You know a guy is a screwup when incompetence is the least of his problems. It’s not that President Bush is trying to do what’s good for America, and failing; it’s that he doesn’t give a bleep about what’s good for America. Bush’s only concern is Bush. If you want proof, just consider how he plays with national security.
Jonathan Alter writes for Newsweek (web only):
For crass political reasons—namely to advance his position on the National Security Agency spying story—the president chose to use a speech to the National Guard Association to disclose details of a 2002 “shoe bomb†plot to blow up the U.S. Bank Tower, the tallest building in Los Angeles. While the plot had been revealed in general terms in the past, the White House this week arranged for Bush’s counterterrorism adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, to explain to reporters in a conference call exactly the kind of details that Goss claimed on the op-ed page helped the enemy. “We are at risk of losing a key battle,†Goss wrote. “The battle to protect our classification system.â€
That system is at particular risk when it is exploited for political purposes.
Presidents can declassify anything they like, of course. But what other purpose could Bush have had than to “remind” us that we’re supposed to be afraid of terrorists? “[L]et’s be clear” Alter writes, “on what this was: a deliberate effort to use declassification for partisan purposes, in this case, defending the administration’s policy on NSA surveillance, which Karl Rove says publicly will be a big part of the 2006 midterm campaign.”
Townsend employed the Bushie trick of placing dots in a way that assumes connection, much the way Bush and his surrogates linked Saddam Hussein to 9/11 in the public mind without explicitly stating there was a connection. In this case, Townsend did not claim the NSA program had anything to do with foiling the Los Angeles plot. Yet Townsend left a trail of breadcrumbs between Los Angeles and the NSA nonetheless. “[W]e use all available sources and methods in the intelligence community,” she siad, “but we have to protect them. So I’m not going to talk about what ones we did or didn’t use in this particular case.”
Dutifully, Fox News host John Gibson followed the crumbs. As Media Matters reports,
Gibson suggested a link on the February 9 edition of Fox News’ The Big Story with John Gibson. When guest P.J. Crowley, former special assistant to President Clinton, noted that the Los Angeles terror plot was foiled by the CIA, not the NSA, Gibson responded: “They’re the same kind of thing … the same animal” Later in the program, while purporting to “[c]onnect the dots,” Gibson lumped together the alleged Library Tower plot and the “controversy over the use of high-tech spying.”
Kool-aiders across America are now certain that the NSA spy program stopped the bombing of Los Angeles, and how can those soft-headed libruhls be so stupid not to trust the President? Don’t they remember 9/11?
Yeah, just like we remember Iraq didn’t have anything to do with it. But let’s go on …
Via True Blue Liberal, Maureen Dowd writes in her column today:
Vice President Dick Cheney bitterly complains that national security leaks are endangering America. Unless, of course, he’s doing the leaking, tapping Scooter Libby to reveal national security information to punish a political critic.
President Bush says he will not talk about specific security threats to America. Unless, of course, he needs to talk about a specific threat to Los Angeles to confuse the public and gain some cheap political advantage.
The White House says it has done everything possible to protect the homeland. Unless, of course, it hasn’t. Then it can lie to hide the callous portrait of Incurious George in Crawford as New Orleans drowned.
The attorney general can claim that torture and warrantless wiretapping are legal, and can mislead Congress. Unless, of course, enough Republicans stand up and say, as Arlen Specter told The Washington Post, that if that lickspittle lawyer thinks all this is legal, “he’s smoking Dutch Cleanser.”
The president doesn’t know the Indian Taker Jack Abramoff. Unless, of course, W. has met with him a dozen times, invited him to Crawford and joked with him about his kids.
The Bushies can continue to claim that the invasion of Iraq was justified because Saddam was a threat to our security. Unless, of course, he wasn’t, and the Cheney cabal was simply abusing the trust of Americans to push a wild-eyed political scheme.
A pattern, as they say, emerges.
Update: The Medium Lobster (the Wise; the All-Seeing) explains Bush national security policy.
Did Specter really say that Abu Gonzo had been smoking Dutch Cleanser? Far fuckin out.
C-SPSAN had college students on this morning and the concervative was talking about how ‘leave all kids behind’ was about being accountable.
How accountable is the Bush regime for getting us in Iraq …etc…etc.???/
my local paper had the front page headline yesterday- ‘Spying foils plot’, and of course the article says no such thing- evidently cooperation from another government did.
typical
I saw you on C-SPAN yesterday. You GO girl! I mentioned you in my blog today and have linked you too. Spread the word!!
Best wishes from a new fan.
Bush and his gang have preyed on our ignorance. Initially I was suckered in buying Cheney’s suitcase nuke scenerio until I was able to understand the complexity in both resources and manpower to produce a nuclear weapon. Scott Ritter did an excellent interview explaining the probablity that Saddam had a nuclear capacity of less than 1%, and that was a generous percentage based on the unknowable.
The same bullshit was employed with the aluminum tubes.How are we to know if our elected officials who have access to expertise don’t tell us straight,but purposely mislead us into drawing a conclusion that is false.
I’ve learned that Bush speaks with the proverbial forked tongue and he’s whittled his credibility down to nothing. Every word Bush and his buddies speak is perceived by me as deceptive.. Laying down breadcrumbs is the perfect analogy to descibe the process of that deception.
As an aside…My brother- in- law just asked me last week if I thought the WMD’s were hidden in Syria. I mean, where else could they be?.. 🙂
I mean, where else could they be?.. 🙂
Don’t tell anybody, but I’ve got ’em.
Speaking of following dots… I remember the coloring books I had as a kid where you connect the numbered dots to create a picture…but you could already see what the final picture was before you connect any of the dots… seems fitting for the dot games Dubya likes to play, or maybe there are alot of adults that never tire of old children’s games.
Saw you on C-span yesterday, I thought you did a nice job. It got me to your blog. I thought it was odd that Brian asked if you had any children? He’s the only host of washington journal without a good pokerface. How dare you call some conservative staffer a little twerp? All in all I thought he was easier on you than most liberals he has on his show, maybe he detected that you were a real person, not some political hack with an agenda. Although he did point out that you were selling t-shirts and your book on you website, how dare you. Nice blog i’ll be sure to come back.
Another little deception was the one that Digby pointed out on his blog…In Bush’s efforts to protect us they were monitoring air samples outside of mosques here in the United States for traces of radio activity. That served as a two-fer, first it stigmatizes all muslims as potental terrorists and second it makes people think that a nuclear device can be cooked up in a kitchen sink. Until Digby drew attention to the story, I never considered the subtle implications that were planted on a sub-conscious level by that revelation after it was “pryed” from our government. Cheney must be laughing his ass off at the gullibllity( trust) of the American public.
With all the praises heaped upon Rove as to being some sort of tactical genius, I’m at a loss to understand how deception and manipulation can be equated with brillance. I don’t see it as a quality worthy of puffing a chest on, nor is it an attribute I would embrace from a supposed leader.
Leaks, Leaks, Leaks.
I saw some hack on fox news actually admitting that the bushies leaked val plames name, but it was o.k. because they were trying to defend the foreign policy of the United States? And besides it not classified if the executive branch desides to release it. Ah they are so fair and balanced?
This sounds like something that would be produced by the ministry of truth in orwells book, facts are changed to fit the needs of dear leader,replaced as needed and the old facts are forever lost in the memory hole………
How would one smoke dutch cleanser?….never mind I am sure it’s classified…
Speaking of following dots [Thanks NEOJOE]……The first deception dot I heard about coming from the Rove/Bush camp was the subliminal message in a 2000 presidential race Bush ad which did a lightening quick flash [the subconscious gets the message and the person’s conscious brain never realizes it has been manipulated] of the word RATS hidden within a tv ad while/when the ad’s visual/audio was referring to Democrats.
After some smart guy from, I believe Washington state, found that subliminal message……the uproar brought out protests of innocence [it was inadvertent… so sorry] from the Bush campaign, then brought up the issue of *subliminal messages being illegal, and then brought forth some ‘experts’ who opined that ‘subliminal messaging didn’t really affect people much anyway’, so ‘what’s the big deal’.
*The most notorious manipulation using subliminals was done in movie theaters whereby subliminals flashing on the screen impelled people to get up and go get popcorn and drinks at the concession stands…… such manipulation was subsequently made illegal to protect the unsuspecting movie goers.
Yeah……I read #5 above in which Swami wrote, “Bush and Co. have preyed on our innocence.” ……and I wonder if perhaps all along during the Bush reign, innocent Americans may have been subjected to Rovian preying tactics along the lines of subliminal messaging. If so, ‘drinking the kool-aid’ might really refer to those whose psyches are most vulnerable to hidden messaging that flashes something like ‘Bush is God’ or ‘trust Bush’.
Since the day’s of me wearing the ” I LIKE IKE ” button on my lapel to my home-made bumper sticker that say’s [Welcome to America, The World’s Fastest Growing 3rd World Country], I have never seen a more corrupt government. I have lived under the iron rules of Pinochet, Marcos and Kuanada just to name a few but this Bush administration takes my breath away for the shear audacity of the lies they perpetuate and the depth of their dishonesty. I now have to consider another country to live out the remaining years of my life rather then vote under the pretext of a “democracy” which entitles me my only democratic right to vote for one of two pre-selected, bought and paid for, kosher approved lemmings to be my dictator for 4-8 years. May God have mercy on my dear American countrymen.
BarryBarry,
It’s not that bad is it? Although “kosher approved lemmings” sounds pretty scary. I sum up our current situation with the following poem, I penned on a blog a couple days ago:
Remember November the year 2000. Remember the IZOD clad thugs, faces flush with last knights strategy session. “Sore Loserman” is it a real surprise, when we consider the events of the day? The privileged greed of the “chosen” has co-opted the collective fear of the “controlledâ€. Hey as Mr. Gore said “we stared down 10,000 warheads” surely we can stare down the Neo-Conman super frat boys.
We now have more evidence that the Bush Administration politicized intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War. Paul R. Pillar was National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia from 2001-2005, and was responsible for coordinating all of the intelligence communy’s assessments regarding Iraq. He writes in the online version of Foreign Affairs that the intelligence was politicized and cherry-picked, particularly with regard to the supposed link between Saddam Hussein and Aa-Qaeda. The article is at: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85202-p10/paul-r-pillar/intelligence-policy-and-the-war-in-iraq.html
This article agrees with the statement of former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook on June 17, 2003: “…instead of using intelligence as evidence on which to base a decision about policy, we used intelligence as the basies on which to justify a policy on which we had already settled.” There was a similar statement in the Downing Street Memo: “…the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” Three insider accounts, all with the same conclusion.
I have always felt that George Bush and Dick Cheney should have been arrested and charged with overthrowing the government of the United States when they seized the White House in 2000. Even now, their impeachment and subsequent capital punishment is long overdue.
9/11. Some Democrat was in charge, right? I forget.