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whomod said:

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Cheney, Powell Split Over Iraq, Book Says
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Sat Apr 17, 1:54 AM ET
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell are so upset with one another over the Iraq war that they are barely on speaking terms, according to excerpts from a new book published in the Washington Post on Saturday.
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The book, entitled "Plan of Attack," is not due to be released until next week but the Post's assistant managing editor, Robert Woodward, wrote it and the newspaper is reporting from it.
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Woodward, perhaps best known for his role in the Watergate scandal that forced the resignation of president Richard Nixon in 1974, interviewed administration officials for the book, including Bush.
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He writes that the relationship between Cheney and Powell became so strained over the plans to invade Iraq that Cheney and Powell are barely on speaking terms.
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Powell, Woodward said, opposed the war and believed Cheney was obsessively trying to establish a connection between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network. He said Powell believed Cheney took ambiguous intelligence and treated it as fact.
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"Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's 'Gestapo' office -- had established what amounted to a separate government," the Post writes.
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"The vice president, for his part, believed Powell was mainly concerned with his own popularity and told friends at a dinner he hosted a year ago celebrating the outcome of the war that Powell was a problem and 'always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."'
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But Powell agreed to publicly support the war after Bush personally asked him to, according to Woodward's book.
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Bush also said he prayed for divine guidance in launching the war.
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"I am prepared to risk my presidency to do what I think is right," the Post quotes Bush as saying.
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Bush told Woodward he was cooperating on the book because he wanted the story of how the United States had gone to war in Iraq to be told.
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Bush hoped to leave a record that "will enable other leaders, if they feel like they have to go to war, to spare innocent citizens and their lives."
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"But the news of this, in my judgment, the big news out of this isn't how George W. makes decisions," Bush is quoted as saying.
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"To me the big news is America has changed how you fight and win war, and therefore makes it easier to keep the peace in the long run. And that's the historical significance of this book, as far as I'm concerned."


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By the way Matter eater Man, Dave is right! What's wrong with you??!!
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Bush wasn't a draft dodger!
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He was an AWOL deserter
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Which is completely different than a 'suicider'. they just sound the same.




Interesting how you snuck this zinger in under radar by completely re-writing an old post, Whomod.

There was nothing but the little blue emoticon here in this post yesterday when I looked at it.

And gee, what a surprise, Whomod has posted another link of "evidence" to a highly partisan, gloatingly anti-Bush website, at www.bushawol.com

The article on Woodward's new book only offers partisan remarks and conjecture, more allegations without evidence. You italicizing parts of those remarks in red and blue makes them not the slightest bit less partisan and non-factual.


Here's what the Washington Post (not exactly a conservative news-source) had to say about Bush's National Guard record:

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Bush's Guard Service In Question
Democrats Say President Shirked His Duty in 1972
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By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 3, 2004; Page A08
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In recent days, a one-year gap in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service during the height of the Vietnam War has been raised by Democrats.
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While none of the presidential candidates has directly criticized Bush's service, some Democrats, including Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe, have accused the president of shirking his military duties in 1972, when Bush transferred to an Alabama unit. McAuliffe on Sunday called Bush "AWOL," or "absent without leave," during that period.
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Terry Holt, spokesman for the Bush campaign, accused McAuliffe of trying to "perpetuate a completely false and bogus assertion." Holt said, "The president was never AWOL."
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Questions about Bush's Guard service first surfaced during the 2000 presidential race, when he ran against Vice President Al Gore, a Vietnam veteran. A review of Bush's military records shows that Bush enjoyed preferential treatment as the son of a then-congressman, when he walked into a Texas Guard unit in Houston two weeks before his 1968 graduation from Yale and was moved to the top of a long waiting list.
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It was an era when service in the Guard was a coveted assignment, often associated with efforts to avoid active duty in Vietnam. Bush was accepted for pilot training after having scored only 25 percent on the pilot's aptitude test, the lowest acceptable grade.
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In 2000, the Boston Globe examined a period from May 1972 to May 1973 and found no record that Bush performed any Guard duties, either in Alabama or Houston, although he was still enlisted.
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According to military records obtained by The Washington Post, Bush first requested and received permission in May 1972 to be transferred to the Alabama National Guard so he could work on a U.S. Senate campaign. After he was in Alabama, he received notice from the Guard personnel center that he was "ineligible" for the Air Reserve Squadron he requested.
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In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flying because he failed to complete an annual medical exam. A month later, Bush requested to be assigned to a different unit in Alabama and was approved. Although he was required to attend periodic drills in Alabama, there is no official record in his file that he did.
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According to the records, Bush had been instructed to report to William Turnipseed, an officer in the Montgomery unit. "Had he reported in, I would have had some recall and I do not," Turnipseed, a retired brigadier general, told the Globe in 2000. "I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had a first lieutenant from Texas, I would have remembered."
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White House communications director Dan Bartlett said yesterday that although no official record has been found, "obviously, you don't get an honorable discharge unless you receive the required points for annual service." He said Bush "specifically remembers" performing some of his duties in Alabama. Bartlett also provided a news clipping from 2000 quoting friends of Bush's from the Alabama Senate campaign saying they recalled Bush leaving for Guard duty on occasion.
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Bush said in 2000 that he did "show up for drills. I made most monthly meetings, and when I missed them I made them up."
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Reached in Montgomery yesterday, Turnipseed stood by his contention that Bush never reported to him. But Turnipseed added that he could not recall if he, himself, was on the base much at that time.
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Bush returned to Houston after the election, and again his service is vague in the records. His officers at Ellington Air Force Base wrote in May 1973 that Bush could not be given his annual evaluation, because he "has not been observed" in Houston between April 1972 and the following May. Ultimately, another officer states in a subsequent document that a report for that one-year period was unavailable for "administrative reasons."
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The records indicate that Bush surfaced at the end of May 1973 and fulfilled point requirements 10 times between May 31 and July 30. In September 1973, Bush requested an early discharge to attend Harvard business school; in October he received an honorable discharge.
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The issue of military service has been out front this year, with two decorated veterans -- Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark -- in the race and with Republicans questioning the Democrats' commitment to national security.
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During the New Hampshire campaign last month, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore -- a Clark supporter -- referred to Bush as a "deserter" at a rally of 1,000 people outside Concord. Two days later in Iowa, former senator Max Cleland (Ga.), who lost three limbs during the Vietnam War, told voters that Kerry is "the one guy who can call his hand on the hypocrisy of a bunch of people that never went to war."
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Kerry said yesterday that he had not decided whether to make Bush's service an issue in the general election. Asked whether he has suggested that surrogates pursue this line of attack, he said: "I have not suggested to any of them that they do so, and I spoke out against the use of the word deserter, which I thought was inappropriate, wrong and over the top."
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Staff writer Ceci Connolly, traveling with Kerry, and researchers Don Puhlman and Lucy Shackelford in Washington contributed to this report.



Not the slightest documentation of wrongdoing. Bush was honorably discharged. More slanderous Democrat allegations and vitriol, without evidence.




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( from the "It's not about oil or Iraq..." topic, page 24: )
Mister JLA said:
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That doesn't change the fact that blahblahblah neocons this, neocons that, conspiracy...Haliberton...Cheney, where was Bush on 9/11...? he duped the American public...lies, lies, lies, the average American doesn't question things like I do, since I care more and am smarter...here in California...blahblahblah.


Signed,

whomod.



"The Whomod Technique"
http://www.rkmbs.com/Number=258330