Letters to the Editor
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The strange mirror world of the Bush administration pt1
a fine and succint article by SB (as usual). It got me thinking.
from 92 to 2000 when Bill Clinton was in office there was a concerted right-wing vendetta against him and his wife (who terrifies the psyche of religious conservative males and conservative females). They existed in a nether world of false and made up scandal, like Whitewater and the suicide of Vince Foster [surely he was having an affair with Hillary let's juice this up] and then he was killed on the shady orders of Clinton, No? well no, at least David Brooks had the decency to declare a mea culpa in his two superb books 'blinded by the right' and the the 'republican noise machine'. So you have a 6 years of unjust attacks on the president and the whitehouse culminating in using Linda Tripp as a so called confidant to the young and confused Monica Lewinski but in reality all the time she's wired and reporting her indiscretions to her GOP superiors. A dirty and dishonourable deed if ever there was one. After 6 years of falsehoods they now had some dirt on him and they were going to milk it for all it was not worth. And boy did they milk it.
in the Alice in Wonderland world of George Bush's reign over America you have a list as long as your arm of scandals. They are all well reported and known about internationally, here's a few at at glance. But very few of them ever make any dent.
The energy 2001 task force that was held in secret that Cheney contrary to law will not release the contents of [Cheney: I'll do what I like]
The fact that 9/11 happened on his watch and not a single person at the helm during this fiasco has been reprimanded or fired. On the contrary they've all been promoted. Myers in charge of NORAD became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Tenet gets the presidential medal of freedom and on and on. [Bush administration to 9/11: our air defences were designed to fight Russia we were not as fully staffed as was popularly imagined...we thought there were 18 separate planes in the air being hijacked so we couldn't identify in time the ones that turned out to be deadly] so we promoted the people who messed up.
Tenet now says he met Rice and warned her prior to 9/11 but she delegated the follow-up to minions. [Rice: I don't recall such a meeting]
This is not a small point since a huge part of the Bush myth was built up on him being the security and war president and that no-one could have foreseen this. [what was that Aug 6 memo called? Rice: I don't recall, congressman: Bin Laden determined to attack on US soil, Rice: it was vague and not actionable]
The War on terror [aka the Global War on Terror]. The final Likud-isation of American politics. An Orwellian charter. Designed to make the problem metastasize just like the war on poverty has increased it and the war on drugs has made them proliferate out of all control. Did I mention the war on Crime?
The stovepiping of intelligence in the office of special plans involving Feith and Luti at the orders of Cheney and Rumsfeld. The intidimadtion of the spooks by Cheney and Libby. I've read about this in countless articles and at least 5 books. [Bush answer: the CIA failed us, we will use that old hack Porter Goss to modernise, then it turns out he goes because his appointed 2nd in command is into gambling and prostitutes]
The whole fiasco with yellowcake and Nigeria, Wilson and Plame [Bush; if anyone is leaking we will out them, the prosecutor finds that Libby is dodgy but Rove is ok [why?] and indicts Libby, Bush shows 0 contrition, solid rumour is that Libby will be pardonned before end of Bush term]
The Iraq war
The 'quaint' torture memo by John Yoo.
Abu Ghraib [a few rotten apples, never mind that Geoffrey Miller was sent from Guantanamo to Gitmo-ise Abu Ghraib, it wasn't from the top no matter what Seymour Hersh says, it was a few rotten apples, honest, and we'll bury 'em]
Similarly you have the goings in Baghram air base and Guantanamo, there's a lot more where this came from.
The downing st memo proves that the whole case for the war was bogus.
The leak by two no 10 officials that Blair had to dissuade Bush from bombing Al-Jazeera's HQ (they had already bombed them in Afghanistan and Baghdad) [Bush: it's just not true]
The American extraordinary rendition gulag [Rice: we dont' torture people, Tenet: we don't torture people]
The warrantless wiretaps [Bush: we are defending this country against 'terrists']
The Billions looted in Iraq, still hasn't really come out that one.
The hugely expensive private army in Iraq and war profiteers like Haliburton and Bechtel and Kellog/brown root etc...
The backing of Israel in the 5 week bombardment of lebanon killing over 1000 people, creating 1 million refugees and the dropping of over 1 million cluster bomblets in the last 3 days (many on economic targets like agriculture). They were going to go for a 'sustainable cease-fire' which conveniently would buy Israel more time to kill from the air. [Bolton: I'm damn proud of what we did] Winograd thought that the whole thing was a total and incompetently managed mess.
The attorney general sackings [Gonzales, I had nothing to do with it (one month later) oh hang on I mis-spoke, I don't recall, I don't recall....]
I must have missed out a few but these are all on the record, they're all true and they're all known about in quite a detailed way.