Bush and the Ultimate Kool-Aid: Power

Former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil mentioned a scene when he was first interviewed to join the Bush cabinet. Bush and Cheney were there; what I remembered about the description is that Bush and Cheney were like fraternity brothers at some second-rate school interviewing somebody for the fraternity with their smugness, knowing looks and eye-rolling well intact as if Paul O'Neil were some innocent freshman. My first reaction as I reading was: uh-oh, I've seen those kind of executives before.

Bob Woodward has an article in The Washinton Post about his book, State of Denial, but I thought of Paul O'Neil's baptism into the inner workings of the Bush circle as Woodward described Jay Garner's experience with Rumsfeld and Bush; Garner was the man in Iraq before Bremer took away his job; we begin with Garner finishing his summary to Rumsfeld of what he felt were the major mistakes up to that time in Iraq:

Third, Garner said, Bremer had summarily dismissed an interim Iraqi leadership group that had been eager to help the United States administer the country in the short term. "Jerry Bremer can't be the face of the government to the Iraqi people. You've got to have an Iraqi face for the Iraqi people," he said.

Garner made his final point: "There's still time to rectify this. There's still time to turn it around."

Rumsfeld looked at Garner for a moment with his take-no-prisoners gaze. "Well," he said, "I don't think there is anything we can do, because we are where we are."

He thinks I've lost it, Garner thought. He thinks I'm absolutely wrong. Garner didn't want it to sound like sour grapes, but facts were facts. "They're all reversible," Garner said again.

(snip)

Later that day, Garner went with Rumsfeld to the White House. But in a meeting with Bush, he made no mention of mistakes. Instead he regaled the president with stories of his time in Baghdad.

In an interview last December, I asked Garner if he had any regrets in not telling the president about his misgivings.

"You know, I don't know if I had that moment to live over again, I don't know if I'd do that or not. But if I had done that -- and quite frankly, I mean, I wouldn't have had a problem doing that -- but in my thinking, the door's closed. I mean, there's nothing I can do to open this door again. And I think if I had said that to the president in front of Cheney and Condoleezza Rice and Rumsfeld in there, the president would have looked at them and they would have rolled their eyes back and he would have thought, 'Boy, I wonder why we didn't get rid of this guy sooner?'"

"They didn't see it coming," Garner added. "As the troops said, they drank the Kool-Aid."

Forget the ideology which is badly flawed. These guys are wallowing in their own power drink. Bush and his team are dysfunctional. I want to believe that Americans finally understand what a disaster we have on our hands in Washington but that's not certain; forgive me if I state the obvious: it would be in our best interests not to allow Bush and his inner circle to start yet a third war and show us what other fiascos they can offer us.