GOP Cover-Up a Real Page Turner

Rep. Thomas Reynolds, head of the House Republican election effort, said he told GOP House Leader Dennis Hastert months ago about concerns Foley sent inappropriate messages to a teenage boy. Reynolds, R-N.Y., is under attack from Democrats who say he did too little to protect the boy.

Hastert covered up that information.

Other Foley Facts:
He had Internet sex with a boy during a House vote. The smutty exchanges took place in 2003 while the Florida Republican was waiting to vote on emergency funding for the Iraq war.
According to ABC News, Foley sent instant messages about orgasms to the boy from the floor of the House. Before signing off to vote, Foley asked his teenage friend, "can I have a good kiss goodnight."


Sheer Foley

President Bush said he was "disgusted" by Foley's behavior...but turned away calls for House Speaker Dennis Hastert's resignation for failing to act on reports that Hastert did nothing when confronted with evidence of Foley's inappropriate text messaging.

ABC News had read excerpts of instant messages provided by former pages -- under the age of 18 -- who said the congressman, under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, made repeated references to sexual organs and acts.

Interesting note -- on Capitol Hill, Foley, who is 52 and single - and co-chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus - has long been pushing bill against certain images of kids on websites, the Child Modeling Exploitation Prevention Act, or CMEPA. "These websites are nothing more than a fix for pedophiles," Foley said when he introduced the bill in 2002.

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from the Associated Press:

Foley, who represents an area around Palm Beach County, e-mailed the page in August 2005. The page had worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., and Foley asked him how he was doing after Hurricane Katrina and what he wanted for his birthday. The congressman also asked the boy to send a photo of himself, according to excerpts of the e-mails that were originally released by ABC News.

In 2003, Foley faced questions about his sexual orientation as he prepared to run for Sen. Bob Graham's seat. At a news conference in May of that year, he said he would not comment on rumors he was gay. He later decided not to seek the Senate seat to care for his parents.

According to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the boy e-mailed a colleague in Alexander's office about Foley's e-mails, saying, ''This freaked me out.'' On the request for a photo, the boy repeated the word ''sick'' 13 times.

U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Nears 2,800

Non-Existent WMDs Lead to Death of 2,791 U.S. soldiers in Iraq


While President Bush speechifies about the importance of spreading "democracy" at the point of a gun in the Middle East, and shows no interest in an exit strategy for his Iraq quagmire, the death toll of U.S. and other coalition soldiers steadily rises. October has proved to be the worst months for U.S. casualties this year...one of the worst months since Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" a bit prematurely three years ago.

Bush Cover-Up Exposed

[For months, President Bush and his henchmen have been downplaying his contact with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Not unlike Bush's attempts, after the collapse of Enron, to deny his close relationship with Ken Lay, who was W's single largest campaign contributor. But the truth is out: Bush just loves felons.

Now the truth is out - from a GOP-controlled committee in Congress, no less.]

Abramoff and Rove Had 82 Contacts, Report Says

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — A bipartisan Congressional report documents hundreds of contacts between White House officials and the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his partners, including at least 10 direct contacts between Mr. Abramoff and Karl Rove, the president’s chief political strategist.


The House Government Reform Committee report, based on e-mail messages and other records subpoenaed from Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying firm, found 485 contacts between Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying team and White House officials from 2001 to 2004, including 82 with Mr. Rove’s office. The lobbyists spent almost $25,000 in meals and drinks for the White House officials and provided them with tickets to numerous sporting events and concerts, according to the report.

Mr. Rove has described Mr. Abramoff as a “casual acquaintance,” but the records obtained by the House committee show that Mr. Rove and his aides sought Mr. Abramoff’s help in obtaining seats at sporting events, and that Mr. Rove sat with Mr. Abramoff in the lobbyist’s box seats for an NCAA basketball playoff game in 2002. After that game, Mr. Abramoff described Mr. Rove in an e-mail message to a colleague: “He’s a great guy. Told me anytime we need something just let him know."

Bush Failed to Supoort the Troops

‘There simply aren’t enough troops’
A retired general says higher-ups let soldiers down and the U.S. is playing ‘a shell game.’
By Noam Levey, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON | A retired senior general who commanded an infantry division in the conflict said Monday that requests by commanders in Iraq for more soldiers were repeatedly turned down.

“Many of us routinely asked for more troops,” retired Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste said, a claim contradicting statements by President Bush and his senior aides that the administration has given the military all the resources it has asked for.

“There simply aren’t enough troops there to accomplish the task,” said Batiste, who has previously called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign.

“It’s a shell game we’re playing in Iraq, and we’ve been doing it since Day 1. And we’re still doing it today.”

The general’s remarks, echoed by two other retired soldiers Monday, came at a special hearing called by Democratic senators as part of what they said would be an initiative to increase oversight of the war effort.

Bush Tortures Innocent Man

Bush can't get Osama - but he can torture computer geeks

Canadian Was Falsely Accused, Panel Says

Muslim Held by U.S. Was Sent to Syria For Interrogation

By Doug Struck, Washington Post

TORONTO, Sept. 18 -- Canadian intelligence officials passed false warnings and bad information to American agents about a Muslim Canadian citizen, after which U.S. authorities secretly whisked him to Syria, where he was tortured, a judicial report found Monday.

The report, released in Ottawa, was the result of a 2 1/2-year inquiry that represented one of the first public investigations into mistakes made as part of the United States' "extraordinary rendition" program, which has secretly spirited suspects to foreign countries for interrogation by often brutal methods.

Arar, now 36, was detained by U.S. authorities as he changed planes in New York on Sept. 26, 2002. He was held for questioning for 12 days, then flown by jet to Jordan and driven to Syria. He was beaten, forced to confess to having trained in Afghanistan -- where he never has been -- and then kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months before he was released, the Canadian inquiry commission found.

O'Connor concluded that "categorically there is no evidence" that Arar did anything wrong or was a security threat.

Bloody Legacy of Failure

Today I want to update Americans on our global campaign against terror. The United States is presenting a clear choice to every nation: Stand with the civilized world, or stand with the terrorists. And for those nations that stand with the terrorists, there will be a heavy price.
-- October 6, 2001 presidential radio address


Five years after invading Afghanistan, it's obvious that President Bush, who failed to capture Osama bin Laden dead or alive, has no intention of pursuing him in Pakistan. It appears that Pakistan, which has been openly shielding bin Laden for years, doesn't have enough oil reserves to warrant Bush's attention.

His inaction, of course, does not stop Bush from speechifying about the so-called war or terror. He has to generate scary headlines day in and day out to distract the public from his utter failure to lessen the terrorist threat at home and abroad.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Iraq - a country that played no role in the 9/11 attacks or any terrorism against the U.S. - the U.S. death toll has risen to 2666. The number of WMDs found remains at zero.