Cheney and Other Republican Liars and Hypocrites

Since 2002, no government official lied about the war in Iraq more than Dick Cheney. In a different era, the vice president would have been impeached and sent packing. Cheney's outing of a CIA officer whose husband's factual report on Niger yellowcake disagreed with Cheney's self-serving fantasies should have been enough to send the vice president to jail. Dick Cheney's authoritarian and anti-social character has been on display repeatedly but in no case was it more obvious than when he shot a friend of his in the face with a shotgun and it was the friend who was obliged to apologize. Strange man, Dick Cheney.

I am proud to be yet another blog linking to Larry Wilkerson's article in The Washington Note:

...when Cheney claims that if President Obama stops "the Cheney method of interrogation and torture", the nation will be in danger, he is perverting the facts once again. But in a very ironic way.

My investigations have revealed to me--vividly and clearly--that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009.

(snip)

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

(snip)

There in fact were no such contacts.

It's a national disgrace that right-wing Republicans continue to coddle such liars as Dick Cheney. But Cheney wasn't the only liar. We have to include such 'stalwart' Republicans as Donald Rumseld, Scooter Libby, Alberto Gonzalez, Douglas Feith, and yes, George W. Bush. There were plenty of others. The fact remains that the Bush Administration felt comfortable lying to Congress for eight years. But they didn't stop there. They lied to the American people.

Now Nancy Pelosi is accused of lying about what she was told by an administration that had little credibility. Our country needs a reliable non-political CIA but Bush and Cheney were doing everything they could to politicize parts of the government that had always been nonpolitical and bipartisan. As an example, the Bush Administration promoted people like Dusty Foggo to the number three spot at the CIA:

Foggo is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria after pleading guilty to a single count of fraud as part of a plea bargain. He is the highest ranking CIA officer ever to be convicted of a federal felony.

The fraud was part of a bribery ring that included Foggo's old friend, contractor Brent Wilkes, and former [Republican] Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, both of whom have been sentenced to years in prison.

Court papers filed this week offer the most detailed glimpse yet of Foggo's misconduct, which included getting his mistress hired to a $100,000 a year job at the CIA and steering millions of dollars in CIA contracts to Wilkes.

Even in the CIA there were people under Bush who were feeding at the public trough.

Again, most people in the intelligence community are competent professionals. But Bush and Cheney were not shy about bending the rules and finding people who would do the same. Here's another example of life under Bush by way of Talking Points Memo:

Adm. Mike McConnell came in as the Director of National Intelligence with a rep for being professional and non-partisan, a calling card the Bush Administration has put to its own uses.

(snip)

In his first months as DNI, McConnell did plenty to undermine that rep. He told Congress that three German terrorism suspects had been arrested due to intercepts made possible by the then-new Protect America Act when in fact they were obtained under the old FISA law. Soon after, McConnell offered a especially misleading account to Congress of a supposed FISA Court ruling that had delayed the U.S. from spying on the kidnappers of U.S. troops in Iraq. And throughout congressional debate on a surveillance law he claimed that the debate itself endangered American lives.

Then earlier this year, he suggested that a questioner at a public event at Johns Hopkins was "disappointed" that the U.S. hadn't suffered additional terrorist attacks. And now McConnell has really let lose, framing the Senate debate on the surveillance bill as being between those who think "we shouldn't have an Intelligence Community" and those who do. That has prompted a letter from Sen. Russ Feingold demanding an apology for those false characterizations of the debate.

There were other people besides McConnell who served at Bush's pleasure and thought nothing of lying to Congress. We know Cheney and others were liars. We know they lied to people like Pelosi. Until proven otherwise, I think we already know who the liars are. In the current political climate, Dick Cheney will never be prosecuted and sent to jail for his crimes. At the very least, he should go home and the news media should stop paying attention to a man who lied his way into a war our nation did not need.

President Bush: The Blamer-in-Chief

There are exceptions, but one of the classic marks of a right-wing conservative is their tendency to blame everyone but themselves. Since the members of the Bush Administration keep trying to wear his mantle, it's worth noting that one of those exceptions was Winston Churchill who, though not quick to blame himself, still managed to accept responsibility for some of his blunders. Actually people with a record of successful decisions and actions can afford to accept responsibility and that may speak volumes about today's Republican Party: they have a well-financed and well-oiled noise machine but their record of accomplishments is not good. And none have accomplished so little as our president.

Dan Froomkin of White House Watch notes Bush's latest attempt to blame someone else for his particular fiasco in Iraq:

President Bush says that he should be trusted on military issues because he listens to his commanders. But he has a tendency to celebrate his generals when they're providing him political cover -- then stick a knife in their backs when they're no longer of any use to him.

Last week, Bush rejected any blame for the chaos that ensued in Iraq after the March 2003 invasion. So whose fault was it? Bush pointed the finger at Gen. Tommy Franks, the Central Command chief at the time. "My primary question to General Franks was, do you have what it takes to succeed? And do you have what it takes to succeed after you succeed in removing Saddam Hussein? And his answer was, yes," Bush said.

As we know, Bush does not listen. It is amazing how many untruths Bush can squeeze into his statements. So far, Bush has blamed any number of people for his fiasco in Iraq. He has blamed the Iraqis themselves, the Iranians, the Syrians, al Qaida and any number of others, including his fellow Americans. It's curious to note that President Bush has not blamed his partner in war, Dick Cheney. The vice president is, in some ways, more responsible for the fiasco than the president, but he gets a free pass from Bush. Others have noted Bush's reluctance to hold his vice president accountable, presumably, as the all too biting humor goes, because Cheney knows where all the bodies are buried.

We know the president is incompetent. We know he adheres to an ideology that blinds him to advice from experts who know what they're talking about. We know Bush cannot blame the generals for his fiasco in Katrina. We know Bush cannot blame the generals for the lack of an energy policy or the high gasoline prices. We know Bush cannot blame the generals for the reams of right-wing nonsense coming out of the various departments of the government as the president ignores science, the law and history. We know Bush cannot blame the generals for the outing of a CIA operative. The list of blunders and nonsense for which the president is responsible is long. Even in Iraq, Bush seems to have a conveniently compartmentalized memory of events. The generals did not insist on no-bid contracts. The generals did not send twenty-year-olds to set up stock markets. The generals didn't waste time on lucrative privatization schemes for Bush cronies. The generals did not come up with the preemptive strike princile. And it was not the generals who set up Paul Bremer as a viceroy. Blunder after blunder can be traced directly to decisions made by the Bush inner circle and there were no generals in that inner circle.

In my opinion, Bush is an authoritarian corporatist. He believes that business knows best—and deserves the most (certainly far more than was prevalent from the 1930s to the 1990s)—and I suspect he and his closest associates believe stockholders, business ethics and democracy are 'quaint.' But even Bush's business friends, cronies, campaign contributors and associates must all be astonished at just how grossly imcompetent the president has proven to be. It's a shame that Bush's real supporters, the same business class, fail to realize how much they themselves have lost their way and how much of Bush's failures stem from their own flawed ideological view of the world. I have no problem with competent people earning more than the rest of us but today's business world needs to explain how mediocrities like Bush keep acquiring so much wealth, power and authority to do the harm they do to our country.

The Delusional and Contrary Mr. Bush

It's hard to escape the notion that if liberals say the night is dark, a right-wing contrarian like President Bush will get it in his head to say the opposite just to spite liberals. Right wing conservative pundits have made a living out of being contrarians but the effect of such nonsense on the affairs of our country can only be described as a fiasco when put into action and made part of official American policy. In the end, we are witnessing a national tragedy of historic dimensions.

The month of May was not a good one for Bush's war in Iraq. The death toll of our soldiers in May comes to 124 and the total coalition deaths, which for some reason does not include Iraqis fighting on our side, is 129 deaths. Not since the bizarre punitive battles that took on the entire city of Fallujah have so many Americans died. The attack on Fallujah remains a symbol of Bush's bizarre war; destroying an entire Iraqi city because of the crimes of a few against a handful of contractors who ignored travel warnings against going into Fallujah not only doesn't make sense, the destruction of a city of 300,000 was an operation that can hardly be considered American. The military opposed the initial plan from the White House to attack Fallujah back in April 2004; it was considered counterproductive. But Bush and his inner circle pushed on.

And now three years later, there is no sign that Bush has learned a thing. But he still considers himself the Decider-in-Chief. Think Progress draws our attention to an article by Georgie Anne Geyer in the Dallas News:

..by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness.

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny."

Destiny. Methinks the president has a touch of what some call the Napoleonic complex. Years before being handed the keys to the White House by his father, Bush once asked Queen Elizabeth who the back sheep was in her family, obviously making it clear that he was the black sheep in his own family. There is no sign that frat boy ever grew up. The bunker mentality of the president is not healthy and Congress need to come to grips with President Bush's increasingly delusional view of the world. A president with that kind of bunker mentality cannot properly do his job and cannot properly serve the American people.

We have a problem of course in the vice president. There is no other way to describe Cheney except to say that he takes pleasure in being sneaky and dishonest. I say that because 'last throes' Cheney has repeatedly lied to the American people, and among his friends he tells stories that are supposed to be about how clever he is but that, to my mind, show a very different person than Cheney would like us to see. Cheney has no understanding that there is no United States as we know it unless there is law and that law is the US Constitution and the laws that follow thereby from Congress. So we have a dysfunctional right wing president and a dysfunctional right wing vice president and a sluggish Congress that is finally becoming aroused but that is still doing too little to hold Bush and Cheney to account.

The Four Phases of the Bush Presidency

From day one, there were signs that George W. Bush was an illusion. The debate with Al Gore that was on foreign policy showed George W. Bush as a deer in the headlights, something we have seen two, three, four times a year since: a president who is a master of photo ops and public relations completely out of his depth, completely unable even to pull a reasonable bluff of being presidential. After the debate, Karl Rove saved his man by pointing hysterically and effectively at Gore's sighs, but the fact is that we're all sighing these days as blunder piles on blunder and idiots like Senator McCain talk about walking safely in downtown Baghdad while failing to mention his safety was assured by a heavy military sweep prior to his stroll and a bristling fully armed escort with helicopters as he 'wandered' an open market. These days the deer in the headlights mode would be even more prevalent if Bush hadn't discovered some time ago the snarling bully in some of his performances that simply cover his up own incompetence and lack of understanding of what it takes to be president.

The incompetence was visible in Bush's first eight months. Sidney Blumental calls those months the first phase. Here's Blumenthal's piece in Salon as he talks about the potential treasure trove in the hidden e-mails of a very dysfunctional presidency:

The rise and fall of the Bush presidency has had four phases: the befuddled period of steady political decline during the president's first nine months; the high tide of hubris from Sept. 11, 2001, through the 2004 election; the self-destructive overreaching to consolidate a one-party state from 2005 to 2006, culminating in the repudiation of the Republican Congress; and, now, the terminal stage, the great unraveling, as the Democratic Congress works to uncover the abuses of the previous six years.

(snip)

In Watergate, "Deep Throat" counseled that the royal road to the scandal's source was to "follow the money." In the proliferating scandals of the Bush presidency, Congress is searching down a trail of records that did not exist in the time of Nixon: Follow the e-mails.

The discovery of a hitherto unknown treasure-trove of e-mails buried by the Bush White House may prove to be as informative as Nixon's secret White House tapes. Last week the National Journal disclosed that Karl Rove does "about 95 percent" of his e-mails outside the White House system, instead using a Republican National Committee account. What's more, Rove doesn't tap most of his messages on a White House computer, but rather on a BlackBerry provided by the RNC. By this method, Rove and other White House aides evade the legally required archiving of official e-mails. The first glimmer of this dodge appeared in a small item buried in a January 2004 issue of U.S. News & World Report: "'I don't want my E-mail made public,' said one insider. As a result, many aides have shifted to Internet E-mail instead of the White House system. 'It's Yahoo!, baby,' says a Bushie."

An unraveling presidency, indeed. I have no idea where things will go from here. I distrust presidents who begin to feel a sense of desperation. I can only hope our military balks at any further adventures by a desperate and incompetent president, but these are, after all, strange times. It's unclear what to do with a president who is so unrepentant and who has learned so little in six years. And what of his shrinking circle of enablers on the Republican right?

The media loves scandals but has lost its ability to recognize a profound crisis. Congress must assert itself in the next two years but its not clear if the media will hamper the ability of Congress to deal with a profound leadership crisis, or recognize at last the depth of the crisis we're in and the need to steady the ship of state and protect our democracy.

The Cold War Versus the Current Era

Republicans are moaning about how difficult things are these days. This is curious. The Bush Administration went around in circles for five years huffing and puffing on North Korea and essentially came back to the policy that existed at the end of Clinton's presidency. After 9/11, we had to deal with Afghanistan and that would have kept the Bush Administration plenty busy, but they chose to give us a war in Iraq that we didn't need. It isn't just foreign policy that is difficult for Bush; he botched the response to Hurricane Katrina and then claimed he needed a law that allowed him to call in the military which was nonsense since the real problem was an underwhelming use of the resources he had.

Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly links to a story by Paul Kennedy in the Los Angeles Times who punctures the new mythology:

IT WAS FUNNY, in a grim sort of way. Last week, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates responded to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's polemical attack on the United States by remembering the 50-year Cold War as a "less complex time" and saying he was "almost nostalgic" for its return.

(snip)

The argument goes as follows: The Cold War, although unpleasant, was inherently stable. It was a bipolar world — centered on Washington and Moscow — and, as UC Berkeley political scientist Kenneth Waltz argued, it was much more predictable than, say, the shifting, multipolar world of the 1910s or 1930s, decades that were followed by calamitous wars. Yes, it's true that the two sides possessed masses of nuclear weapons aimed at each other's biggest cities, but the reality is that they were constrained by a mutual balance of terror.

Kennedy debunks the 'easy' days of the Cold War and properly so. On several blogs, including Donkey Path, there have been posts reminding us how disastrous it would have been, as just one example, to have had a president like George W. Bush handling something as 'predictable' as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I don't want to minimize what's going on these days. Things are changing and we have an ideological administration with its head stuck on old ideas about the world; and some Republicans (Wolfowitz as an example) are even shocked that people in the third world aren't behaving like stereotypical natives in old Hollywood movies. In some respects, Bush has been handling the wrong problems while ignoring a wide range of issues, including genocide, human rights, labor rights, Global Warming and the need to deal with energy issues on a much broader basis. And certainly things are going on in parts of the world we don't know very well, but part of the problem is that there are too many people in our current administration (and Congress, for that matter) who don't want to know what's going on in the world, let alone learn, for example, what the difference is between Sunnis and Shiites. In the end, the problem is that the American people elected an incompetent marketing executive for president and a paranoid lever puller for vice president. We need competent people in this era who are driven more by pragmatism than ideology. We stayed out of trouble during the Cold War because by and large we did have competent people.

Defining Bush: A Compassionate Imperialist?

By now, we know that Bush is not a typical Republican. We know he's not a moderate, though that's what he ran as in 2000. We know he's not a Goldwater conservative; Goldwater's politics are now too liberal for Bush. We know fiscal conservatism is not his thing. How do we define him, then? Perhaps by letting Bush define himself.

Melinda Henneberger of The Huffington Post caught this exchange on C-Span during an interview of Bush:

When the interviewer made a reference to "Goldwater Republicans," and "Rockefeller Republicans," he chuckled -- his word -- and stopped the questioner from finishing his thought.

"I'm just chuckling because I think 'Goldwater Republicans' and 'Rockefeller Republicans' are pretty far past," the president said. "That's rude of me to chuckle, but I would be cautious about stereotyping philosophies."

Okay, his interviewer said mildly, but what he'd really wanted to know was how (George W.) Bush Republicans would be defined, and what images the phrase "Bush Republican" might summon for future generations.

And suddenly, it was 2000 again; Mr. Bush did not mention 9/11 or the global war on terror, Iraq or Afghanistan, Saddam or bin Laden: "Compassionate conservatism" was his legacy, he declared, and referred to the faith-based initiatives we haven't heard much about in subsequent years. "I made a name by being compassionate."

Now, to be fair to the president, Bush says things all the time that aren't connected to reality. One has to take everything he says with a grain of salt. But if he really does believe that this presidency is about 'being compassionate,' how does he explain his war in Iraq? Did compassion lead him to lie to the American people? Did compassion lead to the special rendition programs and the excessive use of torture? Was Abu Ghraib and the leveling of Fallujah about compassion?

Perhaps we have misunderstood Bush's war in Iraq. The war, as far as Bush was concerned, really was over when he strutted on the aircraft carrier. Iraq has been an American colony since April of 2003 and Bush is just your friendly compassionate imperialist having trouble with his colonial subjects.

Okay, I'm being sarcastic. It's entirely possible that Bush is being sarcastic. But let's assume Occam's razor, that the simplest explanation is that the president meant what he said in the above exchange. To repeat, that means we have a president, this president, who says his legacy is that he will be remembered for 'being compassionate.' How do we get our arms around such an idea? How do we talk about it in a way that is respectful without being dishonest? Frankly, how do we talk about it without being alarmed by the president's disconnect from any rational understanding of his failing presidency?

Iran: Does Bush Administration Know What It's Doing?

One of the reason I'm hard on Condoleezza Rice is that people in foreign policy have a responsibility to make sure a president understands what's happening and Dr. Rice has fallen down on her job not once, not twice, but on several occassions. All too often we have heard Condi Rice say she didn't know about something, or something had not come to her attention. It's become a tiresome excuse. There have been earlier diplomatic overtures from Iran and Rice has claimed not to know about or remember them. Here's the story by Spencer Ackerman from TPM Muckraker on the 2003 potential overture from Iran:

Yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that she doesn't remember if she saw a fax detailing an Iranian diplomatic overture in 2003. Today, Michael Hirsch of Newsweek has something that should jog her memory: the fax itself.

(snip)

Through a Swiss intermediary, the Iranian regime proposed the basis for comprehensive discussions. If accepted, it would have meant the Iranians would have put on the table ending its support for Palestinian terrorist groups; "action" on transforming Hezbollah into a "mere political organization within Lebanon"; "transparency" that Iran isn't trying to develop WMD; and "enhanced action against Al Qaida members in Iran." In return, the U.S. would ultimately lift all sanctions on Iran; ensure "full access" to nuclear technology (!); and provide, in general, a "halt in hostile U.S. behavior," to include action against "anti-Iranian" terrorist groups.

It's of course worth noting that the sincerity of the offer is not something to accept at face value. But that would have been the point: to create a diplomatic mechanism to find out how serious the Iranians actually were about reaching a modus vivendi with the U.S., and to determine if the price for that was acceptable.

The fax was an opportunity that should not have been ignored by Bush or Condi Rice. Most of the time, diplomacy begins by finding out what's possible; it almost never arrives fully packaged and signed like a gift out of the blue—you have to work for it to make successful diplomacy happen. There have been some useless PR stunts by the White House where a couple of quick phone calls are called diplomacy or a short trip is called extensive diplomacy. It doesn't wash.

One of the big issues that is overlooked by the media is that the Bush Administration is clearly losing the initiative and even losing control of its own foreign policy. We have an administration that has not understood from day one that while a strong military can be useful, an actual war is a failure of diplomacy, not an instrument of diplomacy. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia lately have been aggressively trying to influence American policy and it's not always in our best interest. Here's the story by Richard Boudreaux of the Los Angeles Times:

...Israeli officials have begun an unusually open campaign to muster international political and economic pressures against Iran. They warn that time is growing short and hint that they will resort to force if those pressures fail to prevent Iran's development of an atomic weapon.

Israeli leaders fear that an Iranian bomb would undermine their nation's security even if Tehran never detonated it. That Israel has its own nuclear arsenal would not counteract the psychological and strategic blow, they believe.

Israel began secretly preparing in the early 1990s for a possible air raid on Iran's then-nascent nuclear facilities and has been making oblique public statements about such planning for three years.

What is new is Israel's abandonment of quiet diplomacy to rally others to its side. Until a few months ago, Israeli leaders worried that high-profile lobbying would backfire and provoke accusations that they were trying to drag the United States and its allies into a war.

The Israelis are not the only ones trying to drag the United States into a war. We have a chorus of neoconservatives who don't seem to know any better. Not since the 1920s have we had a White House so lacking in imagination or so unwilling to engage in serious diplomacy that would clearly be in our national interest.

Again, Bush's Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Bush has it exactly backwards. Backwards is exactly where President George W. Bush is taking our nation. Here's Bloomberg with the details of Bush's health cuts to pay for his fiasco in Iraq and his tax cut for the very wealthy:

President George W. Bush proposed cutting $78 billion from U.S. health spending over five years, setting up a potential fight with congressional Democrats.

The $701 billion budget for the Department of Health and Human Services that Bush sent to Congress today includes $66 billion in cuts over five years from Medicare, which provides health insurance for 43 million Americans. Bush also would cut $12 billion from Medicaid for the poor and from a program that provides health insurance for low-income children.

``On health care, rather than trying to solve the crisis by lowering costs and covering more people, the president's plan will make the crisis worse by raising costs and failing to cover those who need it most -- our nation's children,'' said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the Senate health committee, in a statement.

How do Republicans keep justifying this guy?

Iran and the Continuing Bush Fiasco

The Bush Administration continues to talk out of both sides of its mouth on Iran. It says one moment that there is no plan to attack Iran and the next moment it cranks up the rhetoric and never, never contradicts its friends in the right wing media who are itching for war as a way....; well, no one is sure what they're trying to do.

Reuters has the story on Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:

The United States is not planning for a war with Iran but is determined to stop Iranians supplying bombs for deadly attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday.

The Bush administration has stepped up its rhetoric against Iran in recent weeks, prompting speculation it could be laying the ground for a military attack.

The United States has also sent a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf region, a move widely seen as a warning to Iran.

But Gates said the United States was pursuing a purely diplomatic path....

A purely diplomatic path. Wow, Robert Gates didn't take long to step into the Bush bubble. He does realize doesn't he that he's dealing with a team of incompetents who are driven more by domestic politics than a serious foreign policy? Diplomacy. If Bush were serious, he'd be hiring some heavyweight envoys by now. Are we running the risk of a third war so an incompetent president can look tough while his incompetent secretary of state pursues bungled diplomacy with little credibility? Or are we heading for a third war so an incompetent president can blame his fiasco on others? It's a very thin line between the two possibilities and neither are acceptable (one quick note: I supported the war in Afghanistan but one reason I came out against the war in Iraq is that I kept reading about a great deal of civilian bungling that was going on in Afghanistan; sometimes a president has to show that he can truly win one war before he starts a second).

Those still defending the president, whether they work for him or are in Congress or in the media, better get their act together and ask the obvious question: what are the American people getting out of Bush's incompetent handling of not one but two wars with the potential of a third war? Americans do not doubt the abilities of our military but they have good reason to doubt the abilities of politicians—not just Bush and his inner circle by the way—who seem to pay more attention to pleasing their base than getting the job done. And conservatives who fantasize that an attack on Iran will somehow win the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and give us something useful in Iran to boot don't belong in world affairs. The Republican radical right wing agenda is dead and has nothing useful to offer. Democrats and the few rational Republicans left in Congress need to nail the door shut against any further nonsense.

James Fallow in The Huffington Post has more thoughts on Iran:

If we could trust the Administration's ability to judge America's rational self-interest, there would be no need to constrain its threatening gestures toward Iran. Everyone would understand that this was part of the negotiation process; no one would worry that the Administration would finally take a step as self-destructive as beginning or inviting a war.

But no one can any longer trust the Administration to recognize and defend America's rational self-interest -- not when the President says he will carry out a policy even if opposed by everyone except his wife and dog, not when the Vice President refuses to concede any mistake or misjudgment in the handling of Iraq. According to the constitutional chain of command, those two men literally have the power to order a strike that would be disastrous for their nation. The Congress has no official way to prevent them from doing so -- it is interesting, and alarming, to think that in practice the safety valve might be the professional military, trained to revere the chain of command but faced with what its members would recognize as ruinous instructions.

What the Congress can do is draw the line. It can say that war with Iran is anathema to the interests of the United States and contrary to the will of its elected representatives. And it should do that now.

Congress has been patient with Bush, too patient in fact. More than five years of war with little concrete results is pathetic. Launching a war in Iraq we did not need with a deliberately misleading case for that war is impeachable. We are indeed constrained by political realities that make impeachment difficult but Congress has a responsibility to our nation to draw a clear line that holds Bush to account (and that line can be more concrete than what Fallows seems to suggest). Any Republican who will not check the recklessness of George W. Bush is simply avoiding resposibility. Real diplomacy can still take place and when it happens, the world will have no difficulty recognizing it, but what we are now seeing is mush; it is not credible and looks far too much like cover for Bush's incompetence.

The Cheney Problem II

The Scooter Libby trial is focusing attention on Vice President Dick Cheney like never before and the details we are learning are not putting Cheney in a good light. Americans can no longer ignore Cheney's hubris and incompetence but there have been signs for at least four years that much of this actually goes deeper. The problems with the secretive vice president are mounting.

That hasn't stopped Cheney from admitting that the job of Republicans in Congress is to bow to the superiority of the Bush Administration; here's the story from CBS News:

Vice President Dick Cheney shot back at Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, who has accused the Bush administration of playing "a ping-pong game with American lives" by sending more U.S. troops into Iraq.

"Let's say I believe firmly in Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican," Cheney said. "But it's very hard sometimes to adhere to that where Chuck Hagel is involved."

Given his hypocritical bullying of his fellow Republicans and given the facts and behavior of the Bush Administration in the last six years, Cheney's comment has no other fundamental interpretation than this: when it comes to Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, Republicans must rubber stamp the incompetence, recklessness, deceptions and abuse of the US Constitution no matter what. That is behavior an overwhelming majority of Americans cannot afford.

Dan Froomkin of White House Briefing is back and has some comments on the Cheney situation:

While Dick Cheney undoubtedly remains the most powerful vice president this nation has ever seen, it's becoming increasingly unclear whether anyone outside the White House believes a word he says.

Inside the West Wing, Cheney's influence remains considerable. In fact, nothing better explains Bush's perplexing plan to send more troops to Iraq than Cheney's neoconservative conviction that showing the world that we have the "stomach for the fight" is the most important thing -- even if it isn't accomplishing the things we're supposed to be fighting for. Even if it's backfiring horribly.

But as his astonishing interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer laid bare last week, Cheney is increasingly out of touch with reality... ...

The secretive Cheney has the largest staff of any vice president in history; in essence, it's a government within a government with little oversight by Congress. Cheney has ignored repeated media requests to interview some of his people and understand his 'unusual' operation. President Bush has, by law, the ultimate authority in his government but it's never been clear how he and Cheney divide up their responsibilities. In the past, some critics have argued that Cheney is the real president while Bush is the public relations man.

Americans have a right to know what's going on in a government that has been elected by the people and why so much behavior is deliberately being hidden from us (Google Halliburton, Iraq reconstruction, defense contracts, and Republican campaign donors just as a place to start). As I mentioned above, Cheney has resisted all attempts to understand his operation; Justin Rood of TPM Muckraker has a story that may begin to peel back the layers of secrecy by revealing some of the people who directly work for Cheney (note that Cheney apparently has others burrowed in various departments around Washington):

Stamped "For Official Use Only," the four-page document lists 81 employees, including six who worked for Lynne Cheney. That's well over the 30 or so names Cheney's office is said to submit routinely to directory services.

The directory shows 23 staffers who worked exclusively on national security and homeland security issues. Meanwhile, three positions were dedicated on domestic policy issues; one of those was vacant at the time of the directory's publishing.

It's not clear how much overlap there is with the list we posted earlier of 41 staffers serving Cheney from the Senate's payroll according to a 2006 report. But at least now we're in the ballpark of the 88 staffers Laura Rozen estimated to be there.

In the next few months, Congress needs to ask what these people are doing. If there isn't cooperation forthcoming from Cheney, Congress should seriously consider cutting Cheney's staff budget in half, investigating Cheney's role in starting the war in Iraq and investigating his obvious interest in widening the war, possibly with Iran.

Since August 2003, when Cheney lied about a nuclear program in Iraq, the media and his fellow Republicans have walked on egg shells perhaps because of Cheney's threats and famous vindictiveness that resulted in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. The more the country learns about Cheney, however, the more it becomes obvious that his behavior is unacceptable by any rational interpretation of the US Constitution and that his resignation is long overdue.

Dealing with Bush's Failed Presidency

Near the end of January, President Bush will trot out his latest State of the Union and it is likely to be another charade that has little to do with how things really are and it will call for things that will do little to solve the problems that Bush has given us or has simply neglected. But as the problems become increasingly clear, the question that hangs in the air is whether the American people fully understand what we are facing as things now stand and if things continue without correction. There are tough choices ahead and there is evidence Bush and his right wing friends are not unpleased that the choices are difficult thanks to their recklessness. The phrase Peter Schrag of the Sacramento Bee uses to describe Bush's last six years is 'vast carelessness':

The year-end debate about the Iraq Study Group's unequivocal diagnosis of failure and its grim list of uncertain remedies is the real measure of the hopelessness of the mess America made. The ISG's 79 recommendations -- some wise, some impolitic, some impossible -- is itself a confession that all the choices are bad.

That's not the commission's fault: No one else has a persuasive idea either, least of all the president -- the self-proclaimed decider -- who started and ran this misbegotten war.

As Nick Carraway says about the privileged and insouciant Tom and Daisy at the end of "The Great Gatsby" (1925): "They were careless people ... they smashed up things and creatures and then they retreated back to their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made ... ."

It's a strong column, though Schrag makes the careful point that the American people themselves are ultimately not excused either; I recommend reading the rest. Bush and his Republican friends are exactly like rich and spoiled children who are rapidly going through their parents' fortune; they are indifferent to the effect their reckless actions have on hundreds of millions of people here at home and around the world.

Bush 'Stays the Course': More Talk, No Plan

President George W. Bush held another press conference on Wednesday and left little doubt he's in need of adult supervision. Not only has he been less than truthful about the cookies he's taken from the cookie jar, he's at risk of burning the house down.

The voters have voted and Bush still thinks he has some sort of mandate. After the election, Bush talked briefly about bipartisanship but has spent most of the time being petulant and combative and well, somewhat delusional. James Baker's report has everiscerated Bush's rosy picture of Iraq and Bush still thinks if he can have one more deal of the cards he can get it right this time. While refusing to even consider major diplomatic efforts which are usually required in situations like this, Bush wants to increase the troops in Iraq by playing musical chairs one more time with our over-stretched military.

While most rubber stampers of the famous 109th do-nothing Republican Congress squirm uncomfortably about what to do in Iraq, an increasing number of Republicans are looking the facts square in the eye along with the Democrats and saying it's time to wind down our affairs in Iraq before too much more damage is done. We need to take care of our military more than we need to nurse the Iraqis to do want they need to do themselves; there's no use pretending that Bush knows how to cure a civil war he caused in the first place with more military intervention. At this point, we need diplomacy, redeployment and a political solution.

Senator Harry Reid is growing impatient with Bush's games as we read in The Raw Story:

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) issued a statement after the president's last press confence of the year, which blasted Bush for not understanding the need for "urgent change" in Iraq.

"It is heartening to see that President Bush has reversed his position, rejected the failed Rumsfeld doctrine, and heeded Democratic calls to increase the size of the military," Reid stated. "Unfortunately, it is troubling to see that he still does not understand the need for urgent change in Iraq."

"The President seems lost within his own rhetoric," Reid's statement continued. ...

Lost within his own rhetoric. That describes the Decider-in-Chief quite well. It's time for Bush to get a grip on reality.

Steve Soto of The Left Coaster has more to say:

I had previously argued that the Democratic leadership should work to create a bipartisan congressional foreign policy agenda as a counterpoint to the White House. As Bush publicly blows off the generals on whether he will escalate Iraq by another 20,000-40,000 troops, does this issue have the potential to be the Democrats’ blunt instrument against the Bush Administration at the start of the new Congress? I think it does.

We hear that the generals and the Joint Chiefs are against the escalation. We are seeing signs that Republicans up for reelection in 2008 are at best hesitant and at worst opposed to the escalation. Just today, Minnesota GOP Senator Norm Coleman has come out against the escalation, and supposedly Maine’s Susan Collins is questioning it as well. How many GOP senators and House members who are up for reelection in 2008 will support an escalation? ...

Read the rest of Steve Soto's post and his suggestions on how Congress should handle Bush; it makes sense to me, particularly if, in the next two weeks, Bush doesn't do a great deal more to acknowledge the need for significant changes. He's dithered enough. Think back to Hurricane Katrina and think of how out of touch Bush was and how slow to react. Multiply that by ten. That's where we are. We have a president who thinks he can blow off the voters, the Democrats, the generals and reality.

Bush Megalomania Continues

Earlier this month, I wrote the following on Donkey Path:

Bush's tirades and rambling rhetoric are getting tiresome; his arrogance has simply become a pathetic shield to avoid change as well as responsibility for his failures. Bush has compared himself to Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and now Truman. His strange megalomania is not a pretty sight to behold.

The Huffington Post catches another absurd comparison of Bush to an earlier president:

[Bush:] I'm going to work hard. I'm going to sprint to the finish. And we can get a lot done.

And you're talking about legacy. Here, I - I know - look, everybody's trying to write the history of this administration even before it's over. I'm reading about George Washington still.

My attitude is if they're still analyzing number one, 43 ought not to worry about it, and just do what he think is right, and make the tough choices necessary.

Bush is running out of people to compare himself to. Note also the strange way he talks about himself in the third person. For the record, Washington's legacy hasn't changed in 200 years and was largely recognized in his own time. The legacy of Bush's first six years won't change either. Bush has a chance to repair some of his self-inflicted damage to his reputation in his last two years but only by changing course, by working with the Democrats and actually repairing some of the damage he has done to our nation. One other thing: Bush could help himself by genuinely embracing a dose of humility.

Rumsfeld Memo Written Just Before Being Fired

The nation is still waiting for the president to step outside his bubble and face reality. Next week is the report from the Baker Iraq Study Group and we'll see how realistic their proposals are or whether they're just providing cover for the president. If James Baker and the others do their job, though, it will be a rough week for Bush. We may soon know if anyone can get through to junior.

Sometimes it's impossible to know what to make of all the figures in the Bush Administration. The gang that can't shoot straight continues with the same hubris and noise. You read about the arrogance, you read about the incompetence, you read about their ideological fixations and yet you wonder if it isn't all a game to them. People die and the spinners in the Bush Administration can do no better than smirk when they delude themselves into thinking they have won some minor technical point in a joust of words. But it's what they're paid for and will continue to be paid for after they leave the administration. In other words, maybe it really is just a money machine for them, and doing the right thing isn't possible because it would cut off the money machine being funded by rich billionaires on the right who could care less what the United States stands for.

If, however, the fiasco of the last four years comes down to nothing more than the gut instinct of George W. Bush, it's time to recognize that our nation has a problem—and we need to address it. And the word games are irrelevant, as they should be.

The New York Times has published a memo by Rumsfeld (hat tip to The Huffington Post) that is simply Rumsfeld covering his ass or else profoundly cynical evidence of flim flam over the last four years or, more likely, both. Here's an excerpt of the memo with an explanation by the Times:

Following is the text of a classified Nov. 6 memorandum that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sent to the White House suggesting new options in Iraq. The memorandum was sent one day before the midterm Congressional elections and two days before Mr. Rumsfeld resigned.

Above the Line: (Many of these options could and, in a number of cases, should be done in combination with others)

¶Publicly announce a set of benchmarks agreed to by the Iraqi Government and the U.S. — political, economic and security goals — to chart a path ahead for the Iraqi government and Iraqi people (to get them moving) and for the U.S. public (to reassure them that progress can and is being made).

¶Significantly increase U.S. trainers and embeds, and transfer more U.S. equipment to Iraqi Security forces (ISF), to further accelerate their capabilities by refocusing the assignment of some significant portion of the U.S. troops currently in Iraq.

(snip)

¶Initiate an approach where U.S. forces provide security only for those provinces or cities that openly request U.S. help and that actively cooperate, with the stipulation being that unless they cooperate fully, U.S. forces would leave their province.

¶Stop rewarding bad behavior, as was done in Fallujah when they pushed in reconstruction funds, and start rewarding good behavior. Put our reconstruction efforts in those parts of Iraq that are behaving, and invest and create havens of opportunity to reward them for their good behavior. As the old saying goes, “If you want more of something, reward it; if you want less of something, penalize it.” No more reconstruction assistance in areas where there is violence.

¶Position substantial U.S. forces near the Iranian and Syrian borders to reduce infiltration and, importantly, reduce Iranian influence on the Iraqi Government.

The memo goes on with some suggestions that have been floated around by others and some suggestions that are just stupid (see the point above about Fallujah). Many of the more sensible suggestions were offered more than three years ago and never implemented. I'm at a loss to know what the memo represents. Have we been watching a four year experiment by ultraconservatives to prove that they know what they're doing and, what, Rumsfeld is now admitting they don't know what they're doing? I'm at a loss to understand it.