Abortion
- On Bush's first day in office, he issued an executive memorandum blocking U.S. funding for international organizations that perform abortions or provide abortion counseling or services overseas.
- Bush also froze U.S. funding for the World Health Organization's reproductive health program an eliminated funding for the United Nations Population fund.
- Bush did increase funding for abstinence programs by one-third (to $135 million), the largest increase for any area outside of defense.
- He signed a bill banning "partial-birth abortions," which omits any exceptions for a woman's health.
- The Bush administration altered a fact sheet on the website for the National Cancer Institute to suggest that abortion could cause breast cancer.

AIDS
- Bush failed to follow through on his commitment of $500 million to prevent mother-to-child AIDS transmission.
- Bush promised to provide generic AIDS drugs to poor countries, but instead his administration backed 39 major pharmaceutical companies who sued the South African government for allowing the manufacture and importation of generic AIDS drugs.

Bush's Brain
- Bush was dangerous in Japan in February 2002, when his confusion of "deflation" with "devaluation" sent the yen into a tailspin.
- "More and more of our imports come from overseas"
- "The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law."
- "They want the federal government controlling social security like its some kind of federal program."

 

To list all of Bush's worrisome remarks is beyond the scope of this page. Check out
www.bushisms.com
Bushisms: Adventures in George W. Bushspeak, and
The Complete Bushisms, just to name a few.

Bush's Business Associations
- Received $50,000 investment to start his oil and gas company, Arbusto Energy, from James Bath, the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's brother. Some of James Bath's connections attempted to funnel millions of dollars to Osama in the late 90's.

Bush's Military Record
- Bush's connections kept him out of Vietnam by getting him into the Texas Air National Guard, where he didn't show up for duty for a full year.
- Bush was transferred to an Alabama National Guard Unit in order to work on a U.S. Senate campaign there, but never showed up.
- Despite over a year absent, Bush was not punished, in fact he was released early to attend Harvard Business School.

Foreign Policy
Afghanistan & Iraq
- Bush ordered and directed a "first strike" war of aggression against Afghanistan causing thousands of deaths. He removed the government of Afghanistan by force and installed a government of his choice.
- He authorized daily intrusions into Iraqi airspace and aerial attacks including attacks on alleged defense installations in Iraq which have killed hundreds of people in time of peace. He has authorized, ordered and condoned attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq on civilians, civilian facilities and locations where civilian casualties are unavoidable.
- In his public speeches leading up the war with Iraq, President Bush insisted that Iraq was developing an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that included biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. No evidence of such programs has been found. According to chief weapons inspector David Kay, "we were almost all wrong," about the Iraqi weapons threat.

 

Here are the main points from Kerry's speech on Iraq 9/20/04:

*The war on Iraq was a mistake -- war was unnecessary because the inspections were working: "Today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious? Is he really saying that if we knew there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaeda, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer is no -- because a commander in chief's first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe."

*Iraq distracted from the war on terror: "The president claims it is the centerpiece of his war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight."

*President Bush misled us about the reasons for the war before it occurred: "He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war. And he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens. By one count, the president offered 23 different rationales for this war."

*President Bush is still misleading people about Iraq, painting an optimistic picture directly contradicted by his own intelligence officials: "In June, the president declared, 'The Iraqi people have their country back.' Just last week, he told us: 'This country is headed toward democracy. Freedom is on the march.' But the Administration's own official intelligence estimate, given to the president last July, tells a very different story. According to press reports, the intelligence estimate totally contradicts what the president is saying to the American people."

*Bush went to war for ideological reasons and consistently misjudged the situation on the ground: "This president was in denial. He hitched his wagon to the ideologues who surround him, filtering out those who disagreed, including leaders of his own party and the uniformed military. The result is a long litany of misjudgments with terrible consequences. The administration told us we'd be greeted as liberators. They were wrong. They told us not to worry about looting or the sorry state of Iraq's infrastructure. They were wrong. They told us we had enough troops to provide security and stability, defeat the insurgents, guard the borders and secure the arms depots. They were wrong. They told us we could rely on exiles like Ahmed Chalabi to build political legitimacy. They were wrong. They told us we would quickly restore an Iraqi civil service to run the country and a police force and army to secure it. They were wrong. In Iraq, this administration has consistently over-promised and under-performed. This policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence. And the president has held no one accountable, including himself."

The Death Penalty
- As governor of Texas, Bush presided over more executions - 152 - than took place in the other 49 states combined during that time. And hundred's more attempts, with scheduled dates getting last minute stays . . . More than any other elected official in recorded American history!
- An investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that 43 of the first 132 convicts executed under Bush, were represented by defense attorneys who have been publicly sanctioned for misconduct. Forty others, the Tribune reported, had lawyers who presented no evidence or only one witness during the critical sentencing phase of their trials. And dozens of others reportedly were convicted with the help of unreliable physical evidence or the testimony of non-credible witnesses.
- In a 1999 Talk Magazine interview, Bush performed an imitation of Karla Faye Tucker (a Texas death row inmate whom Bush had denied clemency), whimpering "Please don't kill me."

The Economy
- Bush vowed not to run deficits and to eliminate the federal debt. Instead, he turned a $5.6 trillion projected budget surplus into a projected deficit of over $5.2 trillian.
- The Bush economic plan centers on corporate welfare, tax rebates to the richest 1 percent of Americans and corporate investor incentives. The average tax cut for the top 1 percent of taxpayers under the Bush "growth" plan is $30,127, compared to the average tax cut for the middle 20 percent, which is $289.
- Bush upped military spending by 80 billion to 355.5 billion. In George Bush's proposed FY 2004 federal budget, over 50% -- $399 billion of the $782 billion in discretionary money goes to military spending. The U.S. has a bigger military budget than the rest of the United Nations Security Council combined.
- The average number of jobs created monthly under every President since Truman is 135,000, however the average number of jobs created monthly under Bush has been -79,189.
- Bush's budget deficit for 2004 exceeds the highest budget deficit in history, which was posted in 1992 by Bush's father by $188 billion.

The Environment
- Under Gov. Bush, Texas ranked 50th among states in air quality and first in toxic polluters, toxic releases, carcinogens in the air and 13 other polluting categories.
- Bush put polluting industry representatives in charge of the state's Natural Resources Conservation Council (Texas' version of the EPA).
- The "Clear Skies" Plan lowers pollution reduction targets and pushes back target dates.
- The Bush EPA is now dropping lawsuits against polluters who may have broken the law by expanding their operations without safeguards. This makes Bush's gutting of the Clean Air Act retroactive to before he was president.
- Environmental programs cut by $1.6 billion.
- Corporate polluters used to pay to clean their own messes. Now Bush is shifting the costs to you. The Superfund program was created to ensure that corporate polluters bore the brunt of the costs of cleaning up the worst environmental disasters. But under President Bush, Superfund assets have declined to nearly zero. Now your tax dollars will pay for 80 percent of the program in 2004, and all Superfund cleanups in 2005.
- Bush proposed weakening mercury regulations in Clean Air Act, despite the FDA and EPA's own recent recommendation that pregnant women and young children eat less tuna and other seafoods to avoid excessive mercury consumption. Approximately 630,000 babies are born in the United States every year to mothers who have been exposed to unsafe mercury levels.

Criminal Justice
Drug Policy - Bush has essentially admitted that he used cocaine. He won't deny using cocaine or marijuana, though under persistent questioning he said that he hadn't used cocaine in the last 7 years. According to former President George Bush's Chief of Staff Michael C. Dannenhauer, G. W. Bush "was out of control since college. There was cocaine use, lots of women, but the drinking was the worst." He said Bush's use of cocaine started "sometime before 1977" and that former President Bush told him that George W. even experienced some "lost weekends in Mexico."
- However, as governor of Texas, Bush pushed a "no tolerance" policy that sent casual cocaine users -- who's dads aren't rich, or president -- to prison for years. He even had the gall to proclaim that such users "need to know that drug use has consequences." In one instance, Governor Bush signed legislation mandating jail time for people caught with less than a single gram of cocaine.
Health Care
- Health care spending rose 9.3 percent in 2002 and 8.5 percent in 2001 -- more than four times the rate of inflation.
- In the last two years of the Clinton Administration, 2.3 million people gained health insurance. Since Bush took office, 3.8 million have lost it.

MEMBERS OF THE ADMINISTRATION
- Ashcroft - Bush's named Attorney General
- Rounded up thousands of terrorism supects after 9/11 and held them in secret and without charges. This resulted in no 9/11-related arrests and no usable intelligence about terrorism.
- Refused to halt executions while he studied the causes of racial disparity in federal death penalty prosecutions, ordered prosecutors to seek the death penalty in more cases.
- John Poindexter - who Bush has appointed in charge of the Total Information Awarness system.
- Poindexter was convicted in 1990 of five felony counts in the Iran-contra affair.

Religion
- Prior to a 1998 trip to Israel, Bush told a group of reporters that the first thing he would tell Israeli Jews was that they were all going to hell.
- As Governor ofTexas, declared a "Jesus Day."
- Set up on Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in the White House to expand government funding of religious ministries and to create church-state "partnerships."
- "We need common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God. Those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench." - George Bush in response to a California circuit court ruling about the Pledge of Allegience.

Special Interest Paybacks
- Electric Utilities/Coal Industry- Electric utilities gave $13 million to Republicans in the 2000 election cycle. Bush Administration Relaxed Clean Air Rules, Saving Companies Millions. A proposed rule change by the Bush EPA would remove mercury emissions from Clean Air Act regulations that have been used to limit the most toxic air pollutants. Instead, mercury emissions would fall under Clean Air Act regulations that govern less toxic pollutants that cause acid rain and smog.
- Halliburton/Kellogg, Brown & Root- Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of Texas-based Halliburton from 1995-2000. Cheney Made Millions As Halliburton CEO, And Still Retains "Lingering" Financial Interest. In postwar Iraq, Halliburton is the largest private contractor, with potential deals totaling over $11 billion.
- Oil and Gas Industry- In the 2000 election cycle, the oil and gas industry contributed over $26.5 million to Republicans, and over $1.8 million to George W. Bush's election campaign. At least a dozen industry officials were named to the transition teams at the Energy and Interior departments as well as the Environmental Protection Agency. Bush Proposed Opening the Arctic Refuge and National Parks to Oil Companies. Nine days before Bush's inauguration, energy industry lobbyists gathered in the American Petroleum Institute's offices to make a "wish list" for the Bush energy plan. According to the Washington Post, "A first review of the 11,000 pages of documents bolsters the contention of Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups that the Bush administration relied almost exclusively on the advice of executives from utilities and producers of oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy while a White House task force drafted recommendations that would vastly increase energy production."
- Mining Industry- The mining industry gave over $5.6 million to Republicans through the 2000 election cycle. Bush alone received at least $300,000 from the mining industry. Bush Eased Mountaintop Mining Regulations; Allowed More Waste to Be Dumped in Local Waterways.
- Nuclear Industry- During the 2000 and 2002 election cycles, the owners and operators of nuclear power plants gave over $7.8 million to Bush, the RNC and GOP candidates and committees. On July 23, 2002, Bush signed a bill which formally adopted storing nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, a plan that was also adopted by both the House and Senate. Findings have revealed more than 30 earthquake faults in the Yucca Mountain vicinity and the possibility of groundwater contamination. The EPA has proposed a rule change that would permit radioactive waste, including refuse and soil from decommissioned nuclear power plants and weapons manufacturing plants, to be disposed of in landfills not designed for nuclear waste.
- Wall Street- Six Wall Street firms, Merrill Lynch, UBS Americas, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse First Boston, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, accounted for six of the top 10 companies whose employees donated the most to Bush in 2004. The centerpiece of Bush's economic plan was a provision to eliminate the amount of tax paid by individuals on stock dividends. However, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported, "Nearly two-thirds of the benefits of exempting corporate dividends from the individual income tax would flow to the top five percent of the population, because these taxpayers own the lion's share of stocks." Bush Cut Capital Gains Tax.
- Pharmaceutical Industry- The pharmaceutical industry gave nearly $1.4 million to Bush in 2000 and nearly $450,000 directly to his campaign and $950,000 to his inaugural fund. The legislation made it illegal for Medicare bargain over price with drug companies, which will add an additional $139 billion in corporate profits to the cost of the bill, according to Ben Peck of the Medicare Rights Center. Bush and the GOP Congressional leadership inserted $89 billion to subsidize employer's health costs to allay concerns about the potential of employers to drop drug coverage for retirees.
- Chemical Industry- As of July 1999, chemical industry insiders raised at least $500,000 in presidential campaign cash for Bush. A Government Accounting Office report released in March 2003 noted that even though US chemical facilities were "attractive targets for terrorists," the ability of any facility to respond to an attack was "unknown." GAO found that the chemical industry was not required by law to assess vulnerabilities or take action to secure their facilities, and that "the federal government has not comprehensively assessed the chemical industry's vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks."
- Insurance Industry- The industry was the No. 10 contributor of hard money to the Bush campaign, giving over $1.6 million and includes 14 Pioneers. So far in 2004 the industry has given over $2 million and producing eight Pioneers and four Rangers. A handful of large companies have reported they expect to collectively save more than $2.5 billion over time, thanks to the new government subsidy for employers that offer prescription-drug benefits to retirees.
- Logging Industry- During his 2000 presidential bid, Bush was the top recipient of donations from the forestry and forest products industry, receiving nearly $300,000. In December 2003, the Bush Administration overturned the roadless rule in the largest national forest in the U.S., the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska, thereby removing prohibitions on logging and mining in the forest. On August 22, 2002, Bush proposed a policy for our national forests which would make it easier for timber companies to log and remove trees and brush from 190 million acres of the most "fire-prone forests" across the country.

- "Pioneers" who committed to raising at least $100,000 in donations were carefully trackeds so that could later be rewarded accordingly. The Pioneers included at least forty-four top energy executives. Nineteen Pioneers were subsequently appointed ambassadors.

Terrorism
- President Bush initially opposed creating the 9/11 commission at all, and then gave in to the political pressure.
- Bush then appointed Henry Kissinger -- who made a career out of covering up the truth -- to head the commission. Kissinger was forced to resign because of possible conflicts of interest.
- Bush delayed giving the commission access to Presidential Daily Briefs, eventually allowing the commission to take a brief look at the documents and take White House-approved notes.
- Bush opposed giving the Commission an extension to finish its work after White House delays made the Commission's original deadline impossible to meet.
Bush didn't want to allow National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly under oath, again giving in only after political pressure forced him to do so.
- Bush has tried to limit his own time in front of the commission as much as possible, trying to arrange a meeting only one hour long with only two commissioners. Bush has now agreed to meet with the whole commission, but only if Vice President Cheney is with him. Bush has handed over only 25 percent of the 11,000 pages of documents that show President Clinton's strong emphasis on fighting terrorism.