Have the failures of the Bush administration become so commonplace that they don't even make the major news nowadays? A year ago, I wrote about the war president Bush loses. No, not the Iraq war -- the war on terror.
Earlier reports by the State Department showed that terrorism had reached its highest point in decades. That was a colossal failure considering Bush had been waging his war against it for a couple of years. Surely things could not get worse, right?
Don't buy his story that the fact that there hasn't been a terrorist attack on American soil for over four years shows that we're safer. After all, we had not been attacked on our soil for twice as long before the 9/11 attack. Although the first attempt to take down a World Trade Center tower in 1993 didn't bring it down, it did kill six people. More importantly, it showed that terrorists have been intent on attacking us on our shores for much longer than the eight "safe" years before 9/11.
It's clear that America was much safer from terrorism under president Clinton than it is now.
There has been general disapproval of President Bush lately. No, that's not a reference to his approval rating dropping into the low-30s. The Commander in Chief's generals have been publicly disapproving of his administration, of late.
What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures. Some of the missteps include: the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war, McNamara-like micromanagement that kept our forces from having enough resources to do the job, the failure to retain and reconstitute the Iraqi military in time to help quell civil disorder, the initial denial that an insurgency was the heart of the opposition to occupation, alienation of allies who could have helped in a more robust way to rebuild Iraq, and the continuing failure of the other agencies of our government to commit assets to the same degree as the Defense Department. My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results.
On Wednesday, General John Batiste joined the chorus of criticism. The General commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq from 2004 to 2005. Interviewed on the Today show, Batiste said that the administration's conduct of the war violated fundamental military principles. His position is that, "We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them. And that leadership needs to understand teamwork." He also made it clear that the timing of so many generals speaking out against the war now is not a coordinated campaign.
There is clearly widespread disapproval of the war in Iraq among the leadership of the military fighting the war. As you would expect, most of those still in active duty are keeping quiet with their opposition. Like good soldiers, after privately expressing their disagreement, they salute and follow orders in the end. However, many are becoming so disillusioned with the war that they're retiring and speaking out.
lie: to present false information with the intention of deceiving
The Progressive Zone is full of posts flat out calling president George W. Bush a liar. I regularly correspond with a circle of friends about political matters. As you might expect, I have also referred to Bush as a liar a number of times in those email discussions.
When I do, a friend of mine always responds that it's unfair to call the president a liar. It's not that my friend is a Bush supporter -- he concedes that many inaccuracies have come from the administration. My friend just believes that I cannot be sure that the president's deception was intentional.
The mission yielded a 122-page report that was quickly stamped "secret." The technical team reported conclusively that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. Even though they had communicated their unanimous findings to Washington before the aforementioned statement by Bush, the administration continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories for almost a year. This is unequivocally a lie on the part of the president.
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
There's no way this statement can be reconciled with Bush's now infamous NSA espionage program. Of course, Bush now claims he approved of the NSA spying on US citizens without a court order because it protected the American people. He asserts that the NSA only conducts warrantless wiretaps on conversations held by international terrorists. But that still directly contradicts his 2004 statement. Regardless, the latest news out just this month is the real picture of the scope of Bush's espionage program. It turns out that the NSA is doing wholesale spying on communications where both parties are domestically-based Americans.
No matter what contortion of logic you make, there's no way that either of these two statements by Bush could be construed as unintentionally misleading. These are unquestionably bald-faced lies.
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
After making that assurance, it must have been incredibly difficult for Bush to have to belie his word and approve the NSA to spy on American citizens. The mitigating factor was that the espionage was also being conducted over foreign terrorists. Therefore, even though he promised to get a court order before doing so, he decided that national security trumped his reputation for honesty. Any American chatting with al Qaeda operatives overseas deserves to be spied on anyway.
That said, Bush would never approve of spying on a phone call or email without a warrant when both parties in the communication are Americans, would he? Who better to ask than Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez. It turns out that Gonzalez was asked about that very issue during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee Friday. His response: "I'm not going to rule it out" that Bush could order warrantless wiretaps on telephone calls occurring solely within the US. Apparently, Gonzalez must have missed Bush's statement referred to above and was simply misinformed.
The best way to get to the bottom of this is to consider the wires that could be tapped. Let's look at the public statement made by former AT&T technician, Mark Klein, last week. He states that at the beginning of 2003, the NSA tapped in to AT&T's Internet backbone. From five different American cities, the NSA began "conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the internet -- whether that be peoples' e-mail, web surfing or any other data." Based on his technological knowledge of the AT&T network, Klein does not believe that the NSA's spying program is limited to foreign communications.
How can we reconcile this new information with the statement Bush made in 2004? I'm afraid no amount of double-talk, diversion, and spin could possibly explain that away.
Everyone surprised by "Scooter" Libby's testimony to the Grand Jury please stand up. Now that everyone is seated, let's discuss the implications of that testimony. Libby claims that "the President specifically had authorized" him to disclose information in the (previously classified) National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to Judith Miller.
When the president authorizes disclosure of information, it is no longer classified. Does that exonerate the president of criminal activity? Perhaps it does on this one matter. However, it does not exonerate the president of extreme hypocrisy. Don't forget Bush's statement in September 2003: "if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of."
With this clear stance against leaks from the White House, Bush should be declaring mea culpa and apologizing to the American people. Of course, after five years with this administration, America knows better. Instead, Bush trotted out his official liar, Scott McClellan, to hold a press briefing.
True to form, he diverted blame to those making "irresponsible and unfounded accusations ... against the administration, suggesting that we had manipulated or misused that intelligence." McClellan stated that declassifying the NIE "was very much in the public interest." That's right, he's claiming that disclosing sensitive intelligence to the press is the right way to combat public debate about the administration's shaping of intelligence to justify invading Iraq.
Under Bush logic, exposing a sensitive NIE to the press is the right way to respond to certain facets of the public discovering his perpetration of fraud against the American people. Yet, when someone in his administration leaks the existence of NSA espionage of American's phone lines and email that he approved, Bush claims that national security was put at risk, as if al Qaeda operatives would never have otherwise suspected that intelligence agents might be eavesdropping on their communications.
It's well known that president George W. Bush is not much of a learned person. However, this week Bush exposed just how ignorant he is, particularly regarding geography. He clearly doesn't know where America is. Last Thursday, he published the The National Security Strategy. In his letter to his fellow Americans, Bush claimed the purpose of the strategy is "to protect the security of the American people." However, a close look at the strategy reveals that it leaves America entirely unprotected.
In his hunt for America to protect the security of her people, Bush's strategy traverses almost the entire planet. It's no secret that a major part of his strategy to protect the security of the American people is to send most of our security forces to Iraq so he can exhaust hundreds of billions of dollars worth (and the lives of 2600 troops so far) of protective resources on the opposite side of the planet. He also considers Afghanistan a logical outpost to protect Americans. The strategy also mentions Syria and Iran as possible locations to defend America. The list of foreign lands where we need to secure America's safety could go on and on were it to include all those Bush identifies in his strategy.
Ironically, his strategy hardly recognizes the United States. Although a reasonable person would consider the homeland as the best place to defend the American people from attack, Bush's strategy makes no mention of our ports, where millions of containers enter this country unchecked every day. It does not address our borders, where millions of foreigners cross into our country unchecked every year. The strategy does not include aviation, the instrument of the last catastrophic attack against the American people. It does not mention protecting us from terrorist cells now on our own soil, even though one of the most deadly terrorist attacks ever perpetrated inside our borders was executed by natural-born American citizens in Oklahoma City in 1995.
It was a bad day for liberty in the US yesterday. It's hard to think of any other single day in American history during which more liberties were dashed. Sadly, Americans have become so calloused to having their freedom eroded away that hardly a peep was heard. Here are the liberties that were lost Thursday.
The USA PATRIOT Act has been eroding liberties for years now. Fortunately, some of the most controversial sections of the Act had a sunset provision to be retired at the end of 2005 (although Congress agreed to extend it a short time for them to consider whether or not to make those sections permanent instead). To prevent this from happening, Senator Feingold (D - Wis.) proposed amendments to the Act. They included an amendment that would set an expiration of provisions regarding National Security Letters in four years. Sadly, the Senate voted 93 to 3 against Feingold's amendment yesterday. This sets up the provisions most intrusive on our liberties to almost certainly be made permanent by Senate vote in the near future.
The abuses of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are well documented. What is not well documented is how people's freedoms are being robbed there. There are nearly 600 detainees who have been held there for about three years without being accused of a crime, permitted a trial, or allowed legal representation. All this in spite of the fact that they have not been proven to have any connection to terrorism. They will be held there indefinitely and there is no intent for the Bush administration to give them their day in court. Some of them are American citizens.
This sudden rash of freedom-robbing activity yesterday is unprecedented. Even with the slow erosion of liberty under the Bush administration for the past few years, this latest news shows that America's liberties have reached a new low.
On Sunday, 
On Wednesday, 
