Why didnt Gore run again in 2004?

I wondered this from the day he decided in 2001-2002 not to run. It didnt make any sense besides the fact that he may have been burned out or the DNC may have been peeved at him. The fact is that Gore would have been our best candidate and the one who made most electoral sense. I mean who better to win all of Gore 2000 states and more than Gore himself.

Plame affair. Now that the pressure from the election is off, where will prosecutor Fitzerald take the CIA leak investigation.

9-11 investigation. There were hints in the last few weeks about a CIA report which would name names on who was responsible in the administration for 9-11 occuring. Is this report going to come out soon and what damage will it have?

WMD investigation Phase two of the Senate report on how the pre-war intelligence was used in the administration will be due out soon. What will be the effects of this?

Niger/Yellowcake/forged documents Josh Marshall was supposed to have teutonic plate shifting reporting on all this and although he did come out with a few articles, not much came from it. Also CBS is supposed to air a story about this soon. This should become a big story.

Not to mention the goodies bag called Halliburton.

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Washington Post
Dana Milbank
Monday 22,2004 Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/a13541-2004Mar21

In the early days after the September 11th,2001,attacks, the Bush White House cut nearly two thirds an emergency request for counterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal adminstration budget documents shows.

The document,dated Oct. 12,2001, shows that the FBI requested $1.5 billion in additional funds to enhance its counterrorism efforts witht the creation of 2,024 positions. But the White House Office of Management and Budget cut that request to $531 million. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft,working within the White House limits,cut the FBI's request for items such as computer networking and foreign language intercepts by half,cut a cyber-security request by three quaretrs and eliminated entirely a request for "collabrative capabilities".

The group released two oter administration documents,parts of which have already been made public,showing that just before the Septmeber 11 attacks, Ashcroft did not agree to $588 million in increases that the FBI was seeking for 2003.The request included funds to hire 54 translators and 248 counterrorism agents and support staff. But in 2003 request send to the White House,dated September 10 2001, Ashcroft did not propose that any FBI programs get increases above previuosly set levels and proposed small cuts to some programs related to counterrorism.

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In fact much of the media has been transformed from transcribers of the facts and events of the political process into quasi-focus groups. Even worse the media has developed a troubling conflict of interests which should prevent them from covering this race. Now I'm not a media expert but here are some observations.

First of all, We havent secures all of Iraq's borders so that any possible terrorist dont enter America from Iraq.

Second as Mahablog points out that we didnt properly secure Iraq's nuclear waste dumps at sites like Tuwaitha.

Tuwaitha is a town about 14 kilometers southeast of Baghdad.It sits next to a 23,000-acre nuclear site that once included a nuclear reactor.Last weeked a team of safeguards inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived to inventory the nuclear material there, or at least what was left of it.

Iraqi guards at the nuclear site left their posts in mid-March, as US marines approached. But the Marines did not arrive until April 7. In the interim, the people of Tuwaitha broke into the facility and carted off anyhting that looked useful or saleable or just interesting.

Brightly colored 55-gallon barrels were especially prized. The men of Tuwaitha emptied hundreds if the barrels of yellow-brown mud and used he barrels to haul water from wells and canals for drinking,baking, and cooking.

The yellow brown mud was uranium oxide, or 'yellow cake', a low grade form of enriched uranium.

Mahablog goes on the conclude correctly that-

"The war on Iraq was supposed to be about weapons of mass destruction, not oil.Yet the Pentagon moved quickly to secure oils fields but forgot about Tuwaitha."
http://www.mahablog.com/id13html

So, if we cant completely secure Iraqi borders and we havent properly secured Iraqi nuclear waste dumps which now we now has a large amount of unaccounted for nuclear material which could be used for dirty bombs, how are we safer again?

Plus, the Bush Administration has been lax about homeland security funding,port and border security,95% of the containers that come into our country are not inspected,customs agencies re underfunded, and our first responders are sorley underfunded among many other things.Stephen Flynn's new book 'America the Vulnerable' exposes just how vulnerable our country's homeland security has become. It is complete criminal negligence by the Bush administration.

Plus how would war on Iraq prevent terrorist from other countries from attacking us? How would our
war on Iraq prevent terrorist cells alredy within our country from attacking us? Remember that Bush always says that 'we have to be right 100%, while they only have to be right once'. So why isnt the Bush administration acting accordingly?

We have let this false choice argument of 'fighting them there so we dont fight them here' just get beaten into our heads. It is completely ludrcious and we need to combat this myth. Fighting in Iraq does not prevent the terrorists from attacking us here.

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Have Kerry explain what really happened and have him focus on what he was really talking about in 1971. He was not betraying his fellow soldiers in Vietnam when he came back, he was trying to shed light on the failed policies of the administration and war planners who put soldiers like himself into positions of committing atrocities. He needs to make this point very clear because I think this is Phase Two(or Phase 3 or 4 I cant keep up) of the next attack-- convince people that Kerry betrayed his fellow soldiers. So we need to do some preemptive action like these town hall meetings before any damage is done.

This cant come from a policy speech. This has to come from answering other veteran's question in an open forum. Kerry is a tough guy and he should show he can handle tough questions. Several of these town hall style forums on this will do an effective job of ending this contraversy.

Kerry could also use this opportunity to outline  to focus on current veterans issues like his goals on foreign policy and how he will treat veterans when they come home. He could also

Kerry needs a 'i feel your pain' moment while he clarifies what actually happened 30 years ago.This might do it.
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So for 6 months our soldiers in Iraq without the proper equipment. Nearly 40,000 of our 130,000 soldiers in Iraq did not have flak jackets for 6 months.

As former Colonel David Hackworth wrote on October 22,2003 on Military.com "about 40,000 of our sons and daughters in harm's way in Irq actually have to buy,borrow,beg, or go without adequate body armor because a bumbling Pentagon bureaucracy hasnt been issuing 100 percent of our troops the very best full metl jacket money can buy--even though the money has been long appropriated".

Soldiers had to actually ask their families to buy their flak jackets because Bush wouldnt provide them.

Congressmn Martin Meehan wrote about the lack of bulletproof shielding or reinforced doors on the Humvees that soldiers were ridind around in Iraq.In May 9,2004 in the NH Eagle Tribune, Meehan wrote an editorial which talked about how the 789 soldiers who died as of April 2004 142 were killed by land mines or improvised explosives and 48 others died in rocket propelled grenade attacks. In May 2004 the Army had armored only 60 percent of the 12,800 think skinned Humvees in Iraq and Afghanistan that require reinforce windows and doors.

So the fact that Bush is criticizing Kerry on the $87 billion vote is ludricous. The whole reason for the $87 request by Bush in August 2003 was because he didnt adequetely plan for the post war operations in Iraq beforehand.

So the fact tht Kerry or Edwards voted against the $87 billion is irrevelent to the matter. The vote would have still passed overwhelmingly 87-12. This is not about Kerry-Edwards this about a negligent commander in cheif.

The soldiers still dont have the proper equipment in Iraq. And why? One of the reasons is because Bush put priority in his $87 billion request to make sure Halliburton got their money in no-bid contracts. Halliburton in its reconstruction efforts hve not accounted for billions of dollars.Another reason is that Bush made a priority to request $1.9 billion in funds for Iraqi zip codes rather than protect our soldiers. Bush would rather supplement 9 million to modernize Iraqis postal system than protect our soldiers.

Has Bush made any serious attempt to hold Halliburton to account? Has Bush fired anyone in Pentagon who dragged their feet on getting the funds for our troops?

Bush also favored having tax cuts in the middle of a war which in itself is unprecedented instead of providing funds for equipment and protection for our troops. Kerry was not the commander in chiefduring this Iraq War. Bush was. And right now while our troops STILL DO NOT HAVE PROPER EQUIPMENT OR PROTECTION IN IRAQ, Bush would rather divert attention from this fact and blame Kerry for his own incompetence and negligence.

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Zogby also found that "less than two in five(36%)believe that the 9/11 commission 'had answered all the important questions about what actually happened on September 11th' and two in 3(66%) New Yorkers and (56.2% overall) *called for another full investigation of the 'still unanswered questions' by congress or Elliot Spitzer,New York's Attorney General.New Yorkers suported a new inquiry by a margin of three to one,but so did half(53%) of 'very conservative' citizens across the state"

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sorry I couldnt post the link but its the last Zogby poll.

Two points.

First, this poll is very encouraging to say the least. This poll shows that many people didnt buy the embarrasing whitewash of an investigation by the 9-11 commission. They didnt buy the 'everybody was responsible, so nobody was responsible' conclusion. Or the laughable 'it was a failure of imagination' conclusion.

The public didnt buy into the spin that the reason the attacks happened is because we didnt have a national intelligence director or there was the Jamie Goerelick 'wall'. There is still alot about 9-11 that needs to be answered. There are just too many holes and inconsistencies in the 9-11 report and story of the events that day.

The 9-11 commissioners are doing their tour now and are conducting town hall meetings to promote theor report. We need to be confront them with this poll and demand to have another commission done by the 9-11 familes led by Kristen Breitwiser or an outside organization led by AG Spitzer. No more of this handpicked commissioners by the president crap

Minor point. This poll also backs up Dean as being right as well. (:  

Where is Joe Lockhart at condemning her comments. The Kerry campaign must not be aware of the term Rapid Response. You know rapidly getting out there and fighting and fighting back against Bushco and his cronies.You know rapidly responding to attacks that could fester if you dont rapidly respond to them. This is basic stuff.

Heres some similarities:

An obvious similarity is that both men are Texans. Grady Little is from Abilene, Texas and Bush claims Texas as his home although he was actually born in Maine.

But heres some of the blown calls by both men.

Bush's blown calls-
-Bush ignores Clinton adminsitration warnings in January 2001 that fighting Al Queda should be top priority.
-Ignoring Richard Clarke's repeated warnings.
-Before 9-11, Bush ignored repeated terrorist threat warnings in the summer of 2001.
-After receiving August 6th PDB entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within the US", Bush decides to go on a month vacation.
-On 9-11, Bush sits in classroom for 7 minutes reading My Pet Goat after hearing the second tower was hit.

Grady Little's blown calls*-

-Had Adrian Brown pinch-hit in pivotal situation in game 1 of 2003 Oakland ALDS series.
-Left pithcer John Burkett in for one inning too long in game 4 of that series. Burkett was running on fumes in the 6th inning and Jermaine Dye proceeded to hit a 2 run hr off him.
-He brought the infield in with one out and the bases loaded in the 9th inning of Game 5 in that Oakland series. This meant that any hard grounder gets through the infield and the Sox lose the Series.
-Little's repeated decision of sending his runners which resulted in "seemingly endless streak of strike em out,throw em out double plays against the Yankees" in the ALCS.

And the biggest blown call by him in the playoffs-Leaving Pedro Martinez in the 8th inning of game 7 against the Yanks. Little had Mike Timlin in the bullpen who had been lights out in the playoffs and Scott Williamson in to close the game out. The Timlin-Embree-Williamson bullpen combo had been extremly effective in the playoffs. But Little had a hunch about something and left Pedro in. They lose the game and Little gets fired later that offseason.

Now despite the fact that Grady Little and George Bush might be nice friendly Texans who you might want to have a barbeque and beer with, they blew some big calls. They had to go. Little didnt lose the game on purpose, he had confidence in Pedro but it ended up blowing up in his face. And GM Theo Epstein had to let Little go.

There's also no evidence that Bush allowed 9-11 to happen on purpose but his crisis management is terrible and many Americans lost their lives because of it. Because of that, Bush has to get fired in November.

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*some information provided by sports writer Stephen Sears of nu-news.com.
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