Tag: Worst President Ever

Addicted to Fear – Cowardice Has Become the Source of Republican Power

Jon Ponder

The Republican Party’s macho bluster and apparently endless appetite for war makes it seem counter-intuitive to think of them as cowards. And yet, seven years into the Bush regime, it is clear that the GOP has become dependent on fear to keep itself in power — and to support this addiction the party leadership has converted its rank and file members into America’s first generation of bona fide yellow-bellied chickens.

After the GOP took over the government in 2000 and ran all three branches for six years, the truth about the conservative movement was finally revealed. After years of unctuous claims that they were for family values and lower spending and against corruption, Republicans demonstrated that the exact opposite is true. They were caught engaging in a wide range of sleazy activities, both personal and financial, and Bush and the GOP Congress ran the Treasury into the ground, racking up more debt than all the presidents since Washington, combined. Now, with that record fresh in voters’ minds, all they have left to run on is the politics of fear.

Nearly every day, a subtle or not-so-subtle message of fear — about terrorists, Moslems, Iran, whatever works — is transmitted from the bully pulpit of the White House press room podium out to the public via the seemingly unwitting mainstream media, Fox News and rightwing talk radio. The government’s fear propaganda is mostly just noise in the background to normal people, but rank and file conservatives gobble it up like ravenous dogs.

9/11 Did Not “Change Everything”

The Republican culture of fear was born out of the 9/11 attacks — which we are told “changed everything” because they were an “attack on America.” But when the World Trade Center was bombed in February 1993 by rightwing Islamic terrorists very like the ones who would take the towers down eight years years later, no one suggested that our response to this “attack on America” should be invading and occupying Iraq.

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California’s Top Dem: Bush’s Fire Photo Op Will Interfere with Firefighting

Jon Ponder

Lt. Gov. John Garamendi:

“How about sending our National Guard back from Iraq, so that we have those people available here to help us?”

“I’ve got some doubt about the value of President Bush coming out here. How many times did he go to New York or to New Orleans and still made promises but hasn’t delivered. We have the Terminator out here, Gov. Schwarzenegger is doing a good job, and we’ll see.”

Asked if Bush’s trip is about PR: “Of course it’s public relations. The actions taking place by the hard working firefighters, the men and women and the police that are out there on the line, and the community that’s pulling together to support wach other, that’s where the action is taking place. I know, okay, President Bush comes out, we’ll be polite, but frankly, that’s not the solution. How about sending our National Guard back from Iraq, so that we have those people available here to help us?”

Asked if Bush’s visit will distract from fire fighting efforts: “Absolutely, no doubt about it. The president goes some place, you’ve got a huge entourage, you’ve got secret service all over and all the chaos that comes with whenever the President arrives, wherever the President happens to arrive. But listen, what we really need are those firefighters, we need the equipment, we need, frankly, we need those troops back from Iraq. We’ll get on here, whether he comes or not, that’s not really the issue. I just hope if he does come, he brings more than he brought to New Orleans” (“Hardball,” MSNBC, 10/23).

Bush Won’t Pay for Kids’ Health Care But Flew Billions in Shrink-Wrapped Bundles of Cash into the Iraq War Zone – a Fortune That Can’t Be Accounted for Now

Jon Ponder

Mid-2003: A reporter in Iraq stands on a pallet filled with shrink-wrapped bricks of C-Notes

“Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?” — Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Pres. Bush said he vetoed the Democrats’ expansion of the SCHIP children’s health insurance program because it was too costly. This confirms what we know about the president’s priorities. But the cost to cover 10 million additional children would be $35 billion, Democrats have pointed out, which is roughly what it takes to run Bush’s war in Iraq for 41 days.

An even more apt example of the misplaced values of Bush and his party is the story of the $12 billion or so that was flown into Iraq in 2003 and then went missing and will never be recovered. It sounds like a financial scandal of historical proportions, and yet it is one of the most under-reported story of the war:

The United States flew nearly $12 billion in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.

The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a U.S. congressional committee.

In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tons, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22, 2004, six days before the handover.

After this was revealed in an investigation into Bush’s handling of his invasion of Iraq, Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee was prompted to ask:

“Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?”

Security in the war zone was so lax as to be non-existent:

“One [Bush Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)] official described an environment awash in $100 bills,” the memorandum [on the investigation for Waxman’s committee] says. “One contractor received a $2 million payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack.

And:

“They also found that $774,300 in cash had been stolen from one division’s vault. Cash payments were made from the back of a pickup truck, and cash was stored in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was given $6.75 million in cash, and was ordered to spend it in one week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds.”

The Bush team — many of whom were inexperienced Republican Party operatives, cronies of the president and their twenty-something kids — lost or ripped off millions of dollars from the UN that was intended to feed Iraq’s poor people:

On April 12, 2004, the [CPA] in Erbil in northern Iraq handed over $1.5 billion in cash to a local courier. The money, fresh $100 bills shrink-wrapped on pallets, which filled three Blackhawk helicopters, came from oil sales under the UN’s Oil for Food Programme, and had been entrusted by the UN Security Council to the Americans to be spent on behalf of the Iraqi people.

The CPA didn’t properly check out the courier before handing over the cash, and, as a result, according to an audit report by the CPA’s inspector general, “there was an increased risk of the loss or theft of the cash.”

Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul in Baghdad … kept a slush fund of nearly $600 million cash for which there is no paperwork: $200 million of this was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces, and the US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds.

To get a sense of the Bushies’ attitude about the loss of the money, here is retired Admiral David Oliver, who was Bremer’s financial advisor, on the loss of billions of Oil for Food dollars:

“I have no idea. I can’t tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn’t – nor do I actually think it’s important.”

Q: “But the fact is billions of dollars have disappeared without trace.”

Oliver: “Of their money. Billions of dollars of their money, yeah I understand. I’m saying what difference does it make?”

The reason Adm. Oliver should have cared — aside from the fact that finance was his purview — is that some of this cash very likely fueled the insurgency that ensued a few months later. It is also likely the money ended up in the hands of terrorists who used it to buy weapons to kill our troops.

Former Head of Coalition Forces Says Bush War Planners Were ‘Derelict in Their Duties’

Jon Ponder

In remarks to an annual conference of military reporters near Washington on Friday, former Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the leader of coalition forces in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, unloaded on the incompetent planning and management of the Iraq war by his former bosses in the Bush administration and the military:

“The administration has failed.”
– Gen. Ricardo Sanchez (retired)

“From a catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan to the administration’s latest surge strategy, this administration has failed to employ and synchronize its political, economic and military power,” Sanchez said.

He said the mismanagement of the war continues today:

“After more than four years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,” Gen. Sanchez said…

“There has been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”

And the future of the occupation looks very grim:

“There is no question America is living a nightmare with no end in sight … There is nothing going on today that would give us hope … The administration has failed.”

Sanchez’ career was derailed as a result of the Abu Grahib prison scandal, which occurred on his watch.

Gore Wins Nobel Prize and MSM Only Yammers About Politics

Trish
Nobel Laureate Al Gore

Al Gore becomes a frickin’ Nobel laureate and all the mainstream media can talk about is whether he will now run for president. Like Gore’s been waiting until he could build his resume enough, say by winning a Nobel prize, to launch a campaign. ABC alone has devoted three web pages to the topic, while CNN is covering the story in its “Politics” section where it quotes an anonymous source on Gore’s prospects.

But he will not run, because he won’t take on the political machine assembled by Sen. Hillary Clinton, said the source. If the senator from New York had faltered at all, Gore would take a serious look at entering the race, the source said. But Gore has calculated that Clinton is unstoppable, according to the source.

Enough already. At least Reuters took a better angle on the “prize as presidency potential” coverage of the award. They are looking at the honor through the lens of Gore’s last run, not any future ones.

While Gore has grown in international stature since his narrow election loss, Bush has seen his credibility damaged at home and abroad by the Iraq war and other foreign policy woes.

Like Gore’s been waiting until he could build his resume enough — say by winning a Nobel prize — to launch a campaign

He is struggling to stave off lame-duck status and stay relevant while increasingly hemmed in by a hostile Democratic majority in Congress. His inner circle is steadily eroding with almost weekly departures of key aides and advisers.

And the president’s public approval rating, which soared to 90 percent after the September 11 attacks in 2001, has sunk close to historic lows, with some polls putting it below 30 percent.

Around the world, Bush has won few friends with his stance on Gore’s signature issue — climate change.

At a White House-convened summit last month, some of the world’s biggest greenhouse polluters called Bush “isolated” and questioned his leadership on the problem of global warming.

I’m glad Gore won the Nobel prize but, selfishly perhaps, I would have preferred he won the White House back in 2000. What a different — and better — world it would be if he had.

Why Is the GOP Hellbent On Giving Pres. Hillary Clinton Authority to Wiretap Without Oversight?

Jon Ponder

With word this morning that Democrats have caved again on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) wiretap laws, it appears that Pres. Bush will get what he wants: the unfettered ability to spy on anyone anytime.

Republicans are so intent on winning the battle that they have lost sight of the fact that a new president will be sworn in 15 months, and that the new president may well be their femi-nazi arch-enemy, Hillary Clinton.

The glee among Republicans over the Democrats’ spinelessness is understandable. They have them right where they want them. All they have to do is suggest liberals are coddling terrorists and Speaker Pelosi et al fold in the wind.

What is even more striking, however, is the Republicans’ short-sightedness. Are they are so intent on winning the battle that they have lost sight of the fact that a new president will be sworn in 15 months — and that the new president may well be their femi-nazi archenemy, Hillary Clinton?

Not just Clinton. Why would Republicans want Pres. Obama or Pres. Edwards, or any Democrat, to have this power? It makes no sense.

Rank and file liberals object to giving Bush unfettered wiretap authority because there is an extremely high likelihood that if he hasn’t already abused this power and spied on his political enemies (in both parties), he will before he’s through.

Either the Republicans’ rhetoric about Hillary Clinton as an evil communist bogeywoman is all a sham, or they are being overly confident about the outcome of next year’s elections.

As it stands today, all trends point to the Dems gaining in the House and the Senate and taking the White House. If trends prevail and Democrats sweep into power in January 2009, the GOP in the next Congress will be powerless to rescind the powers they are eagerly ceding to Bush today.

Congressional oversight of the Executive is not a recommendation in the Constitution, it is a requirement. No president should have unfettered power, especially when it comes to spying on Americans. But if the Republicans are determined to give this sort of authority to the current president in order to score political points, so be it. The Dems are kowtowing to their bullying and fear-mongering, which means Republicans have the votes.

We can only hope the next Democratic Congress will be more willing to watchdog a president of their own party than the GOP was during its six year reign of power.

Bush Secretly Reauthorized Torture in 2005

Jon Ponder

The biggest shock is that the agressive torture rules Cheney and Bush wanted were shot down by then-Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft, who I would have otherwise expected to fall in lockstep. Good for him, if it’s true.

Reading between the lines, it appears Ashcroft was pushed out and replaced by Gonzales, who once wrote that terrorism had rendered the Geneva Convention rules on torture quaint:

When the [Ashcroft] Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.