Awesome speech by SLC mayor re:Bush

[Executor32]

I figured this belonged here, being recent and political in nature. Anyway:

September 1, 2006

Weekend Edition


Have you just about given up any hope that a grassroots Democrat will emerge, one who is articulate, smart, honest and has balls?

Frankly I was very close to giving up on that dream. Then last week GW Bush addressed Veterans of Foreign wars in what he hoped was still righwing-friendly Salt Lake City, Utah. As usual he picked a friendly audience and he let tear against Americans who oppose his war in Iraq, accusing them of being closet fascist-appeasers. Normally the media and Dems let him get away with that kind of demagoguery.

But for once an opponent showed up in the opposite corner of the ring. Bush and his handlers had not counted on Salt Lake City's Democrat Mayor, Ross "Rocky" Anderson. And Anderson was in a fighting mood, landing punch after punch counter punch. Had this been a real fight Bush would in intensive care.

And, unlike the Michael Moores of the political left, Anderson can't be easily dismissed by GOP spinsters and swiftboaters as some kind of a nut. Because Rocky is the real deal:

Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson degree from (born 1951) is the current mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah. He was born in Logan and received a bachelor's degree in science from the University of Utah and a Juris DoctorGeorge Washington University. Although the office of mayor in Salt Lake City is nonpartisan, Anderson's personal party affiliation is Democratic, and much of his platform is that of a liberal Democrat. Anderson was first elected in 1999 and was reelected in 2003. (More)

Hell, he even looks normal.

Anyway, enough from me. Here's the bulk of Anderson's speech that day. (I trimmed it down a bit so you wouldn't bail out until the end. If you want to read the full speech there's a link to it on the Mayor's homepage here.)



Salt Lake City Mayor,
Ross "Rocky" Andersen

Salt Lake City, Utah
August 30, 2006


A patriot is a person who loves his or her country. Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here today to raise your voice out of deep concern for our nation - and our world?

And who among you loves your country so much that you insist that our nation's leaders tell us the truth?

So let's hear it: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!" Because if we had had the truth, we wouldn't be here today.

Let no one deny we are patriots. We support our nation's troops. Let's hear it for our nation's troops! We have so many veterans here today.

A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating president.

That is not a patriot. Rather, that person is a sycophant. That person is a member of a frightening culture of obedience - a culture where falling in line with authority is more important than choosing what is right, even if it is not easy, safe, or popular. And, I suspect, that person is afraid -afraid we are right, afraid of the truth (even to the point of denying it), afraid he or she has put in with an oppressive, inhumane, regime that does not respect the laws and traditions of our country, and that history will rank as the worst presidency our nation has ever had to endure.

We are here today to insist that those who were elected to be our leaders must tell us the truth.

We are here today to insist that our news media live up to its sacred responsibility to ascertain and report the truth, that our news media live up to its sacred responsibility to ascertain and report the truth rather than acting like nothing more than a bulletin board for the lies and propaganda of a manipulative, dishonest federal government.

We have been getting just about everything but the truth on matters of life and death, on matters upon which our nation's reputation hinges, on matters that directly relate to our nation's most fundamental values, and on matters relating to the survival of our planet.

In the process, our nation has engaged in a tragic, unnecessary war, based upon categorically false justifications. More than a hundred thousand people have been killed - and many more have been seriously maimed, brain damaged, or rendered mentally ill. Our nation's reputation throughout much of the world has been destroyed. We have many more enemies bent on our destruction than before our invasion of Iraq. And the hatred toward us has grown to the point that it will take many years, perhaps generations, to overcome the loathing created by our unjustified, illegal invasion and occupation of a Muslim nation.

Our children and later generations will pay the price of the lies, the violence, the cruelty, the incompetence, and the inhumanity of the Bush administration and the lackey Congress that has so cowardly abrogated its responsibility and authority under our checks-and-balances system
of government.

We are here to say, "We will not stand for it any more. No more lies. No more pre-emptive, illegal war, based on false information. No more God-is-on-our-side religious nonsense to justify this immoral, illegal war. We are here to say most fundamentally, no more inhumanity in the name of our nation."

Let's raise our voices, and demand to the administration and our news media, "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"

Let's consider some of the most monstrous lies - lies that have led us, like a nation of sheep, to this tragic war.

Following September 11, 2001, the world knew that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were responsible for the horrific attacks on our country. Our long-time allies were sympathetic and supportive. But our president transformed that support into international disdain for the United States, choosing to illegally invade and occupy Iraq, rather than focus on and capture the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

Why invade and occupy Iraq when it was bin Laden and al Qaeda who attacked our country and still haven't been brought to justice? Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice represented to us, without qualification, that there were strong ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

In September, 2002, President Bush made the incredible and absolutely false claim that "You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam."

President Bush represented to Congress, without any factual basis whatsoever, that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11
attacks.

Our President and Vice-President, along with an unquestioning news media, repeatedly led our nation to believe that there was a working relationship between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government, a relationship that threatened the United States.

Not only has there never been any evidence of any involvement by Saddam or Iraq with the attacks on 9/11, but there has never been any evidence of any operational connection whatsoever between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

The principal claim was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction - biological and chemical weapons - and was seeking to build up a nuclear weapons capability. As we now know, there was nothing - no evidence whatsoever - to support those false claims.

President Bush asserted Saddam Hussein was trying to purchase nuclear materials from an African nation and seeking to obtain aluminum tubes for the enrichment of uranium were challenged at the time by our own intelligence agency and by our own scientists, yet President Bush failed to tell us that!

Ten days, 10 days, before the invasion of Iraq, it was proven that the documents upon which President Bush's claim about Saddam Hussein trying to obtain uranium was based were forgeries. That was found 10 days before we invaded Iraq. However, President Bush did not disclose that to the American people. By that failure, he betrayed each of us, he betrayed our country, and he betrayed the cause of world peace.

Had the American people known we were being lied to - had President Bush informed us that the documents were forged and that he had no other basis for his claim - had our nation's media done its job, rather than slavishly repeating to us the lies being fed to it by the Bush administration - our nation very well may not have allowed the commencement of this outrageous, illegal, unjustified war.

What were we told about chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction? These claims were as baseless and fraudulent as the claims about nuclear weapons.

Of course, no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons were found. Bush Administration Weapons Inspector David Kay, appointed by the Bush administration, noted that Iraq did not have an ongoing chemical weapons program after 1991 - a conclusion remarkably similar to statements made by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice just months before the 9/11 attacks - and before they sacrificed the truth in the service of promoting the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq.

On February 24, 2001, less than 7 months before 9/11, Colin Powell said that Saddam Hussein, and these were his words, "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors," said Colin Powell, some seven months before 9/11.

In July 2001, two months before 9/11, Condoleezza Rice said, and these were her words: "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt." She told us two months before
9/11.

It is astounding how they changed their claims after the President decided to make a case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq!

To think that we could be lied to by so many members of the Bush administration with such impunity is frightening - chilling. Yet these imperious, arrogant, dishonest people think we should continue to
just fall in line with them and continue to take them at their word after we have been lied to time after time after time by these people. What a tragedy, leading to greater tragedy. We are fed lie after lie, our media reinforces those lies, and we are a nation that has been led to a tragic, illegal, unprovoked war.

We are here today because of our values. We love our country. We cherish the freedoms and liberties of our country. We don't call those who speak out against our nation's leaders unpatriotic or un-American
or appeasers of fascists, as we heard from our nation's secretary of defense yesterday. We have good, wholesome family values. In our families, we teach honesty, we teach kindness and compassion toward
others, we teach that violence, if ever justified, must be an absolutely last resort. In our families, we teach that our nation's constitutional values are to be upheld, and that they are worth standing up, as we are here today, and fighting for.

Our family values promote respect and equal rights toward everyone, regardless of race, regardless of ethnic origin, and regardless of sexual orientation. In our families, we teach the value of hard work and competence - and we are left to wonder about a President who, after receiving an intelligence memo about the threat posed by al Qaeda, decides to continue his month-long vacation - just before the 9/11 attacks on our country.

As we demand the truth from others, let us also face the truth. Our government all too often has not cared at all about the human rights of people in other nations - and it doesn't really care about democracy, unless it leads to the election of those who will do our bidding.

Perhaps those in the United States government who (prior to 9/11) aided and abetted Saddam Hussein to further US business interests, while he was gassing the Kurds, should be sharing his courtroom dock as he is now being tried for crimes against humanity.

No more lies, no more hiding of the truth - we can stand the truth - no more wars that more than triple the value of stock in Dick Cheney's prior employer, Halliburton - and which, as of last September, has increased the value of the Halliburton CEO's stock by $78 million.

We are patriots. We are deeply concerned. And we demand change, now.

No more lies from Condoleezza Rice about whether she and President Bush were advised before 9/11 of the possibility of planes being flown into buildings by terrorists. No more.

No more gross incompetence in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

No more torture of human beings.

No more disregard of the basic human rights enshrined in the Geneva Convention.

No more kidnapping of people and sending them off to secret prisons in nations where they will be tortured.

No more unconstitutional wiretapping of Americans.

No more proposed amendments to the United States Constitution that would, for the first time in our nation's history, limit fundamental rights and liberties for entire classes of people simply on the basis of sexual orientation.

No more federal land giveaways to developers.

No more increases in mercury emissions from old, dirty, dangerous coalburning power plants.

No more backroom deals that deprive protection for millions of acres of wild lands in our nation.

No more attacks on immigrants who work so hard to build better lives in this nation.

No more inaction by Congress on fixing our hypocritical and inconsistent immigration laws and practices.

No more reliance on fiction rather than the science of global warming.

No more manipulation of our media with false propaganda.

No more disastrous cuts in funding for those most in need.

No more federal cuts in community policing and local law enforcement grant programs for our cities.

No more inaction on stopping the tragic genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

No more of the Patriot Acts.

No more killing.

No more supposedly pre-emptive wars.

No more contempt for our long-time allies around the world.

No more dependence on foreign oil.

No more failure to impose increased fuel efficiency standards for automobiles manufactured in this country.

No more energy policies developed in secret meetings between Dick Cheney and his energy company cronies.

No more excuses for failing to aggressively cut global warming pollutant emissions.

No more tragically incompetent federal responses to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

No more tax cuts for the wealthiest, while the middle class and those who are economically disadvantaged continue to struggle more and more each year.

No more reckless spending and massive tax cuts, resulting in historic deficits and historic accumulated national debt.

No more purchasing of elections by the wealthiest corporations and individuals in our country.

No more phony, ineffective, inhumane so-called war on drugs.

No more failure to pass an increase in the minimum wage.

No more silence by the American people.

If we can do this in Salt Lake City, we can do this throughout the entire country, and the world is going to hear us.

This is a new day. We will not be silent. We will continue to raise our voices. We will bring others with us. We will grow and grow, regardless of political party - unified in our insistence upon the truth, upon
peace-making, upon more humane treatment of our brothers and sisters around the world.

We will be ever cognizant of our moral responsibility to speak up in the face of wrongdoing, and to work as we can for a better, safer, more just community, nation, and world.

So we won't let down. We won't be quiet. We will continue to resist the lies, the deception, the outrages of the Bush administration and this complacent, complicit, go-along Congress. We will insist that peace be pursued, and that, as a nation, we help those in need. We must break the cycle of hatred, of intolerance, of exploitation. We must pursue peace as vigorously as the Bush administration has pursued war. It's up to every single one of us to do our part.

Let us keep in mind the injunction by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

Discuss.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Wow. They sure are cranking out articulate and awesome anti-Bush speeches in America this week.

Well, they were working on it during the summer holidays, I guess.

[Knife]

When he first came into office, I actually liked the man. He had idea's and wasn't afraid to stir the pot. Now, with some of his views on local matters (plus some of his actions and views on other local matters that have nothing to do with SLC) he strikes a lot of people as an attension whore.

As to his speach; meh. His not welcoming the Pres and being a quasi leader and promoter of the protests have been front page news here for over a week.