B148-DES94
The Bush Bind
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 5/8/04
Sitting Presidents are always subject to criticisms fair and not. Our
current President is no different. Usually the charges made by the other party
are the standard ones any opposing party would hurl- they have truths and
untruths admixed liberally within. Rare is it, though, that the charges are both
damning and almost certainly true in toto. Even worse is when these true charges
come from former members of your own administration. Such is the fix that W.
finds himself in these days. Not only is he seeking re-election against
Democratic Senator John Kerry, but he has to fend off increasingly damning
charges from current and former members of his own administration. Even worse,
these charges seem to support nearly every criticism levied by the most
ideological of his opponents against the President in regards to his neglect of
terrorism before 9/11, and his deceitful conduct of the war in Iraq to the world
and American people.
You know your Presidency is in dire trouble when everything the Far Left
says about you is subsequently proven true by your own people. To wit- the
release of former National Coordinator
for Counter-Terrorism [aka ‘Terrorism Czar’] Richard
Clarke’s book Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War On Terror,
his 3/21/04 60 Minutes interview, & subsequent testimony before the
9/11 Commission has shown Bush as 1) blithely uncaring of Al Quaida threats
pre-9/11, 2) monomaniacally obsessed with Saddam Hussein before and after 9/11,
to the point of seeking to have subordinates ‘frame’ Saddam for the attacks,
and 3) woefully mismanaging both the Afghan & Iraq wars and their
aftermaths. Here’s a typical book excerpt reprinted via a New York Times
piece: ‘I expected to go back to a round of meetings examining what the
next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were, what we could do about
them in the short term. Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about
Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than
getting Al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that
Rumsfeld and [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz were going to try
to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq.’
Of
course, the Bushies sought to immediately discredit Clarke, except that in
interview after interview Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (quoted by Clarke as
saying ‘There aren't any good
targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq.’),
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and co. kept contradicting their own
earlier claims, and each others’. The worst example of this was in reaction to
this claim by Clarke: ‘Later, on the evening of the 12th, I left the video
conferencing center and there, wandering alone around the situation room, was
the president. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us
and closed the door to the conference room. "Look," he told us,
"I know you have a lot to do and all . . . but I want you, as soon as you
can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's
linked in any way."
I was once again taken
aback, incredulous, and it showed. "But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did
this."
"I know, I know, but
— see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred——"
"Absolutely, we will
look — again.` I was trying to be more respectful, more responsive. `But you
know, we have looked several times for state sponsorship of Al Qaeda and not
found any real linkages to Iraq. Iran plays a little, as does Pakistan, and
Saudi Arabia, Yemen.`
"Look into Iraq, Saddam," the president said testily and left us.’
For days the Administration denied the ‘meeting’ ever took place.
Clarke was unequivocally a liar. When Clarke’s aides backed up his story, and
several White House staffers admitted they knew Clarke’s version to be true
the White House sheepishly admitted they had been ‘mistaken’- the meeting
did occur, but W. was just doing ‘due diligence’- no pressure on Clarke and
his staff to frame Saddam.
Even more telling has been Rice, portrayed as utterly clueless and out of
her league in regards to National Security, being told by the White House that
she could not publicly testify under oath before the 9/11 Commission for the
specious reasoning that it would violate the separation of powers of the federal
government. Add to that W’s refusal to testify before the Commission, and the
continued lack of Weapons of Mass Destruction being found in Iraq, and this is a
trying time for the President.
Yet, these are just the latest in a series of stunning revelations from
former ‘insiders’ of W’s reign. Whereas Clarke has been portrayed as a
turncoat auditioning for a job with ‘President’ Kerry (absurd considering
his appointments over the years by mostly Republican Administrations), the White
House has had no easy response to an equally damning book by former Treasury
Secretary Paul O’Neill, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White
House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill, by Ron Suskind. In it O’Neill
claims that from Day 1 the Bush Administration sought to topple Saddam above all
other concerns. O’Neill blasts CIA Director George Tenet when as evidence for
Saddam’s WMD threat he produced a grainy photo of an Iraqi factory claimed to
be producing chemical and biological weapons. O’Neill, ex-CEO of Alcoa,
the aluminum giant, skeptically said there was no way you could tell what was
being produced in a factory from such a photo. Tenet, State Secretary Colin
Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, and others seemed peeved that he was contradicting what
the President wanted to hear.
By all accounts the 1-2 punches of O’Neill’s & Clarke’s books
has the Administration in a tizzy. Well, all except the President who seems to
be living up to his enemies claims of being a mere figurehead. So blissfully out
of touch with the nation’s mood is W. that on 3/24, at a Radio-TV
Correspondents Dinner, he joked ‘Those weapons of mass destruction have to
be here somewhere. Nope, no weapons over there. Maybe under here.’ while a
slide show showed the President supposedly looking under Oval Office file
cabinets and desks.
The apex of how out of touch W. is may have been this quote from
Clarke’s 60 Minutes interview: ‘I
blame the entire Bush leadership for continuing to work on Cold War issues when
they back in power in 2001. It was as though they were preserved in amber from
when they left office eight years earlier. They came back. They wanted to work
on the same issues right away: Iraq, Star Wars. Not new issues, the new threats
that had developed over the preceding eight years.’
That all of these claims and charges have been hanging in the air since
9/11 by Leftists & Democrats is especially galling to W & more so to
Conservative Republicans already abandoning his sinking ship for his bloated
overspending. They seem to be smelling the rot that W and Co. refuse to. It’s
clear the President knew of the Al Quaida threat but pooh-poohed it, knew that
they had plans to use jet liners as missiles on US targets, and was warned
within a week of 9/11 that such an attack could occur. Still he did nothing.
Compared to a 1999 thwarted terrorist attack at LAX, under the Clinton
Administration, & w seems especially naďve & in over his head. Add to
that a cluelessness regarding the future of Iraq, & the most disastrous
economic record since Herbert Hoover and the earlier Bush re-election strategy
of downplaying the economy in favor of his ‘War Record’ seems specious at
best. At worst it’s a recipe for political hari-kiri as more former
aides-cum-critics surface.
The White House seeks to portray critics like Clarke as hypocritical by
pointing to the fact that in August ‘02 news conference Clarke gave a speech
praising Bush’s handling of terrorism, not seeing that such a presentation
merely strengthens Clarke’s claims that he was strong-armed by the White House
into downplaying what he knew to be true. The failures of the CIA & DIA have
been fobbed off with the excuse that other nations’ intelligence agencies made
similar errors re: Saddam’s WMD capabilities, yet it is now clear that most of
those claims were made in large part based upon biased US Intelligence
information and outright fraud by, especially, UK Intelligence.
Add
all of these things together and for the 1st time since Barry
Goldwater ran for President in 1964 Conservatives are terrified that their
candidate could be running a campaign headed for a disaster to rival that one.
And they are right to fear, for people like Clarke, O’Neill, & the
swiftly, forced-forgotten CIA Weapons Inspector David Kay (remember?- no WMDs in
Iraq), seem to keep popping up every few weeks. There are still 7 months to go
before the election, but one needs to go back to Watergate to see an
Administration inflicting so much damage upon itself. Just don’t mention Deep
Throat to anyone in the Administration. Or, better yet, do, and watch them
squirm.
[An expurgated version of this article originally appeared on the 4/04 Hackwriters website.]
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