The Blue State

Cheney does not understand PR

A classic example of the difference between George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.  Bush cares what people think, while Cheney could not care less.  What am I talking about?  Think "hunting accidents":

There was, for instance, the Cheney hunting incident in south Texas,when he accidentally blasted a buddy in the face with birdshot. Yearsbefore, Bartlett had faced another bad-news hunting incident when Gov.George W. Bush was photographed shooting a bird, which upon closerexamination by the photographer, turned out to be a protected species.

As soon as he got that news, Bartlett sprang into action, and by thetime newspaper presses ran that night with the photo, the incident hadalready been officially reported to state authorities, a fine was paidand Bush had issued an apology. The result: a one-day story that you,in fact, probably never heard before reading this.

The way Bartlett describes the Cheney incident, it took forever toreach anyone with Cheney, and the White House aide discovered to hishorror that the hunting party had already been strategizing for 24hours. They planned to give the story to a Corpus Christi reporter,except that, it being the weekend, no one could find him.

Bartlett finally reached the vice president and urgently presentedanother option: getting him on the phone with a national press pool toexplain the entire incident in his own words ASAP. There was deadsilence. Then, the vice president intoned he would handle it his way.Which Cheney did.

And, not coincidentally, his hunting story is still the subject of talk show jokes.

I am almost to the point of believing that Dick Cheney wants people to have a negative view of him.  History books tend to the remember the good and bad, but rarely those in between.

Al-Sadr controls five ministries and 30 members of parliament

Interestingly, this news came from the Wall Street Journal's Bartle Bull, who intended to write a column this morning about how the US has succeeded in bringing democracy to Iraq.  He cited the fact that Moqtada al-Sadr, instead of boycotting the government, is now working within the democratic system to gain power:

As for Mr. Sadr, I reported thefirst hints of his democratic conversion in 2004 when a member of histop political committee told me Mr. Sadr was going to start a politicalparty and contest the elections when they came. He still has not formedsuch a party, but as I saw up close when I later spent five weeks ofthe December 2005 election period embedded in Sadr City with his MahdiArmy, he embraced electoral politics with subtlety and enthusiasm.

Of course he did: He is the leaderof the country's biggest popular movement. Today, controlling fivemajor ministries and about 30 members of Parliament (one of the twolargest blocs in the government) he underwrites the pluralist projectin Iraq as he has done since late 2004.

But just because someone works within a democratic system doesn't make what they are doing more pure.  After all, it was Hitler that worked within the Weimar Republic to take power.  Once he got that power, he dissolved the democracy.  In other words, the Hitler example reminds us of how someone can use the democratic system with the intent of destroying it.

The columnist is missing the point if he thinks that al-Sadr has "converted" into a believer of democracy.  He only uses the existing system to gain power.  And what happens after that is anyone's guess.

Hillary once labeled Gore as "Washington insider"

We all know Hillary Clinton and Al Gore did not get along.  The rivalry even still exists today.  As Sally Bedell Smith of Vanity Fair writes, Hillary told a friend that she despised Al Gore because he represented part of the Washington elite:

"Of course there were tensions," said one of the Clintons' longtimefriends, who recalled private meetings in which Hillary encouraged herhusband to discount Gore's advice by saying, "Bill, you are president.This is your administration." The threesome "at times had the feelingof a brother and sister trying to win the affection not of the fatherbut of another, more powerful older brother," said this friend. Hillaryhad an obvious advantage over Gore, because she and Bill had been onthe same wavelength for so long that they communicated almost bytelepathy. But Gore operated under the assumption that Bill tookHillary's advice only when she claimed an issue as her own, and onlywhen Bill would suffer emotional consequences if he ignored her.

The Clintons resented the Gores because they were products ofWashington's prestigious private schools and its social network, on theA-list for elite Georgetown gatherings such as the annual New Year'sEve party hosted by former Washington Post editor Ben Bradleeand his wife, Sally Quinn. A friend of the Clintons' noted in a journalthat Hillary once said with some bitterness, "Gore gets credit becausehe's a Washington insider and can play the game. Gore is not 'fromsomeplace called Arkansas.'"

Boy have these two people done a complete 180 degree turn.  Gore is now the outsider, while Hillary is the very definition of a Washington insider.

Greenspan on Bush: Political control trumped policy

A few years removed from his retirement as Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan is speaking his mind about the current Administration.  His new book, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, is in stores starting today.  In an interview with the New York Times, Greenspan highlighted his opinion that President Bush is more concerned with power and control than with being a true conservative:

“I’m just very disappointed,” he said glumly, as he sat in hisliving room. “Smaller government, lower spending, lower taxes, lessregulation — they had the resources to do it, they had the knowledge todo it, they had the political majorities to do it. And they didn’t.”

In the end, he said, “political control trumped policy, and they achieved neither political control nor policy.”

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that President Bush did not veto one spending bill when Republicans had control of Congress, helping add at least $2.5 trillion to the national debt.

The White House readily responded to Greenspan yesterday regarding the former Fed Chair's belief that the US went into Iraq for oil.  White House spokesman Tony Fratto called Greenspan's comments a "Georgetown cocktail party analysis."

According to the Los Angeles Times, Alan Greenspan's memoir is really three books in one:

• Book One: Who Greenspan is.
• Book Two: Greenspan's world view.
• Book Three: Greenspan's account of public policy.

Of his failures, Greenspan admits he failed to recognize the importance of the adjustable rate mortgage problem.

Bush says his "unilateral arrogance" made world better off

The book titled "Dead Certain" -- written by Texas author Robert Draper -- will be in stores on Tuesday.  Part of the ideas expressed in the book are based on an exclusive person-to-person discussion last December between Draper and Bush.  According to the site Editor and Publisher, the Washington Post and New York Times were the only newspapers given advance excerpts of the book.

After skimming through a bunch of strange statements by Bush, such as his desire to create the Freedom Institute, I came across a jaw-dropper.  It pertains to Bush's decision-making skills:

..he said he saw his unpopularity as a natural result of his decisionto pursue a strategy in which he believed. "I made a decision to lead,"he said. "One, it makes you unpopular; two, it makes people accuse youof unilateral arrogance, and that may be true. But the fundamentalquestion is, is the world better off as a result of your leadership?"

Are we to take from this quote that Bush is proud of being arrogant?  If so, let's remind ourselves what the word "arrogance" means:

an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions

Interesting, especially the phrase "presumptuous claims or assumptions" -- like about weapons of mass destruction; or that we would be greeted as liberators; or that the oil money would finance the reconstruction.

A Walk Down Memory Lane with Michael Chertoff

With the news that Michael Chertoff may be Bush's top choice to replaceAlbert Gonazales, I thought it would be appropriate to post this video of his(what I believe to be) incompetence. So sit back and watch the show, then askyourself "is this the guy that deserves or is qualified to be the next AttorneyGeneral  of The United States"? I'm sure if he is chosen, the petitions will start flying again (hopefully).

Tim Russert exposed the lies that came from the administration after Katrina

Iraq war was exactly what Osama wanted

Abdul Bari Atwan, one of the few western journalists who interviewed Osama bin Laden, spoke to the Australian Broadcasting Company about a discussion he had with the terrorist leader back in 1996.  Osama bin Laden's ultimate plan, Atwan told ABC, was to get the Americans to take the fight onto Muslim soil.  Osama expressed sadness when Bill Clinton pulled troops out of Somalia:

TONY JONES: When you met bin Laden, he told you that his long-termplan was to "bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil". Thatmust have sounded like madness at the time, but now we have Iraq.

ABDUL BARI ATWAN: It seems Osama bin Laden had a long-term strategy.He told me personally that he can't go and fight the Americans andtheir country. But if he manages to provoke them and bring them to theMiddle East and to their Muslim worlds, where he can find them or fightthem on his own turf, he will actually teach them a lesson. It seemsthe invasion of Iraq fulfilled Osama bin Laden's wish. That's why theAmericans are losing in Iraq, financially and on a human basis, andeven their allies, including Australia, are really losing patience,losing money, losing personnel, losing reputation in that part of theworld.

TONY JONES: When bin Laden told you this back in 1996, the onlything he had that was close to what he was talking about was [former USpresident] Bill Clinton's intervention in Somalia. Bin Laden wasevidently extremely disappointed the Americans had pulled out?

ABDUL BARI ATWAN: Yes. He told me, again, that he expected theAmericans to send troops to Somalia and he sent his people to thatcountry to wait for them in order to fight them. They managed actuallyto shoot down an American helicopter where 19 soldiers were killed andhe regretted that the Clinton Administration decided to pull out theirtroops from Somalia and run away. He was so saddened by this. Hethought they would stay there so he could fight them there. But for hisbad luck, according to his definition, they left, and he was planninganother provocation in order to drag them to Muslim soil.

Full Story

And the rest is history.

Of course, the Bush Administration had its own motivations: profits for the contractors; oil; cornering Iran (didn't really work); increased spending for Pentagon projects (falls into the profits category as well); and furthering the myth about spreading democracy by militarily occupying another country.

NYT: Tenet became different person when Clinton left

This morning, the New York Times editorial board asked where the al Qaeda-fighting version of George Tenet went when Bush was elected?:

George Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, rang theQaeda alarm. He sent a memo to the entire intelligence community sayingthat he wanted no effort spared in the “war” with Osama bin Laden. Hetook on the president’s closest advisers to agitate for a strike on aQaeda base in Afghanistan.      

The disturbing thing was thatthis all happened under President Bill Clinton. When George W. Bush wonthe White House, Mr. Tenet seems to have shifted his priorities. TheC.I.A. chief suddenly seemed consumed with hanging on to his job(through such innovative antiterrorism measures as naming the C.I.A.’sLangley, Va., headquarters for Mr. Bush’s father).

The Bush teamwas so busy in 2001 trying to upend America’s global relationshipsaccording to a neo-conservative agenda that the then national securityadviser, Condoleezza Rice, did not see any urgency in reports that AlQaeda was determined to strike in the United States. Mr. Tenet laterhelped hype the “slam dunk” intelligence that Mr. Bush used to justifydiverting the military from the war of necessity against Al Qaeda inAfghanistan to the war of choice in Iraq.

The priorities of the two administrations were so fundamentally opposite.  Contrary to what ABC and Fox News' Chris Wallace want to believe, Bill Clinton was criticized by Republicans during his presidency for being "too obsessed" with Osama bin Laden.  He wanted to fight al Qaeda.  But immediately after Bush was elected, the attention turned to Saddam Hussein.

I highly recommend Richard Clarke's book Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror.

Historians will not give Bush a break

Ever hear conservatives compare George W. Bush to Harry Truman?  It's a convenient comparison because they simply say, "Well, Bush might have a 28% approval rating, but Truman's was even worse, and now he is thought of by historians as one of the greatest presidents ever."

So the question at hand is when we are all long gone, how will historians view George W. Bush?  For the most part, the 43rd president is already getting negative marks from history scholars.  For example, David Shanet, a member of the Organization of American Historians, says our grandchildren will view Bush as a president that obviously did not learn his history:

Hyper-masculine and self-defeating, the Bush imperialist executiveprobably does not see its adventure in Iraq as a generational issue.Historians who know about the post-Civil War generation drumming up theSpanish American War, can see that eagerness to be tough “like Daddy’sgeneration” runs through this group, too. Ignorance and militantxenophobia along race, social class, religious and cultural lines areeasily seen in the United States ’ occupation of Iraq today.

The secrecy will not stop history, and people will tell the tale of theBush years. Corruption, incompetence, waste, Cheney’s own Halliburtonand its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root squandering vastfortunes…this was all historically predictable from the U.S. experiencein Vietnam and other post-colonial wars. The ignorance of Arabic, theignorance of Sunni, Shia and Kurd conflicts, the ignorance of basicmilitary ‘artillery and infantry’ relationships, all these factors putthe US in today’s embarrassing position.

Kids, this is why studying your history is important.

'Military Misses June Recruiting Goal'

Military.comreports that the Army missed its recruiting goal by 15% (as per Army officials,so it might be more of a "miss")

WASHINGTON - The Army failed to meet its recruiting goal in June, raisingconcern that the unpopular Iraq war and strong economy could wreak even morehavoc on enlistments.

Army officials acknowledged Monday that the service missed its recruitingtarget for the second month in a row, but would not provide exact numbers. Buttwo defense officials said the Army fell short of its 8,400 goal by about 15percent - which is more than twice the June shortfall and would mean thatroughly 7,000 recruits signed up. Readon...

Enlistment was up after the 9-11 because we wereattacked, and we were on our way to even the score in Afghanistan, and getthe guy who was responsible. Similar to after we were attacked by the Japaneseand MILLIONSof Americans enlisted for WWII . Further info at the NationalArchive Data Base. Maybe if we "stayed the course" and focused onOsama bin-Laden in Afghanistan, our military wouldn't be in the shape its inright now. You know the shape I'm talking about; the National Guard. Theiroriginal duties were for the protectionof issues within the United States. Bush changed that. I wonder when he'llmobilize the Boy Scouts?

When I hear people talk about a draft, it makes youwonder...out of 6 of your friends, how many of them would really be suited forthe military and combat? 2-2 1/2? They could all be great people and friends, andthey all wouldn't make great accountants either.

Anyway...feel free toGoogle "army misses recruitment goals",and you'll see the numbers are all over the place, and it wasn't only in June'07.