Showing posts with label Bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush. Show all posts
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Anti-war soldiers die in Iraq
In late August I reprinted an article, "The War as We Saw It," written by seven active duty U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
They wrote:
To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched...Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence....
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.
It concluded: "We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through."
Now, two of the seven soldier authors, Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance T. Gray are dead.
How many more young lives will be sacrificed to President Bush's vanity and willful ignorance?
For details read:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091307O.shtml
They wrote:
To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched...Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence....
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.
It concluded: "We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through."
Now, two of the seven soldier authors, Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance T. Gray are dead.
How many more young lives will be sacrificed to President Bush's vanity and willful ignorance?
For details read:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091307O.shtml
Monday, September 10, 2007
Bush boom leaves middle class out!
Last week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel acknowledged for the first time that the current economic expansion was leaving the middle class behind.
Real incomes for working families declined for the second straight year and remain $2000 below what they were in 2000.
The number of Americans without healthcare jumped to 47 million. Many of those who retained their coverage were paying much higher premiums, reducing their disposable incomes.
Mortgage foreclosures are at a record high. It is projected that 2 million households will ultimately default.
Rising gas prices and the soaring cost of college education are also making it harder for middle class families to make ends meet.
And on Friday the US Labor department announced that the nation had lost 4,000 jobs last month and created very few over the last quarter, an average of only 44,000. To put that in perspective, we need 150,000 new jobs a month simply to absorb all the new workers entering the labor market.
Princeton economist, Paul Krugman, writes that supply side apologists argue that their upper end tax cuts created the "Bush boom" including eight million jobs since 2003. But Clinton raised high marginal tax rates and contrary to conservative projections of disaster created twenty-one million jobs.
I have reprinted Krugman's "Where's My Trickle?" below:
September 10, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Where’s My Trickle?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Four years ago the Bush administration, exploiting the political bounce it got from the illusion of success in Iraq, pushed a cut in capital-gains and dividend taxes through Congress. It was an extremely elitist tax cut even by Bush-era standards: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says that more than half of the tax breaks went to Americans with incomes of more than $1 million a year.
Needless to say, administration economists produced various misleading statistics designed to convey the opposite impression, that the tax cut mainly went to ordinary, middle-class Americans. But they also insisted that the benefits of the tax cut would trickle down — that lower tax rates on the rich would do great things for the economy, helping everyone.
Well, Friday’s dismal jobs report showed that the Bush boom, such as it was, has run its course. And working Americans have a right to ask, “Where’s my trickle?”
It’s true, as the Bushies never tire of reminding us, that the U.S. economy has added eight million jobs since that 2003 tax cut. That sounds impressive, unless you happen to know that a good part of that gain was simply a recovery from large job losses earlier in the administration’s tenure — and that the United States added no fewer than 21 million jobs after Bill Clinton raised taxes on the rich, a move that had conservative pundits predicting economic disaster.
What’s really remarkable, however, is that four years of economic growth have produced essentially no gains for ordinary American workers.
Wages, adjusted for inflation, have stagnated: the real hourly earnings of nonsupervisory workers, the most widely used measure of how typical workers are faring, were no higher in July 2007 than they were in July 2003.
Meanwhile, benefits have deteriorated: the percentage of Americans receiving health insurance through employers, which plunged along with employment during the early years of the Bush administration, continued to decline even as the economy finally began creating some jobs.
And one of the few seeming bright spots of the Bush-era economy, rising homeownership, is now revealed as the result of a bubble inflated in part by financial flim-flam, which deceived both borrowers and investors.
Now you know why 66 percent of Americans rate economic conditions in this country as only fair or poor, and why Americans disapprove of President Bush’s handling of the economy almost as strongly as they disapprove of the job he is doing in general.
Yet the overall economy has grown at a reasonable pace over the past four years. Where did the economic growth go? The answer is that it went to the same economic elite that received the lion’s share of those tax cuts. Corporate profits rose 72 percent from the second quarter of 2003 to the second quarter of 2007. The real income of the richest 0.1 percent of Americans surged by 51 percent between 2003 and 2005, and although we don’t yet have the data for 2006, everything we know suggests that the income of the rich took another upward leap.
The absence of any gains for workers in the years since the 2003 tax cut is a pretty convincing refutation of trickle-down theory. So is the fact that the economy had a much more convincing boom after Bill Clinton raised taxes on top brackets. It turns out that when you cut taxes on the rich, the rich pay less taxes; when you raise taxes on the rich, they pay more taxes — end of story.
But it’s not just trickle-down that has been refuted: the whole idea that a rising tide raises all boats, that growth in the economy necessarily translates into gains for the great majority of Americans, is belied by the Bush-era experience.
As far as I can tell, America has never before experienced a disconnect between overall economic performance and the fortunes of workers as complete as that of the last four years.
America was a highly unequal society during the Gilded Age, but workers’ living standards nonetheless improved as the economy grew. Inequality rose rapidly during the Reagan years, but “Morning in America” was nonetheless bright enough to make most people cheerful, at least temporarily. Inequality continued to increase during the Clinton years, but wages rose, as did the availability of health insurance — and the great majority of Americans felt prosperous.
What we’ve had since 2003, however, is an economic expansion that looks good if not great by the usual measures, but which has passed most Americans by.
Guaranteed health insurance, which all of the leading Democratic contenders (but none of the Republicans) are promising, would eliminate one of the reasons for this disconnect. But it should be only the start of a broader range of policies — a new New Deal — designed to turn economic growth into something more than a spectator sport.
Real incomes for working families declined for the second straight year and remain $2000 below what they were in 2000.
The number of Americans without healthcare jumped to 47 million. Many of those who retained their coverage were paying much higher premiums, reducing their disposable incomes.
Mortgage foreclosures are at a record high. It is projected that 2 million households will ultimately default.
Rising gas prices and the soaring cost of college education are also making it harder for middle class families to make ends meet.
And on Friday the US Labor department announced that the nation had lost 4,000 jobs last month and created very few over the last quarter, an average of only 44,000. To put that in perspective, we need 150,000 new jobs a month simply to absorb all the new workers entering the labor market.
Princeton economist, Paul Krugman, writes that supply side apologists argue that their upper end tax cuts created the "Bush boom" including eight million jobs since 2003. But Clinton raised high marginal tax rates and contrary to conservative projections of disaster created twenty-one million jobs.
I have reprinted Krugman's "Where's My Trickle?" below:
September 10, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Where’s My Trickle?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Four years ago the Bush administration, exploiting the political bounce it got from the illusion of success in Iraq, pushed a cut in capital-gains and dividend taxes through Congress. It was an extremely elitist tax cut even by Bush-era standards: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says that more than half of the tax breaks went to Americans with incomes of more than $1 million a year.
Needless to say, administration economists produced various misleading statistics designed to convey the opposite impression, that the tax cut mainly went to ordinary, middle-class Americans. But they also insisted that the benefits of the tax cut would trickle down — that lower tax rates on the rich would do great things for the economy, helping everyone.
Well, Friday’s dismal jobs report showed that the Bush boom, such as it was, has run its course. And working Americans have a right to ask, “Where’s my trickle?”
It’s true, as the Bushies never tire of reminding us, that the U.S. economy has added eight million jobs since that 2003 tax cut. That sounds impressive, unless you happen to know that a good part of that gain was simply a recovery from large job losses earlier in the administration’s tenure — and that the United States added no fewer than 21 million jobs after Bill Clinton raised taxes on the rich, a move that had conservative pundits predicting economic disaster.
What’s really remarkable, however, is that four years of economic growth have produced essentially no gains for ordinary American workers.
Wages, adjusted for inflation, have stagnated: the real hourly earnings of nonsupervisory workers, the most widely used measure of how typical workers are faring, were no higher in July 2007 than they were in July 2003.
Meanwhile, benefits have deteriorated: the percentage of Americans receiving health insurance through employers, which plunged along with employment during the early years of the Bush administration, continued to decline even as the economy finally began creating some jobs.
And one of the few seeming bright spots of the Bush-era economy, rising homeownership, is now revealed as the result of a bubble inflated in part by financial flim-flam, which deceived both borrowers and investors.
Now you know why 66 percent of Americans rate economic conditions in this country as only fair or poor, and why Americans disapprove of President Bush’s handling of the economy almost as strongly as they disapprove of the job he is doing in general.
Yet the overall economy has grown at a reasonable pace over the past four years. Where did the economic growth go? The answer is that it went to the same economic elite that received the lion’s share of those tax cuts. Corporate profits rose 72 percent from the second quarter of 2003 to the second quarter of 2007. The real income of the richest 0.1 percent of Americans surged by 51 percent between 2003 and 2005, and although we don’t yet have the data for 2006, everything we know suggests that the income of the rich took another upward leap.
The absence of any gains for workers in the years since the 2003 tax cut is a pretty convincing refutation of trickle-down theory. So is the fact that the economy had a much more convincing boom after Bill Clinton raised taxes on top brackets. It turns out that when you cut taxes on the rich, the rich pay less taxes; when you raise taxes on the rich, they pay more taxes — end of story.
But it’s not just trickle-down that has been refuted: the whole idea that a rising tide raises all boats, that growth in the economy necessarily translates into gains for the great majority of Americans, is belied by the Bush-era experience.
As far as I can tell, America has never before experienced a disconnect between overall economic performance and the fortunes of workers as complete as that of the last four years.
America was a highly unequal society during the Gilded Age, but workers’ living standards nonetheless improved as the economy grew. Inequality rose rapidly during the Reagan years, but “Morning in America” was nonetheless bright enough to make most people cheerful, at least temporarily. Inequality continued to increase during the Clinton years, but wages rose, as did the availability of health insurance — and the great majority of Americans felt prosperous.
What we’ve had since 2003, however, is an economic expansion that looks good if not great by the usual measures, but which has passed most Americans by.
Guaranteed health insurance, which all of the leading Democratic contenders (but none of the Republicans) are promising, would eliminate one of the reasons for this disconnect. But it should be only the start of a broader range of policies — a new New Deal — designed to turn economic growth into something more than a spectator sport.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
A Republican trail guides advice to Democrats
You know the Republicans are in trouble when your trail guide, a life long Republican, says he "gonna have to vote Democrat" in the next election! Even says: “Hilliary would make a good president.”
It was a glorious day in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in northern New Mexico. Our horses took us through lush, stream fed lower forests into the alpine evergreens and finally above the tree line, 12, 6000 feet above sea level. A herd of big horn sheep licked salt off the rocky cliffs below.
On the ride down our trail guide Tom, a Texan, former rancher, single father, and life long Republican asked me about the economy. Rule number one on trail rides is don’t insult your guide. Your life is literally in their hands. So I tried to keep the discussion short and non- controversial.
But Tom, wanted to talk about politics.
He had taken George W, Bush quail hunting once. He was going hunting with some law enforcement friends, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who called and asked if “He’d mind if the Governor came along?”
"Not if he brings his own beer.” Tom replied.
So Tom took the future president hunting and reports that he was a really, down to earth nice guy. That’s why he voted for him twice.
Seeing where this was going, and not wanting to end up there, I tried to joke:
” Good thing you didn’t take Chaney. ’”Yeah, I’d a been dead.” laughed Tom.
But then Tom turned serious, thinking out loud: “Bush is OK on the moral issues, but he has shipped our jobs overseas and made a mess of the economy.”
“Yeah,” I responded, “in Wisconsin we’ve lost 25,000 jobs cause of trade deals like NAFTA.”
Tom was on a roll. And it wasn’t the mountain air since we were now descending: "I was doing a lot better before he got in. But things are a lot worse now - healthcare costs are out of control. And college education……..” He left that thought unfinished, letting the reality speak for itself.
“And our foreign policy, Tom continued. “I don’t like dictators as much as the next guy. But he has made a mess over there. Young men are dying… for nothing! The place is a mess. I’ve always voted Republican. But I’m thinking….You know my grandparents would turn over in their grave, but I’m gonna have to vote Democrat this next time around.”
“Your grandparents always voted Republican,” I asked.” Everyone where I’m from in Texas votes Republican,” he said. “But…not this time.”
I damn near fell out of my saddle!
But this is what the numbers are telling us. Across the country people are dissatisfied. President Bush’s disapproval rating stands at a record 71%. It has exceeded 58% all year and hasn’t dropped below 50% for over two years. He has been unpopular longer than anyone in the Oval office in half a century.
People are upset about healthcare, education, housing and gasoline costs; the economy-the loss of family supporting jobs and mortgage foreclosures. They are worried about collapsing bridges, New Orleans and Americans dying in far away Iraq. They want to see something done.
2008 is the Democrats election to lose.
If they speak straight to folks like Tom they’ll win.
If they play fast and loose with hedge fund financiers, free traders, health insurance and drug companies, and Iraq war hawks and profiteers, they will lose folks like Tom and the election.
It was a glorious day in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in northern New Mexico. Our horses took us through lush, stream fed lower forests into the alpine evergreens and finally above the tree line, 12, 6000 feet above sea level. A herd of big horn sheep licked salt off the rocky cliffs below.
On the ride down our trail guide Tom, a Texan, former rancher, single father, and life long Republican asked me about the economy. Rule number one on trail rides is don’t insult your guide. Your life is literally in their hands. So I tried to keep the discussion short and non- controversial.
But Tom, wanted to talk about politics.
He had taken George W, Bush quail hunting once. He was going hunting with some law enforcement friends, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who called and asked if “He’d mind if the Governor came along?”
"Not if he brings his own beer.” Tom replied.
So Tom took the future president hunting and reports that he was a really, down to earth nice guy. That’s why he voted for him twice.
Seeing where this was going, and not wanting to end up there, I tried to joke:
” Good thing you didn’t take Chaney. ’”Yeah, I’d a been dead.” laughed Tom.
But then Tom turned serious, thinking out loud: “Bush is OK on the moral issues, but he has shipped our jobs overseas and made a mess of the economy.”
“Yeah,” I responded, “in Wisconsin we’ve lost 25,000 jobs cause of trade deals like NAFTA.”
Tom was on a roll. And it wasn’t the mountain air since we were now descending: "I was doing a lot better before he got in. But things are a lot worse now - healthcare costs are out of control. And college education……..” He left that thought unfinished, letting the reality speak for itself.
“And our foreign policy, Tom continued. “I don’t like dictators as much as the next guy. But he has made a mess over there. Young men are dying… for nothing! The place is a mess. I’ve always voted Republican. But I’m thinking….You know my grandparents would turn over in their grave, but I’m gonna have to vote Democrat this next time around.”
“Your grandparents always voted Republican,” I asked.” Everyone where I’m from in Texas votes Republican,” he said. “But…not this time.”
I damn near fell out of my saddle!
But this is what the numbers are telling us. Across the country people are dissatisfied. President Bush’s disapproval rating stands at a record 71%. It has exceeded 58% all year and hasn’t dropped below 50% for over two years. He has been unpopular longer than anyone in the Oval office in half a century.
People are upset about healthcare, education, housing and gasoline costs; the economy-the loss of family supporting jobs and mortgage foreclosures. They are worried about collapsing bridges, New Orleans and Americans dying in far away Iraq. They want to see something done.
2008 is the Democrats election to lose.
If they speak straight to folks like Tom they’ll win.
If they play fast and loose with hedge fund financiers, free traders, health insurance and drug companies, and Iraq war hawks and profiteers, they will lose folks like Tom and the election.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Bush opposes funding road and bridge repairs
A week after a deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis, President Bush dismissed Thursday raising the federal gasoline tax to repair the nation's bridges.
Bush said Congress should change its priorities rather then raise revenue to fund repairs: ''That's not the right way to prioritize the people's money. Before we raise taxes, which could affect economic growth, I would strongly urge the Congress to examine how they set priorities.''
President Bush ignored the fact that only 8 percent ($24 billion) of the last $286 billion highway bill, was devoted to highway and bridge projects singled out by lawmakers. The balance is distributed through grants to states, which decide how it will be spent. Federal money accounts for about 45 percent of all infrastructure spending.
The Democratic chairman of the House Transportation Committee proposed a 5-cent increase in the 18.3 cents-a-gallon federal gasoline tax to establish a new trust fund for repairing or replacing structurally deficient highway bridges.
More than 77,000 of the nation's bridges are rated structurally deficient, including the bridge that collapsed over the Mississippi River last Wednesday. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it would cost $1.6 trillion over five years just to bring the nation's infrastructure up to "good" condition. "Establishing a long-term development and maintenance plan must become a national priority," says the group.
President Bush is nothing but audacious in challenging Congress' priorities. Recall that the 2001 Bush tax cuts' price tag was $1.3 trillion, almost enough to cover the entire cost of bringing all the nation's roads and bridges up to par. Half of that tax cut went to the wealthiest 1% those averaging over $900,000 a year and one third of all workers received no tax break at all.
Its the Bush administration's priorities that need changing!
Bush said Congress should change its priorities rather then raise revenue to fund repairs: ''That's not the right way to prioritize the people's money. Before we raise taxes, which could affect economic growth, I would strongly urge the Congress to examine how they set priorities.''
President Bush ignored the fact that only 8 percent ($24 billion) of the last $286 billion highway bill, was devoted to highway and bridge projects singled out by lawmakers. The balance is distributed through grants to states, which decide how it will be spent. Federal money accounts for about 45 percent of all infrastructure spending.
The Democratic chairman of the House Transportation Committee proposed a 5-cent increase in the 18.3 cents-a-gallon federal gasoline tax to establish a new trust fund for repairing or replacing structurally deficient highway bridges.
More than 77,000 of the nation's bridges are rated structurally deficient, including the bridge that collapsed over the Mississippi River last Wednesday. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it would cost $1.6 trillion over five years just to bring the nation's infrastructure up to "good" condition. "Establishing a long-term development and maintenance plan must become a national priority," says the group.
President Bush is nothing but audacious in challenging Congress' priorities. Recall that the 2001 Bush tax cuts' price tag was $1.3 trillion, almost enough to cover the entire cost of bringing all the nation's roads and bridges up to par. Half of that tax cut went to the wealthiest 1% those averaging over $900,000 a year and one third of all workers received no tax break at all.
Its the Bush administration's priorities that need changing!
Monday, August 6, 2007
Hiding behind the troops is the last refuge of Iraq war sponsors!
If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels as novelist Samuel Johnson said, hiding behind the troops is the last refuge of the Iraq war’s sponsors!
As Frank Rich writes in the Sunday Times:
It has been the war’s champions who have more often dishonored the troops than the war’s opponents.
Mr. Bush created the template by doing everything possible to keep the sacrifice of American armed forces in Iraq off-camera, forbidding photos of coffins and skipping military funerals. That set the stage for the ensuing demonization of Ted Koppel, whose decision to salute the fallen by reading a list of their names in the spotlight of “Nightline” was branded unpatriotic by the right’s vigilantes.
The same playbook was followed by the war’s champions when a soldier confronted Donald Rumsfeld about the woeful shortage of armor during a town-hall meeting in Kuwait in December 2004. Rather than campaign for the armor the troops so desperately needed, the right attacked the questioner for what Rush Limbaugh called his “near insubordination.” When The Washington Post some two years later exposed the indignities visited upon the grievously injured troops at Walter Reed Medical Center, The Weekly Standard and the equally hawkish Wall Street Journal editorial page took three weeks to notice, with The Standard giving the story all of two sentences. Protecting the White House from scandal, not the troops from squalor, was the higher priority.
One person who has had enough of this hypocrisy is the war critic Andrew J. Bacevich, a Boston University professor of international relations who is also a Vietnam veteran, a product of the United States Military Academy and a former teacher at West Point. After his 27-year-old son was killed in May while serving in Iraq, he said that Americans should not believe Memorial Day orators who talk about how priceless the troops’ lives are.
“I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier’s life,” Professor Bacevich wrote in The Washington Post. “I’ve been handed the check.” The amount, he said, was “roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning.”
Anyone who questions this bleak perspective need only have watched last week’s sad and ultimately pointless Congressional hearings into the 2004 friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman. Seven investigations later, we still don’t know who rewrote the witness statements of Tillman’s cohort so that Pentagon propagandists could trumpet a fictionalized battle death to the public and his family.
But it was nonetheless illuminating to watch Mr. Rumsfeld and his top brass sit there under oath and repeatedly go mentally AWOL about crucial events in the case. Their convenient mass amnesia about their army’s most famous and lied-about casualty is as good a definition as any of just what “supporting the troops” means to those who even now beat the drums for this war.
.
As Frank Rich writes in the Sunday Times:
It has been the war’s champions who have more often dishonored the troops than the war’s opponents.
Mr. Bush created the template by doing everything possible to keep the sacrifice of American armed forces in Iraq off-camera, forbidding photos of coffins and skipping military funerals. That set the stage for the ensuing demonization of Ted Koppel, whose decision to salute the fallen by reading a list of their names in the spotlight of “Nightline” was branded unpatriotic by the right’s vigilantes.
The same playbook was followed by the war’s champions when a soldier confronted Donald Rumsfeld about the woeful shortage of armor during a town-hall meeting in Kuwait in December 2004. Rather than campaign for the armor the troops so desperately needed, the right attacked the questioner for what Rush Limbaugh called his “near insubordination.” When The Washington Post some two years later exposed the indignities visited upon the grievously injured troops at Walter Reed Medical Center, The Weekly Standard and the equally hawkish Wall Street Journal editorial page took three weeks to notice, with The Standard giving the story all of two sentences. Protecting the White House from scandal, not the troops from squalor, was the higher priority.
One person who has had enough of this hypocrisy is the war critic Andrew J. Bacevich, a Boston University professor of international relations who is also a Vietnam veteran, a product of the United States Military Academy and a former teacher at West Point. After his 27-year-old son was killed in May while serving in Iraq, he said that Americans should not believe Memorial Day orators who talk about how priceless the troops’ lives are.
“I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier’s life,” Professor Bacevich wrote in The Washington Post. “I’ve been handed the check.” The amount, he said, was “roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning.”
Anyone who questions this bleak perspective need only have watched last week’s sad and ultimately pointless Congressional hearings into the 2004 friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman. Seven investigations later, we still don’t know who rewrote the witness statements of Tillman’s cohort so that Pentagon propagandists could trumpet a fictionalized battle death to the public and his family.
But it was nonetheless illuminating to watch Mr. Rumsfeld and his top brass sit there under oath and repeatedly go mentally AWOL about crucial events in the case. Their convenient mass amnesia about their army’s most famous and lied-about casualty is as good a definition as any of just what “supporting the troops” means to those who even now beat the drums for this war.
.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Bush admits his administration leaked CIA agent's name
When it was first disclosed that someone had leaked the name of an undercover CIA operative, Valerie (Wilson) Plame, President Bush said he would fire anyone in his administration who had participated in the leak. Shortly before Plame's cover was blown in 2003, her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former Ambassador, had accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraqi weapons and thus help justify the war. Wilson has said he believes his wife's identity was disclosed in retaliation.
Yesterday, President Bush publicly acknowledged that someone in his administration had been the first to leak the operative’s name.
A lengthy investigation found that several high ranking administration officials revealed Plame's identity. White House political adviser Karl Rove and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage were the primary sources for a 2003 newspaper column outing Plame. Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer also admitted telling reporters about her. Scotter Libby was the only one charged in the matter and not for leaking. And his sentence was commuted by President Bush last week.
But surprise...no one has been fired. Instead the President announced: “Its (the investigation) run its course. And now we are going to move on.”
Evidently the decider has decided that he didn’t really mean what he said about firing anyone way back then when the press and public were demanding to know what he would do if his staff was involved. The decider has decided to do nothing; nothing that is but cover up a crime.
Yesterday, President Bush publicly acknowledged that someone in his administration had been the first to leak the operative’s name.
A lengthy investigation found that several high ranking administration officials revealed Plame's identity. White House political adviser Karl Rove and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage were the primary sources for a 2003 newspaper column outing Plame. Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer also admitted telling reporters about her. Scotter Libby was the only one charged in the matter and not for leaking. And his sentence was commuted by President Bush last week.
But surprise...no one has been fired. Instead the President announced: “Its (the investigation) run its course. And now we are going to move on.”
Evidently the decider has decided that he didn’t really mean what he said about firing anyone way back then when the press and public were demanding to know what he would do if his staff was involved. The decider has decided to do nothing; nothing that is but cover up a crime.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Libby commuted because he knew too much! NY Times call for withdrawal!
More than four years after The New York Times published a series of news stories that justified a US invasion of Iraq that has left 3,649 American soldiers dead and 29,950 wounded, the newspaper's editorial board has called for an end to the Iraq war.
The editorial says, "President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans' demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened - the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war. It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit."
In a related article Frank Rich writes that President Bush commuted Scotter Libby's prison sentence because Libby knew too much about the lies told to sell the war in Iraq and that "... cowardice, the character trait so evident in his furtive handling of the Libby commutation, is as important to understanding Mr. Bush’s cratered presidency as incompetence, cronyism and hubris."
The editorial says, "President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans' demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened - the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war. It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit."
In a related article Frank Rich writes that President Bush commuted Scotter Libby's prison sentence because Libby knew too much about the lies told to sell the war in Iraq and that "... cowardice, the character trait so evident in his furtive handling of the Libby commutation, is as important to understanding Mr. Bush’s cratered presidency as incompetence, cronyism and hubris."
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Bush Administration Turns its Back on Iraqis
In his Times' column (read the entire article) today, Frank Rich points out the Bush administration has deserted Iraqis just as it deserted the citizens of New Orleans.
"...the Iraqis were always pawns on the geopolitical chessboard rather than actual people in the administration’s reckless bet to “transform” the Middle East...."
"Iraqis are clamoring to get out of Iraq. Two million have fled so far and nearly two million more have been displaced within the country. (That’s a total of some 15 percent of the population.)... Iraq’s child-survival rate is falling faster than any other nation’s. One Iraqi in eight is killed by illness or violence by the age of 5...."
"To admit that Iraqis are voting with their feet is to concede that American policy is in ruins. A “secure” Iraq is a mirage, and, worse, those who can afford to leave are the very professionals who might have helped build one. Thus the president says nothing about Iraq’s humanitarian crisis, the worst in the Middle East since 1948, much as he tried to hide the American death toll in Iraq by keeping the troops’ coffins off-camera and staying away from military funerals...."
"The easiest way to keep the Iraqi plight out of sight, after all, is to prevent Iraqis from coming to America. And so we do...."
"Since the 2003 invasion, America has given only 466 Iraqis asylum. Sweden, which was not in the coalition of the willing, plans to admit 25,000 Iraqis this year alone. Our State Department, goaded by January hearings conducted by Ted Kennedy, says it will raise the number for this year to 7,000 (a figure that, small as it is, may be more administration propaganda). A bill passed by Congress this month will add another piddling 500, all interpreters."
"... 5,000 interpreters worked for the Americans. So did tens of thousands of drivers and security guards who...have “an assassin’s bull’s-eye on their backs” because they served the occupying government and its contractors over the past four-plus years."
"...the real forerunner to American treatment of Iraqi refugees is...World War II. That’s when an anti-Semitic assistant secretary of state, Breckinridge Long, tirelessly obstructed the visa process to prevent Jews from obtaining sanctuary in America, not even filling the available slots under existing quotas. As many as 75,000 such refugees were turned away before the Germans cut off exit visas to Jews in late 1941...."
"The message is clear enough: These ungrateful losers deserve everything that’s coming to them. The Iraqis hear us and are returning the compliment. Whether Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is mocking American demands for timelines and benchmarks, or the Iraqi Parliament is setting its own timeline for American withdrawal even while flaunting its vacation schedule, Iraq’s nominal government is saying it’s fed up. The American-Iraqi shotgun marriage of convenience, midwifed by disastrous Bush foreign policy, has disintegrated into the marriage from hell."
" That we are slamming the door in their faces tells you all you need to know about the real morality beneath all the professed good intentions of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Though the war’s godfathers saw themselves as ridding the world of another Hitler, their legacy includes a humanitarian catastrophe that will need its own Raoul Wallenbergs and Oskar Schindlers if lives are to be saved."
"...the Iraqis were always pawns on the geopolitical chessboard rather than actual people in the administration’s reckless bet to “transform” the Middle East...."
"Iraqis are clamoring to get out of Iraq. Two million have fled so far and nearly two million more have been displaced within the country. (That’s a total of some 15 percent of the population.)... Iraq’s child-survival rate is falling faster than any other nation’s. One Iraqi in eight is killed by illness or violence by the age of 5...."
"To admit that Iraqis are voting with their feet is to concede that American policy is in ruins. A “secure” Iraq is a mirage, and, worse, those who can afford to leave are the very professionals who might have helped build one. Thus the president says nothing about Iraq’s humanitarian crisis, the worst in the Middle East since 1948, much as he tried to hide the American death toll in Iraq by keeping the troops’ coffins off-camera and staying away from military funerals...."
"The easiest way to keep the Iraqi plight out of sight, after all, is to prevent Iraqis from coming to America. And so we do...."
"Since the 2003 invasion, America has given only 466 Iraqis asylum. Sweden, which was not in the coalition of the willing, plans to admit 25,000 Iraqis this year alone. Our State Department, goaded by January hearings conducted by Ted Kennedy, says it will raise the number for this year to 7,000 (a figure that, small as it is, may be more administration propaganda). A bill passed by Congress this month will add another piddling 500, all interpreters."
"... 5,000 interpreters worked for the Americans. So did tens of thousands of drivers and security guards who...have “an assassin’s bull’s-eye on their backs” because they served the occupying government and its contractors over the past four-plus years."
"...the real forerunner to American treatment of Iraqi refugees is...World War II. That’s when an anti-Semitic assistant secretary of state, Breckinridge Long, tirelessly obstructed the visa process to prevent Jews from obtaining sanctuary in America, not even filling the available slots under existing quotas. As many as 75,000 such refugees were turned away before the Germans cut off exit visas to Jews in late 1941...."
"The message is clear enough: These ungrateful losers deserve everything that’s coming to them. The Iraqis hear us and are returning the compliment. Whether Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is mocking American demands for timelines and benchmarks, or the Iraqi Parliament is setting its own timeline for American withdrawal even while flaunting its vacation schedule, Iraq’s nominal government is saying it’s fed up. The American-Iraqi shotgun marriage of convenience, midwifed by disastrous Bush foreign policy, has disintegrated into the marriage from hell."
" That we are slamming the door in their faces tells you all you need to know about the real morality beneath all the professed good intentions of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Though the war’s godfathers saw themselves as ridding the world of another Hitler, their legacy includes a humanitarian catastrophe that will need its own Raoul Wallenbergs and Oskar Schindlers if lives are to be saved."
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Bush's legacy: cronyism, corruption & partisanship
“What you’ve got is everything — and I mean everything — being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.” John DiIulio, Bush appointee and former Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
In his Sunday column, Frank Rich brilliantly discusses the Bush administration's pervasive corruption, cronyism, political manipulation and mismanagement, asserting that:
"Wrongdoing of this magnitude does not happen by accident... When corruption is this pervasive, it can also be a byproduct of a governing philosophy....
By my rough, conservative calculation — feel free to add — there have been corruption, incompetence, and contracting or cronyism scandals in these cabinet departments: Defense, Education, Justice, Interior, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development. I am not counting State, whose deputy secretary, a champion of abstinence-based international AIDS funding, resigned last month in a prostitution scandal, or the General Services Administration, now being investigated for possibly steering federal favors to Republican Congressional candidates in 2006. Or the Office of Management and Budget, whose chief procurement officer was sentenced to prison in the Abramoff fallout. I will, however, toss in a figure that reveals the sheer depth of the overall malfeasance: no fewer than four inspectors general, the official watchdogs charged with investigating improprieties in each department, are themselves under investigation simultaneously — an all-time record.
The corruption grew out of the White House’s insistence that partisanship — the maintenance of that 51 percent — dictate every governmental action no matter what the effect on the common good... Loyal ideologues or flunkies were put in crucial positions regardless of their ethics or competence. Government business was outsourced to campaign contributors regardless of their ethics or competence. Even orthodox Republican fiscal prudence was tossed aside so Congressional allies could be bought off with bridges to nowhere."
Read the entire column.
In his Sunday column, Frank Rich brilliantly discusses the Bush administration's pervasive corruption, cronyism, political manipulation and mismanagement, asserting that:
"Wrongdoing of this magnitude does not happen by accident... When corruption is this pervasive, it can also be a byproduct of a governing philosophy....
By my rough, conservative calculation — feel free to add — there have been corruption, incompetence, and contracting or cronyism scandals in these cabinet departments: Defense, Education, Justice, Interior, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development. I am not counting State, whose deputy secretary, a champion of abstinence-based international AIDS funding, resigned last month in a prostitution scandal, or the General Services Administration, now being investigated for possibly steering federal favors to Republican Congressional candidates in 2006. Or the Office of Management and Budget, whose chief procurement officer was sentenced to prison in the Abramoff fallout. I will, however, toss in a figure that reveals the sheer depth of the overall malfeasance: no fewer than four inspectors general, the official watchdogs charged with investigating improprieties in each department, are themselves under investigation simultaneously — an all-time record.
The corruption grew out of the White House’s insistence that partisanship — the maintenance of that 51 percent — dictate every governmental action no matter what the effect on the common good... Loyal ideologues or flunkies were put in crucial positions regardless of their ethics or competence. Government business was outsourced to campaign contributors regardless of their ethics or competence. Even orthodox Republican fiscal prudence was tossed aside so Congressional allies could be bought off with bridges to nowhere."
Read the entire column.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Iraq Chaos Causes Bush to Revise War Projections
On Saturday the NY Times reported that President Bush is "scaling back expectations for the Iraqi government" and won't report on the "surge" until at least September.
The President is delaying because he refuses to acknowledge that his "surge", the latest attempt to salvage the Iraq quagmire, is failing just like the U.S “reconstruction” of Iraq, an oxymoron if there ever was one.
The $30 billion reconstruction effort was designed to complement the military effort to stabilize Iraq. Its official goals were to allow the government to function, revitalize the economy, including the oil industry whose revenues would finance the war, and promote good will toward the United States.
But inspectors for a federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, have found that in a sampling of eight projects across the country that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.
These new findings come after years of insistence by the President, Vice President, American officials in Baghdad and pro-war activists that too much attention has been paid to the failures in Iraq and not enough to the successes. You’ve surely seen the emails of smiling Iraqi children and rebuilt communities! This new report undermines that pro- war hype and recalls Bob Dylan's refrain "...there's no success like failure. And that failure's no success at all."
Bush is also "scaling back expectations for the Iraqi government" because he surely knows, as Frank Rich reports, that there is none: "... the Maliki “government” can’t meet any benchmarks, even if they were enforced, because that government exists only as a fictional White House talking point. As Gen. Barry McCaffrey said last week, this government doesn’t fully control a single province. Its Parliament, now approaching a scheduled summer recess, has passed no major legislation in months. Iraq’s sole recent democratic achievement is to ban the release of civilian casualty figures, lest they challenge White House happy talk about “progress” in Iraq."
In Saudi Arabia, 172 Al Qeada suspects were arrested for planning to blow up oil installations, and kill politicians- additional proof, as if it were needed, that the US venture in Iraq is in shambles. Buried in the Times report on these developments was an admission that the US occupation of Iraqi was generating more terrorist recruits: “The chaos in Iraq has fueled radical ideology among the region’s youth, while providing an environment for militants to train…Officials said that the suspects had trained abroad, in Somalia, Afghanistan and especially Iraq.'It is the beginning of jihadi operations leaking out of Iraq,' said Abdul Aziz al-Qassim, a retired Saudi judge and moderate Islamic activist. 'It is clear that this is some of the effects of what is happening in Iraq, in terms of training and in terms of learning from the Iraqi experience.'”
So the War continues, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, longer now than US military operations in WWII, reconstruction has failed, and the world is less safe than it was before 9/11 as the US occupation of Iraq generates more and more terrorists! This is the world that the neo-cons and their ideological president have created!
The President is delaying because he refuses to acknowledge that his "surge", the latest attempt to salvage the Iraq quagmire, is failing just like the U.S “reconstruction” of Iraq, an oxymoron if there ever was one.
The $30 billion reconstruction effort was designed to complement the military effort to stabilize Iraq. Its official goals were to allow the government to function, revitalize the economy, including the oil industry whose revenues would finance the war, and promote good will toward the United States.
But inspectors for a federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, have found that in a sampling of eight projects across the country that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.
These new findings come after years of insistence by the President, Vice President, American officials in Baghdad and pro-war activists that too much attention has been paid to the failures in Iraq and not enough to the successes. You’ve surely seen the emails of smiling Iraqi children and rebuilt communities! This new report undermines that pro- war hype and recalls Bob Dylan's refrain "...there's no success like failure. And that failure's no success at all."
Bush is also "scaling back expectations for the Iraqi government" because he surely knows, as Frank Rich reports, that there is none: "... the Maliki “government” can’t meet any benchmarks, even if they were enforced, because that government exists only as a fictional White House talking point. As Gen. Barry McCaffrey said last week, this government doesn’t fully control a single province. Its Parliament, now approaching a scheduled summer recess, has passed no major legislation in months. Iraq’s sole recent democratic achievement is to ban the release of civilian casualty figures, lest they challenge White House happy talk about “progress” in Iraq."
In Saudi Arabia, 172 Al Qeada suspects were arrested for planning to blow up oil installations, and kill politicians- additional proof, as if it were needed, that the US venture in Iraq is in shambles. Buried in the Times report on these developments was an admission that the US occupation of Iraqi was generating more terrorist recruits: “The chaos in Iraq has fueled radical ideology among the region’s youth, while providing an environment for militants to train…Officials said that the suspects had trained abroad, in Somalia, Afghanistan and especially Iraq.'It is the beginning of jihadi operations leaking out of Iraq,' said Abdul Aziz al-Qassim, a retired Saudi judge and moderate Islamic activist. 'It is clear that this is some of the effects of what is happening in Iraq, in terms of training and in terms of learning from the Iraqi experience.'”
So the War continues, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, longer now than US military operations in WWII, reconstruction has failed, and the world is less safe than it was before 9/11 as the US occupation of Iraq generates more and more terrorists! This is the world that the neo-cons and their ideological president have created!
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