80 posts tagged “bush”
So here we have our (still) president Bush using some of his time as he runs out the clock to cement his "legacy." That is, to give medals to some of the heroes of his term in office.
We know that he previously gave medals on Dec. 14, 2004, the president bestowed medals on George J. Tenet, the longtime director of central intelligence who built the case for going to war based in part on assessments that Iraq possessed deadly unconventional weapons; Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the overall commander of the invasion of Iraq; and L. Paul Bremer III, the chief civilian administrator of the American occupation of the country.
You know, those folks sure did deserve medals, mainly because those three really did a wonderful job helping us with the whole Iraq war thing. Mission Accomplished and all that.
So now, there are a few more luminaries to add to the list.
Gen. Peter Pace, who was denied a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a year ago because of the war in Iraq, will receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, the White House announced on Wednesday. General Pace, a retired marine, is one of six medal recipients who will be honored by President Bush on June 19, the White House said. Two Democrats are among the six. Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami in Florida and a former president of Hunter College who was secretary of health and human services under President Bill Clinton, is one.
The sixth recipient is Laurence H. Silberman, a senior federal appeals court judge who was co-chairman of a commission appointed by President Bush in 2004 to study failures in intelligence before the Iraq war. The commission’s report was The sixth recipient is Laurence H. Silberman, a senior federal appeals court judge who was co-chairman of a commission appointed by President Bush in 2004 to study failures in intelligence before the Iraq war. The commission’s report was highly critical of the American intelligence bureaucracy.
So we have another failed general who supported Bush's misguided policies getting this award. Super. But what really jumps out at me is the award to Silberman. Note that he authored a report which was "highly critical of the American intelligence bureaucracy." Also note that Bush previously awarded the same award to George Tenet, who headed said intelligence bureaucracy during the time in question. You just gotta love Bush. Of course, there are ulterior motives all around. Bush gave the medal to Tenet in order to shut him up as the CIA was being blamed for the fiasco in Iraq. And Silberman's report was used as cover for that deflection of responsibility on Bush's part. See folks, it wasn't Bush's fault that we got in a war in Iraq... he had "faulty intelligence." Of course we all know that is a lie.
Just as a side note, Donna Shalala, one of the only Democrats to get the award from Bush, is a pretty funny choice on his part. She may have been in Clinton's cabinet, but she's had a pretty dubious history since. She was embroiled in scandals at the University of Florida due to her extravagant lifestyle on the the University's dime. She also was infamous for fighting the janitor's union at the school. Nice for a supposed Democrat. She most recently has been named in a mini-scandal regarding politicians getting favorable rate on mortgages from Countrywide Financial, a prime mover in the mortgage crisis. Let's give that woman a medal!!
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was taking questions at a town hall meeting in Wisconsin yesterday when he fielded a rather unexpected question about who he might have helping implement his Iraq policy.
A questioner asked if Obama would send George W. Bush to Iraq, as ambassador, after the president leaves office. Obama, who was sipping from a bottle of water, seemed to almost do a spit-take at the absurdity of the suggestion.
Some of us knew this all along... but now finally, it is confirmed. So my only question is why this didn't come out before the last election???
Senate committee: Bush knew Iraq claims weren't true
WASHINGTON— A long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report made public Thursday concludes that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made public statements to promote an invasion of Iraq that they knew at the time were not supported by available intelligence.
A companion report found that a special office set up by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld undertook "sensitive intelligence activities" that were inappropriate "without the knowledge of the Intelligence Community or the State Department."
“Before taking the country to war, this administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence,” said committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, D- W. Va.
It's long been known that the administration's claims in the runup to the Iraq war, from Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al Qaida to whether Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, were incorrect, and White House spokeswoman Dana Perino suggested the problems were faulty intelligence.
"We had the intelligence that we had fully vetted, but it was wrong," she said. "We certainly regret that and we've taken measures to fix it."
But the Senate report, the first official examination of whether the president and vice president knew that their claims were incorrect at the time that they made them, reached a different conclusion.
“There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate," Rockefeller said in a statement.
But Rockefeller called the administration’s statements delibrate, writing: "There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate."
Wow... just chalk this up to one more in the seemingly never-ending list of reports out of the Bush administration which could have been posted in the Onion.
Detainees released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay have complained about inhumane conditions there, but according to the admiral in charge, their living situation is "pretty much" like that in a fraternity house.
"We don't have any solitary confinement down here in Guantanamo," Buzby replied. "What we have is single cells. I mean, there's one person to a cell. All the cells are all right next to each other."
"That's like having a single apartment in a fraternity house," suggested Lubin.
"Pretty much," Buzby agreed.
You know, the writers for the Onion, the Daily Show, and Colbert Report are going to really have to work for a living when the Bush guys are gone...
People wonder why the rest of the world hates us... I can't even imagine how insensitive crap like this gets covered in the Middle East. This guy is an idiot. Guantanamo needs to be shut down... now...
By the "standards" of the Bush administration, this is just another day at the office... but you really have to be amazed that they are doing this crap. It is almost like they know that there is no way that McCain is going to get elected, so they don't mind being completely oblivious to public outcry... I mean, let's face it, as long as the MegaCorp (tm) is happy, then the Bush people are happy. And as for average citizens? Who? As for any government worker who actually tries to do her job... well she clearly has not gotten the Bush & Co. memo which directs them to either do nothing, or actively try to sabotage any publicly beneficial functions.
SAGINAW, Mich. - The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.
On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade's interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Midwest office, based in Chicago.
Gade has been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxin-saturated soil and sediment that extends 50 miles beyond its Midland, Mich., plant into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. The company dumped the highly toxic and persistent chemical into local rivers for most of the last century.
Gade, appointed by President Bush as regional EPA administrator in September 2006, invoked emergency powers last summer to order the company to remove three hotspots of dioxin near its Midland headquarters.
She demanded more dredging in November, when it was revealed that dioxin levels along a park in Saginaw were 1.6 million parts per trillion, the highest amount ever found in the U.S.
Dow then sought to cut a deal on a more comprehensive cleanup. But Gade ended the negotiations in January, saying Dow was refusing to take action necessary to protect public health and wildlife. Dow responded by appealing to officials in Washington, according to heavily redacted letters the Tribune obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Regional EPA administrators typically have wide latitude to enforce environmental laws, but in April Gade drew fire from officials in Washington after she sent contractors to test soil in a Saginaw neighborhood where Dow had found high dioxin levels. The levels in one Saginaw yard were nearly six times higher than the federal cleanup standard, and 65 times higher than what Michigan considers acceptable.
One of the lower profile parts of the US Attorneys scandal which was in the news awhile ago was the role of Pete Domenici, the republican Senator from New Mexico. We all know about how Alberto Gonzales worked as a loyal Bushie to politicize the Justice Department. We know how Karl Rove worked to install croneys there, and at all Federal government agencies, and use them to republican political advantage. What many people are not aware is that one of the incidents which started the whole ball rolling of getting this in the news was when Sen. Domenici directly called a US Attorney, and pressured him to begin a bogus investigation of Democratic politician in the middle of an election.
One would think that this is really, really, a criminal abuse of power. A sitting Senator, directly calls a US Attorney, and puts major pressure on him to use the courts to smear an opponent. No real question right? Well, in this topsy-turvey Bush black is white and white is black world, you'd be wrong...
Ooh, that must sting. For ringing up his state's U.S. attorney at bedtime to interrogate him about whether that high-profile corruption case against a prominent state Democrat will result in an indictment before the election, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) has been branded with the dreaded QA: that's right, qualified admonition.
The Senate ethics committee says it left no stone unturned in coming to this conclusion, including interviewing "current and former executive branch officials and attorneys," but that the "Committee finds no substantial evidence to determine that [Domenici] attempted to improperly influence an ongoing investigation." The key word there being "substantial."
The U.S. attorney, David Iglesias, who was of course fired a little more than a month after Domenici's call, testified that the call made him sick. And so the committee says that Domenici "should have known" better -- that such a call would create an "appearance of impropriety." But appearance of impropriety aside, maybe the good senator was just looking for an update. You know, just ringing up the local prosecutor at home to see how things are going.
I'm trying to look past the Democratic primary to the general election. Now, there are some people who say that McCain wouldn't be that bad. I'm here to tell you that this is a gravely mistaken assumption. Here's one in a long list of reasons why McCain would be just as bad as Bush... Equal pay for women.
A Republican minority in the Senate has thwarted attempts to repair the damage done by a bare majority of the Supreme Court in Ledbetter, which determined that companies should be able to engage in pay discrimination without the threat of punitive damages as long as they're able to to keep employees in the dark about it for 180 days after it starts. John McCain, although he didn't show up to the vote, applauds the Senate's decision to help companies pay women unequal wages:
"I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what's being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems," the expected GOP presidential nominee told reporters. "This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system."
In other words, McCain favors women's rights...as long as they can't actually sue to enforce them. People who, affected by the bitterness of the primary, are tempted to think that the parties are indistinguishable may want to consider the votes in both the Senate and on the Supreme Court.
So McCain would like to support the retrograde republican-appointed Supreme Court which came to the tortured logic that the law regarding pay equity doesn't permit anyone to actually enforce it. The Ledbetter decision is so patently ridiculous, that I almost feel embarrassed for the Justices who signed on to it. It may be embarrassing, but sadly, it is not surprising. These jack-holes never saw a law limiting the ability of our corporate overlords to exploit us which they didn't like. With McCain, we'll get another generation of idiots like Alito, Scalia, and Thomas... and seemingly reasonable, but stealthily nasty corporate apologists like Roberts.
One thing I can promise is that with a President Obama (or Clinton), the next Justices will look nothing like that losers that Bush appointed...
You have got to read this front page story in the NY Times today. This just borders on farce, if it wasn't the Bush administration, I wouldn't believe that it was true... but sadly, it is only too true. I can tell you, the Joseph Heller's of the future will have no shortage of material to write the 21st century Catch-22...
How does a 22 year-old get a $300 million defense contract to supply arms to the Afghan army? First, make sure you're not zinged with a felony when police find your fake ID. Then hire a licensed masseur to be your VP. Find some shady arms dealers, make the lowest bid and voila -- you're in business with the Bush administration.
As the Times found out, AEY fulfilled that contract by dealing with a variety of shady arms dealers (one Czech, one Swiss) to get their hands on ammo stockpiles in the old Eastern bloc. And as far as ensuring the quality of the munitions? Here's how it went in Albania:
Albania offered to sell tens of millions of cartridges manufactured as long ago as 1950. For tests, a 25-year-old AEY representative was given 1,000 cartridges to fire, according to Ylli Pinari, the director of the arms export agency at the time of the sale.
No ballistic performance was recorded, he said. The rounds were fired by hand.
Not surprisingly, the Afghan army has been unhappy with the product. AEY shipped the decades-old ammo in cardboard boxes -- apparently to save money on shipping charges. And the Times reports that the boxes arrived in Afghanistan spilling out of the boxes, "revealing ammunition manufactured in China in 1966." It's illegal to deal in Chinese arms.
[T]he company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.
It just keeps getting better though... the story goes into the dude's the 22 year-old CEO's personal life, and it is just insane. He was under 21 when he started defense contracting, and was going out with a fake ID, and was caught. He only avoided a felony charge for fraud by doing a diversion program. It should be noted that the felony conviction would have made him ineligible to contract with the Defense department. He was also involved in numerous domestic disputes with various girlfriends which got the police called on him, including stalking, and physical violence. Wow, an incompetent asshole, sounds like a good fit for the Bushies!
I have just gotten to the point where, in order to keep my own sanity, I simply ignore anything that Bush says or does. But sometimes, you just have to stand in awe at his pure cahones... and how the big news types simply ignore the utterly insane things he says. And no, I'm not talking about his inability to string a coherent sentence together when he is not reading from a teleprompter - I'm talking about his policies.
In his State of the Union, the President asked Congress for $300 million for poor kids in the inner city. As there are, officially, 15 million children in America living in poverty, how much is that per child? Correct! $20.
Here’s your second question. The President also demanded that Congress extend his tax cuts. The cost: $4.3 trillion over ten years. The big recipients are millionaires. And the number of millionaires happens, not coincidentally, to equal the number of poor kids, roughly 15 million of them. OK class: what is the cost of the tax cut per millionaire? That’s right, Richie, $287,000 apiece.
Mr. Bush said, “In neighborhoods across our country, there are boys and girls with dreams. And a decent education is their only hope of achieving them.”
So how much educational dreaming will $20 buy?
That's right, as per the normal with Bush, the kids get the shaft. I'm not surprised. What really pisses me off is that I had to read this on a blog, while you won't hear the network news guys pointing out the utter ridiculousness of Bush's priorities...
I read this article in the NY Times yesterday, but didn't have time to write about it.
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is considering Gen. David H. Petraeus for the top NATO command later this year, a move that would give the general, the top American commander in Iraq, a high-level post during the next administration but that has raised concerns about the practice of rotating war commanders.
In one approach under discussion, General Petraeus would be nominated and confirmed for the NATO post before the end of September, when Congress is expected to break for the presidential election. He might stay in Iraq for some time after that before moving to the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, but would take his post before a new president takes office.
The first thing I thought was... the republicans are positioning him for a run at the presidency. He has proved his bona fides to the gop by sucking up to Bush with the surge. The guy was a counter-insurgency expert, and the book he wrote argued pretty much against the surge strategy. He nevertheless sucked it up, and supported the plan, even after other generals refused to do so. He was rewarded with promotion. He then came to Washington and towed the party line in supporting Bush when he testified to Congress. I was thinking presidential run when he did that testifying, but now it is confirmed. That second paragraph from the article above is the clincher. Why would Bush want to rush this confirmation through now, before the Congress breaks? Do you think the next president might want to make the NATO choice? You bet your sweet ass she/he will. But if this goes through, Petraeus' will be installed and the next president won't get the choice. That will give him a high profile position well into the next term. You can bet that the toady Petraeus will get his but canned as the leader of the military in Iraq by the next president. Hopefully the military, and the Congress block this obvious power play and they send Petraeus out to pasture.
