[Ninong]

One would think that by now they would have learned their lesson? Repeating stuff you hear on Rush Limbaugh or the Faux News Channel or read in the Moonie Times or the Moonie owned Insight Magazine is a sure way to make a fool of yourself. But the RNC, especially under the guidance of Kenny Mehlman, constantly repeated this crap without fact-checking to see if it was even true. Looks like they haven't changed much since Kenny's departure.

The Washington Times' owned Insight Magazine (owned by the Bush family's favorite benefactor, Messiah Moon), published an article by a conservative hack entitled "Democrats Usher in An Age of Treason" back in 2003. That article opened with the following quotation attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged," that's what President Abraham Lincoln said during the War Between the States.
Since then that quotation has been repeated 18,000 times in GOP speeches, right-wing blogs and on Fox News. There's only one little problem with that quotation. Lincoln never said any such thing, not even close. It was made up out of thin air by the author. He has admitted that he made it up but claims it was the magazine's editor who enclosed it in quotes. It just represented what he suspected Lincoln might have been thinking.

That false quote was used by the GOP candidate running against John Murtha, believe it or not, and then retracted the following day after it was pointed out that it was a fabrication.

The RNC forgot to send out a retraction memo and today on the floor of the House of Representatives GOP Rep. Don Young of Alaska repeated that phony Lincoln quote in an attack against those congressmen considering a vote in favor of the anti-escalation resolution. Check it out on YouTube, it's only 46 seconds long. And who wears bright red dress shirts these days? Is that one of his hunting shirts or something? I love YouTube. You can catch these retards in the act and use it against them over and over again.

BTW, Insight Magazine was finally shut down a few weeks ago after that misleading story they published about Barack Obama being educated in a "radical Islamic Madrassa" in Indonesia. That little story was immediately repeated by Fox News. It turned out that he attended that school for two years starting when he was six years old and the school in question is an exclusive Western style, private academy whose student body includes Christians, Buddhists, Confucians and Muslims. Fox News falsely implied that Obama is a Muslim (he's not) and that the radical Madrassa he attended taught radical Wahhabism (it doesn't). They never issued a correction to their false statements.

P.S. -- Repeating quotations that you don't know to be true falls in the same category as using foreign words you can't spell. I constantly see morons misspell words like ciao (usually as chow or caio) and voila (usually as viola or walla) and ad nauseam is constantly spelled ad nauseum even in mainline media articles. Using words you can't even spell makes you look like not only a phony but an ignorant one to boot.

[zhenya]

How this maroons get elected anyway? :slap:
You'd think a person who wrote that little speach for that retard would bother to check that quote. They are lucky Abe is dead or he would sue them for misquoting him...

[Ninong]

Yesterday (Feb. 15, 2007) a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Tony Snow what went wrong in Iraq.

Phony Tony's response: "I'm not sure anything went wrong."

[Ninong]

"Invincible Brilliant Commander" Kim Jong-il celebrated his 65th birthday today. What a lunatic!


P.S. -- Hey, that might make a nice handle for our own boy king?

[Ninong]

Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility


Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[...]

On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.

Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.

"We've done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it," said Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months. "We don't know what to do. The people who are supposed to know don't have the answers. It's a nonstop process of stalling."

Read the rest here.

P.S. -- It made the front page in Sunday's paper!

[Ninong]

We are now four years into this mess in Mesopotamia and the Bush Administration still can't adequately supply the troops we have there now much less the new troops we are sending over there. They will have to "share the assets on the ground so that no solider or Marine leaves the compound without proper protection" according to Gen. Pace.

And when they get injured and sent back home for treatment, we treat them like dirt!

Isn't it amazing that the Bush Administration still can't manage to take care of our troops but they managed to take care of their friends in the oil industry almost immediately?

[Ninong]

Bush may love huge tax breaks for the oil industry but he hates our troops!

Budget cuts veterans’ health care

Bush’s proposed reductions are at odds with a growing medical bill because of Iraq.


WASHINGTON | The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans’ health care two years from now — even as wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system.

Bush is using the cuts, critics say, to help fulfill his pledge to balance the budget by 2012.

After an increase sought for next year, the Bush budget would turn current trends on their head. Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing rapidly — by more than 10 percent in many years — White House budget documents assume consecutive cutbacks in 2009 and 2010 and a freeze thereafter.

The proposed cuts are at odds with recent VA budget trends — its medical care budget has risen every year for two decades and 83 percent in the six years since Bush took office — sowing suspicion that the White House is making them up to make its long-term deficit figures look better.

“Either the administration is willingly proposing massive cuts in VA health care,” said Rep. Chet Edwards, a Texas Democrat, chairman of the panel overseeing the VA’s budget, “or its promise of a balanced budget by 2012 is based on completely unrealistic assumptions.”

Edwards said that a more realistic estimate of veterans’ costs is $16 billion higher than the Bush estimate for 2012.

You can read the rest here.

[Ninong]

Excerpt from Monday's Washington Post article that continues the report that ran in Sunday's paper about how the Bush Administration is treating our injured Iraq war vets:

Sgt. David Thomas, a gunner with the Tennessee National Guard, spent his first three months at Walter Reed with no decent clothes; medics in Samarra had cut off his uniform. Heavily drugged, missing one leg and suffering from traumatic brain injury, David, 42, was finally told by a physical therapist to go to the Red Cross office, where he was given a T-shirt and sweat pants. He was awarded a Purple Heart but had no underwear.

David tangled with Walter Reed's image machine when he wanted to attend a ceremony for a fellow amputee, a Mexican national who was being granted U.S. citizenship by President Bush. A case worker quizzed him about what he would wear. It was summer, so David said shorts. The case manager said the media would be there and shorts were not advisable because the amputees would be seated in the front row.

" 'Are you telling me that I can't go to the ceremony 'cause I'm an amputee?'

" David recalled asking. "She said, 'No, I'm saying you need to wear pants.' "

David told the case worker, "I'm not ashamed of what I did, and y'all shouldn't be neither." When the guest list came out for the ceremony, his name was not on it.

It's a long article, here.

P.S. -- If the Republicans are so keen on this war, why aren't any of their kids in it?


__________________________________________________ _________

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" -- Mrs. George Herbert Walker Bush, speaking of possible American casualties in Iraq! On ABC's Good Morning America, March 18, 2003.

[Ninong]

Capturing or killing Osama bin Laden "may make him bigger than he is today."

"I don't know that it's all that important, frankly." -- Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, retiring Army Chief of Staff.

Here.

P.S. -- I wonder if this attitude has anything to do with the fact that our good ally, Pakistan, has granted Sammy and his deputy, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, safe haven and immunity from arrest in North Waziristan? Better to pretend we have lost interest than to admit we know where they are but can't do anything about it.

Looks like Sammy's setting up shop in Pakistan now just like he did in Afghanistan after he was forced out of Sudan. Before you know it, Al-Jazeera will be showing new recruiting films of jihadis going through basic training.

[Ninong]

From Army Times:



Walter Reed patients told to keep quiet


Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.

“Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media,” one Medical Hold Unit soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

It is unusual for soldiers to have daily inspections after Basic Training.

Soldiers say their sergeant major gathered troops at 6 p.m. Monday to tell them they must follow their chain of command when asking for help with their medical evaluation paperwork, or when they spot mold, mice or other problems in their quarters.

They were also told they would be moving out of Building 18 to Building 14 within the next couple of weeks. Building 14 is a barracks that houses the administrative offices for the Medical Hold Unit and was renovated in 2006. It’s also located on the Walter Reed Campus, where reporters must be escorted by public affairs personnel. Building 18 is located just off campus and is easy to access.

The soldiers said they were also told their first sergeant has been relieved of duty, and that all of their platoon sergeants have been moved to other positions at Walter Reed. And 120 permanent-duty soldiers are expected to arrive by mid-March to take control of the Medical Hold Unit, the soldiers said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Army public affairs did not respond to a request sent Sunday evening to verify the personnel changes.

The Pentagon also clamped down on media coverage of any and all Defense Department medical facilities, to include suspending planned projects by CNN and the Discovery Channel, saying in an e-mail to spokespeople: “It will be in most cases not appropriate to engage the media while this review takes place,” referring to an investigation of the problems at Walter Reed.

[Ninong]

From the Washington Post:

Top officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, including the Army's surgeon general, have heard complaints about outpatient neglect from family members, veterans groups and members of Congress for more than three years.

A procession of Pentagon and Walter Reed officials expressed surprise last week about the living conditions and bureaucratic nightmares faced by wounded soldiers staying at the D.C. medical facility. But as far back as 2003, the commander of Walter Reed, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who is now the Army's top medical officer, was told that soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were languishing and lost on the grounds, according to interviews.

Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, said he ran into Kiley in the foyer of the command headquarters at Walter Reed shortly after the Iraq war began and told him that "there are people in the barracks who are drinking themselves to death and people who are sharing drugs and people not getting the care they need."

"I met guys who weren't going to appointments because the hospital didn't even know they were there," Robinson said. Kiley told him to speak to a sergeant major, a top enlisted officer.

A recent Washington Post series detailed conditions at Walter Reed, including those at Building 18, a dingy former hotel on Georgia Avenue where the wounded were housed among mice, mold, rot and cockroaches.

Kiley lives across the street from Building 18. From his quarters, he can see the scrappy building and busy traffic the soldiers must cross to get to the 113-acre post.

[...]

In 2004, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and his wife stopped visiting the wounded at Walter Reed out of frustration. Young said he voiced concerns to commanders over troubling incidents he witnessed but was rebuffed or ignored. "When Bev or I would bring problems to the attention of authorities of Walter Reed, we were made to feel very uncomfortable," said Young, who began visiting the wounded recuperating at other facilities.

Beverly Young said she complained to Kiley several times. She once visited a soldier who was lying in urine on his mattress pad in the hospital. When a nurse ignored her, Young said, "I went flying down to Kevin Kiley's office again, and got nowhere. He has skirted this stuff for five years and blamed everyone else."

You can read the rest here.

[Ninong]

WASHINGTON - The Army said Thursday that the two-star general in charge of Walter Reed Army Medical Center has been relieved of command following disclosures about inadequate treatment of wounded soldiers.

Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, who was commanding general of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command as well as Walter Reed hospital, was relieved of command by Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey.

In a brief announcement, the Army said service leaders had “lost trust and confidence” in Weightman’s leadership abilities “to address needed solutions for soldier outpatient care” at Walter Reed.

You can read the rest here!

[Ninong]

Looks like Defense Secretary Robert Gates was not happy that Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey had named Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the current Army Surgeon General and former commander of Walter Reed, to take over as commander of Walter Reed from the just fired Maj. Gen. George Weightman. So Gates summoned Harvey back to Washington from Ft. Benning and fired him on the spot. He then named Maj. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, the younger brother of the retiring Army Chief of Staff, as the new commander of Walter Reed. Kiley's days are numbered. He may as well retire now.

And Henry Waxman wants Weightman to testify before Congress to explain why the Army rigged things so that an ex-Halliburton executive would get the contract to operate Walter Reed. That's why most of the former civilian staff left and that's why things have gone from bad to worse. The Army falsified records to make it appear that awarding a new contract to an outside contractor (one of Dick Cheney's pals) would be cheaper than running things themselves. It's going to be a very big can of worms but not as big as the can of worms that will open up next Tuesday when four of the eight recently fired U.S. Attorneys testify. That will be REALLY BIG! Much, much bigger than the media thinks!

The Pentagon is refusing to allow Weightman to testify, so Waxman will have to issue a subpoena forcing him to comply.

P.S. -- The company the Army hired to run Walter Reed is the same company FEMA hired to supply ice to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and you know how well that went.

[Ninong]

The Army Times is covering the Walter Reed debacle in more detail than the mainstream media. They don't mention that the Pentagon falsified records and threw out the first bid so that they could award the contract to Dick Cheney's pal from Halliburton. The former Halliburton executive, whose company was granted a huge Hurricane Katrina contract by FEMA, was not the low bidder on the Walter Reed contract, so the Pentagon falsified their records and revised the criteria to ensure that the Halliburton dude would get the contract. This is the same guy who had trouble delivering ice to Katrina victims.

Note the warning in an Army internal memo to General Weightman six months ago that the situation was so dire that the entire Walter Reed Army Medical Center was "in danger of mission failure!" Even though the casualties from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were greatly increasing the demands for patient care, the civilian contractor (ex-Halliburton dude) was trying to operate with far fewer employees than before. Oh, by the way, this is the same guy who overcharged the Pentagon by hundreds of millions of dollars for fuel and food contracts in Iraq when he was a top Halliburton executive! Under the Bush Administration's push to privatize the entire United States government, profit is more important than the care and well being of our injured service men and women!

This is what you can expect from Compassionate Conservative Republicans who love the war but hate the troops! None of their kids are in it anyway!

P.S. -- The country is fortunate that the Democrats have subpoena power in both the House and the Senate because the see-no-evil, hear-no evil, do-nothing Republican-controlled Congress would have swept the whole thing under the rug and accused anyone who dared ask embarrassing questions of aiding the terrorists!


__________________________________________________ __________

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" -- Mrs. George Herbert Walker Bush, speaking of possible American casualties in Iraq! On ABC's Good Morning America, March 18, 2003.

[Ninong]

The situation in Iraq is playing out exactly as predicted! U.S. and Iraqi forces have moved into Sadr City but Moqtada al-Sadr was warned days in advance by the Maliki government and he has agreed to withdraw his forces and lay low for the duration. This happens every time! This is nothing new.

Meanwhile, down in the Basra area, the British, along with some Iraqi special forces, raided an Iraqi Interior Ministry installation and freed dozens of tortured detainees, including children! Remember some time back when U.S. forces freed hundreds of Sunni detainees who were being secretly held in the basements of two Interior Ministry buildings? The Iraqi government, including the Interior Minister himself, pretended to not know anything about it. It was supposedly a roque operation. Yeah, right! Hundreds of detainees being tortured in the basement of the very building they worked in and they didn't know anything about it.

Well, this time, it seems the Brits didn't notify the Maliki government in advance of this raid and al-Maliki is FURIOUS! Official statement from al-Maliki's office:

"The Prime Minister has ordered a prompt investigation into the incident of breaking into the security complex headquarters in Basra and he affirmed the need to punish those who have carried out this unlawful and irresponsible act." There was no mention of pursuing the accusations of prisoner abuse.

The 'unlawful and irresponsible act' was carried out by Iraqi special forces with the assistance and supervision of British coalition forces!

The Maliki government is a complete joke and we are fools to continue with this charade!

Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was just asked a couple of days ago if we have a Plan B for Iraq. In other words, what happens next if "the surge" doesn't work. He replied that Marines don't plan for defeat, Marines only make plans for victory. In other words, there is no Plan B. That's not all that surprising when you consider that there was never a Plan A either. On the very same day that Gen. Pace said we have no backup plan if the surge doesn't work, Gen. Petraeus, our new commander of forces in Iraq, told a U.S. Senator that there is only a 25% chance that the surge will work!

So there's only a 25% chance that the surge will work and there's no backup plan in the event it doesn't work. This has been the official position of the Bush Administration all along, except for the part about acknowledging the possibility that the surge won't work. Plan A is "the surge." Plan B is to stick with Plan A no matter what happens. But the guy in charge of making "the surge" work says there's only a one in four chance that it will work.

[Ninong]

I know I linked to this story earlier in this thread but it bears repeating now that the mainstream media has finally picked up on the story about our military medical system being understaffed and neglected.

WASHINGTON | The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans’ health care two years from now — even as wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system.

You can read the rest here.

That's because our own Invincible Brilliant Commander George W. Bush doesn't care what happens two years from now. That will be someone else's problem. Why should he bother being honest with the budget figures when he's not honest with anything else?

So don't pay attention to anything this corrupt, incompentent bunch of cold-hearted jerks says about wanting to fix the problems that are now making the news. The facts are that George W. Bush wants to cut the funding for veterans' health care!!! And his former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, is the one who insisted on closing military hospitals in the middle of a war. That's why they haven't paid attention to maintaining Walter Reed -- it's on the closure list! Donald Rumsfeld, the greatest secretary of defense in the history of our country, according to the worst vice president in the history of our country.

When it comes to a choice between properly funding the care of our wounded troops, the Bush Administration would prefer to give tax credits to the oil industry.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Ninong

And, BTW, it won't be just 21,500 troops. Those are just the combat units. There will be an equal number of support units. The true number will be at least 35,000 and possibly as high as 48,000. And the cost will be at least three times the number Bush is putting out.

That's something I posted more than a month ago in this thread. Well, Ray Charles could have seen this coming:

The Bush Administration is about to admit that they're sending 6,000 additional support personnel with those 21,500 combat troops and that their original estimate of $5.6 billion is too low, so they need another $2 billion right away to cover these 6,000 support troops.

"Typically, it takes 5,500 support troops for a 4,000-soldier combat brigade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But the Defense Department says the most recent addition of troops will require far fewer support troops because a sizable support infrastructure is in place in Baghdad and Anbar province."

They deliberately misled the American people about the number of troops they were sending and the additional cost, not that this should come as a surprise to anyone. The only surprise would be if this latest estimate is truthful.

P.S. -- All of these estimates are for funding the surge through Sept. 30, 2007 only. If any or all of those troops are still there after that date, then the surge costs will go up.

[Ninong]

The mayor of Baghdad thinks we have our priorities wrong. He wants to know why we insist on wasting money on "planting trees" in his city when we can't even keep the lights on for more than a couple of hours a day.

On average, residents get only two hours of electricity a day, and are bitterly angry that the world's most powerful nation has not delivered a single major power plant in four years of occupation.

And hours after yesterday's presentation a high-ranking US official admitted that, despite spending $22 billion on reconstruction across Iraq, the Americans didn't expect Baghdad to have a 24-hour electricity supply until 2013.

Here.

P.S. -- Silly mayor! You don't need lights to see the trees in the daytime and only the insurgents would dare venture out at night.

[Ninong]

I was reading something yesterday about the joint U.S.-Iraqi patrols in the Sadr City section of Baghdad. A U.S. Army platoon was supposed to meet up with an Iraqi Army platoon for a joint nighttime patrol in Sadr City. You might remember that representatives of Moqtada al-Sadr negotiatied "rules of engagement" allowing U.S. and Iraqi forces to enter Sadr City unopposed. This is all part of al-Sadr's agreement with al-Maliki to lay low for the time being.

Anyway, the Iraqi platoon was supposed to meet up with the American platoon at 7 p.m. They didn't begin to show up until 9 p.m. It seems they're sort of on their own and they started arriving one by one around 9 p.m. They didn't all show up until 9:30 p.m. Evidently Iraqi time means you're on time as long as you're there within three hours of the appointed time.

After the Iraqi troops finally got there, negotiations began through the single interpreter to determine who would do what -- who would lead and who would follow, who would ride in the humvees and who would walk alongside, etc. These negotiations took more than two hours. It was finally agreed that the Iraqis would lead and the Americans would follow. This is supposed to be an Iraqi mission to take control of their own streets. The Americans were trying to explain to the Iraqis that they were there to train them in how to do this. The Iraqis resented the idea that they needed any training.

The biggest sticking point was the argument over who would get to ride in the humvees. It was finally agreed that only officers from both sides would get to ride in the humvees. All enlisted men from both sides would walk. The patrol finally departed shortly after midnight. The streets were deserted and all was quiet. According to the rules of engagement negotiated with al-Sadr, we are not to make any noise that would wake the sleeping citizens. In particular, we are not to knock on any doors late at night because that would disturb the residents.

The patrol was a complete success even if it was several hours late in getting started. They encountered no resistance and they made as little noise as possible. It was sort of like a parade, minus the marching band.

Meanwhile, we finally got a timeline on what the Bush Administration means by a "surge in forces." What they really mean is an escalation. A surge is a temporary, short-lived increase in strength. According to Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the day-to-day commander of forces in Iraq, he expects that the increased troop level will need to be maintained at least through February 2008. That's just over a year after "the surge" began.

So far we have two of the five "surge" combat brigades on the ground in Iraq. The other three are expected to arrive between now and June, along with additional support troops and the additional 2,200 military police that Gen. Petraeus has requested to handle the anticipated increase in detainees. BTW, those 2,200 MPs were not included in the original estimate of 21,500 "surge" troops. The 21,500 was just the number of troops in the five combat brigades. It didn't include any support troops or additional MPs.

The only way the Army can sustain this escalation through February 2008 would be to reactivate National Guard units that have already served combat tours in Iraq. Right now they are already sending R.A. units back into combat with less than a year stateside. And let's not forget that Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has admitted that the additional armored humvees needed for these additional troops won't arrive in Iraq until July but he assured us that no troops would leave the compound without adequate protection because they will share what they have until the new equipment gets there.

I'm not sure, but I believe this is either the fifth or the sixth "surge" in the last few years. Later this month we will mark the fourth anniversary of our arrival in Iraq but as our own Brilliant Invincible Commander reminded us just the other day, we didn't choose to make Iraq the battle front in the war on terror, they did. Actually I think he's still confused about that point. It's just the other way around. We chose to make Iraq the battle front in the war on terror and they followed us there.

[Ninong]

Cairo - Corruption in Iraq is now worse than it was during Saddam Hussein's regime, the Chairman of Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity (CPI), Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, said in an interview published Thursday in the Arabic-language Asharq Alawsat newspaper.

'There are eight ministers and 40 general directors against whom corruption charges have been brought and they had all fled abroad,' he said.

According to Al-Radhi, the commission was currently investigating the embezzlement of public funds to the tune of eight billion US dollars.

Independent observers in Baghdad report that it is very difficult to find an official who will discharge a public service without a bribe.

Al-Radhi conceded that the authority itself has been found guilty of corruption on several occasions.

From dpa.

P.S. -- This nation-building stuff is hard work. No wonder I was against it before I was for it. -- GWB