George W. Bush's poll numbers are tumbling, his credibility crumbling, his domestic and foreign policies faltering, and our national debt soaring. Worse, many Americans fear that our nation is at far greater risk of terrorist attack today than before 9/11.

While Mr. Bush has cynically spun lies, and claims to care about America and its people, he has undermined the United States Constitution, stomped upon freedoms granted under the US Bill of Rights, attacked the bulwark of environmental laws that protects our natural resources, threatened our national security through reckless military adventures, and has savaged our economy by serving not the electorate but his campaign donors. Mr. Bush has proven repeatedly by his actions that he represents not the people, but a handful of the nation's wealthiest families, a small group of corporate special interests and right wing religious Christian zealots.

Meanwhile, the real American people, not the super rich, but those millions who form the backbone of this country -- America's middle class, the working poor, the elderly, our children, honest businesspeople, our soldiers, firefighters, police, scientists, bureaucrats and other public servants, have been callously battered by a Republican administration that is more abusive and ruthless in its wielding of power than any president, any Congress, any ruling political party in American history.

The president has, often behind our backs, made deals to sell out our public lands to multinational corporate oil drillers; sell off our national forests to corporate loggers; poison our air to benefit coal, energy and auto company CEOs; and threatened our drinking water by not prosecuting corporate polluters. His administration has rewarded corporate swindlers at Enron and other companies by failing to adequately punish those individuals responsible for massive criminal harm done to the people and the country. This administration, in league with these corporate pirates, has tarnished the image of America worldwide, and harmed the good name of those honest corporations who have steered clear of Republican cronyism and Neoconservative global profiteering schemes.

Still, the corporate-owned mainstream media, in attendance at the President's rarely held press conferences, meekly reports the administration's false promises and lame excuses, and fails to ask the tough questions that are critical to the survival of our nation in this dark time.

In truth, this is a time made even darker not by Al Qaeda, that shadowy terrorist enemy who attacks us from without, but by a Republican President and Congress that are shattering the bedrock of democratic institutions upon which our founding fathers built our country. They are destroying America by a terror attack from within.

Americans deserve straight answers from George Bush, and they deserve them now: ...

The twenty questions follow - read them at http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1115-08.htm