Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count – Steven F. Freeman and Joel Bleifuss

Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count – Steven F. Freeman and Joel Bleifuss, Seven Stories Press (2006) 265pp. (S) ***

Recently, Robert Kennedy, Jr. wrote an extensive, thoroughly documented, piece for Rolling Stone magazine on the probable theft of the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen, was also published this year (2006). While some may genuinely comment that such analyzes are far too little too late, one must nonetheless appreciate these efforts to get the truth out, no matter what the timing. (It must also be noted that the principle author, Steven Freeman, wrote online immediately following the election, pointing out the wide discrepancy between exit poll figures and the official tallies.)
Essentially what Freeman and Bleifuss do is extrapolate their findings from these sets of numbers: the 2004 exit polls (prior to there being “adjusted” as to better match the final tallies), the 2004 official tallies, and the 2000 official tallies. There are, of course, other sets of numbers (like opinion polls), but it is these three that are principally cited by the authors. For those who like mathematics and statistics, Freeman and Bleifuss offer a bevy of charts and graphs, so as to better supplement their argument. The numbers, at times, are a bit overwhelming, but the reader can easily see the need for an in depth analysis of these numbers, if the authors are to succeed in making their points. This is the general conclusion that they come to: “National exit polls [in the 2004 U.S. presidential race] indicate that Bush suffered a defeat in the popular vote by approximately 7 million votes, a margin of about 5 percentage points. On the other hand, the official story of Bush’s 3 million vote victory is simply not substantiated by the data. The only conclusion consistent with the data is that the 2004 U.S. presidential election was stolen.”(p.296) Need we say more?

Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth – Joe Conason

Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth – Joe Conason, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press (2003) 245pp. (S) ***

Big Lies was part of the tidal wave of works that constituted the class of 2003. That served as an answer to some of the more obnoxious screeds of the right, served up by the likes of Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage. It’s really unfortunate that this democratic return volley came as late as it did, that there weren’t more books like J.H. Hatfield’s Fortunate Son and Rick Abraham’s The Dirty Truth, works that sought to expose George W. Bush’s gubernatorial record and his failures as a businessman in the private sector. Now, we can only imagine how many other prospective voters such publications would have reached, even given the nasty (yet brutally effective) Bush information suppression machine.
What Joe Conason seeks to do is to explode some of the myths of right-wing ideology that have subsequently been filtered down through the corporate media, to finally become unquestioned truth. In discussing perceived media bias, Conason hits it on the head when he writes: “Complaining constantly about [liberal] bias [in the media] serves to intimidate journalists, enforce demands for favorable coverage and privileged access, and ultimately, to maintain the overpowering influence that conservatives now enjoy.”(p.34) It’s simply amazing what constantly crying victim can accomplish (even when your party controls all three branches of the federal government).
Where Conason goes wrong, however, is when he writes the following: “After two years of skewed tax cuts, destructive deregulation, and social regression, nobody doubts Bush’s conservatism.”(p.176) (Nobody, that is, except perhaps many conservatives.) Well, what is exactly conservative about passing tax cuts that break the treasury and land the federal government right back in deficit spending? One can advance several arguments as to why George W. Bush is not a conventional conservative. Among them to be included: the launching of war of aggression upon a weak and for the most part defenseless foe (that for the record, never attacked us), using a justification of disarming said foe of his imaginary weapons of mass destruction that have yet to manifest themselves, the trampling of civil liberties via statutes of the USA Patriot Act and warrantless wire taps, by a man whose 2000 campaign mantra was “I trust the people, not the government,” and finally, the adoption of a reckless fiscal policy that has only grown the deficit and the overall debt. This is just a start, but whatever the case, there is abundant evidence to suggest that at heart, George W. Bush is not a genuine conservative, whatever one may think bout his ability to be “compassionate.”
Because his book was published in 2003, Conason is unable to devote much of his analysis to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Nor is he able to summon sufficient amounts of skepticism with regards to the Bush administration’s official line on the events of 9/11. (Again, without having the benefit of time, at one point, however, he quotes Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political consultant, “we can go to the country on this issue [the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent ‘war on terror’] because they [American voters] trust the Republican party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America’s military might and thereby protecting America.”(p.192) Never mind that the source of this quotation is a shameless chicken hawk, who is completely comfortable in helping to spin a war of aggression to the American people, a war predicated upon one of the worst national security and defense breakdowns in U.S. history while he was in power, furthermore, a war he knows he will never personally fight in, nor will members of his family. How do they keep getting away with it? Conason cites two truths: “In political campaigns, a lie backed by enough money effectively becomes truth.”(p.78) and “Appearance matters more than substance in contemporary [American] politics . . . ”(p.90) Though the cynicism is overwhelming, these two statements best explain how George W. Bush continues to beat the odds. The bigger the budget, the more shit that will fly and stick. What a sad, sad reality, indeed.

The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception – David Corn

The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception – David Corn, Crown Publishers/Random House (2003) 337pp. (S) ***

While another book on the deceptions of George W. Bush may seem like overkill, David Corn proves that the meticulous documentation of these prevarications, mendacities, and distortions, still has its place. Whether it be selling his tax cuts, himself as a candidate, Social Security “reform,” or an invasion of Iraq, duplicity has been Bush’s main standard. The common formula seems to be this: strike your opponent low, but with enough distance so as to ensure “plausible deniability,” while all the while posturing yourself as being above the partisan fray. This “Rovian ruse” has become a tried and tired strategy of the Bush White House. And sadly, to this point, such practices seem to have served team Bush all too well, even with astute writers like David Corn calling them out on their devious game.
Another method employed by the Bush regime, involves the creation of a climate of crisis to advance policy ends. Such cases in point include, again, Social Security “reform” (i.e. Social Security is about to run out so therefore we must act now), judicial nominations (i.e. an unacceptable level of vacancies), and , of course, the sale of his Iraq invasion (i.e. “mushroom clouds,” etc.). Again, these are tactics that have served Bush all so very well, so much so that their repetition should be a giant warning signal to Americans who are again and again being sold this false bill of goods.
Lastly, Corn asks, “Does Bush believe his own lies?”(p.320) While he doesn’t answer the question directly, either way, Corn believes, the lies have an equally detrimental impact. Take, for instance, the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. Corn notes that one of the reasons Bush proclaimed for initiating an unprovoked war of aggression, was so that weapons of mass destruction wouldn’t make their way into the hands of terrorists. Then Corn cites the looting of Iraqi nuclear facilities in the chaotic aftermath of the U.S. invasion. Did radioactive materiel find its way into the possession of terrorists? We may never know.
On an aside note, this reviewer must express his disappointment with David Corn, who in the follow-up to the 2004 U.S. presidential election, pooh-poohed any notion that the election was stolen. I believe both he and The Nation have done this country a great disservice in dismissing the possibility of underhanded tactics by the right in that critical election. When a closer evaluation of that election was called for, the readers of The Nation instead got a frenzied dose of self-recrimination for the left, when in actuality the only mistake of the Kerry/Edwards campaign was their failure to follow-up the widespread irregularities in Ohio with legal recourse. Apart from that, the Kerry/Edwards ticket ran an honorable race, especially in contrast to the low-ball practices of the Bush/Rove campaign machine. If the left is to win any elections again, it must first stop blaming itself in post-election mortems, and start addressing the abundant fraud, deceit, and vote manipulation on the right, beginning with an in depth analysis of the paperless, touch screen voting machines. Thanks to the likes of John Conyers, Bob Fritrakis and Harvey Wasserman, Mark Crispin Miller, Robert Kennedy, Jr., and Steve Freeman this story is finally being told and getting out
Corn devotes plenty of ink to the invasion of Iraq, but still, there are some things that he neglects. For instance, what did Saddam Hussein ever do to the U.S.? Sure he invaded a neighboring theocracy twenty-five years ago and ten years later, a monarchy, but aside from the effects upon U.S. oil interests, where’s the beef? (Or was it because he had decided to trade his oil in euros?) Just like a decade and a half ago during the run-up to and during the first Gulf War, Americans today hear a lot of talk about “liberation.” But how does a foreign entity go about “liberating” a monarchy and its subjects, while all the while keeping said monarchy intact? Bush talks about installing “democracy” across the Middle East, but when did a democracy ever arise at the point of a gun barrel of foreign, occupying troops, let alone in a region of the world where democracy is not familiar to its history? Given this, it would seem that what Bush & Co. really want in Iraq is another Saddam Hussein type figurehead (i.e. dictator), who in name only, is not Saddam Hussein. (However, so far the Bush administration seems to have only succeeded in inadvertently creating a Shiite quasi-theocracy.) While all the pre-invasion reasons have collapsed (Saddam’s alleged possession of WMD, Al Qaeda links to the Iraqi government) for being the frauds they are, Bush is left with “democracy,” a causus belli rarely heard in the run-up to the invasion. By the way, why shouldn’t Saddam Hussein have possessed WMD (WMD that was in part supplied to him by the U.S. – just ask Donald Rumsfeld who visited him twice – once in 1983 and again in 1984), especially in the face of a foreign, hostile aggressor such as the U.S. (a country that singularly has the largest stockpile of WMD on the planet and holds exclusive company to the fact we are the only ones to have used a nuclear device on a civilian population)? The best of all scenarios, though, would be a WMD free Middle East, that would include Israel. In the meantime, the U.N. was handling the situation competently, overseeing the disarming of Iraq, thus making the policy of "pre-emptive" invasion superfluous, unnecessary, and wholly catastrophic. Sure Saddam Hussein has a nasty history of using such weapons upon his foes and his own citizens alike, but hey, Franco bombed his own people too. (I don't mean to sound cavalier. This is not to say that bombing is not a morally reprehensible act. It is. This is only to say that bombing one's own citizens is not unprecedented. The horrible and atrocious acts of Saddam Hussein can claim many things, but one of them is not originality.) The point is, there are plenty of ruthless dictators in the world, but as long as they’re kept in their box, by that ever rational principle we know as deterrence, then reasonably there should be no trouble. (Is there any room left for reason in the post 9/11 hysteria?) For what is more important to a dictator than maintaining his own power; so why would he jeopardize that with a half-cocked, suicidal shot at the largest super-power in the world? What, then, is the real reason we find ourselves presently in Iraq? According to former CIA man, Ray McGovern, it’s OIL (Oil, Israel, and Logistics). Enough said.