Who's Counting Bush's Mistakes?

Who's Counting Bush's Mistakes?

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real
Posted on February 20, 2006, Printed on March 14, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/32382/

Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best, The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons. And no administration in U.S. history has spoken louder, or as often, of its honor.

So let us count our spoons.

Emergency Management: They completely failed to manage the first large-scale emergency since 9/11. Despite all their big talk and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on homeland security over the past four years, this administration proved itself stunningly incompetent when faced with an actual emergency. (Katrina Relief Funds Squandered)

Fiscal Management: America is broke. No wait, we're worse than broke. In less than five years these borrow and spend-thrifts have nearly doubled our national debt, to a stunning $8.2 trillion. These are not your father's Republicans who treated public dollars as though they were an endangered species. These Republicans waste money in ways and in quantities that make those old tax and spend liberals of yore look like tight-fisted Scots.

This administration is so incompetent that you can just throw a dart at the front page of your morning paper and whatever story of importance it hits will prove my point.

Katrina relief: Eleven thousand spanking new mobile homes sinking into the Arkansas mud. Seems no one in the administration knew there were federal and state laws prohibiting trailers in flood zones. Oops. That little mistake cost you $850 million -- and counting.

Medicare Drug Program: This $50 billion white elephant debuted by trampling many of those it was supposed to save. The mess forced states to step in and try to save its own citizens from being killed by the administration's poorly planned and executed attempt to privatize huge hunks of the federal health safety net.

Afghanistan: Good managers know that in order to pocket the gains of a project, you have to finish it. This administration started out fine in Afghanistan. They had the Taliban and al Queda on the run and Osama bin Laden trapped in a box canyon. Then they were distracted by a nearby shiney object -- Iraq. We are now $75 billion out of pocket in Afghanistan and its sitting president still rules only within the confines of the nation's capital. Tribal warlords, the growing remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda call the shots in the rest of the county.

Iraq: This ill-begotten war was supposed to only cost us $65 billion. It has now cost us over $300 billion and continues to suck $6 billion a month out of our children's futures. Meanwhile the three warring tribes Bush liberated are using our money and soldiers' lives to partition the country. The Shiites and Kurds are carving out the prime cuts while treating the once-dominant Sunnis the same way the Israelis treat the Palestinians, forcing them onto Iraq's version of Death Valley. Meanwhile Iran is increasingly calling the shots in the Shiite region as mullahs loyal to Iran take charge. (More)

Iran: The administration not only jinxed its Afghanistan operations by attacking Iraq, but also provided Iran both the rationale for and time to move toward nuclear weapons. The Bush administration's neocons' threats to attack Syria next only provided more support for religious conservatives within Iran who argued U.S. intentions in the Middle East were clear, and that only the deterrent that comes with nuclear weapons could protect them.

North Korea: Ditto. Also add to all the above the example North Korea set for Iran. Clearly once a country possesses nukes, the U.S. drops the veiled threats and wants to talk.

Social Programs: It's easier to get affordable -- even free -- American-style medical care, paid for with American dollars, if you are injured in Iraq, Afghanistan or are victims of a Pakistani earthquake, than if you live and pay taxes in the good old U.S.A. Nearly 50 million Americans can't afford medical insurance. Nevertheless the administration has proposed a budget that will cut $40 billion from domestic social programs, including health care for the working poor. The administration is quick to say that those services will be replaced by its faith-based programs. Not so fast...

Despite the Bush administration's rhetorical support for religious charities, the amount of direct federal grants to faith-based organizations declined from 2002 to 2004, according to a major new study released yesterday....The study released yesterday is confirmation of the suspicion I've had all along, that what the faith-based initiative is really all about is de-funding social programs and dumping responsibility for the poor on the charitable sector, said Kay Guinane, director of the nonprofit advocacy program at OMB Watch.. (More)

The Military: Overused and over-deployed.

Former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned in a 15-page report that the Army and Marine Corps cannot sustain the current operational tempo without doing real damage to their forces. ... Speaking at a news conference to release the study, Albright said she is very troubled the military will not be able to meet demands abroad. Perry warned that the strain, if not relieved, can have highly corrosive and long-term effects on the military. (More)

With military budgets gutted by the spiraling costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the administration has requested funding for fewer National Guard troops in fiscal 2007 -- 17,000 fewer. Which boggles the sane mind since, if it weren't for reserve/National Guard, the administration would not have had enough troops to rotate forces in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly 40 percent of the troops sent to those two countries were from the reserve and National Guard.

The Environment: Here's a little pop quiz: What happens if all the coral in the world's oceans dies? Answer: Coral is the first rung on the food-chain ladder; so when it goes, everything else in the ocean dies. And if the oceans die, we die.

The coral in the world's oceans are dying (called bleaching) at an alarming and accelerating rate. Global warming is the culprit. Nevertheless, this administration continues as the world's leading global warming denier. Why? Because they seem to feel it's more cost effective to be dead than to force reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. How stupid is that? And time is running out.

Trade: We are approaching a $1 trillion annual trade deficit, most of it with Asia, $220 billion with just China -- just last year.

Energy: Record high energy prices. Record energy company profits. Dick Cheney's energy task force meetings remain secret. Need I say more?

Consumers: Americans finally did it last year -- they achieved a negative savings rate. (Folks in China save 10 percent, for contrast.) If the government can spend more than it makes and just say charge it when it runs out, so can we. The average American now owes $9,000 to credit card companies. Imagine that.

Human Rights: America now runs secret prisons and a secret judicial system that would give Kafka fits. And the U.S. has joined the list of nations that tortures prisioners of war. (Shut up George! We have pictures!)

I could go on for another 1,000 words listing the stunning incompetence of the Bush administration and its GOP sycophants in Congress. But what's the use? No seems to give a fig. The sun continues to shine in this fool's paradise. House starts were up in January. The stock market is finally back over 11,000.

But don't bother George W. Bush with any of this. While seldom right, he is never in doubt. Doubt is Bush's enemy. Worry? How can he worry when he has no doubts?

Me? Well, I worry about all the above, all the time. But in particular, I worry about coral.

Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, which was nominated for a Pulitzer.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/32382/

• Who's Counting Bush's Mistakes? - PK
  • Ah, quit your whining, you're just a know-nothing - unpatriotic liberal - sm - Starcat
    • LOL! - PK

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I meant to spell *neocons* - sorry.

I also meant to say that Charles Shumer tried to pass a bill trying to fix the deplorable 5% of INSPECTED shipments that enter our ports daily and raise that percentage with the introduction of new technology that would enable most, if not all, shipments to be inspected for deadly substances.  The Republicans, who hold the majority vote, wanted nothing to do with that.

I apologize for any other errors I made.  I'm still not up to par after being discharged from the hospital recently.

When Democrats accuse George W. Bush of being a liar, Republicans -- and until recently, the media -- have responded that Bush is a man of integrity whom you can trust at his word. It was the evil Bill Clinton who lied. Remember him wagging his finger at us? That bastard!

Well, yes, Bill Clinton did indeed lie to us. He lied to us about oral sex. It sure is good that we spent nearly $100 million to find out how semen reacts on a cotton blue dress from the Gap. Of course, it turned out that he was telling the truth to us about Whitewater and filegate and travelgate and campaign finance-gate and gate-gate and more. I'm sure we could find better uses for that money today. But, Clinton certainly did lie about that hummer. Imagine that, a man lying about sex. In America no less.

Of course, unlike another president, Clinton's lies didn't kill anyone.

Anyway, I decided to put just a short list together of lies by George W. Bush. These are not banal lies about one's sex life, these are big lies, whoppers and tall tales about his own record, who he is, what he's done and what he stands for.

1. The Iraq War.

We could really start and end with this one, since this lie has killed and wounded thousands of American soldiers and countless Iraqi men women and children. But this one certainly does not stand alone.

Let's break this out into subcategories as well, such as:

a) The smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud. Iraq didn't even have shitake mushrooms.

b) Saddam would not let the inspectors in. Bush has now made this claim twice. It came as quite a surprise to the hundreds of U.N. inspectors that were in Iraq in 2003 and were told by the U.S. to get out or get bombed.

c) Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. All right, I cut them some slack on this one as EVERYONE thought that he still possessed some WMD capability. The difference is that no one else felt that Hussein was any sort of credible military threat to the rest of the region, much less the United States. And, by no one else, I mean C.I.A., the U.N. and anyone else not named Wolfowitz, Rice, Libby, Rumsfeld, Cheney or Pearle.

d) We know exactly where they are. So said Rumsfeld shortly after the war ended. I wonder if he's shared that bit of information with his boss yet?

e) The laundry list. Both Bush in his 2003 State of the Union speech and Colin Powell at the United Nations read through a laundry list of horrors that was quantified down to the milliliter. Powell called these charges facts that were unassailable. Yet we have still not found a drop.

f) We believe that, in fact, Saddam Hussein has reconstituted nuclear weapons. Dick Cheney said this on Meet the Press in 2003. Even as Bush and others were careful of going overboard, Dick Goebbels Cheney kept going for not just the Big Lie, but the Grandaddy of them all.

g) Drones that could attack the United States. True, if they were launched from Padre Island. The truth is that little Timmy down the block has a more sophisticated remote control airplane than Saddam did.

h) Yellow cake uranium. The Italian press thought those documents were fake. Let me repeat that: the ITALIAN PRESS thought they were forgeries!

i) We will be welcomed as liberators. Those are bullets, roadside bombs and RPGs, not roses fellas.

j) Imminent? Who said imminent? Well, Ari Fleischer, Donald Rumsfeld and others. But, apparently Bush never said the words himself. He just used every other phrase he could think of to scare the crap out of us. And, as a point of order, isn't it the Bush Administration? When someone is speaking for the administration, don't they speak for Bush?

k) Al Qaeda and Saddam had close ties. Well, both he and bin Laden are Sunni Muslims, they both have moustaches and, to quote Cliff Clavin, neither of them have ever been in my kitchen. They must be like brothers.

l) We have found WMDs in Iraq. Bush and others have made this claim regarding an ever so dangerous weather tracking truck.

m) They could have been destroyed by Saddam. Or moved out of the country. I know Bush doesn't read the papers or watch the news, but does he even listen to his own staff? David Kay, his hand-picked inspector, said there obviously weren't any weapons in the first place. But, what if Bush is right and they were moved, shipped out of the country? Well, then the whole purpose of the war -- to keep Hussein from giving his WMDs to terrorists -- was a failure. Well, George, which one is it?

I could go on and on, but we've got even more real hardcore, honest to goodness, Grade A lies to address.

2. Taxes (part 1)

Bush has consistently claimed that he is against tax increases. Yet, as Governor, his 1997 tax plan would have forced tens of thousands of business to pay franchise taxes that previously did not have to pay. According to the GOP School of Taxes playbook, that's a tax increase, no if ands or buts about it.

3. Taxes (part 2)

Throughout the 2000 campaign and through 2001, Bush claimed that his mega tax cut for the mega rich was actually a tax cut for the working folks. In fact, he said the vast majority would go to the bottom. As Al Franken has so ably pointed out, by far the vast majority usually means more than 14.7 percent that the bottom 60 percent received. Consider that fuzzy math.

4. Taxes (part 3)

In 2003, Bush claimed his latest sop to the uber-wealthy would create jobs. In fact, the special interest, Rockefeller tax cut was -- in true Orwellian fashion -- named the Jobs and Growth Act of 2003. Someone wake me when those 2.6 million jobs Bush promised in 2004 start being created. He needs to create around 300,000 jobs a month through Election Day to reach his pledge.

5. Taxes (part 4)

Bush, who tried to extend taxes to thousands of businesses and not call it a tax increase, now claims that if his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are not made permanent, that is a tax increase. Now, remember, the law as written says those taxes automatically phase out if nothing is changed. Bush now says if the law as written -- the law he signed -- is not changed, that is a tax increase.

6. I fulfilled my duty.

He didn't take his flight physical because his doctor was in Houston. The entire National Guard spin is falling apart before our eyes. The facts of the issue have remained the same, but the Bush Team's laughable responses become inoperable by the day. Despite their ever-angrier denials, the issue won't go away. Last Friday night's document dump and run still hasn't answered the key question: where were you during the war, George? At least 1972. You can say it's trolling for trash all you want, but you can't make the issue go away without some proof.

7. I'm a uniter not a divider

Bush's 2000 mantra -- bought hook, line and sinker by much of the media -- was that only he could come to Washington and end the partisan bickering. Within weeks, this proved to be completely untrue. His heavy-handed partisanship even cost him control of the U.S. Senate for a time, as Republican Jim Jeffords bolted the party.

In 2002, Bush showed his unifying skills by saying that Democrats who disagreed with his behemoth vision for the Department of Homeland Security -- a plan he had opposed for nearly a year -- didn't care about the security of the country. You know, guys like Senator Tom Daschle, who was actually a terrorist target. He then thanked Max Cleland and Mary Landrieu for their steadfast support by targeting them and backing opponents who questioned their patriotism and, in Louisiana, sent out mailers to black neighborhoods with the wrong election date.

Well, Bush is a uniter in one way: He has united the Democratic Party like never before, and is driving independents back to the Democratic Party in droves. Please, keep uniting us.

8. The 2004 budget.

From front to back, the latest Bush budget is one of the most fraudulent documents ever created by the U.S. government. Well, at least since the last budget. Like 2003, Bush doesn't count the cost of Iraq or Afghanistan into his fantasy land accounting. He also counts in billions of spending cuts that are flat out pipe dreams that even the GOP won't support. According to the White House, the deficit -- which has gone from hundreds of billions in the black to $518 billon in the red in just three short years -- will be cut in half. This from an administration that has overestimated growth and underestimated projected deficits each year. But, according to George, prosperity truly is just around the corner.

9. I won't run a deficit.

During the 2000 campaign, Bush responded to those who -- quite correctly -- said his voodoo economic plan would drive us right back into the gutter that he would not operate a deficit. He said that he was a governor. I believe in balanced budgets. Yes, the same way kids believe in the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny.

10. I hit the trifecta.

Following our steady plummet back into deficit land, Bush used the handy excuse of the trifecta: war, national emergency and recession. He explained away his past statements that he wouldn't run a deficit by claiming he had made an exception for those three things. Of course, he never actually said that. Paul Begala, Al Franken, Paul Krugman, Joe Conason and others have all reviewed every statement printed during the 2000 campaign and Bush never made any such qualification. Of course, why should we hold them to what he actually said? As Larry Speakes, Ronald Reagan's press secretary once said, No it wasn't true, but it sure sounded good.

11. I released all my National Guard records in 2000.

On Meet the Press, Bush once again fell back to his standard behavior when confronted with an uncomfortable subject: he lied his ass off. Four years after reporters first asked him to release his records -- and a nearly a week after he promised to -- Bush finally followed in the footsteps of John F. Kennedy, John McCain, John Kerry, Bob Kerrey and Wes Clark and released his full military record.

12. I'm spending less than Bill Clinton.

On Meet the Press, an interview that will go down in history as one of the stupidest decisions Karl Rove has ever made, Bush claimed that government spending has actually dropped under his tenure. Even GOP stalwarts ran away from this one faster than Rush Limbaugh runs to a bowlful of Oxycontins. The truth of the matter is that federal spending has exploded under George W., just as spending exploded in Texas while he was governor. This fella just ain't your daddy's fiscal conservative.

Here is a great quote on Bush's spending:

His dramatic increase in the size and spending of the federal government with a record deficit. With his $2.23 trillion budget, his administration will complete the biggest increase in government spending since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. The budget deficit predicted by the House Budget Office will hit a record $306 billion. Spending on government programs increased 22% from 1999 to 2003. A Washington Post report said, The era of big government, if it ever went away, has returned full-throttle under President Bush. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey commented that under President Bush, the federal government is out of control. The source? Liberal media publication Intellectual Conservative in an article entitled Why Christians Should Not Vote for George W. Bush, February 15, 2004.

13. Free Trade.

George W. Bush supports free trade. That's why he slapped tariffs on imported steel. Of course, had the potentially affected steel mills been located in New York instead of Pennsylvania -- a state he hopes to win in 2004 -- Bush would still be a pure free trader.

14. Outsourcing.

Last week, the Bush Administration claimed that the outsourcing of high-paying U.S. jobs to other countries is a good thing. N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, wrote a report saying exactly that. He then reiterated his belief in the wonderful attributes of Americans losing their jobs at a press briefing on the report. Once again, Republicans are fleeing from this statement as fast as they can. So is George Bush, who immediately ran to Pennsylvania to promise 2.6 million jobs by the end of the year. Unfortunately, Mankiw is Bush's hand-picked employee -- and the president has already signed the report.

As Senator Tom Harkin said: Under George Bush, America has a new #1 export: jobs.

15. No one could have imagined them hijacking airplanes.

Of all the lies, this one might be the most annoying. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice made this claim repeatedly during the summer of 2002. Nevermind that Ramsey Yousef, one of the masterminds of the original attack on the World Trade Center, had his plot to hijack and crash 12 airplanes foiled by U.S. and foreign intelligence agents...in 1995. It was big news then, but apparently didn't make it all the way out to Stanford University. Rice's deceit was completely exposed in 2002 when details of the President's Daily Intelligence Briefing in August 2001 revealed that CIA and other sources warned the administration of just such hijackings. But she is never called on this or other lies when she makes her media rounds.

16. Air Force One was a target.

While everyone remembers and praises Bush's appearance with firefighters in New York City, the White House -- and the press -- conveniently ignore the actual timeline of events. That meeting took place on September 14, 2001. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, the entire New York congressional delegation and, of course, Rudy Gulliani, had been on the scene for days, Rudy and Bill since almost minute one. On September 11, 2001, after he was notified of both the first and second plane crashes, it took nearly an hour for Bush to depart Florida. But, he did not go to Washington, or even make a statement in Florida. No, first he flew to an Air Force Base in Louisiana; then, to the safety of a bunker in Nebraska. He told Americans it was safe, while he was entombed.

Many criticized his absence, most notably Peter Jennings who asked Where is the President. To combat such criticism, the Bush White House claimed that they zig-zagged across the country because of a credible threat against Air Force One. Nearly a year later, they were forced to admit that they had, in fact, received no such threat.

Now, I am not necessarily criticizing Bush's flight itinerary on 9/11/01. Keeping the President safe was the top priority and they rightly took steps to ensure his safety. So why not just say that and be done with it? Why did the White House have to put out another lie to try to make themselves look heroic? Because that's what they do.

17. Bill Clinton pillaged the White House as he walked out the door.

Well, according to the General Accounting Office in yet another investigation that spent our tax dollars, the allegations of looting just weren't true. Was there some damage and pranks? Of course, just as there are in every transition. But widespread damage? No, it wasn't true, but it sure sounded good.

18. Leave No Child Behind.

The president's key education initiative is a well-intentioned attempt to change education in the United States. It could lead to real changes, if Bush had actually funded the plan rather than treat it as a nice photo op to show he really cared.

According to Senator Edward Kennedy, the author of the legislation and Bush's main prop in 2001, in the two years since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, the Bush Administration has cut its funding, reneged on promised resources for better teachers and smaller classes, and worked to divert millions of dollars to private school vouchers... President Bush's new budget for 2005 will leave over 4.6 million children behind. Still pending before Congress is President Bush's 2004 budget which provides schools with over $7.5 billion less than promised in the No Child Left Behind Act. And there is every expectation that the President will propose again not only to cut resources for public school reform, but to divert scarce public education dollars to private schools.

Enough said.

19. Cost of the Medicare Bill.

Oops! They must have forgot to carry the one...or they are just liars. In fall 2003, Bush sold his Medicare budget with some interesting numbers: it would only cost $400 billion over 10 years. Now keep in mind that passage of this plan was in extreme doubt, as Democrats opposed the plan as a joke that would cost too much and do too little, while Republicans complained that, well, it cost way too much. The Bush Team assured everyone that it would cost no more than $400 million and the plan passed the House by a razor thin margin.

Lo and behold, they snookered us again. Just a few months later, the plan now costs $540 billion, with more sure to be added as the plan actually begins the implementation process.

20. Ken Lay.

After the Enron scandal hit full force, Bush tried to downplay his relationship with Ken Lay by saying he gave money to my opponent Ann Richards. Suddenly Lay, whom Bush had previously called Kenny Boy, didn't' ring a bell. Despite the fact that Enron was Bush's #1 contributor from 94-00, the fact that Bush was flown around the campaign trail in 1998 on Lay's private plane, and Lay's status as a Pioneer (and serious contender for Commerce Secretary) Bush and he really weren't that close. Maybe that's why Martha Stewart is on trial and not Ken Lay.

(By the way, does it strike anyone as odd that Martha is being tried for almost exactly what George W. Bush did when he left Harken Energy?)

21. I'm against Nation Building.

Throughout the 2000 campaign, Bush assailed Clinton's successful military forays in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo, saying he opposed nation building. Today, see Afghanistan; see Iraq. In fairness, when you look at the deteriorating situations in both countries, it is clear that Bush is not really doing any nation building right now. He has ignored the reconstruction of Afghanistan (famously forgetting to fund it in his 2003 budget. Sorry about that Mr. Karzai!) and he has, to put it diplomatically, completely screwed the pooch in Iraq by ignoring the possible resistance to a U.S. occupation, handing over the reconstruction to corporate cronies like Halliburton and the reigns of power to unpopular sycophants like Ahmed Chalabi. Disaster looms where we can least afford to fail.

22. I remember that sign from the Old West: Wanted Dead or Alive.

Following the 2001 terrorist attacks, Cowboy Bush repeatedly strapped on his star and gave us his best John Wayne impersonation, essentially guaranteeing that we would take out Osama bin Laden. Now, Bush says of capturing bin Laden: I have no idea (Meet the Press, February 8, 2004). What would John Wayne say?

23. We're safer now that Saddam is caught.

Howard Dean was ridiculed for questioning this platitude, but he is right. Hopefully we will be safer, but that outcome is certainly not assured. Not if Iran is stronger in the region and Iraq splits apart, divided into three warring factions, any of which could destabilize Turkey, Syria or Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, scores of Al Qaeda fighters have streamed into Iraq since the war began, an outcome we had sought to avoid by taking Hussein out.

For the present, I think we should ask the boys and girls being shot at if they feel more or less safe since December.

24. I was never arrested after 1972 -- unless you count that DWI. Err, those two DWIs.

Bush reportedly told the Dallas Morning News in 1999 that he was never arrested after 1972. Of course, as we all learned, he was arrested for drunk driving in 1978, with his younger sister and Australian tennis star John Newcombe, in the car. According to NBC News, Bush was also arrested for another DWI in Midland after 1972. Are his arrests the big deal? No, but his constant lying about them sure goes to character, don't you think?

25. I supported the Patient Protection Act.

During the 2000 presidential debates, Bush claimed he supported the Patient Protection Act and the Patient's Bill of Rights. I almost fell on the floor, especially since Al Gore, standing mere feet away, did not call him on one of the most obvious lies in campaign history. This one was actually well-explored by the media, but Gore let this meatball glide harmlessly over the plate without taking the bat off of his shoulder.

The truth is Bush vetoed the Patient Protection Act in 1995 and let the Patient's Bill of Rights -- landmark legislation that became the model for other states and the federal government --become law without his signature. So, if by support you mean opposed and tried to kill, then yes, you supported them.

26. I signed the hate crimes bill.

Another juicy whopper. Now Bush had won re-election mere months before with nearly 70 of the vote. If he wanted a bill passed, he got it. But, Bush ordered his legislative minions to kill the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act, less than one year after the most gruesome hate murder of the post-Civil Rights era. The guy who was the leader in killing the bill? State Senator David Sibley (R-Waco), a man who had supported the same legislation just a few years earlier. You might recognize Sibley; he's the guy you see driving Bush's golf cart whenever Bush is back in Crawford playing golf.

27. I want to get to the bottom of the Plame leak.

Following the sliming of Ambassador Joseph Wilson for exposing the Nigerian yellow cake lie, and the outing of his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent, Bush said it was a very serious matter and that he wanted to get to the bottom of it. But he never ordered his staff to do anything about it. Since very few members of the White House would have had the clearance to even know that Plame was an operative, and even fewer are even allowed to make eye contact with, much less to talk to the media, it shouldn't take Sherlock Holmes to find the culprit here. Instead, he actually lamented that we may never know who did it because Washington is full of leakers. Thankfully, after cajoling from Democrats forced Attorney General John Inspector Clouseau Ashcroft to recuse himself from the investigation, it appears that we may actually discover who is behind this act of treason. Scooter Libby, your lawyer is on the line.

28. I will fight the war on terror.

This claim, unfortunately, is also debatable. Just when we had smoked them out of their holes and got them on the run our intelligence services and our military were forced to change their focus from fighting Al Qaeda to invading Iraq, letting bin Laden off the hook. In addition, despite numerous reports on the vulnerability of our ports, little has been done to make them more secure from terrorism. Also, despite a serious congressional study, media scrutiny and an on-going non-partisan investigation, little has changed regarding how our intelligence is gathered and analyzed to avoid making the same mistakes. In fact, little has changed beyond making several bureaucracies into one huge bureaucracy under the banner of the Department of Homeland Security. And, in perhaps the most bizarre example of sleeping at the wheel, the 2004 Bush budget offers no funding for biothreat detection at Post Offices. This after the White House said they foiled a mail attack to the White House last year and days before Ricin was mailed to Senator Bill Cat Murderer Frist's office.

Well, that's my list. Please add to it, as it is far from all-inclusive.

Not unlike the leaders of this country, those chickens might appear healthy on the surface, yet be harboring something very dangerous and deadly inside.

I don't think it takes much for any reasonable person to fill in the blanks of what really happened here.  Wilson told the truth and disagreed with Bush.  Bush doesn't like the truth and particularly doesn't like people who disagree with him.  Therefore, the messenger must be destroyed.  If that includes an undercover CIA operative and all the people she worked with it, well, that just makes the revenge sweeter.  Period.

If anyone else did it, it would be considered treason.  If Bush does it, it's merely dirty politics.

The real question now is:  IS it illegal or just dirty politics as usual in Washington?  In my book, it's certainly immoral, unethical and I especially agree with the last paragraph of the article when it refers to our democracy being hijacked on the way to war.

I would love to see these scumbags indicted, and the only person I have any faith in IS Fitzgerald.  I believe if something illegal occurred, Fitzgerald will indict.

Anyone who paid attention to these elections knows how the Bush camp works.  Look what they did to John Kerry's courageous military service, when Bush himself was too much of a coward to put his own life in danger.

GT, I hope we all can survive the next 3 years.  Between avian flu, terrorism and a president whose hobby is playing GI Joe for REAL, I'm not very hopeful.

I'm looking for a reason to smile this week.  I hope Mr. Fitzgerald provides one.  To see that honesty and accountability are still alive and well in the U.S. and that all has NOT been lost would definitely make me smile.

Why won't Sarah Palin answer a spontaneous question from the press?  What is this candidate hiding?  How date the elitist repub party think they can railroad a candidate by us by dressing her in a skirt.

Meet the Press, Time Magazine, Today Show, Newsweek, George Stepanoupoulous. No soft balls like the View, Barbra WaaWaa or Fox propaganda machine.  We must stand up and demand answers from the repubs.  This is OUR country - demand accountability.

Working on party favors.....

YES WE CAN

"Anyone in my office involved with a leak will be fired" to "Anyone who is found guilty of leaking," I figured he had a handle on what the decision is going to be by the special prosecutor, who, incidentally, was appointed by BUSH.

I guess time will tell if justice truly does prevail.

Bush makes Nixon look like a choir boy.

    Wednesday 31 August 2005

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

A New Orleans resident waded through floodwaters coated with a fine layer of oil in the flooded downtown area on Tuesday, August 30, 2005.

    A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

    The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.

    The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised no net loss of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

    In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection, said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as highly questionable, and boasted, Everybody loves what we're doing.

    My administration's climate change policy will be science based, President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as a report put out by a bureaucracy, and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive Report on the Environment, stating, Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment, the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.

    In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease. Bush completely ignored this statement.

    In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of abstinence. When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.

    On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan. Bush had boarded his very own Streetcar Named Desire.

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    Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of The Clinton Wars, is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.

me as TAXPAYERS) pays Faux News for its' *fair and balanced* reporting. 

Ya gotta laugh at the morons who actually BELIEVE this nitwit, though!

Democrat.  There is no money in it and he couldn't fake the compassion required.

succeeded in passing his privitization of Social Security.  Then we would be seeing all you gung-ho True Believer Repubs freaking out at the devastation of your retirement money.  You would have to walk the walk instead of pontificating endlessly on your favorite subjects - scarey terrorists, Ayers, socialism, Salinsky, yak, yak, yak.  It would serve ya all right.