) must be in a panic-stricken state, trying to figure out how to persuade “enough of the people, enough of the time” of the Bush regime's BIG LIES to grab another 4 years of power!
* Do we really want another four years of lies, falsehoods, fraud, swindling, looting, plundering, cover-ups, felonies (outing CIA agents whose family members tell the truth) … and other corruptions committed by the insane neo-con Bush regime?
* Hasn't the blood-thirsty Bush regime already taken us backwards in time, to a 14th century-like lawless state of robber-barons creating chaos, misery, and mayhem, resulting in the deaths of 400 US Soldiers, 77 Coalition Troops, and between 21,000-55,000 Iraqi people, to enrich their neo-feudal plutocrats (e.g. Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Bechtel, & neo-crony investors raping America & Iraq)?
* Isn't the squandering of over $85 Billion to-date, down a black-hole of death & destruction, with another $87 Billion rubber-stamped by an intimidated & corporate-run Congress, and the highest deficits in our nation's history, sufficient proof of the disloyalty by the rapacious Bush regime to America's citizens and this nation?
Instead of a great 21st century vision to improve the lives of our citizens and re-invigorate our nation– all we've had from the miserable failures in the Bush regime, is chaos, death, debt, unemployment, rising misery and hardships here at home & abroad, and a dearth of any substantive programs for “We the People”.
The Bushies hilariously claim to want to “democratize” the entire Middle East to enrich their corporate top-dogs & fat-cats, and make the richest-of-the-rich, even richer. [By the way, given the bungled fiasco in Iraq, do you really consider the arrogant, idiot Bushies competent to take-on anything else? The very thought of the stupid Bush cabal negotiating a major international change program, given their panic-stricken modus operandi, is laughable in the extreme!!! The rest of the world accurately perceives that the neo-con Bush cabal, full of hubris, are self-centered, greedy thieves & wooden-headed thugs!!!]
Once the American people wake-up to the fact that following 4 years of Bush– all we have to show for it are the highest debts in history; re-distribution of wealth of our nation into the hands of the top 5% plutocrats; a 3rd world approach to health care denying over 45 million citizens aide; highest unemployment in 8-10 years; warmongering creating more terrorism & hatred of the US around the world; and, skyrocketing poverty rates at a staggering level– then Bush will be ousted from office!
Once the Iraqi people wake-up to the fact that their country is being swindled, looted & plundered to enrich the Bush & Cheney Inc. criminal elements, then god help the poor American US Soldiers who will bear their wrath.
Once the rest of the world “wakes-up” to the longer-term consequences of the Bush regime's vision for a neo-feudal slave state, that impoverishes the masses of people & ruthlessly exploits the natural world, so that a few greedy ghouls can live like neo-emperors, god help this nation.
In “Skepticism grows among US voters” by Jim Lobe, on http://www.defencetalk.com/news/publish/article_727.shtml
“WASHINGTON – Popular doubts about United States President George W Bush's credibility and his justification for going to war in Iraq are on the rise, according to a new survey conducted by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
The survey of a random sample of more than 1,000 voters, which echoes the results of other recent national polls, found that 55 percent of respondents believed that the administration went to war on the basis of incorrect assumptions, particularly the notion that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the US or its allies.
And despite subsequent denials by senior administration officials, an overwhelming 87 percent of the public felt that the administration before the war portrayed Iraq as an imminent threat. While 42 percent believed that the administration did have the evidence to justify such a depiction, a strong majority of 58 percent said that it did not.
This disparity, according to PIPA, which conducted the survey between October 31 and November 10, has translated into major questions about the president's personal veracity and credibility. Only 42 percent of those polled said that they believed that Bush was “honest and frank”, while 56 percent said they had doubts about the things he says.
Moreover, 72 percent (up from 63 percent in July) said that when the administration presented evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – one of its two major pre-war reasons for attacking Iraq – it was either presenting evidence it knew was false (21 percent) or “stretching the truth” (51 percent), according to the survey. That represents a sharp rise in public skepticism about the war's justifications from five months ago.
Last June, 39 percent of respondents said they thought the administration was being truthful in its pre-war assertions about the threat posed by Baghdad. That percentage has now fallen to 25 percent. And the 21 percent who now believe the administration was, in effect, lying in its claims about Iraqi WMD is more than double the 10 percent who told pollsters that five months ago.
These changes are particularly significant for Bush's re-election prospects, according to PIPA's director, Stephen Kull, who noted that trust in the credibility of candidates is one of the most reliable indicators of voting behavior in the US, even higher than party affiliation.
Indeed, those who said they believed the president was being truthful about the pre-war situation were 11 times more likely to say they intended to vote for Bush next year than those who expressed doubts.
Kull also told the media that the decline in Bush's credibility might be the single most important factor in a sharp rise in the number of voters who say the president's handling of Iraq has made them less likely to vote for him in the November 2004 presidential elections.
As recently as two months ago, a plurality of 35 percent of respondents said Bush's performance on Iraq would make them more likely to vote for him, as opposed to 31 percent who said it would not affect their vote either way, and 30 percent who said it would make them less likely to back him.
While the same percentage of voters (35 percent) insists his performance in Iraq will still incline them to vote for Bush, 42 percent now say they are less likely to vote for him for that reason. “For the first time, the president's handling of Iraq has shifted from a net positive to a net negative for his electoral prospects,” said Kull.
While the increasingly violent resistance to the US occupation in Iraq was a factor, he added, the fact that more people believe the administration lied or was “stretching the truth” about the reasons for going to war was the main reason for the rise in the “less likely” category, he added.
Echoing the findings of most pre-war polls, which, until immediately before the war, showed that majorities of the public favored giving the United Nations arms experts more time and seeking more international support before invading Iraq, the new survey finds that Americans have returned to their pre-war views.
A majority of 61 percent said the administration should have taken more time to find out whether Iraq did indeed have WMD, and 59 percent said they should have taken more time to build international support.
This contrasts strongly with opinions during and in the immediate aftermath of the war.
In one Los Angeles Times poll taken April 2-3, for example, two-thirds of respondents said Bush had devoted enough time to international diplomacy and 73 percent said he had given arms inspectors ample time to search for the weapons.
Significantly, most of the public in the latest survey believed that Bush was determined to go to war regardless of the actual evidence. Sixty-three percent said the president would have attacked even if US intelligence agencies had told him there was no reliable evidence that Iraq possessed or was building WMD or was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda.
Despite all of these findings, only 38 percent of those polled believed that going to war was the wrong thing to do. Forty-two percent said the war was the best thing for the US and an additional 15 percent said they supported the war in order to support the president, though they were not certain that war was the best option.
Supporting these judgments was the belief that, while Iraq might not have posed an imminent threat on the order depicted by the administration, most of the public still believed it had a WMD program (71 percent) and was providing support to al-Qaeda (67 percent), despite no evidence to support these conclusions.
“The majority's views about the decision to go to war are nuanced,” said Kull. “It believes there were legitimate concerns that prompted the decision, while at the same time it believes the threat was not imminent and the decision was taken precipitously, without proper international support.””
