Tag: George W. Bush

Or How About This One?

“‘He said he’d be a uniter, not a divider. He said he’d bring America together,’ she said of Bush. ‘He didn’t need a lot of experience, he had this great intuition, he understood people, he could go meet with rogue leaders, look in their eyes and their souls, solve our problems. Remember that?‘” And here’s another Clinton attempt to grapple Obama to the mat: He’s Dubya all over again. Uh, this from the “national security” candidate who backed Dubya’s play in both Iraq and Iran? Sorry, try again.

Still, the article above was worth reading for this sterling endorsement: “Ryan and Anna Pekins, 18-year old twins from Durham who said they plan to vote in Tuesday’s primary, said they came away very impressed with Clinton. ‘I was leaning toward Hillary before and now I’m pretty sure I’ll vote for her,’ Anna said. ‘I think she keeps in mind that not everyone wants to see change in the country and the plans she proposes appeal to those who support change and those who don’t.‘” She just about called it: Vote Clinton, the “Status Quo-Change” candidate.

The Commission, Stonewalled.

“There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations.” From a few days ago, 9/11 Commission Chairs Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton angrily accuse the CIA and Dubya White House of stonewalling their investigation. “As a legal matter, it is not up to us to examine the C.I.A.’s failure to disclose the existence of these tapes. That is for others. What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.”

Tortured Reasoning.

“The grim truth is, not much has changed. The Bush administration continues to limit our basic freedoms, conceal its own worst behavior, and insist that it does all this in order to make us more free.” As a follow-up to her 2006 list of civil liberties violations, Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick surveys The Bush Administration’s Top 10 Stupidest Legal Arguments of 2007.

Delusional Decider.

“‘I believe we will keep the White House,’ he said twice at a pre-holiday news conference in the White House briefing room. ‘I believe ours is the party that understands the nature of the world in which we live and that the government’s primary responsibility is to protect the American citizens from harm…I’m confident we can pick up seats in both the Senate and the Congress.'”

Hey, Mr. President, how is the weather on Mars? At a news conference today, Dubya predicted a GOP presidential victory and GOP congressional gains come next November. (He also refused to comment on the CIA tapes debacle.) The good news here for the rest of us is that this man has been wrong about pretty much everything for the past seven years. Why stop now?

Cuba? Don’t they make mojitos?

“‘I was panicked a bit because I really don’t know about…the Cuban Missile Crisis,’ said Perino, who at 35 was born about a decade after the 1962 U.S.-Soviet nuclear showdown. ‘It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.‘” Wait, wait, wait…what? By way of Ben of The Oak, it seems Dubya press secretary Dana Perino has never heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis. “So she consulted her best source. ‘I came home and I asked my husband,’ she recalled. ‘I said, “Wasn’t that like the Bay of Pigs thing?” And he said, “Oh, Dana.”‘” Ladies and Gentlemen, the spokesperson for our current president. Have we fallen so far? And if that sounds like a pedantic thing to say, well, consider me pedantic. I know nobody wants to work for this misfit administration anymore, but, we’ve a lot of people in this country, and many of ’em are still even Republicans. Perhaps we can find someone to fill the position of the president’s mouthpiece who knows a thing or two about major events in American history over the past fifty years? That’d be great.

Libby cries Uncle.

“The process ‘would last even beyond the two years of supervised release, cost millions of dollars more than the fine he has already paid, and entail many more hundreds of hours preparing for an all-consuming appeal and retrial,’ Wells said.” Cheney consigliere and convicted felon Scooter Libby files a motion to dismiss his appeal of the Plamegate verdict. Said Libby’s lawyer, Theodore Wells: “[T]he burden on Mr. Libby and his young family of continuing to pursue his complete vindication are too great to ask them to bear.” (Let’s remember: According to Dubya last July, the burden of jail time for perjury was apparently too much to bear as well.)

Dubya’s Iran Plans, NIE-capped.

“Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.” Uh, y’know that whole Iran is the new face of evil, imminent-WWIII thing we’ve been hearing about? Well, never mind. It’s time to update those lyrics, Senator McCain: A new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report — which, it seems, Cheney may have held up for a year — finds that Iran actually stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. “Even if Iran were to restart its program now, the country probably could not produce enough highly enriched uranium for a single weapon before the middle of the next decade, the assessment stated. It also expressed doubt about whether Iran ‘currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.‘”

This happy piece of information obviously puts our Saber-Rattler in Chief in a bit of a bind — In a news conference this morning, he was reduced to spluttering, “‘What’s to say they couldn’t start another covert nuclear weapons program?‘” What indeed…perhaps we should bomb them anyway, is that your point? Well, probably not. Says Slate‘s Fred Kaplan of the NIE: “If there was ever a possibility that President George W. Bush would drop bombs on Iran, the chances have now shrunk to nearly zero….Skeptics of war have rarely been so legitimized. Vice President Cheney has never been so isolated.” Still, just to keep the timeline in perspective, Dubya made that dubious WWIII comment months after being apprised of this information. So, in effect, he was lying to us yet again.

As for the 2008 contenders, the campaigns are all taking the news pretty much in stride, although Chris Dodd got off a pretty good zinger on Clinton: “It’s easy to say ‘fool me once, shame on George Bush,’ but when she’s been fooled twice, shame on her.“

Rats on the Titanic.

“‘There’s a growing sense, a growing probability, that the next administration could be Democratic,’ said Craig L. Fuller, executive vice president of Apco Worldwide, a lobbying and public relations firm, who was a White House official in the Reagan administration. ‘Corporate executives, trade associations and lobbying firms have begun to recalibrate their strategies.‘” As a Democratic presidency in 2008 looks increasingly likely, business lobbyists scramble for deals under Dubya. “Few industries have more cause for concern than drug companies, which have been a favorite target of Democrats. Republicans run the Washington offices of most major drug companies, and a former Republican House member, Billy Tauzin, is president of their trade association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.” Well, for them to be really concerned, we Dems have to show more backbone in the face of lobbyists than we have thus far in this Congress. And, as Simon Lazarus recently pointed out anew in The Prospect, no matter who wins in 2008, corporate lobbyists will still have the Roberts Court to back their play for some time to come.

Annapolis: Too Little, Too Late?

“The consequences of Bush and Rice’s passivity were disastrous. Israel didn’t lose the war, but it didn’t win, either, and that’s what it had to do to maintain its image of invincibility, which has long deterred hostile neighbors from contemplating aggression. Hezbollah didn’t win, but all it had to do was not lose, and it clearly achieved that goal, enhancing its reputation as the power that had stood up to the Zionists and faced them down.” In his discussion of the recent Mideast summit in Annapolis (which publicly aimed to kickstart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and privately aimed to pry Syria further away from Iran), Slate‘s Fred Kaplan brings up a crucial — and missed — opportunity for diplomacy last year, during the Israel-Lebanon crisis. “(By the way, this may have been the genesis of a new Israeli verb, lecondel—in Hebrew, ‘to Condel,’ short for ‘to Condoleezza’ — meaning, as the New York Times’ Steven Erlanger has explained, to come and go for meetings that produce few results.)” And, speaking of political linguistics, it turns out that Annapolis, however picturesque, might not have been the best place to hold the summit — In Arabic, “Annapolis” roughly translates to “I am the Police.”