bush by the numbers

yeah I know this is yet another in a trillion of forwards similiar in vein but it's a goodie so check it:

Bush by numbers: Four years of double standards
By Graydon Carter
03 September 04



1 Number of Bush ministration public statements on National
security issued between January 01 and 10 September 01 that
mentioned al-Qa'ida.

104 Number of Bush ministration public statements on National
security and defense in the same period that mentioned Iraq or Sdam
Hussein.

101 Number of Bush ministration public statements on National
security and defence in the same period that mentioned missile defence.

65 Number of Bush ministration public statements on National
security and defence in the same period that mentioned weapons of mass
destruction.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Len in his three
State of the Union dresses.

73 Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in
his three State of the Union dresses.

83 Number of times Bush mentioned Sdam, Iraq, or regime (as in
change) in his three State of the Union dresses.

$1m Estimated value of a painting the Bush Presidential Library in
College Station, Texas, received from Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia's
ambassor to the United States and Bush family friend.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned Saudi Arabia in his three State
of the Union dresses.

1,700 Percentage increase between 01 and 02 of Saudi Arabian
spending on public relations in the United States.

79 Percentage of the 11 September hijackers who came from Saudi
Arabia.

3 Number of 11 September hijackers whose entry visas came through
special US-Saudi "Visa Express" programme.

140 Number of Saudis, including members of the Bin Len family,
evacuated from United States almost immediately after 11 September.

14 Number of Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) agents
assigned to track down 1,0 known illegal immigrants in the United
States from countries where al-Qa'ida is active.

$3m Amount the White House was willing to grant the 9/11
Commission to investigate the 11 September attacks.

$0 Amount approved by George Bush to hire more INS special agents.


$10m Amount Bush cut from the INS's existing terrorism budget.

$50m Amount granted to the commission that looked into the
Columbia space shuttle crash.

$5m Amount a 1996 federal commission was given to study legalised
gambling.

7 Number of Arabic linguists fired by the US army between
mid-August and mid-October 02 for being gay.

George Bush: Military man

1972 Year that Bush walked away from his pilot duties in the Texas
National Guard, Nearly two years before his six-year obligation was up.

$3,500 Reward a group of veterans offered in 00 for anyone who
could confirm Bush's Alabama guard service.

600-700 Number of guardsmen who were in Bush's unit during that
period.

0 Number of guardsmen from that period who came forward with
information about Bush's guard service.

0 Number of minutes that President Bush, Vice-President Dick
Cheney, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the assistant Defence
Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, the former chairman of the Defence Policy
Board, Richard Perle, and the White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove
the main proponents of the war in Iraq served in combat (combined).

0 Number of principal civilian or Pentagon staff members who
planned the war who have immediate family members serving in uniform in
Iraq.

8 Number of members of the US Senate and House of Representatives
who have a child serving in the military.

10 Number of days that the Pentagon spent investigating a soldier
who h called the President "a joke" in a letter to the editor of a
Newspaper.

46 Percentage increase in sales between 01 and 02 of GI Joe
figures (children's toys).

Ambitious warrior

2 Number of Nations that George Bush has attacked and taken over
since coming into office.

130 Approximate Number of countries (out of a total of 191
recognised by the United Nations) with a US military presence.

43 Percentage of the entire world's military spending that the US
spends on defence. (That was in 02, the year before the invasion of
Iraq.)

$401.3bn Proposed military budget for 04.

Saviour of Iraq

1983 The year in which Donald Rumsfeld, Ronald Reagan's special
envoy to the Middle East, gave Sdam Hussein a pair of golden spurs as
a gift.

2.5 Number of hours after Rumsfeld learnt that Osama bin Len was
a suspect in the 11 September attacks that he brought up reasons to
"hit" Iraq.

237 Minimum number of misleing statements on Iraq me by top
Bush ministration officials between 02 and January 04, according
to the California Representative Henry Waxman.

10m Estimated number of people worldwide who took to the streets
on 21 February 03, in opposition to the invasion of Iraq, the largest
simultaneous protest in world history.

$2bn Estimated monthly cost of US military presence in Iraq
projected by the White House in April 03.

$4bn Actual monthly cost of the US military presence in Iraq
according to Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld in 04.

$15m Amount of a contract awarded to an American firm to build a
cement factory in Iraq.

$80,000 Amount an Iraqi firm spent (using Sdam's confiscated
funds) to build the same factory, after delays prevented the American
firm from starting it.

00 Year that Cheney said his policy as CEO of Halliburton oil
services company was "we wouldn't do anything in Iraq".

$4.7bn Total value of contracts awarded to Halliburton in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

$680m Estimated value of Iraq reconstruction contracts awarded to
Bechtel.

$2.8bnValue of Bechtel Corp contracts in Iraq.

$1bn Amount the war and its aftermath are projected to cost for
the 04 fiscal year.

35 Number of countries to which the United States suspended
military assistance after they failed to sign agreements giving
Americans immunity from prosecution before the International Criminal
Court.

92 Percentage of Iraq's urban areas with access to potable water
in late 02.

60 Percentage of Iraq's urban areas with access to potable water
in late 03.

55 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who were unemployed before
the war.

80 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who are unemployed a Year
after the war.

0 Number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi
surrender in May 1945.

37 Death toll of US soldiers in Iraq in May 03, the month combat
operations "officially" ended.

0 Number of coffins of de soldiers returning home that the Bush
ministration has permitted to be photographed.

0 Number of memorial services for the returned de that Bush has
attended since the beginning of the war.

A soldier's best friend

40,000 Number of soldiers in Iraq seven months after start of the
war still without Interceptor vests, designed to stop a round from an
AK-47.

$60m Estimated cost of outfitting those 40,000 soldiers with
Interceptor vests.

62 Percentage of gas masks that army investigators discovered did
Not work properly in autumn 02.

90 Percentage of detectors which give early warning of a
biological weapons attack found to be defective.

87 Percentage of Humvees in Iraq not equipped with armour capable
of stopping AK-47 rounds and protecting against roside bombs and
landmines at the end of 03.

Making the country safer

$3.29 Average amount allocated per person Nationwide in the first
round of homeland security grants.

$94.40 Amount allocated per person for homeland security in
American Samoa.

$36 Amount allocated per person for homeland security in Wyoming,
Vice-President Cheney's home state.

$17 Amount allocated per person in New York state.

$5.87 Amount allocated per person in New York City.

$77.92 Amount allocated per person in New Haven, Connecticut, home
of Yale University, Bush's alma mater.

76 Percentage of 215 cities surveyed by the US Conference of
Mayors in early 04 that h yet to receive a dime in federal homeland
security assistance for their first-response units.

5 Number of major US airports at the beginning of 04 that the
Transportation Security ministration mitted were Not fully screening
baggage electronically.

22,600 Number of planes carrying unscreened cargo that fly into
New York each month.

5 Estimated Percentage of US air cargo that is screened, including
cargo transported on passenger planes.

95 Percentage of foreign goods that arrive in the United States by
sea.

2 Percentage of those goods subjected to thorough inspection.

$5.5bnEstimated cost to secure fully US ports over the Next
dece.

$0 Amount Bush allocated for port security in 03.

$46m Amount the Bush ministration has budgeted for port security
in 05.

15,000 Number of major chemical facilities in the United States.

100 Number of US chemical plants where a terrorist act could
endanger the lives of more than one million people.

0 Number of new drugs or vaccines against "priority pathogens"
listed by the Centres for Disease Control that have been developed and
introduced since 11 September 01.

Giving a hand up to the vantaged

$10.9m Average wealth of the members of Bush's original 16-person
cabinet.

75 Percentage of Americans unaffected by Bush's sweeping 03 cuts
in capital gains and dividends taxes.

$42,000 Average savings members of Bush's cabinet received in 03
as a result of cuts in capital gains and dividends taxes.

10 Number of fellow members from the Yale secret society Skull and
Bones that Bush has named to important positions (including the
Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum Jr. and SEC chief Bill
Donaldson).

79 Number of Bush's initial 189 appointees who also served in his
father's ministration.

A man with a lot of friends

$113m Amount of total hard money the Bush-Cheney 00 campaign
received, a record.

$11.5m Amount of hard money raised through the Pioneer programme,
the controversial fund-raising process created for the Bush-Cheney 00
campaign. (Participants pledged to raise at least $100,000 by bundling
together cheques of up to $1,000 from friends and family. Pioneers were
assigned numbers, which were included on all cheques, enabling the
campaign to keep track of who raised how much.)

George Bush: Money manager

4.7m Number of bankruptcies that were declared during Bush's first
three years in office.

02 The worst year for major markets since the recession of the
1970s.

$489bn The US tre deficit in 03, the worst in history for a
single year.

$5.6tr Projected national surplus forecast by the end of the
dece when Bush took office in 01.

$7.22tr US national debt by mid-04.

George Bush: Tax cutter

87 Percentage of American families in April 04 who say they have
felt no benefit from Bush's tax cuts.

39 Percentage of tax cuts that will go to the top 1 per cent of
American families when fully phased in.

49 Percentage of Americans in April 04 who found that their
taxes h actually gone up since Bush took office.

88 Percentage of American families who will save less than $100 on
their 06 federal taxes as a result of 03 cut in capital gains and
dividends taxes.

$30,858 Amount Bush himself saved in taxes in 03.

Employment tsar

9.3m Number of US unemployed in April 04.

2.3m Number of Americans who lost their jobs during first three
Years of the Bush ministration.

22m Number of jobs gained during Clinton's eight years in office.

Friend of the poor

34.6m Number of Americans living below the poverty line (1 in 8 of
the population).

6.8m Number of people in the workforce but still classified as
poor.

35m Number of Americans that the government defines as "food
insecure," in other words, hungry.

$300m Amount cut from the federal programme that provides
subsidies to poor families so they can heat their homes.

40 Percentage of wealth in the United States held by the richest 1
per cent of the population.

18 Percentage of wealth in Britain held by the richest 1e per cent
of the population.

George Bush And his special friend

$60bn Loss to Enron stockholders, following the largest bankruptcy
in US history.

$5m Amount Enron CEO Kenneth Lay earned from stock option
profits over a four-year period.

$101m Amount Lay me from selling his Enron shares just before
the company went bankrupt.

$59,339 Amount the Bush campaign reimbursed Enron for 14 trips on
its corporate jet during the 00 campaign.

30 Length of time in months between Enron's collapse and Lay (whom
the President called "Kenny Boy") still not being charged with a crime.

George Bush: Lawman

15 Average number of minutes Bush spent reviewing capital
punishment cases while governor of Texas.

46 Percentage of Republican federal judges when Bush came to
office.

57 Percentage of Republican federal judges after three years of
the Bush ministration.

33 Percentage of the $15bn Bush pledged to fight Aids in Africa
that must go to abstinence-only programmes.

The Civil libertarian

680 Number of suspected al-Qa'ida members that the United States
mits are detained at GuantE1namo Bay, Cuba.

42 Number of nationalities of those detainees at Guantanamo.

22 Number of hours prisoners were handcuffed, shackled, and me
to wear surgical masks, earmuffs, and blindfolds during their flight to
Guantanamo.

32 Number of confirmed suicide attempts by Guantanamo Bay
prisoners.

24 Number of prisoners in mid-03 being monitored by
psychiatrists in Guantanamo's new mental ward.

A health-conscious president

43.6m Number of Americans without health insurance by the end of
02 (more than 15 per cent of the population).

2.4m Number of Americans who lost their health insurance during
Bush's first year in office.

Environmentalist

$44m Amount the Bush-Cheney 00 campaign and the Republican
National Committee received in contributions from the fossil fuel,
chemical, timber, and mining industries.

0 Number of regulation rollbacks downgring or weakening
environmental laws in Bush's first three years in office.

31 Number of Bush ministration appointees who are alumni of the
energy industry (includes four cabinet secretaries, the six most
powerful White House officials, and more than other high-level
appointees).

50 Approximate number of policy changes and regulation rollbacks
injurious to the environment that have been announced by the Bush
ministration on Fridays after 5pm, a time that makes it all but
impossible for news organisations to relay the information to the widest
possible audience.

50 Percentage decline in Environmental Protection Agency
enforcement actions against polluters under Bush's watch.

34 Percentage decline in criminal penalties for environmental
crimes since Bush took office.

50 Percentage decline in civil penalties for environmental crimes
since Bush took office.

$6.1m Amount the EPA historically valued each human life when
conducting economic analyses of proposed regulations.

$3.7m Amount the EPA valued each human life when conducting
analyses of proposed regulations during the Bush ministration.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned global warming, clean air, clean
water, pollution or environment in his 04 State of the Union speech.
His father was the last president to go through an entire State of the
Union dress without mentioning the environment.

1 Number of paragraphs devoted to global warming in the EPA's
600-page "Draft Report on the Environment" presented in 03.

68 Number of days after taking office that Bush decided Not to
ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to reduce greenhouse
gases by roughly 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 12. The United
States was to cut its level by 7 per cent.

1 The rank of the United States worldwide in terms of greenhouse
gas emissions.

25 Percentage of overall worldwide carbon dioxide emissions the
United States is responsible for.

53 Number of days after taking office that Bush reneged on his
campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.


14 Percentage carbon dioxide emissions will increase over the next
10 years under Bush's own global-warming plan (an increase of 30 per
cent above their 1990 levels).

408 Number of species that could be extinct by 50 if the
global-warming trend continues.

5 Number of years the Bush ministration said in 03 that global
warming must be further studied before substantive action could be
taken.

62 Number of members of Cheney's 63-person Energy Task Force with
ties to corporate energy interests.

0 Number of environmentalists asked to attend Cheney's Energy Task
Force meetings.

6 Number of months before 11 September that Cheney's Energy Task
Force investigated Iraq's oil reserves.

2 Percentage of the world's population that is British.

2 Percentage of the world's oil used by Britain.

5 Percentage of the world's population that is American.

25 Percentage of the world's oil used by America.

63 Percentage of oil the United States imported in 03, a record
high.

24,000 Estimated number of premature deaths that will occur under
Bush's Clear Skies initiative.

300 Number of Clean Water Act violations by the mountaintop-mining
industry in 03.

750,000 Tons of toxic waste the US military, the world's biggest
polluter, generates around the world each Year.

$3.8bn Amount in the Superfund trust fund for toxic site clean-ups
in 1995, the Year "polluter pays" fees expired.

$0m Amount of uncommitted dollars in the Superfund trust fund for
toxic site clean-ups in 03.

270 Estimated number of court decisions citing federal Negligence
in endangered-species protection that remained unheeded during the first
year of the Bush ministration.

100 Percentage of those decisions that Bush then decided to allow
the government to ignore indefinitely.

68.4 Average Number of species ded to the Endangered and
Threatened Species list each year between 1991 and 00.

0 Number of endangered species voluntarily ded by the Bush
ministration since taking office.

50 Percentage of screened workers at Ground Zero who now suffer
from long-term health problems, almost half of whom don't have health
insurance.

78 Percentage of workers at Ground Zero who now suffer from lung
ailments.

88 Percentage of workers at Ground Zero who Now suffer from ear,
nose, or throat problems.

22 Asbestos levels at Ground Zero were 22 times higher than the
levels in Libby, Montana, where the W R Grace mine produced one of the
worst Superfund disasters in US history.

Image booster for the US

2,500 Number of public-diplomacy officers employed by the State
Department to further the image of the US abro in 1991.

1,0 Number of public-diplomacy officers employed by the State
Department to further US image abro in 04.

4 Rank of the United States among countries considered to be the
greatest threats to world peace according to a 03 Pew Global Attitudes
study (Israel, Iran, and North Korea were considered more dangerous;
Iraq was considered less dangerous).

$66bn Amount the United States spent on international aid and
diplomacy in 1949.

$23.8bn Amount the United States spent on international aid and
diplomacy in 02.

85 Percentage of Indonesians who h an unfavourable image of the
United States in 03.

Second-party endorsements

90 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was
handling his job as president on 26 September 01.

67 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was
handling his job as president on 26 September 02.

54 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was
handling his job as president on 30 September, 03.

50 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was
handling his job as president on 15 October 03.

49 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was
handling his job as president in May 04.

More like the French than he would care to mit

28 Number of vacation days Bush took in August 03, the
second-longest vacation of any president in US history. (Record holder
Richard Nixon.)

13 Number of vacation days the average American receives each
Year.

28 Number of vacation days Bush took in August 01, the month he
received a 6 August Presidential Daily Briefing heed "Osama bin Len
Determined to Strike US Targets."

500 Number of days Bush has spent all or part of his time away
from the White House at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, his parents'
retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine, or Camp David as of 1 April 04.

No fool when it comes to the press

11 Number of press conferences during his first three Years in
office in which Bush referred to questions as being "trick" ones.

Factors in his favour

3 Number of companies that control the US voting technology
market.

52 Percentage of votes cast during the 02 midterm elections that
were recorded by Election Systems & Software, the largest
voting-technology firm, a big Republican donor.

29 Percentage of votes that will be cast via computer voting
machines that don't produce a paper record.

17On 17 November 01, The Economist printed a correction for
having said George Bush was properly elected in 00.

$113m Amount raised by the Bush-Cheney 00 campaign, the most in
American electoral history.

$185m Amount raised by the Bush-Cheney 04 re-election campaign,
to the end of March 04.

$0m Amount that the Bush-Cheney 04 campaign expects to raise
by November 04.

268 Number of Bush-Cheney fund-raisers who h earned Pioneer
status (by raising $100,000 each) as of March 04.

187 Number of Bush-Cheney fund-raisers who h earned Ranger
status (by raising $0,000 each) as of March 04.

$64.2mThe Amount Pioneers and Rangers h raised for Bush-Cheney
as of March 04.

85 Percentage of Americans who can't Name the Chief Justice of the
United States.

69 Percentage of Americans who believed the White House's claims
in September 03 that Sdam Hussein was personally involved in the 11
September attacks.

34 Percentage of Americans who believed in June 03 that Sdam's
"weapons of mass destruction" h been found.

22 Percentage of Americans who believed in May 03 that Sdam
h used his WMDs on US forces.

85 Percentage of American young ults who cannot find
Afghanistan, Iraq, or Israel on a map.

30 Percentage of American young ults who cannot find the Pacific
Ocean on a map.

75 Percentage of American young ults who don't know the
population of the United States.

53 Percentage of Canian young ults who don't know the
population of the United States.

11 Percentage of American young ults who cannot find the United
States on a map.

30 Percentage of Americans who believe that "politics and
government are too complicated to understand."

Another factor in his favour

70m Estimated number of Americans who describe themselves as
Evangelicals who accept Jesus Christ as their personal saviour and who
interpret the Bible as the direct word of God.

23m Number of Evangelicals who voted for Bush in 00.

50m Number of voters in total who voted for Bush in 00.

46 Percentage of voters who describe themselves as born-again
Christians.

5 Number of states that do not use the word "evolution" in public
school science courses.

This is an edited extract from "What We've Lost", by Graydon
Carter, published by Little Brown on 9 September

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For a former college drop-out from Ontario and, briefly, a lineman
stringing up telegraph wires on the railways of Cana, Graydon Carter,
55, has risen to impressive heights. The editor of Vanity Fair since
1992 after succeeding Tina Brown he is one of America's
celebrity editors with clout, glamour and a nice line in suits.

It is hard to imagine Carter doing physical work of any kind,
beyond exercising his thumb on his silver Zippo lighter. His labour is
restricted to rejigging helines in his magazine he is a
self-confessed failure at delegation of duties and swanning to
Manhattan parties. Martini in hand, he cuts an almost princely and
dandyish figure, with billowing shirts and similarly billowing silver
hair.

The spotlight on his activities has never burned brighter. In
recent months he has transformed the regular editor's letter at the
front of the magazine into less of a chat about its coming contents
the spres of Annie Leibowitz and rants of Christopher Hitchens and
more a full-bore diatribe against the world of George Bush.