Looking for WMD? You won't find them here, since we'll be inspecting President Bush's changing tune on Iraq in Monday's final countdown for War, on Terror and Otherwise. In the meantime, here are some other prime examples of Manipulation and Deceit from the Bush administration:
July 2003: In the last several months, the Environmental Protection Agency has delayed or refused to do analysis on proposals that conflict with the president's air pollution agenda, say members of Congress, their aides, environmental advocates and agency employees.
But supporters, some administration officials among them, acknowledge that Mr. Bush's "compassionate conservative" agenda has fallen so far short of its ambitious goals, in a number of cases undercut by pressure from his conservative backers, that they fear he will be politically vulnerable on the issue in 2004.At issue is Mr. Bush's willingness to demand financing from Congress on his signature "compassionate conservative" issues, like education reform and AIDS, with the same energy he has spent to fight for tax cuts and the Iraq war.
Critics say the pattern has been consistent: The president, in eloquent speeches that make headlines, calls for millions or even billions of dollars for new initiatives, then fails to follow through and push hard for the programs on Capitol Hill.
November 2003: President Bush flubs a speech about China, so the White House changes the transcript.
December 2003: President Bush nabs a fabulous photo op with the troops in Bagdad and a tasty-looking plastic turkey.
February 2004: We note that you can't find Executive Order 13233 posted on the White House website along with (presumably) all the other Executive Orders President Bush has signed. EO 13233 gives former presidents and their assignees the right to prevent the release of presidential papers. It also allows a sitting president to block the release of a former president's records, even after that former president has signaled his approval.
March 2004: Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines.
The videos are intended for use in local television news programs. Several include pictures of President Bush receiving a standing ovation from a crowd cheering as he signed the Medicare law on Dec. 8.The materials were produced by the Department of Health and Human Services, which called them video news releases, but the source is not identified. Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."
But the production company, Home Front Communications, said it had hired her to read a script prepared by the government.
September 2004: Research doesn't back your policies? For the Bush administration, the answer is clear: stop collecting the data.
The Department of Education is sharply cutting back on the information it collects about charter schools for a periodic report that provides a detailed national profile of public, private and charter schools.Confirmation of the change, originally relayed in an e-mail message to a university professor, came on Wednesday from a spokeswoman for the Education Department. Last week, the first national comparison of test scores showed students in charter schools largely trailing comparable students in traditional public schools.
The federal report, known as the Schools and Staffing Survey, provides a wealth of information about charter schools, including the location and number of such schools, their share of low-income students, the qualifications of principals and teachers and the ratio of teachers to students.
October 2004: President Bush assures us that Pakistan's A.Q. Khan -- the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program who was caught selling secrets on the global black market -- had been "brought to justice" when in reality Khan is living in a villa and was pardoned this year by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. None of Khan's co-conspirators have been brought to trial.
