"it doesn't matter who votes, what matters is who counts the votes." - Josef Stalin

In the last few days I have been having a problem getting my thoughts together. I'll just say I have been a little overwhelmed by what has been happening. Yesterday I posted on the problem with voting machines. I've been looking at this subject for some time and for me it is always in the back of my mind. When looking at elections you try to handicap each candidate and make an educated guess as to who will win. Now one might use polls, who is the incumbent, the state of the economy, foreign policy, etc... as guides. But when you have it in the back of your mind that no matter what a candidates stances are on these aforementioned issues, and many other issues as well, does not matter if the election system is corrupt.

As well all know the PDB of August 6, 2001 was released on Easter Saturday. I'm also sure you are aware that, as a politician, if you want to bury a story you release it on the weekend because less people pay attention to the news on the weekend. That being the case I'll bet even less people pay attention on a holiday weekend. What do you think? But I would assume all of this never crossed the White House's mind. So we have the PDB being released with the tiniest amount of fanfare possible, except if it was released over the Christmas holiday. How serious is all of this in the PDB? Well read this form the August 4, 2002 issue of Time. This article reinforces that the Bush administration was not very worried about terrorism before 9/11. That in and of itself is not hard to believe and to a certain extent--if it wasn't for the warnings form the previous administration--is not something, I think, that they should be so worried about. The problem they have is that they have been saying that they were very worried about terrorism before 9/11 and that, of course, the President was " fully engaged". So now to admit that well no one was worried about terrorism back then and that we never knew this was coming would be to say they have been lying.

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option. - Your President January 28, 2003, SOTU

There was nothing in there that said, you know, there's an imminent attack. There was nothing in this report to me that said, oh, by the way, we've got intelligence that says something is about to happen in America. That wasn't what this report said. The report was kind of a history of Osama's intentions, I guess is the best way to put it, kind of a history of what the agency had known. - Your President April, 12, 2004

But the one thing to keep in my about all of this stuff on 9/11 is that if it weren't for the happenings on that fateful day they never would have been able to make the case for war in Iraq. Don't ever forget the Pearl Harbor comment in the PNAC publication Rebuilding America's Defenses, page 63:

Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor.

Now I see these two: Second statement from Sept. 11 Commission and New Reports on U.S. Planting WMDs in Iraq. So remember if the WMD appear you heard it here first. From the second article I think this is interesting:

Sources in Iraq speculate that occupation forces are using the recent unrest in Iraq to divert attention from their surreptitious shipments of WMD into the country.

So is it possible all the unrest is being used as a diversion to plant WMD in Iraq? They wouldn't do that would they? Is that why Bremer started all of this by closing down a newspaper? We let's suppose that that's not true and that things have just gone wrong in Iraqbecausee those running our country are less than competent. This is a good summation of where we are right now, Collapse? Iraq is in dissarray and I think that chaos was the plan from the start.
- posted by Mom/Dad @ 11:00 AM