The Case Against George W. Bush
At the time that this was written, more accusations were brought against George W. Bush and his regime. In both his book "Against All Enemies" and in testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism advisor, said that Bush did not consider terrorism an urgent issue and was so focused on Iraq that he was unable to do a credible job against al-Qaeda. (And Senators from his own party are saying he has made a mess of Iraq as well.) Of course this brought torrents of accusations against Mr. Clarke from the Republicans, everything from sour grapes for having had his position demoted from Cabinet level to self-aggrandizement and profiteering. (If you want to know about the real profiteering in the war against Iraq, see this video about the Carlyle Group.) Some of what I find interesting in this is that the Bush administration counters Clarke's accusations with general statements like, "We acted aggressively against al-Qaeda." When it comes to specifics, they are not so quick. There's a lot of, "I don't remember such a meeting," or, "There's no record that I can find that supports what he says." These are not the statements of people who are confident that they are right, they are statements of people who have things to hide.
But this is not all the evidence to support the idea that there is something rotten about the Bush administration. Taken individually, the accusations and evidence may seem open to question, but taken collectively, it seems that any reasonably fair minded person would conclude that this administration has many sins to hide. I don't know if they've done anything illegal, but they certainly have performed many immoral, dishonest, and dishonorable acts, the sum of which has left the U.S. in a more vulnerable position because of a thinly spread military and gutted economy. Let's take a look at the list I'm aware of:
- The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has concluded that the case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was exaggerated by changing qualified assessments into statements of fact. For instance, on page 18 of the report ("WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 2004) the authors state: U.N. inspectors said that "Iraq might have imported enough media to produce these [30,000 liters of anthrax and other agents] amounts." However, Bush changed this to, "The inspectors concluded that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that amount." Bush skipped from "might have imported enough media" to "had likely produced"; this is a clear exaggeration of the conclusion. If this were the only such instance, there wouldn't be much of a case against Bush, but the report is filled with such instances and Bush is not the only member of his administration who made such claims.
- Karen Kwiatkowski, a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, has written an article entitled "The New Pentagon Papers" for salon.com in which she describes how the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans had "through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president." In short, the article says that neo-conservatives have taken control of the government and use whatever means necessary to further their ideological agenda, including outright lies, distortions, and partial truths.
- During Bush's buildup for war, members of his administration repeatedly made statements about the immediate threat posed by Iraq. However, on "Meet the Press" Donald Rumsfeld said that, "You and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase, 'immediate threat'. I didn't. The president didn't. And it's become kind of folklore...". (view the video) When presented with his own quotes such as, "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than Saddam Hussein in Iraq," all Rumsfeld could do was stammer.
- In January former Treasure Secretary Paul O'Neill published a book, "The Price of Loyalty," in which he says that Bush was focused on Iraq from the day he took over the oval office. This is in direct contradiction to Bush's campaign promises to keep the U.S. military out of "nation building". And again, the Republicans say that Mr. O'Neill suffers from "sour grapes". Seems to be a lot of that going around. Subsequent to the publication of his book, Mr. O'Neill's story has been corroborated by another Bush administration official.
- The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 was passed with a number of improprieties. One particularly reprehensible impropriety was that as soon as the bill was passed, Thomas Scully, the government official responsible for Medicare, resigned from his government job to work for two companies, each of which was directly affected by the legislation. This is against federal law that prohibits presidential appointees from seeking private employment with firms involved with matters that they are working on; however, Scully was given a waiver by the Department of Heath and Human Services. Why? See a full report at Common Cause.
This is quite a list of accusations and incidents. In total they say that something's rotten in Washington.