Reports on election fraud by corporate media:

Countinghouse Blues: Too many votes in Sarpy County

Warren's vote tally walled off: Alone in Ohio, officials cited homeland security
By Erica Solvig

Bush's 'Incredible' Vote Tallies
By Sam Parry

Palm Beach County Logs 88,000 More Votes Than Voters

Software flaw found in Florida vote machines
By Eliot Kleinberg

Computer Loses More Than 4,000 Early Votes
Jacksonville, N.C.

Computer Glitch Gives Bush 3,893 Extra Votes Error Will Not Change Election Outcome
COLUMBUS, Ohio

Maryland e-voting controversy continues in presidential race
By William Welsh

Computer glitch still baffles county clerk
By Kristin Miller

E-voting irregularities raise eyebrows, blood pressure
USA Today 11/3/04

Scattered e-voting problems reported
By Anick Jesdanun, Associated Press

Reports of electronic voting trouble top 1,000
By Rachel Konrad, Associated Press

A Diebold plot to rig the elections? Where did that idea come from? The rumors began with this letter from Diebold's CEO, Wally Odell, who was moonlighting as a Republican fundraiser. In his invitation to a benefit for Bush last August, he wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president."

Important Articles to Consider:

Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
by Thom Hartmann

Kerry Won
Greg Palast
November 04, 2004

The stolen election of 2004: welcome back to hell
By Larry Chin

Worse Than 2000: Tuesday's Electoral Disaster
By William Rivers Pitt

Should America Trust the Results of the Election?
by Shane Cory

The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy
by Thom Hartmann

Comparison: Exit Polls, Machine Results

A collection of dozens more stories from all over the states

Proof CNN is tampering with the election to cover the fraud

The Rise Of The Fourth Reich

Please pass these articles on! W is not our president. Remember the words of Ben Franklin:

"But the most dangerous Hypocrite in a Common-Wealth, is one who leaves the Gospel for the sake of the Law: A Man compounded of Law and Gospel, is able to cheat a whole Country with his Religion, and then destroy them under Colour of Law." The New-England Courant, July 23, 1722

The Feminist Majority Foundation, while fighting to end gender apartheid in Afghanistan, learned that Taliban militants were recruited from madrassas (religious schools) that were largely funded by Saudi Arabia. The Saudi's are funding fundamentalist nepotists all aound the globe, aren't they?

Saudi women face are required to receive permission from their husband in order to work, study, or travel. All women are barred from driving, administering their own businesses, or interacting with men in public. Disobeying these laws can bring punishment and even imprisonment by the country’s religious police, the muttawa.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that a woman’s right to vote in Saudi Arabia would "have to come in due course." I think it's safe to assume he would not be one to speak up if women's constitutional rights here in America the Free came and went.

Feminist Majority Foundation is calling for the United Nations to revoke Saudi Arabia's membership for failure to uphold UN Charter for Human Rights, specifically regarding the rights of women.

Take Action

* Please vote Democrat on November 2nd. A missed opportunity could be a liberty lost. The religious fascists are armed and funded.

* Write to Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary, asking him to challenge Saudi Arabia’s membership in the United Nations for failure to uphold UN Charter for Human Rights.

* Write to Colin Powell. Ask him if he misses credibility.

I turned thirty this autumn season. My rebellious sensibilities have not been a phase, as some family members may have hoped. My ideals however, over these dozen years of adulthood, have become more fully integrated into my actions. I’ve strived to destabilize my assumptions and attempt acts of that challenge comfort. Of cohorts and mentors, I am blessed. I am so inspired! One thing I’ve learned is that many people worldwide are engaged in “varied and differing struggles to define and establish their freedom” (Serequeberhan, Tsenay. The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy, 32). The method is not necessarily as important as this intentional movement – the will to be free.

Margaret Cho, Ani DiFranco and my girlfriend Melanie have taught me that telling the truth about oneself is one of the most liberating acts one can perform. Otherwise, we are actors in a predefined, mostly patriarchal discourse, the boundaries of which are set by abstract forces and worse, self-enforced. The negative ramifications of coming out, reporting a male co-worker’s harassment, sharing your art with an audience are dwarfed by the grace and energy generated by self-determination.

I’ve been gifted the chance to be involved in Driving Votes. This organization is rooted in love - of friends, sovereignty and dreams of liberty (ones documented on hemp and otherwise). The friends who have begun and sustain this activity are some of the most creative, driven, open-hearted folks I’ve ever known. I feel welcomed into a burgeoning community who are committed to not only unseating a fascist regime but to dancing, hugging, traveling and dreaming together.

We are all working hard these days to get people out to vote for the sane candidate. We are trying to understand how to communicate to others visions undistort by the ubiquitous messaging of corporate colonization. Tracy Chapman lent her powerful voice and melodious influence towards these ends. Ani DiFranco’s current tour is called Vote Dammit; Margaret Cho’s: State of Emergency. I was delighted when I saw that the latter two, my cherished mentors, had joined forces for three concerts in swing states. I got downright giddy when I saw these righteous, riotous babes’ cyber-support of Driving Votes. Not only do they advocate revolution, put forth radical critique of racism, sexism and imperialism they do so independently of Papa Sony and Sons.

We are creating mediums for dissent. How else will our message carry? Do you think Ani could disseminate the lyrics –

open fire on hollywood
open fire on MTV
open fire on NBC
and CBS and ABC

if her work were owned by Warner Brothers? Matt and Jesse created the on-line, infrastructure that supports Driving Votes because the internet is still open to non-corporate influences and, with their hella skills, their uncensored vision can reach many.

Over the next 11 days, I’m talking to other swing states residents about this upcoming election because I’m anxious. I can sit at home, biting my nails and cursing my tv, my “country,” or I can be a part of this, this struggle that starts by turning off the tv and meeting neighbors with whom I share decisions of great consequence.

Michael Moore was right when he said, during his Slacker Tour appearance in Seattle this week, that we liberals are the majority. “The Sleeping Giant” has been awakened by the prince of the oil oligarchy.

My mother recently watched Fahrenheit 9/11 and reflected on it with the wonder and indignation with which I tried to describe my interpolation of Chomsky’s 501 The Conquest Continues some years ago. At the time she told me not to believe all the sources I read and I replied she should keep this in mind when she pulled Newsweek out of the mailbox or flipped on NBC. I thank Michael Moore for helping to create common ground on which intergenerational liberals can stand. Of my agitated spirit, my dad once remarked: “You should have been born in the sixties!” Remember how we took for granted the stability of the social order before the W coup?

My loved ones are teaching me that gratitude and laughter are as important as critique.

"I love the part of music, that it can take you over and you can trust it…I want to make music that, when women listen to it, they can be inside themselves again. To make dance music is even better, because then they can be dancing together, with other women feeling inside of themselves."
Kathleen Hanna, Le Tigre
Verve, 2001

I trust the music of Hell’s Belles not because it is a woman delivering sexist, albeit sassy lines but because they inspire all of us to follow their lead: Take a good thing, lose the bullshit and make it your own. Ohm, who makes room in the center, front stage for women at her concerts is purposefully creating space that women can occupy freely, including emancipatory space inside us.

I use the term “regime change” in the title of this piece explicitly to mean patriarchal regime change. I see us progressive folks gathering to beat Bush and I’m psyched! What purpose does an enemy serve but to temper and spur our talents!? Let’s learn from mistakes, (our own, our parents', our government’s). Take what inspiration we need, leave behind oppressive social habits and create art with transformative possibilities.

"The content and technique can come together in dance music. In European countries…we don’t get asked: “Which is more important, message or music?” What that question doesn’t acknowledge is that all music is political and a lot of it is very conservative. It’s usually only progressively political people who are pigeon-holed for making political music, but everyone else is just supporting the status quo."
Kathleen Hanna, Le Tigre
Verve, 2001

Michael Moore is recent example of this phenomenon. He’s called a “propagandist” but Fox “Shut-It-Pansy” News is believed to be “fair and balanced.” Kathleen Hanna reminds us that all media, all art we consume has a message. Media that supports the status quo (which, these days comes from a dangerously conservative perspective) needs to have its veneer of objective legitimacy stripped away. Let’s not be afraid to criticize the so-called authorities. Let’s follow in the steps of brave rabble-rousers like Hell’s Belles, Le Tigre and Michael Moore by expressing ourselves honestly and without apology.

rockin' to hell belles

Attendees:
Katie, Miller, Spike, Sarah, Roe, Roger, Kyle- WELCOME!
Nicki, Richard, Jo, Maya, Oliver, Lisa, Paul, Matt, Kristin, Maegan

UPDATES:
* Successful Oregon Trip - Maegan lead 3 carfuls of Driving Votes
volunteers to Portland this past weekend. They registered over 100 swing
state voters! Feedback from one member asked that, when planning trips to
OR, we choose locations that 1) are not inundated with other voter
registration drives and 2) have a population not as likely to already be
registered. Maegan's car went to transit centers and libraries and found
that, while people weren't always friendly, they often needed to be
registered.

* Seattle Driving Votes 2nd Fund Raiser at the Crocodile last week was a
great success. We raised $1100 and almost 200 people enjoyed the music of
the Radio Nationals, Dear John Letters and The Mores. Thank you Richard
for making this event happen!

TAKE ACTION!
AUGUST TRIPS
AUG 8: Kristin is planning a trip to Portland to register voters this
weekend: AUG 8. She'll leave on Saturday and register voters all day
Sunday. Please contact her at kmariet13@earthlink.net if you want to join
the fun!

AUG 14: I am leaving for Portland on Saturday, August 14th to do voter
registration. Please contact me at coleen@drivingvotes.org if you would
like to join me and several other of our DV cohorts.

Please consider leading/joining a trip down to Oregon in the latter half
of Aug. Some of us will be on the cross-country trip and it will be great
to have others driving votes in NW swing states. Kyle, our friend at
Washington Citizen Action, also recommends stopping in Vancouver, WA to
register voters. This town is key in winning control of the state
legislature in WA and is place where there are easily motivated swing
voters.

HEMPFEST: August 21-22
Katie Kennedy, from the Seattle Hempfest Voter Registration Project
offered us the opportunity to do voter registration right here in our
hometown. Hempfest attracts 150,000-180,000 attendees and Washington
Citizen Action, ACORN and Washington Voter Registration Project are some
of the groups who will be joining forces to register voters at this event.
I'll be sending a separate email next week to call for volunteers to do a
4-hour shift during one of the days of this 2-day event. Thanks Katie!

WASHINGTON CITIZEN ACTION
Kyle Tanner from Washington Citizen Action joined our meeting to let us
know that his group offers structured opportunities to do voter
registration in Washington EVERYDAY OF THE WEEK! His organization has set
a goal of registering 60,000 voters in Washington, concentrating on low
proclivity young voters, people of color and the LBGT community. They work
events, food banks, transit centers, community centers and have already
registered 32,776 voters. They will also be making 130,000 contacts of
registered voters for the Get Out The Vote Project, concentrating on swing
precincts in Tacoma. Please contact Kyle at kyle@wacitizenaction.org if
you want more opportunities to do voter reg in WA. Thanks for joining us
Kyle!

OPERATION ESPRESSO
Michael Schultheis started this project here in Seattle make registering
to vote EASY by targeting places of commerce where people wait in line.
We are joining Michael & Co. by installing a stack of voter registration
forms, and a sign in the window that says "Register Here to Vote" at
businesses all across the city. Cafe owners have told Michael that
customers REALLY appreciate the convenience of registering to vote while
ordering their double tall latte! Thousands of voter reg forms have been
scooped up - the project is proving to be VERY successful. Please feel
free to make this project Operation Hair Salon, Operation Grocery Store,
and Operation Laundromat, etc. We ask that you follow up with the
businesses that you solicit to make sure they do not run out of forms.
Leaving your email with the manager may be a good idea too so they can let
you know if they need more materials. Also, let me know where you've been
successful, so we can keep track of our efforts. If you need packets of
forms, please let me know!

Thank you all for your support and hard work. Our next meeting will be
next Wednesday, August 11th (8:00pm) at Maya and Oliver's home.

All the best ~
Coleen
coleen@drivingvotes.org

In a rare instance of truth-telling, Bush Jr. admitted: “I am a media creation.” Bush Jr., who poses for photo ops with fake turkeys, flight suits and ten-gallon hats, is just the latest incarnation of the new right’s efforts to appeal to a broad voter base while evangelically serving the interests of very small population of robber barons. George Herbert Walker Bush fashioned his family history and, I believe, the image of the new right, to fit with a masculine heroism embodied in the cowboy. In order to galvanize a generation who had been inoculated on Wild West propaganda and witnessed social upheaval on both the European and North American continents, Bush Sr. adopted the perfect mascot for a conservative revival. Perhaps John Wayne had his dance card full, but Ronald Reagan’s governorship of California combined with his cowboy image invented by Hollywood made him the perfect leading man for the new right’s vision of American politics and its global imperialist intent.

Imperialist leaders must fund their agendas with working folks’ money, ie. taxes, which means they need popular buy-in. Not only do they demonize the enemy and rely on religious propaganda to gain consensus, they placate the middle and working classes with secular images celebrating the glory of American expansionism. The rhetoric of 19th century imperialism mirrors the 2003 propaganda promoting the invasion of Iraq. The natives of North America and the citizens of Iraq at once posed an imminent threat to America’s well-being and were in need of our “civilized” ways. Our government was generous enough to remove the yoke of their “primitive” traditions and bring them freedom. This freedom was implemented similarly. The Indian Wars and Operation Iraqi Freedom do not follow the Cain and Abel model where two brothers vie for resources but rather the imperialist model whereby a judeo-christian nation brutalizes a non-judeo-christian nation, utilizing occupation and assimilation as methods for acquiring the latter’s’ resources.

I went to school with conservative Irish kids whose families were working class one generation earlier and illegal aliens just two generations ago. I’ve witnessed the reshaping of family history to fit upward mobility goals and the New England Bush clan is no exception. Bush Sr. knows every working class man longs to believe he still has a frontier to conquer. Though he and his son were born rich and attended blue blood Ivy League schools, he positions his family and his party to cater to this “I-wanna-be-a-cowboy” fantasy. One example of this is Bush Jr. buying Crawford Ranch two months before the 2001 inauguration to bolster his image as a cowboy. Time and Newsweek bid farewell to Reagan this month, featuring him on their covers in, yes, a cowboy hat. Cowboys, the heroes of the “Wild West” were frontline colonists, settlers who encroached upon and invaded Native people’s land and communities. No wonder the neo-conboys are so intent on occupying land that belongs to other nations. They are continuing a history idealized by our country’s media and history books.

Bush signs first federal restriction of abortion in over 30 years

Recognize these grins?

Consider the following:

- Almost 49% of Americans' tax dollars go to military expenditures.

- In 1996, the Federal government spent 13,688 times more money on corporate welfare than on social welfare: 167,000,000,000 vs.12,200,000. (The New Yorker, Feb. 26 and March 4, 1996. "DEVIL WOMEN: With a little imagination, poor women can be blamed for just about everything", by Kathy Pollitt).

- The catholic church, one of the largest sects of christianity, is also one of the wealthiest organizations in the world with a multiplicity of assets, including billions worth of tax-free land worldwide.

Despite their enormous wealth and government subsidies, Christian churches across most sects practice tithing, encouraging their members to pledge 10% of the gross annual salary to their church's "charitable" exploits. Thus, the evangelistic political party wants your taxes and your tithing, roughly about 40% of you paycheck. Joe Blow cowboyservative thinks that the $10 of his annual taxes that is spent to subsidize the electricity bills of elderly people and single mothers in his community is an outrage. The PR arm of the republican party has convinced working people that it's acceptable to spend your money on this country's political and religious nobility and wrong to help thy neighbor.

The log cabin party is no stranger to this kind of "turn-the-other-cheek," two-faced hypocrisy. Supposedly an advocate of state's rights, it rails, theoretically, about the evils of big government and then wants to federally control women's wombs, how you shag in the sack, commitment between queers, and your kids' worship of the divine. Conservative hypocrisy was rampant at the catholic college I attended. Sale of condoms was forbidden on campus. In a panel discussion on the subject, one sweater-set clad christian deemed it a violation of church law to have birth control sold just yards away from the campus church. A feminist colleague of mine countered wryly with the observation that no good christian had a problem with the Army ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corp) headquarters' adjacency to the church even though this organization, in its very mission, violates one of the ten commandments: thou shalt not kill.

Despite contradicting the tenets of their faith, our country's bloated military industrial complex is the beloved beast of the christian right. The Bush administration has further extended this centralized power, violating our Bill of Rights and the Geneva Treaty alike. How can Bush call himself compassionate when he intends to wage war-without-end, executed the most prisoners in US history when governor, and approved of Geneva treaty-violating treatment of prisoners, with results so violently pornographic they make Clinton's "scandal" look like puppy love? This Orwellian hypocrisy masks rampant criminal actions and we, the working class, foot the bill. Why is it so hard for people to see through the right's flimsy rhetoric? Perhaps for the same reasons that the person who lost the contest for votes in 2000 is our president - it's easier to follow authority than question it.

The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing Michael Moore's new documentary that criticizes Bush. Fahrenheit 911 is being censored because Michael Eisner is worried about losing Disney tax incentives from ol' brutha Jeb in Florida.

Boycott Disney and sign the petition, letting Eisner weigh the costs of censorship.

Thanks Michael for your courage and hard work! I can't wait to see the film!

We drove to Portland’s Saturday Market in matching yellow Driving Votes t-shirts. The sun was bright, the air warm. As I stood next to the elephant ear stand, I froze. The reality of Driving Votes’ purpose was suddenly at-hand, and I was a shy girl, rooted in one spot, swallowing hard.

I did take the leap and reveled in the opportunity to talk with dozens of people I would otherwise never have met. I was delighted at how kind people are. Most people met my eyes and some even smiled. Northwest folks are indeed friendlier when the sun graces us and I am so grateful for its help in ushering me into the world of voter registration. I was not as outrageously successful as my cohorts and was dog-tired by the end of the second day, but I am more hopeful than ever! People are disenfranchised for a reason and ordinary citizens have the opportunity to reach out and change that.

I shared with my mother Corinne’s most striking quote: “I realized that, to change the world, I didn’t have to turn everyone into a vegan anarchist.” My mother remarked that this seemed to parallel my own political growth. When I told my dad I was registering voters, he asked: “Did you register yourself?” I’ve never been apolitical but rather vocal about my distaste for a jerry-rigged system that gives you a choice between tweedledum and tweedledumber. I wasn’t always disenfranchised though. Two months after I turned 18, I voted for Clinton and celebrated his victory. A few years later I interned full-time in D.C. at the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor. Clinton had appointed Karen Nausbaum, a union activist passionate about women’s rights in the workplace. My supervisor, Diane Crothers, was a former member of the New York Redstockings (a 70’s radical feminist group) and worked as a lawyer representing domestic violence survivors. I was blessed to work on issues such as non-traditional childcare, low-wage workers’ rights, the Fair Pay Act, AIDS education in the workplace and helped develop a list of feminist policy initiatives that Karen presented to Clinton in the Rose Garden. In addition to this work, I had the opportunity to participate with 250,000 other feminists in the National Organization of Women’s march on the capital. I was happy and hopeful. After I had returned to college to finish out my senior year, Clinton showed his true colors. He signed the Welfare to Work legislation (Nausbaum quit after this), supported NAFTA, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and proved he was in the pocket of big business. I finished school and moved out West, hoping to find like-minded lefties like myself and vowed not to be fooled by liberal leaders like Clinton again.

For many years, I was uninspired by our government and possessed no wish to be active in it. I strove to imagine a better world and to bring this vision forth through my actions, writing and relationships. Now, witnessing the US left blossoming into coalitions with a common enemy to unite us, I see that what Corinne was talking about. We can make a difference by banding together with others that have a different set of values as long as we have shared goals. The ironic combination of Bush’s fundamentalist regime and my talented friends has inspired me to involve myself more deeply in changing the direction of our country. We at Driving Votes know that Bush Jr. is a small man with good friends and the winds of fancy are fleeting. We are exercising the rights our country’s founders handed us by publicly voicing our dissent and registering voters.

I want Bush out and prosecuted. I want Kerry to appoint only pro-women Supreme Court justices. I want the liberal coalitions formed this election season, the season America sees the light of sanity, to join me in creating revolutionary change. I want big business monopolies and oligarchies to hit the road and for all people to live comfortable and free. Think we can pull it off? Getting on the streets and asking others to think about and enact change has given me the hope to say: Yes!

Two months after I turn thirty, I will vote for Kerry and celebrate his victory. I feel passionately however that our capitalist patriarchy, by its very structure, blots out democracy and must die or we all will. Democrat leaders are loyal to this system and chip away the ideals we entrust them with, pandering to corporate puppeteers. I do not accept that the two-party system is the best we can do. I believe that we can make it our common goal to create a better system. For those who want a united front against Bush, telling others to wait until after the election to vociferously demand civil rights for queers or protection of reproductive choice I say: join me at the draft table on November 3rd. Let’s put everything we know and everything we feel into a synergy with more potential than “anybody but Bush.” Until then, I’ll meet you on the street.

Exploitation and poverty now extend among the populace with a growing universality. Soothsayers like DiFranco, who for 15 years has had the courage to critique the elite, are now messengers of a hope our country once had. Our country was born of revolution; our forbearers broke from the established power with a better idea. The white male slave owners who created the Declaration of Independence did not include my gender in “we, the people.” Women have been able to vote 84 years out of this country’s 228 years of existence. What our country really needs is to fuse the passion for liberty American patriots demonstrated with the leadership of women. After typing this sentence, I searched the Internet for documentation of Abigail Adam’s petition to John Adams, her husband, to include women’s voting rights in the Constitution. The first quote of hers I found spoke of “passion for Liberty.” I see now that 228 years ago this fusion existed and continues today. In March 1776, Abigail wrote to John in Philadelphia: "Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation." Like Ani, Abigail was a woman of courage and clairvoyant good sense.

John didn’t listen and generations of feminists have stepped up to carry out her promise. We, the women-people, broke the laws in order to vote, to have autonomy of our bodies, to live independently. Many of us over the centuries have noticed that the laws in this democratic land do not work for us, have demanded change and won. Sadly, many of the in-roads feminists have made into our current patriarchal system have not changed it. 99% of all American women will work in their lifetime, but capitalism is as virulent as ever. Women earn 73 cents of every man’s dollar and cannot, as a class, amass enough resources to challenge male dominance in the domestic sphere. Suffragists fought for 73 years to win the vote and 84 years later, we are still choosing between two white men whose interest in women ranges from a targeted voting bloc to a cheap labor source. The main item on Bush's domestic agenda is the marriage movement. Why? Because, like Hitler, who’s Nazi slogan 'Kinder, Kirche, Kueche' (Children, Church, Kitchen) was an important cornerstone of his fascist regime, Bush recognizes that our imperialist economic system cannot meet sustenance needs. If women did not perform household duties, raise children and care for men and their institutions for free, the system would collapse.

Bush is helping to unite progressives across race, class and creed. We can not, however, limit our goal to integration. A female US president would be great but look at Margaret Thatcher. Look at the army of conservative women who have taken advantage of feminist strides and entered the political realm as obedient tokens, serving misogynist agendas. Women are just as likely as men to be co-opted by corrupt systems. I propose we honor and give thanks for those radicals who have risked/risk much to ignite movements toward peace, freedom and the pursuit of happiness. A radical movement in the US is not dead. Perhaps 20-years of assaults by the new right has dampened its flame, but the embers are red hot and need only to be ignited with the breath of passionate folks willing to challenge the status quo. Give a shout out to your local feminists. In fact, why don’t all

all decent men and women
call themselves feminists?
out of respect
for those who fought for this
i mean, look around
we have this

“This” is our chance at fully realizing an egalitarian society. The momentum that carries Bush out of office must continue beyond the flatland of the 2-party system. Do we want to play it safe and stagger along toward Armageddon with bible thumping oil execs? Or do we want to make radical break with tradition and listen to women-centered women for a change?

Hopefully this statement will foil any plans the Bush administration may have had to pull bin Laden out of a cave in the weeks before the presidential election.

How is the Cheney/Bush re-election campaign planning on rigging the election this time? Too little too late, Florida's banned voter purging. Iraq's a bloody quagmire. I believe Cheney will wait until after the throne is secured to start invading another country. That leaves one of the worst possibilities: another terrorist attack in the US. Americans embraced Bush as a competent leader after 9/11 and we trusted his leadership so much, we handed over our civil liberties. Now that he's in the same fix his dad was in twelve years ago, looking down the barrel of a one-term reign, he's got to be planning something.

There is no doubt that Bush benefited from the 9/11 attacks, both in polls and policy. The questions I weigh regarding September 11th 2001 are: Did the Bush administration plan these attacks or did they let them happen? I'm encouraged that a national committee is examining the latter possibility. My pessimism tells me this is a "lessons-learned" review on Bush and CO.'s terms that will result in a scapegoat - probably the FBI will be cited for negligence. My hope however is that the American public will finally see Bush and Co. as the rest of the world does: a wealthy band of corporate crooks who profit off of mass murder. Let's connect the dots between profit, murder and crooks in the White House:

-Halliburton has an estimated 18 billion dollars worth of government contracts in Iraq (that no other company was allowed to bid for) and Cheney, Halliburton's CEO from 1995 until he joined George W. Bush's presidential ticket in 2000, is still receiving paychecks from them.

-"Pentagon auditors in December said that a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellog, Brown and Root....may have overcharged the US by as much as $61 million dollars from last May to the end of December...for the cost of fuel it was importing from Turkey....The fuel contract is now under investigation by the US Justice Department" (Simpson, Glenn. "At Center of Halliburton Uproar, Little Known Kuwaiti Company" The Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2004, pg. 1)

-646 American soldiers have already died and U.N. study calculates that 100,000 Iraqi civilians will die during the coming war, plus 400,000 after the war.

Can similar dirty tactics be connected to September 11th?

The August 6th memo proves that Bush had more than "vague" warnings of the attack. This is not the only warning that circulated Washington. A few months after 9/11 I saw on CNN footage from July 2001 which featured a Congresswoman (Feinstein, Boxer?) stating that there is evidence of a terrorist attack on American soil in the next three months and that plans may include hijacking planes to use as bombs. My greatest wish is to find this clip again (Jon Stewart - help!) and juxtapose it with Rice's claim of "vague evidence" so that folks will have to contend with the fact the Bush had a timeline, method and defined location and failed to act.

Even when the attack was underway, military forces did not act as they should and as they have in the past:

October 25, 1999 – The jet carrying golfer Payne Stewart from Florida to Texas flies off course. Air traffic controllers alert the military, who send F-16s to intercept the flight. Response time: 21 minutes

July 16, 2002 – A group of entertainers from India on a flight to New York become excited at seeing the New York City skyline. Flight attendants alert authorities, and F-16s intercept the flight and escort it to the runway. Response time: 17 minutes

September 11, 2001 - Only after both of the World Trade Center towers had been hit and a third hijacked plane was known to be heading towards Washington DC did the US military dispatch fighter jets to patrol the skies of our Capitol, called in from Langley Air Force base, 130 miles away. The D.C. Air Guard is located at Andrews Air Force Base, less than ten miles from the Pentagon Elapsed time of hijackings: *** 1 hour 42 minutes ***

Personally, I'll never forget seeing the World Trade Center Towers engulfed in flames and minutes later a brown man's face looming on the screen and fingered as the culprit. If the attack was a surprise, how did they have a suspect before the towers even fell? It was certainly jumping to conclusions considering the last terrorist attack in the US was perpetrated by a white boy with US citizenship. Even more curious is that on September 11th, 12 members of the bin Laden family were allowed to charter a jet (when all flight traffic was grounded) and returned to Saudi Arabi before being questioned by the FBI.

How does one reconcile all of these elements without suspecting foul play?

I know it's too much to ask of even the most liberal person to believe that the home of the brave is led by sociopaths who would kill their own people to further their agenda. Maybe it's outrageous to think another terrorist attack will happen in the coming months, but Cheney is already warning us another attack may be coming.

Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky and the neo-cons will stick to planting evidence or better yet, good ol' fashion mud-slinging.