Tag: Worst President Ever

Has ‘Victory in Iraq’ Morphed Into the Unwinnable ‘War on Terror?’

Buck Banks

Fear factor: As George Bush continues his Scary Terror tour of American Legion conventions and gatherings of military folk to put the fear of Allah into Americans everywhere, it’s interesting to note that it was only last November that he had ginned up something called the “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.” He unveiled it at the U.S. Naval academy in a speech that is reminiscent of his current warlord warblings except for its focus on victory as opposed to a neverending slog through an ever deepening crisis in the Middle East.

By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people.
— G.W. Bush, Sept. 5, 2006

On Nov. 30, 2005, Bush described the enemy in Iraq this way:

The terrorists in Iraq share the same ideology as the terrorists who struck the United States on September the 11th. Those terrorists share the same ideology with those who blew up commuters in London and Madrid, murdered tourists in Bali, workers in Riyadh and guests at a wedding in Amman, Jordan. Just last week they massacred Iraqi children and their parents at a toy giveaway outside an Iraqi hospital.

This is an enemy without conscience, and they cannot be appeased. If we’re not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people.

Yesterday, in his “War on Terror” speech, Bush described them this way:

The terrorists who attacked us on September the 11th, 2001, are men without conscience — but they’re not madmen. They kill in the name of a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs that are evil, but not insane. These al Qaeda terrorists and those who share their ideology are violent Sunni extremists. They’re driven by a radical and perverted vision of Islam that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women and children in the pursuit of political power. They hope to establish a violent political utopia across the Middle East, which they call a “Caliphate” — where all would be ruled according to their hateful ideology. Osama bin Laden has called the 9/11 attacks — in his words — “a great step towards the unity of Muslims and establishing the Righteous… [Caliphate].”

This caliphate would be a totalitarian Islamic empire encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. We know this because al Qaeda has told us. About two months ago, the terrorist Zawahiri — he’s al Qaeda’s second in command — declared that al Qaeda intends to impose its rule in “every land that was a home for Islam, from [Spain] to Iraq. He went on to say, “The whole world is an open field for us.”

Is it me, or is Bush saying the same thing again? And it’s interesting to note that earlier versions of both of these “national strategies” were released in 2003 and have been updated annually. So what is it? the War on Terror or Victory in Iraq? According to an article today in the Boston Globe, both themes are defining Congress’ approach to the last full month of law-making until December as well as the midterms this fall:

… the Republicans have shelved high-profile bills on immigration and lobbying and ethics reforms for a streamlined agenda emphasizing domestic security.

Republican leaders in the House and Senate are planning votes this month on legislation concerning Pentagon spending, port security, bioterrorism, Bush’s controversial warrantless wiretapping program , and military tribunals for terror suspects. The goal: allowing the GOP to tout its credentials in fighting the threat of terrorism.

“The bottom line is that there have been no terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11, and that is the ultimate measure of success,” said Senate majority leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican. “Democrats have urged retreat from Iraq, and, as we all know, that has become the central front in this war on terror.”
[…]

Bush to Lower Gas Prices Before November Elections

Jon Ponder

President Bush won’t withdraw troop from Iraq before November because it would not be politically expedient for his very meager post-presidential legacy. (What other reason could there be?) But he can help Republican candidates with another nagging issue: gasoline prices. Looks like they’re about to fall, just in time for the elections in November:

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: …We may have a little good news here. Looks like gas prices are coming down, maybe quite a bit. Traditionally they do drop after Labor Day, that’s the end of the summer driving season. Also federal pollution requirements change then making it cheaper to refine, but there are some other things that are going on as well.

Crude oil prices are coming down. They closed below 70 bucks a barrel this week for the first time since June. One reason for that is we haven’t had any big hurricanes yet like we did last year. And the recent high price of gasoline had that possibility already built in, right now the national average for gasoline, 2.80 a gallon.

According to one survey, that’s the lowest it’s been since April 20 and some experts are predicting after September the 15th the price could head farther south in a hurry, perhaps as low as $2 a gallon by Thanksgiving. That’s a big drop from the recent average of $3.03 a gallon as recently as August 20.

…And of course, … only a cynic would suggest that there might be a relation between the sharp drop in gasoline prices and the upcoming midterm elections. And we don’t have cynics here in THE SITUATION ROOM, do we?

The Bushwhackers: He Swapped the Bottle for the Bible

Trish

Tired of being tired of Bush? Go to the Bushwhackers’ site and watch the video for their song, “He Swapped the Bottle for the Bible.”

Their sound is traditional country, but don’t look for songs from their CD, “Beatin’ Round the Bush” to be played on your local Hot Country format station

The Bushwhackers’ sound is traditional country, but don’t look for songs from their CD, “Beatin’ Round the Bush,” to be played on your local Hot Country format station. Not with lyrics like these:

He swapped the bottle for the bible
Now he might be liable
To blow us all to bits…won’t that be nice?
He swapped the bottle for the bible
He’s as stubborn as a child,
How did we make this crazy mistake twice?

…A few more years, we won’t have to see his silly grin.
We’d be so much better off if he was three sheets to the wind.

Other songs on the CD include “Buckshot Dick,” “The Daughters Love To Drink,” and “Never Saw No Weapons.”

The group’s leader, Richard Levy, a former Herman’s Hermit, lives in my own hometown of St. Augustine, Fla.

Poll: Bush’s Approval Rating Down to 34 Percent, 45 percent Among Wal-Mart Shoppers

Buck Banks

Eroding, imploding: According to a poll conducted by Zogby International this week, George Bush continues to lose support among his Republican base and his approval rating has hit 34 percent, down two points in the past two weeks. The survey was conducted Aug. 11-15, 2006, and included 1,018 respondents.

The numbers continue to reflect erosion in the President’s political base — just 62 percent of Republicans give him positive marks for his job performance, while 38 percent give him negative marks. Even among weekly WalMart shoppers — a demographic group identified by Pollster John Zogby as a critical support group for Bush — just 45 percent now give him positive job marks, though his numbers among those shoppers have improved 10 points since early June.

More than three out of four — 76 percent — of weekly WalMart shoppers voted for Bush over Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, earlier Zogby polling showed.

Among both conservatives and those who consider themselves very conservative, 59 percent give [Bush] positive marks, while 41 percent in each group gave him a negative job rating.

One third of respondents — 34 percent — said that, overall, the nation is headed in the right direction, while 59 percent said they think things are off on the wrong track.

Democrats continue to carry a lead into the fall campaign season on the generic congressional election question. Likely voters in the poll, asked whether they planned to vote for the Democrat or the Republican in their local congressional election, 39 percent favored Democrats, while 31 percent said they would be voting for the Republican candidate. Democrats also are winning the battle among independents, who favor the out–of–power party by a 32 percent to 20 percent margin, with 41 percent of independents yet undecided.

Asked if the war in Iraq has been worth the loss of American lives, 38 percent said “yes,” while 56 percent said “no,” a ratio that has held steady over the past year or so.

Poll: Bush Drops Back to 33%

Jon Ponder

George W. Bush is both the Worst President Ever and the luckiest. No other president since the Founding could have maintained a a 33 percent approval rate after a similar six year record of gross negligence and incompetence:

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted this week found the president’s approval rating has dropped to 33 percent, matching his low in May. His handling of nearly every issue, from the Iraq war to foreign policy, contributed to the president’s decline around the nation, even in the Republican-friendly South.

More sobering for the GOP are the number of voters who backed Bush in 2004 who are ready to vote Democratic in the fall’s congressional elections — 19 percent. These one-time Bush voters are more likely to be female, self-described moderates, low- to middle-income and from the Northeast and Midwest.

Two years after giving the Republican president another term, more than half of these voters — 57 percent — disapprove of the job Bush is doing.

Poll: One In Two Americans Believes Iraq Had WMDs

Buck Banks

Fifty percent can be all wrong: A new Harris poll suggests that half of Americans believe Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the time Bushco decided to invade Iraq. And it appears that the delusion has been maintained and even enhanced by strong partisan rhetoric by bloggers and conservative media, as well as by individuals’ personal psychological need to find a justification for the ongoing war. The Associated Press reports:

People tend to become “independent of reality” in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.

The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.

Despite this, a Harris Poll released July 21 found that a full 50 percent of U.S. respondents — up from 36 percent last year — said they believe Iraq did have the forbidden arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, an attack whose stated purpose was elimination of supposed WMD. Other polls also have found an enduring American faith in the WMD story.

“ARE SADDAM HUSSEIN’S WMDS NOW IN HEZBOLLAH’S HANDS?”
— Fox News

Pollsters say that the timing of the poll may help explain the results:

Two weeks before the survey, two Republican lawmakers, Pennsylvania’s Sen. Rick Santorum and Michigan’s Rep. Peter Hoekstra, released an intelligence report in Washington saying 500 chemical munitions had been collected in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.

“I think the Harris Poll was measuring people’s surprise at hearing this after being told for so long there were no WMD in the country,” said Hoekstra spokesman Jamal Ware.

But the Pentagon and outside experts stressed that these abandoned shells, many found in ones and twos, were 15 years old or more, their chemical contents were degraded, and they were unusable as artillery ordnance. Since the 1990s, such “orphan” munitions, from among 160,000 made by Iraq and destroyed, have turned up on old battlefields and elsewhere in Iraq, ex-inspectors say. In other words, this was no surprise.

The no-surprise aspect of the non-story didn’t stop the — surprise! — wingnuts from jumping all over it:

Conservative commentator Deroy Murdock, who trumpeted Hoekstra’s announcement in his syndicated column, complained in an interview that the press “didn’t give the story the play it deserved.” But in some quarters it was headlined.

“Our top story tonight, the nation abuzz today …” was how Fox News led its report on the old, stray shells. Talk-radio hosts and their callers seized on it. Feedback to blogs grew intense. “Americans are waking up from a distorted reality,” read one posting.

Other claims about supposed WMD had preceded this, especially speculation since 2003 that Iraq had secretly shipped WMD abroad. A former Iraqi general’s book — at best uncorroborated hearsay — claimed “56 flights” by jetliners had borne such material to Syria.

[…]

Pensito Review Releases Draft of Bush Veto Signing Statement

Buck Banks

Executive power play: President George Bush today vetoed a bipartisan bill that sought to expand the limitations currently imposed on human stem cell research purportedly based on his religious beliefs. It was Bush’s first veto of a congressional bill in the five-and-a-half years of his presidency.

Instead of vetoing bills he disagrees with, Bush usually cheerfully signs them in public ceremonies that make it appear that he gets along with the legislative branch of government and even thinks it serves a useful purpose. Then, as soon as everyone leaves the room, he does a take-back via the signing statement.

A signing statement is a written proclamation issued by the executive branch that accompanies the signing of a law passed by the government’s legislature. Historically, they are mainly used for rhetorical or political proclamations, but U.S. presidents have used them to set forth how they intend the executive branch of the federal government to interpret and enforce the new law.

Pensito Review’s investigative team has uncovered what appears to be an early draft of a signing statement Bush intends to append to his veto of the stem cell bill today. Ordinarily, presidents do not attach signing statements to vetos, but it is obvious that Bush wants to extend his “take-back” powers to vetos, in case he ever does it again.

Here is what is believed to be an early draft of Bush’s veto signing statement recovered from a discarded dictaphone transcript:

As president of the United States of America, I hereby exercise my absolute power as supreme … no, strike that, … as commander and chief to determine at some time henceforth in the future … man, I like to add in those henceforths … to re-, re- … what’s that word? … oh yeah, rescind … rescind this veto of the Stem Cell Research Expansion Act and hold it not to be applicable to the executive branch except insofar as I say so.

It would be my perogative to rescind the veto as command and chief in the following circumstances: In the event that Mom or Dad, or both, or Jeb or any other close family relatives, and maybe Karl Rove, comes down with kidney disease, heart disease, diabetes, cancer or diseases of the nervous system, such as Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease, or any other illness that expanded stem cell research holds great promise for the treatment or cure of.

Bush’s Budget News Might Not Be So Good After All

Buck Banks

Mangling expectations: Today the headlines are full of the good news that the Bush administration’s budget-deficit predictions of six months ago were wrong, and that, miraculously, the budget has $100 billion more in it than the Office of Management and Budget thought it would have at this time. So, was the OMB wrong back in March and is it right now? And what if this is not the first, but the third time that a similar pattern of annual Bush budget buggering has occurred?

Felix Gillette points out in the Columbia Journalism Review that this is indeed the third year in a row that OMB has issued dismal deficit predictions early in the year followed by happy-happy, joy-joy announcements that the gloom was premature and there’s actually googobs more money in the budget than we thought there would be six months ago. He offers some examples of how the MSM routinely reports on the OMB’s cash-flow crowing without questioning the predictable pattern, beginning with 2006:

“The White House Office of Management and Budget is expected to announce Tuesday that, because of the increased tax receipts, the deficit will be about $100 billion less than what was projected six months ago,” Bloomberg News reported.

Sound familiar? It should.

That’s more or less the exact trick the OMB trotted out for the media this time last year. Witness the following account in the Financial Times from July 2005.

“After several years of embarrassing budget figures, the Bush administration yesterday had good news to report,” noted the Times. “The administration, which released its mid-session budget review yesterday, boosted its forecasts for tax revenues following stronger than expected tax receipts to date in the fiscal year that ends in September.”

“It cut its forecast for the fiscal 2005 budget deficit to $333bn … less than the forecast it released in February and a sharp reduction from the $412bn deficit in 2004,” added the Times.

That announcement, in turn, came on the heels of the OMB’s cheerful forecast one year earlier that the federal budget deficit in 2004 was turning out to be significantly less than — surprise, surprise — earlier predictions.

“And today, the White House unveiled its midsession budget review estimates,” reported National Public Radio in July 2004. “It showed a budget deficit of $445 billion for this year, up from $374 billion in fiscal 2003. But Joshua Bolten, President Bush’s budget director, presented it as good news because it’s $76 billion less than the White House projected in February.”

So, we can expect the now traditional sight of the Accountant In Chief telling reporters how the deficit is lower than predicted because of job growth and tax cuts and a robust economy due wholly and solely to his whiz-bang economic policies — not because the OMB jiggered the books to make the boss look good.

Trouble is, willing or not, we are all stakeholders in BushCo, but unlike coporations in the real world that are answerable to shareholders, we don’t have the luxury of being able to sell off something that smells like Enron and buy into an alternative that exercises real fiscal responsibility.

Don’t Miss “The Dark Side” Tonight

Trish

Everybody watch The Dark Side on PBS tonight so you can tell me how it was.

On September 11, 2001, deep inside a White House bunker, Vice President Dick Cheney was ordering U.S. fighter planes to shoot down any commercial airliner still in the air above America…

I have to work but you probably don’t, and the critics who got to preview the Frontline special, like the Seattle Times, make it sound pretty must-see.

Comedians have made countless Darth Vader jokes about Cheney, but the film’s title is no joke about The Force. It’s from Cheney’s own words about America’s response to terrorists: “We have to work the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies.”

But apparently he didn’t use the actual intelligence from the agencies.

The CIA and its then-director, George Tenet, knew immediately that al-Qaida in Afghanistan was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and said so. But author James Bamford says that while the Pentagon was still smoking, Rumsfeld said, “We’ve got to see, somehow, how we can bring Saddam Hussein into this.”

“The Dark Side” claims that 9/11 provided Cheney and Rumsfeld with a pretext for achieving their longstanding ambition to go after the Iraqi dictator and to boost executive power that they’d seen diminish ever since their days as allies in Nixon’s administration. As consummate political infighters, they resented and continually undermined Tenet — a sports-loving man’s man who had become pally with George W. Bush…

Damn. I might have to buy the DVD.