Speechless

From today's New York Times:

The net effect of the week's debate has, Mr. Bush's advisers argued, been to at best discredit Mr. Clarke and at worst cloud the issue. "I think in the end, he's not going to have any credibility," Charles Black, a Republican consultant with ties to the White House, said of Mr. Clarke. "I think any objective person watching this is going to come away saying this is confusing at best."

. . .

The White House strategy also involves what officials said would be a continued effort to discredit Mr. Clarke and to confuse the dispute with a battery of accusations and counteraccusations intended to increasingly make this dispute appear to be a partisan fight between Republicans and Democrats.

Let's be clear about what's being discussed here: Bush officials are not even hiding what they're trying to do. They're deliberately trying to mislead and confuse the public regarding the deaths of 3000 Americans on 9/11/2001 and over 500 American servicepeople in Iraq.

How can anyone think such dishonest people deserve to be in the White House?

So, NOW what do they do?

Via Pandagon, we find out that Clarke responded on NPR today to the "thermonuclear" GOP demand to declassify his former testimony. He wants it declassified, along with everything else about 9/11. Looks like Frist screwed the pooch, big time.

For the Bushies, this is a nightmare from which they just can't wake...

Tough on Terror

A few weeks back, we discovered that the Bush administration refused Pentagon plans to go after Abu Musab Zarqawi in Kurdish-controlled portions of Iraq, because they needed him in place as a rationale to invade:

With Tuesday’s attacks, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq.

But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.

. . .

The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late — Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone. “Here’s a case where they waited, they waited too long and now we’re suffering as a result inside Iraq,” [former National Security Council member Roger] Cressey added.

At the time of that story, it was estimated that close to 700 deaths since the cancelled plans were attributable to Zarqawi.

Well, the news just got worse.

Via Hesiod, the AP is reporting that Zarqawi was likely behind the Madrid attacks that cost the lives of 190 Spaniards:

Investigator Jean-Charles Brisard said Spanish officials told him some suspects held in the March 11 attacks were in contact with al-Zarqawi as recently as a month or two before the bombings, which killed 190 people and wounded more than 1,800.

"They believe today he was the mastermind," Brisard, who is probing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, said in a telephone interview from Geneva, Switzerland.

No wonder the administration is trying so hard to discredit Richard Clarke. Once the floodgates are open, the rest of their incompetence will become part of the public consciousness.

But really, this transcends politics (are you listening, Sen. Frist?). Here we have a concrete example of how the administration's failures have resulted in hundreds of innocent deaths.

"The world is safer without Saddam", indeed.

"A shame to this government"

Are there no responsible Republicans left?

On the one hand, we have Richard Clarke, a well-regarded, credible, 30-year government veteran basically charging the current White House with dereliction of duty and basic incompetence in defending the American people. His account is corroborated not only by events and witnesses, but by the White House's own documents and statements. The White House responds, not by refuting the charges, but with a character assassination attempt amounting to the worst abuse of power since Nixon.

What's more, the White House has had to retract several of its criticisms of Clarke as they've been proven untrue. Numerous other criticisms are inconsistent and self-contradictory.

And what do we have from the Senate Majority Leader? Do we have calls for investigations? Cries for impeachment proceedings? Attempts to safeguard the American people?

Not at all.

From Senator Bill Frist, we have calls for a fishing expedition against the whistleblower, the only possible reason for which is to provide political cover for those who have failed the American citizenry. He wants to declassify Richard Clarke's previous testimony.

Perhaps, Dr. Frist said, inconsistencies will be found. "Until you have him under oath both times, you don't know,'' the Tennessee Republican said.

This, of course, follows Frist's bald-faced assertion that Clarke "told two entirely different stories under oath". Now he's backpedaled to "perhaps inconsistencies will be found".

What's more, Sen. Frist remarked,

Loyalty to any Administration will be no defense if it is found that he has lied before Congress.

This appears to be a new standard, considering the claims the administration made both before the Iraq War and after.

And yet, Frist has the gall to refer to Clarke as "a shame to this government". Indeed, Sen. Frist, there is a shame here, and a scandal. But it isn't Clarke's behavior that is shameful.

It is clear that Sen. Frist and the rest of the Congressional GOP leadership cannot be counted on to keep the best interests of America at heart when base political power is at stake. The priorities have been laid bare for all to see.

So, I say, "bring it on". Declassify the former testimony -- all of it, not just creatively edited portions. For that matter, release all the other 9/11 records Frist and his Republican cohorts in Congress and the White House have been keeping from the American people for no other reason than to keep tight hold on the reins of power in this country. Let the truth out. It would be a welcome change.

Did Bush Expect a Two-Week Written Notice?

Bush protests now: "And had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September 11, we would have acted." But he had plenty of information. The former deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, the only member of the 9/11 commission to read the president's daily brief, revealed in the hearings that the documents "would set your hair on fire" and that the intelligence warnings of al- Qaida attacks "plateaued at a spike level for months" before September 11. Bush is fighting public release of these PDBs, which would show whether he had marked them up and demanded action.

Only having specific knowledge of a certain date, location and time would have provoked action from this administration?

Don't Confuse Them With the Facts

I cannot count the times that I have asked myself why the people in Washington seem to know nothing about the news of the day.

Here a glimpse into the reason:

Ben-Veniste asked Armitage to comment on statements Rice has made recently in the media. When Armitage said he couldn't because he didn't know what Rice had said, Ben-Veniste asked, "Do you own a television?"

"Yes, and it's generally on. And I won't tell you what it's on," Armitage answered, although in an exchange with Commissioner Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, he conceded it's tuned to basketball.

Gee, I guess those sportscasters just don't impart a lot of knowlege about the world, because Richard Armitage of of Iran-Contra fame seems only capable of crafting propaganda and doesn't care about the facts.

From the Absolutely Clueless Department

When I read the following news story, the questions that whizzed through my brain were boundless. How in the world did this become news?

Who could write this with a straight face? Who would read this and have this knowledge imparted for the very first time?

Okay, enough with the suspense -- here you go:

WASHINGTON - The security situation in Iraq (news - web sites) is dangerous and the threat to all Americans there remains extremely high, the State Department said Tuesday.

Okay, all those that are surprised, take one step back.

I see that only the Bush Administration is still standing in the same spot. Oh, wait! Those other unidentifiable people must be members of the FreeRepublic!

Fools. All of you.

Of course, it's not safe. Those were the propaganda tapes put out by Armitage's students.

Regarding Clarke

I haven't had the chance to review Richard Clarke's book yet, of course. But here are just a few impressions from the coverage this fiasco is receiving.

The White House is absolutely, positively scared. They're not trying to refute facts; they're going into full-tilt ad hominem attack mode against Clarke, trying to discredit him. Tried and true right-wing, of course.

The only problem is, it doesn't wash. First of all, Clark is a registered Republican; by all accounts, he's also a hard-liner who served under Reagan, Clinton and Bush II. He's not "partisan".

Second, if he were just doing this to make money off of his book, as the White House suggests, why wouldn't he have written a glowing report of the President? He could have easily done so; it would have been touted far and wide by right wing media, and he would have made a mint. But he didn't.

Third, as Atrios notes, the White House clearance process took three months; if that hadn't been the case, the book would have been released well before the campaign had gotten under wa.

Fourth, the White House is providing very little in the way of factual details actually refuting what Clarke said. Just the ad hominem stuff, as noted above.

Fifth, the person the White House is using to refute Clarke (Dr. Rice) has a history of making provably false statements to the media, on issues such as uranium from Niger and pre-9/11 warnings. This isn't a solid foundation on which to base a character attack.

Sixth, and finally, Clarke's allegations aren't the first. Randy Beers and Paul O'Neill, both long-time public servants and/or Bush partisans, have said largely the same thing. Furthermore, we now have a whole list of others who corroborate Clarke's story.

The media is having a hard time sorting through all the bull the White House is dishing out. Some of it is provably false, and let's hope it doesn't win the debate on this matter.

Bush: "Kerry wants to spend a million gazillion dollars!"

Does anyone still believe anything Bush says on the subject of economics? By now, anyone who has followed what the Bush administration puts out about economic and budget matters knows it's not exactly a gold-star source for information. Hence, their accusations that Kerry wants to spend $1 trillion over the next ten years on new proposals are a tad suspect.

For the record, Bush's tax cuts, if made permanent, will run over $2 trillion over the next ten years. Of course, to Bush, failing to change the law to make the tax cuts permanent amounts to a "tax increase". Notwithstanding that bit of campaign dishonesty, leaving the law as it stands means we'll have $2 trillion more to use for programs people want.

One thing to keep in mind, when it comes to the Bush administration (and campaign), is that much of the information it puts out uses think-tank-type tricks. In other words, it's quite possible that, in order to "calculate" that Kerry's proposals will cost over $1 trillion over the next ten years, they're ignoring the effects of inflation, assuming tax cuts don't expire as per current law, etc. These tricks are designed to deceive, and the Bush administration has shown, over and over, an affinity for using them. Remember the fiasco over their most recent budget, when others ran the numbers and found the Bush job predictions were ludicrous?

It's a smart policy, when it comes to these folks, to ask to see the numbers and then run the calculations yourself. I would imagine that, on this issue as on so many others, truth and Bush are not close friends.

For that matter, after all the Bush lies that have been exposed, does anyone still believe anything they say?

George "No-Cred" Bush does it again

Remember during the 2000 campaign when George Bush explicitly stated he'd promote reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels? It was only two months into his presidency when he reversed himself:

Retreating from a campaign pledge, President Bush told Congress Tuesday that his administration would not impose mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide on the nation's power plants.

In a letter to Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., the president made no mention of a campaign promise to require reductions in emissions of "four main pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide."

Well, guess what? Yet another of Bush's flip-flops is coming back to haunt us:

MAUNA LOA OBSERVATORY, Hawaii (AP) -- Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year, say scientists monitoring the sky from this 2-mile-high station atop a Hawaiian volcano.

. . .

The climatologists forecast continued temperature rises that will disrupt the climate, cause seas to rise and lead to other unpredictable consequences -- unpredictable in part because of uncertainties in computer modeling of future climate.

. . .

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol would oblige ratifying countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions according to set schedules, to minimize potential global warming. The pact has not taken effect, however.

The United States, the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter, signed the agreement but did not ratify it, and the Bush administration has since withdrawn U.S. support, calling instead for voluntary emission reductions by U.S. industry and more scientific research into climate change.

There's changing your mind, and there's telling people what they want to hear, then going off and doing the opposite. As which do you think this qualifies?