The Empire 153

'Demanding Truth From Power
David Swanson
January 24, 2007

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, Washington director of Democrats.com and a board member of Progressive Democrats of America.

It was disturbing to see so many members of Congress in both parties clamoring to get Bush's autograph on their copies of his State of the Union—not because it was such a dishonest speech that did such a disservice to this country, and not because they should have been handing him subpoenas instead. Rather, my concern arises from the habit Bush has developed following the signing of any document. Typically he goes home, talks to his lawyers, and issues a "signing statement" the next day radically altering what he has just signed. Bad as that speech was, it could get a lot worse.
Of course the state of our union is what it is regardless, and Bush had almost nothing to say about it. He claimed our economy was thriving, a claim fairly well debunked by Virginia Sen. Jim Webb's Democratic response. But, for the most part, when the president got at all specific in his speech, he proposed new initiatives and said little or nothing about the past six miserable years. In the seventh year of his presidency, he proposed balancing the budget in five years and reducing gasoline usage in 10 years. The president mentioned "courage" a lot, but wouldn't it have been more courageous to have admitted that similar rhetoric over the past six years has been followed by actions that have taken us in the opposite direction, and wouldn't it have been more courageous to have set goals for the next two years?
During most of the speech, the president avoided specifics. His rhetoric was so vague and his changes of topic so swift that he was closer to listing issues than discussing them. Some more detail on his various proposals was posted on the White House website, but it didn't always add much. For example, immigration reform "without animosity and without amnesty" turned out to mean that immigrants would have to pay a "meaningful penalty" before they could become citizens.
Bush began by congratulating Nancy Pelosi repeatedly on becoming Speaker of the House. He had nothing special to say to the large man seated to Pelosi's right. Vice President Dick Cheney had been in the news earlier that day when the prosecutors in the trial of his former chief of staff claimed that Cheney had played a central role in exacting retribution against a whistleblower who exposed one of the main lies that took us into the war, a lie made during Bush's State of the Union speech four years ago. Somehow the announcers on NBC failed to mention that or to make note of Bush's record low popularity, and while their affiliate had filmed it, they did not reveal any awareness of the fact that eight state senators that day had introduced a resolution to impeach Bush and Cheney into the state legislature in New Mexico. (A state can begin impeachment by sending a petition to Congress.)'

Lees verder: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/01/24/demanding_truth_from_power.php