Tag: Worst President Ever

Babs Is Angry with Rove, Cheney & Card over Junior’s Fall in Polls

Jon Ponder

The Washington Note:

Barbara Bush is allegedly TICKED off at Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Andy Card, nearly all of them — except Karen Hughes — for how her boy is faring in the hearts and minds of Americans.

The matriarch of the Bush clan is colder than North Pole ice right now to those around her son who she thinks have undermined him. I’ll tell who my sources are if Patrick Fitzgerald gives a call and makes me — but the sources are very close to Poppa Bush (41), who has been traveling a bit with some of his old entourage, including Brent Scowcroft and others of the first Bush regime…

Should be interesting to watch the role of the First Mother in the coming couple of months. Watch for a lot to change right after the State of the Union address, I’ve been told.

Did Someone Leak Bush’s Speech to Hil?

Trish

Or is she just that good?

In case you missed the memo, Sen. Hillary Clinton did a brilliant job of emailing people yesterday with the facts — as opposed to the spin — on Bush’s call for Congressional support of disarming Saddem Hussein way back when.

Of course, now we refer to this as “Quagmire in Iraq.” But Hillary still remembers why she voted to give the president the authority to make decisions in 2002.

“It is time for the President to stop serving up platitudes and it is past time for the President, Vice President, or anyone else associated with them to stop impugning the patriotism of their critics.” – Sen. Hillary Clinton

I voted…on the basis of the evidence presented by the Administration, assurances they gave that they would first seek to resolve the issue of weapons of mass destruction peacefully through United Nations sponsored inspections, and the argument that the resolution was needed because Saddam Hussein never did anything to comply with his obligations that he was not forced to do.

Their assurances turned out to be empty ones, as the Administration refused repeated requests from the U.N. inspectors to finish their work. And the “evidence” of weapons of mass destruction and links to al Qaeda turned out to be false.

Before I voted in 2002, the Administration publicly and privately assured me that they intended to use their authority to build international support in order to get the U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq, as articulated by the President in his Cincinnati speech on October 7th, 2002. As I said in my October 2002 floor statement, I took “the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a U.N. resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible.”

Instead, the Bush Administration short-circuited the U.N. inspectors – the last line of defense against the possibility that our intelligence was false. The Administration also abandoned securing a larger international coalition, alienating many of those who had joined us in Afghanistan…

I take responsibility for my vote, and I, along with a majority of Americans, expect the President and his Administration to take responsibility for the false assurances, faulty evidence and mismanagement of the war.

Hillary’s email went out a full day before Bush’s speech but in it she correctly anticipates both the speech’s contents and its themes.

After all, if ever there was someone who could stand in front of a meticulously staged backdrop before a crowd of hand-selected supporters and spout absolute inanities with an air of bluster and arrogance, that man is George W. Bush.

It is time for the President to stop serving up platitudes and present us with a plan for finishing this war with success and honor — not a rigid timetable that terrorists can exploit, but a public plan for winning and concluding the war. And it is past time for the President, Vice President, or anyone else associated with them to stop impugning the patriotism of their critics.

You go girl.

Bush: ‘God Put Me Here’

Jon Ponder

Delusional: The president’s religiosity is over the top:

“He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ”

Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

The deaths of American soldiers and innocent Iraqi children mean nothing to Mr. Bush, who sees these losses as part of God’s plan:

“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said.

Don’t worry. Jesus is in his head, talking to him, telling him what to do:

Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.

For Bush, Iraq War Has Always Been About GOP Politics

Jon Ponder

Bush’s war: From the outset of the Bush team’s “marketing campaign” (their words) promoting the war in Iraq in 2002, cynical types such as yours truly have suspected that going to war in Iraq on the timetable they rammed through the Congress and the Pentagon had everything to do with electing Republicans – including themselves in 2004 – and nothing whatsoever to do with WMD, democracy in the Middle East, fighting terrorism “over there” and the dozens of other reasons they have tested on us for sending American youths to die in Iraq.

I said: ‘Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?’ He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: ‘We just have to do this now.’ “

Now – at long last, and way too late – the former Democratic Majority Leader of the Senate confirms this suspicion:

Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota, remembers the exchange vividly.

The time was September 2002. The place was the White House, at a meeting in which President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pressed congressional leaders for a quick vote on a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.

But Daschle, who as Senate majority leader controlled the chamber’s schedule, recalled recently that he asked Bush to delay the vote until after the impending midterm election.

“I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it. I said: ‘Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?’ He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: ‘We just have to do this now.'”

Daschle’s account, which White House officials said they could not confirm or deny, highlights a crucial factor that has drawn little attention amid rising controversy over the congressional vote that authorized the war in Iraq. The recent partisan dispute has focused almost entirely on the intelligence information legislators had as they cast their votes. But the debate may have been shaped as much by when Congress voted as by what it knew.

It was obvious in 2002, and it is crystal clear now, that the Bush team – led by their political director, Karl Rove – carefully scheduled the war so that the timetable would work with the schedule of the next two election cycles.

[…]

White House in Denial

Jon Ponder

In over his head: What is sad about this story is the fact that White House aides are still so deluded that they think they’d be better off if President Bush actually ran the show:

Embattled White House aides have begun to believe President Bush must take the reins personally if his evaporating agenda and credibility are to be salvaged.

Bush has been advised to make staff changes, but “He thinks that would be an admission he’s screwed up, and he can’t bring himself to do that,” said one official.

“We’re just plodding along,” admitted a senior Bush aide from deep within the West Wing bunker. “It’s up to the President to turn things around now.”

Even as his poll numbers tank, however, Bush is described by aides as still determined to stay the course. He resists advice from Republicans who fear disaster in next year’s congressional elections, and rejects criticism from a media establishment he disdains.

“The President has always been willing to make changes,” the senior aide said, “but not because someone in this town tells him to – NEVER!”

For the moment, Bush has dismissed discreetly offered advice from friends and loyalists to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and bring back longtime confidant Karen Hughes from the State Department to shore up his personal White House staff.

“He thinks that would be an admission he’s screwed up, and he can’t bring himself to do that,” a former senior staffer lamented.

So aides have circled the wagons as Bush’s woes mount, partly hoping they can sell the President on a December blitz of media interviews to help turn the tide.

“The staff basically still has an unyielding belief in the wisdom of what they’re doing,” a close Bush confidant said. “They’re talking to people who could help them, but they’re not listening.”

Bush Knew Saddam-al Qaeda Link Was False from the Beginning

Jon Ponder

Murray Waas:

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

“You can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror,” President Bush said in September 2002 – one year after he learned that the facts were otherwise.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the “President’s Daily Brief,” a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.

This evidence means that the president, vice president and their top staffers lied repeatedly when they connected the Iraqi leader with bin Laden’s terrorist group. For example, one year after reviewing the PDB, Bush said:

“You can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror,” President Bush said on September 25, 2002.

The next day, Rumsfeld said, “We have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts with Iraq who could help them acquire … weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities.”

And now:

The administration has refused to provide the Sept. 21 President’s Daily Brief, even on a classified basis, and won’t say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.

Polls: How Dangerous Is a 37% Approval Rating?

Jon Ponder

Teflon wearing thin? It is astounding that 37 percent of Americans still give George Bush a positive rating on his performance as president. (Even hard to fathom is the fact that 8 percent of Democrats approve of Bush!).

It is true, nonetheless, according to a recent USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll. In the past 50 years, only two presidents – Reagan and Clinton – have regained popularity after falling into the 30’s. The others never fully recovered from their drop in the polls:

  • Bush need look no farther than his father, George H. W. Bush, who struggled with a sluggish economy in 1992. His job approval hit 39 percent in February, and in November he was voted from office.
  • Carter, hurt by the Iran hostage crisis, was at 37 percent in September 1980. Two months later, he lost his re-election bid.
  • Ford, who succeeded Nixon, grappled with a falling economy and high inflation. He spent much of 1975 with approval percentages in the 30s and lost to Carter in ’76.
  • Nixon saw his approval rating plummet to 31 percent in the summer of 1973 as the nation followed the Watergate hearings. He resigned a year later.
  • Johnson, stymied by the Vietnam War, hit 36 percent in March 1968, the month he decided not to seek re-election.
  • Truman, beset by the unpopular Korean War, was at 23 percent in January 1952, when he chose not to run again.
  • Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy were the only two presidents in the past 50 years to never fall below 40 percent approval. Eisenhower’s low was 49 percent in 1960, shortly after a U.S. spy plane was shot down by the Soviets. Kennedy bottomed at 56 percent in September 1963, two months before his assassination, as the public began to grow uneasy about U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Michael Moore Answers White House Attack, ‘Confesses’ Scandalous Affiliations

Jon Ponder

Lightning rod: Speaking at the first annual Paul Wellstone Memorial Dinner, filmmaker Michael Moore returned fire against a recent attack by the Bush White House – and helpfully provided fodder to his critics by confessing to associations with groups accused of scandalous, even murderous, behavior.

The White House recently attempted to smear Rep. Jack Murtha, a decorated Vietnam vet, by comparing Murtha’s proposal to withdraw from Iraq to Moore’s position. The smear didn’t stick, Moore said, because it was misdirected:

If they really wanted the American people to hate Congressman Murtha they should have compared him to Scooter Libby. Put that name in there. Then people would dislike him. Put Karl Rove’s name in there. Put Dick Cheney’s name in there.

Another reason the smear failed, Moore said, was the fact that a “majority of the people agree with me now” that the war should be ended. He then stated his position on withdrawing from Iraq, which is not substantively dissimilar to Murtha’s – and is in line with about two-thirds of Americans, according the latest polls:

[…]

Must Listen: If Bush was Joking, Why is Blair Panicking?

Trish

Stop what you’re doing and listen to this NPR report on the British cover-up of Tony Blair holding Bush back from bombing the headquarters of Arab satellite station Al Jazeera.

Blair putting a restraining hand on George Bush casts Bush as somehow trigger happy…with Blair constantly reaching for the cold flannel to mop his forehead and calm him down

Day to Day’s Madeleine Brand interviewed the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland, who reported the questions being asked in England are: If that good-natured, wacky cut-up George Bush was just joshing, then a) why was his proposition – and Blair’s attempts to talk him out of it – included in an official memo; and b) why is the British government going to such great lengths – invoking a gag order and threats of criminalization against anyone who might leak the memo’s contents – to squash it?

The answers to those questions include the possibility that there are other things in other memos, both about Bush’s idiocy and Blair’s restraining hand. And maybe, just maybe, the actual bombings of Al Jazeera in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the one at the Hotel Palestine in Baghdad, which killed one Al Jazeera journalist and critically wounded two more, were not the pure accidents the Bush administration claimed.

Nabil Khoury, a U.S. State Department spokesman in Doha, said the strike on the Arab satellite TV network’s office was a mistake, and he called upon al-Jazeera not to jump to conclusions. “My personal view is that it is a mistake, a grave mistake. It is something we all regret,” Khoury said. “I personally cannot imagine that a country which respects general freedoms can target media establishments.”

Time to get a more vivid imagination, Nabil.

Some Al-Jazeera employees felt the bombing might have been deliberate, for the station has been reporting extensively on the plight of Iraqi civilians and the number of casualties from U.S. bomb attacks…

Chief editor Ibrahim Hilal, speaking from the station’s headquarters in Doha, said witnesses “saw the plane fly over twice before dropping the bombs. Our office is in a residential area and even the Pentagon knows its location.”

Meanwhile, Freedland paints an even more nauseating picture.

The idea of Blair putting a restraining hand on George Bush casts Bush as somehow trigger happy…with Blair constantly reaching for the cold flannel to mop his forehead and calm him down. That’s not a flattering image, really, for either of them.”

Offshoring CIA Torture: European Probe Expands

Trish

Europe is vigorously investigating which of its members helped the CIA get away with disappearing and torturing suspected terrorists over the four years since 9/11. The probe began after a Nov. 2 story in the Washington Post exposed suspicious flights.

Whether it was European complicity in the U.S. effort to “offshore” its torture, or the CIA simply using our allies behind their backs, the activity was widespread. AP:

Human Rights Watch identified possible sites for secret detention centers, based on flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004

Austria’s air force was investigating allegations that a CIA transport plane containing suspected terrorist captives flew through the neutral country’s airspace in 2003, and Denmark said it would ask U.S. authorities for details about the alleged transport of detainees on planes said to be used by the CIA over Danish territory…

Bulgaria was the latest country to deny reports of involvement, saying the CIA’s planes never landed at the Sarafovo airport near the Black Sea…

Human Rights Watch said it had evidence indicating the CIA transported suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania. The New York-based group identified the Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania and Poland’s Szczytno-Szymany airport as possible sites for secret detention centers, saying it based its conclusions on flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004…

On Tuesday, Swiss senator Dick Marty, who leads the Council of Europe probe, said he was investigating 31 suspect planes that landed in Europe in recent years…

Other airports that might have been used by CIA aircraft in some capacity include Palma de Mallorca in Spain, Larnaca in Cyprus and Shannon in Ireland, as well as the U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany, Marty said in a report.

Swedish authorities, meanwhile, have confirmed at least one plane with alleged CIA links landed in Sweden three times since 2002. Denmark says 14 flights with suspected CIA ties entered its airspace since 2001; Norway has confirmed three such flights; and Icelandic media have reported 67 landings.

There have been other unconfirmed reports in Macedonia and Malta.