Reviewers praise for

You're Not Stupid! Get the Truth

Midwest Book Review, Nov. 2004

You're Not Stupid! Get The Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency is an unabashed wake up call to what President Bush and his "neocons" are doing to the country. From a hyper-focus on testing children that ignores real problems with public education - Bush's own home state of Texas has an abysmal graduation and college attendance rate, partly in due to pressures to have substandard achievers drop out rather than bring down test scores - to the lies surrounding the war in Iraq, to how much warning the Bush administration had before the 9/11 attacks, to the overwhelming array of tax favoritism for the wealthy in Bush fiscal policy and more, You're Not Stupid! Get The Truth bluntly exposes lies as lies. A brutally honest, well-researched book that debunks common myths and sharply warns readers to be vigilant against being manipulated, and strongly recommended reading for all eligible voters.

Bookideas.com - by Prof. John Walsh

July 30, 2004
See excerpted version here or original online

The case against the current President of the USA, George W. Bush, is a fairly damning one, and it is well-made by public interest lawyer William John Cox in his compelling new book, You're Not Stupid! Get the Truth. From the well- publicised discrepancies over his early criminal record to the evasion of military service and to the business success that resulted entirely from his personal connections, the case made with relentless attention to detail reveals Bush to be a man with few if any redeeming features. His privileged background and lack of interest in his fellows and their lives make it possible for him to enact policies that are disastrous to most of his constituents; his religious and other ideological beliefs seem to cause him to reason that he is doing the right thing and that any devious or underhand tactic is worth it to achieve his goals and those of his close advisors.

Cox focuses for most of the book on Bush's role in fostering such beliefs and, necessarily, devotes a great deal of time to the run-up to the war in Iraq and its aftermath. Using a variety of sources, he demonstrates the regularity with which the president and his staff were alerted to the imminent danger of an attack by highjacked aeroplanes being flown into high profile targets and their brusque dismissal of these threats. He details the ways in which Bush and his staff misled the public by associating Iraq with the al Qaeda network and by falsely claiming there was evidence that Saddam Hussein had built or obtained weapons of mass destruction.

As a result of these deliberate falsehoods and a pre-arranged determination to eliminate Saddam Hussein, Cox argues, Bush led his country into an illegal war - illegal because it contravened international norms established under the United Nations. Now that the absence of weapons of mass destruction has been (predictably) made apparent, Bush and his closest ally British PM Tony Blair have resorted to a moral argument that war was justified because it resulted in the end of an undesirable regime. So which undesirable regime will be next? North Korea? Iran? Myanmar has an extremely repressive regime that kills and enslaves thousands of its population yet there has been no mention of invading it. What about undemocratic states with high rates of state execution like China? How about a second attempt at one party Vietnam? Is this really a sensible way to manage the world's largest military power?

Cox's argument is cogent and well-made through all of this. If Cox's book helps at all to unseat Bush from the high office he has wrongly obtained, then he has done us all - American or not - a great service.

Reader Reviews on Amazon

 

Small Press Review, July-Aug. 2004, p. 2.
Editor’s Notes, by Len Felton

Read Full Review here or see original online

Scorn & Style

Books condemning the Bush presidency are legion. It's a testament to some stubborn human will to ignorance that Bush maintains any standing in the polls at all. If I hadn't spent many years as a biostatistician I would sincerely doubt the actuarial sense of data that shows Bush with anything more than ten percent. But there he is in a dead heat with a genuine war hero whose only "fault" is that he's open to changing his mind when evidence prevails that he should.

Most of the several dozen books on the Bush calamity are published by larger publishers, but here's a new one, by Progressive Press [POB 126, Joshua Tree, CA 92252, $15.95 paperback] written by attorney William John Cox that stands up to the Dean, Clarke and Wilson tomes. In You're Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency, Cox reveals himself to be a careful and dedicated researcher who cites 93 primary sources with 883 footnotes and concludes that Bush and his "gang of zealots" have deceived the American public, abetted by the "passivity of the mainstream media."

Cox covers it all, from what he calls the "theft of the American presidency" through "new lows in dirty tricks" in the midterm elections of 2002, to "Prevaricator III: the Campaign for Reelection," when "the ballyhoo of his nominating convention will be an insult to the thousands who died, perhaps unnecessarily, on September 11, 2001."

Cox quotes Samuel Johnson's "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" and points out that in all his photo-op politicking Bush is not risking his own life but is "putting the lives and futures of our children at risk."

Finally, Cox discusses the coming election and the role of the new electronic election devices, especially the Diebold Election System whose CEO, Walden O'Dell, is a huge Bush contributor, and who is quoted as saying he'll put Ohio [a swing state] in the Bush column whatever it takes. Cox points out that "neither Diebold, its CEO, any of its executives, or any other manufacturer of voting systems have made campaign contributions to any Democratic candidates."

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