By Daniel Meltzer
Volume 75, Number 43 | March 15 -21 2006
Talking Point
Twenty questions: A brief review of W, Dick et al.
1. George W. Bush was born and raised and went through school in
a) Texas b) New England.
2. President Bush speaks with a decidedly
a) Texas b) New England accent.
3. Which candidate received more votes in the 2000 presidential election?
a) George W. Bush b) Al Gore
4. According to Newsweek magazine, Dick Cheney has killed as many as 70 pheasants in a single day.
True_________ False_________
5. Which president of the United States once collided with, and injured, an Icelandic police officer while bicycle riding?
6. Name the vice president of the United States who once shot a close friend in the face while bird hunting.
7. President Bush a) did ___b) did not ___ frequently utter the statement “I’m a uniter, not a divider” prior to and during his first term in office.
8. President Bush a) did ___b) did not ___ swear to uphold the laws of the nation in both of his inaugural oaths of office.
9. President Bush a) did ____ b) did not ___ later say that he can violate any law chooses.
10. President Bush has stated that the nation is at war, but that combatants captured in that war are not really prisoners of war and therefore not entitled to POW rights as guaranteed by the Geneva Convention, of which the United States is a signatory.
True_________ False_________
11. President Bush has stated that he will not permit Iran, a signatory to the nuclear nonproliferation pact, to acquire nuclear weapon technology, but that he approves of India, which has never signed the pact, having access to weapons-grade uranium and nuclear bomb-making technology.
True_________ False_________
12. President Bush has denied being warned in advance that New Orleans’s levees were likely to be breached by Hurricane Katrina, but was later seen on videotape being told just that by then FEMA Director Michael Brown, a few days before the storm hit.
True_________ False_________
13. In the days before, during and immediately following Hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster to ever strike the continental United States, President Bush was
a) at work in the Oval Office.
b) in the White House Situation Room,
c) in Louisiana surveying storm preparations,
d) on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Mexico, in full pilot’s combat gear, observing and directing relief and evacuation operations,
e) on vacation in Texas.
14. Vice President Dick Cheney is a major shareholder in Halliburton, Inc., a defense contractor and holder of multibillion-dollar no-bid contracts to provide services to the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
True_________ False_________
15. Virginia’s Republican Senator John Warner concluded last December’s Senate Armed Services Committee’s hearing into charges of prisoner abuse, torture and possible murder at U.S.-run military prisons in Iraq and Cuba with an assurance that he would resume the hearings after the Christmas/New Year recess.
True_________ False_________
16. Senator Warner did reopen the hearings, as promised.
True_________ False_________
17. The activities and personnel of private security companies contracted by the government to provide bodyguard services for Americans and Iraqis, and which have engaged in combat, and which have been said to charge as much as $5,000 to escort a visitor on a single car ride from the airport to downtown Baghdad, are not governed by any American, Iraqi or international law.
True_________ False_________
18. President Bush has denied knowing former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a confessed felon.
True_________ False_________
19. Photographs have been published showing the president and Abramoff attending functions together, even shaking hands.
True_________ False_________
20. Cuban civilians are employed by the U.S. Defense Department to work at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
True_________ False_________
All correct answers are classified.
