G.W. & Crew's Flip Flop Catalog, courtesy Aaron Eiseman, via Daily Kos.
Senator Edwards: Yes, Mr. Vice President, there is no connection between the attacks of Sept. 11 and Saddam Hussein. The 9/11 commission has said it. Your own secretary of state has said it. And you’ve gone around the country suggesting that there is some connection. There’s not.
Vice President Cheney: The senator’s got his fact wrong. I have not suggested there’s a connection between Iraq and 9/11.
[...]
Vice President Cheney: It strikes me that that is absolutely the heart of what needs to be done from the standpoint of education. It’s also important as we go forward in the next term we want to be able to take what we’ve done for elementary education and move it into secondary education. It’s working. We’ve seen reports now of a reduction in the achievement gap between majority students and minority students. We’re making significant progress.
[...]
Vice President Cheney: Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.
Turns out this isn't true at all. There's even a picture.
[...]
Vice President Cheney: ... So the story I think is a good one and the data he’s using is old data. It’s from 2003. It doesn’t include any of the gains that we’ve made in the last year. We’ve added 1.7 million jobs to the economy.
This one is not technically a lie, but it is misleading.
More misrepresentations from the Washington Post:
Cheney suggested that an agreement had been reached on debt relief for Iraq, saying that "the allies have stepped forward and agreed to reduce and forgive Iraqi debt to the tune of nearly $80 billion, by one estimate." While there are reports of some sort of agreement, no plan has been made public. Cheney also said that allies had contributed $14 billion in "direct aid." Actually, $13 billion was pledged, but only $1 billion has arrived.Cheney also said Iraqi security forces have "taken almost 50 percent of the casualties in operations in Iraq, which leaves the U.S. with 50 percent, not 90 percent." The United States does not keep track of Iraqi casualties, either civilian or in the security services. Recently, a senior U.S. official in Baghdad estimated that 750 Iraqi policemen have been killed but has no estimate of those wounded. The United States as of yesterday has had 1,061 deaths and 7,730 wounded.
[...]
Cheney said Kerry once vowed to allow a veto by the United Nations over U.S. troops. This refers to a statement made nearly 35 years ago, when Kerry gave an interview to the Harvard Crimson, 10 months after he had returned from the Vietnam War angry and disillusioned by his experiences there.
[...]
Cheney continued to charge that Kerry voted 98 times to raise taxes. But factcheck.org -- a nonpartisan group Cheney cited during the debate as a fair data checker -- says nearly half were not for tax increases per se and many others were on procedural motions.
UPDATE: And even more lies: here and here.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- President Bush said Saturday that under a "Kerry Doctrine," Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry would require the permission of foreign powers before launching military action.The inflammatory charge, leveled here by Bush and in a new campaign commercial, was immediately denied by Kerry's advisers. The accusation is based on a partial reading of Kerry's remark in Thursday's debate that he would have a "global test" to prove the legitimacy of U.S. military action; Kerry also said he would reserve "the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States."
Kerry "said something revealing when he laid out the Kerry Doctrine," Bush said at a convention of home builders here. "He said that America has to pass a global test before we can use American troops to defend ourselves. . . . Senator Kerry's approach to foreign policy would give foreign governments veto power over our national security decisions." (AP)
And Bush says something revealing when he wrongly assumes "global test" means deferring to foreign governments: it's a scientific term that refers to the validity of a statistical model (a Google search on "global test" statistics -Bush -Kerry yields more than 3,000 articles, most of which are, like this one, related to science and technology).
When Kerry says we need a "global test" to prove the legitimacy of U.S. military action, he's not talking about getting permission from the U.N., as the Bush campaign has either ignorantly or disingenuously suggested. He's using an established term to describe methodically testing assumptions against reality.
At the debate President Bush said, "I’m not exactly sure what you mean, 'passes the global test,' you take preemptive action if you pass a global test." National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "I heard Senator Kerry say that there was some kind of 'global test' that you ought to be able to pass to support preemption, and I don't understand what that means."
From yesterday's New York Times, "Congress Moves to Protect Federal Whistleblowers":
Over strenuous objections from the Bush administration, Congress is moving to increase protections for federal employees who expose fraud, waste and wrongdoing inside the government.Lawmakers of both parties say the measures are needed to prevent retaliation against such whistleblowers, who reveal threats to public health, safety and security.
But the administration says the bill unconstitutionally interferes with the president's ability to control and manage the government.
On Wednesday, a House committee approved a whistleblower protection bill. In July, a Senate committee approved a similar measure offering more extensive protections to whistleblowers.
Representative Todd R. Platts, Republican of Pennsylvania, the sponsor of the House bill, said: "We need to protect public servants who expose fraud and intentional misconduct. Court decisions in the last 10 years have eroded whistleblower protections, so that if you're a federal employee, you're often risking your job - and the wrath of your superiors - if you come forward with evidence of wrongdoing.''
[. . .]
While the legislation has broad support and a compromise appears to be within reach, it is impossible to know whether the measure will become law. As evidence of a need for legislation, lawmakers cited dozens of cases, including these:
Federal investigators found that two Border Patrol agents, Mark Hall and Robert Lindemann, were disciplined after they disclosed weaknesses in security along the Canadian border. Teresa C. Chambers was dismissed from her job as chief of the United States Park Police after she said the agency did not have enough money or personnel to protect parks and monuments in the Washington area. The nation's top Medicare official threatened to fire Richard S. Foster, the chief Medicare actuary, if he provided data to Congress showing the cost of the new Medicare law, which exceeded White House estimates. Airport baggage screeners say they have been penalized for raising concerns about aviation security. But in August, an independent federal agency, the Merit Systems Protection Board, ruled that they had none of the whistleblower rights available to other federal employees. The government, it said, can "hire, discipline and terminate screeners without regard to any other law.''
On cnn.com today, "Rice defends Bush's debate comments":
Rice said Bush did not misspeak when he said that the network of 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."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.
Asked how that could be interpreted to mean Khan has been brought to justice, Rice said, "He has been brought to justice because he's out of business."
Ken Lay must be so relieved.
George Bush has insisted repeatedly on the campaign trail that his presidency has been characterized by unwavering policies based on core convictions. But a key component of his security and military strategy -- a willingness to wage war "pre-emptively" against perceived enemies -- lies largely in tatters, say experts and policy-makers.These experts, from both sides of the political spectrum, say the brutal experience in Iraq has eroded many elements of what has come to be called the "Bush doctrine," leaving the United States with less flexibility in the war on terror.
President Bush himself appeared to dial back on the doctrine during Thursday night's debate when asked whether he would launch future pre-emptive strikes in the wake of the Iraq war. Bush replied, somewhat unenthusiastically, that "a president must always be willing to use troops," but only "as a last resort."
That is a far cry from the bold policy the president articulated in 2002, which rejected the traditional focus on containing threats or responding only after an enemy had staged a clear act of aggression.
In fact, say policy experts, the violent insurgency in Iraq, which has tied down 140,000 U.S. troops, has all but removed Americans' stomach for a similar pre-emptive engagement against an enemy who has not actually launched or prepared an imminent attack on the United States.
Iraq "will leave a long and damaging legacy," said Fred Ikle, a senior government arms control expert for decades who has argued that the United States must be more willing to use military might to achieve its goals. "It will inhibit us more than is good for our future. We fumbled."
Ikle was one of the founders of the Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative group that has long pressed for a more muscular American military posture, and includes Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz -- key architects of the Iraq war -- among its members.
[. . .]
The Bush administration continues to insist that the doctrine remains U.S. policy. It has a number of elements, including an insistence that any state that supports terrorists will be considered an enemy, that the United States has the right to attack such countries pre-emptively -- even, as in the case of Iraq, before an enemy has mounted a challenge or the president feels there is an imminent threat of an attack.
Under the doctrine, the United States would also act to prevent any country from even attempting to match American military might.
Most of these elements were outlined in speeches in 2002 and then codified in September 2002, in a 33-page document called "The National Security Strategy of the United States." It stated that terrorism presented a new kind of danger and needed a new kind of response.
"As a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed," the document said.
Bush went further and targeted three countries in his famous "axis of evil" State of the Union speech in 2002, hinting that Iran and North Korea, as well as Iraq, might be attacked pre-emptively if they were perceived as threatening the United States.
But many experts say that the first broad pre-emptive invasion might be the last, at least for now, because of the expense of Iraq, the apparently poor planning for the occupation, the violent backlash and the lack of resources or troops for another such venture.
Rather than be cowed by President Bush's earlier hints, or by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, both Iran and North Korea have defied international demands, and both appear to be developing nuclear weapons, without any indication that the president might seek to resort to a pre-emptive attack. In the presidential debate Thursday night, President Bush emphasized multilateral talks, involving China, to resolve the North Korea crisis, and Bush has looked primarily to European negotiators to deal with Iran. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Wow. We thought this entry would require lots of analysis. But there's no need. Bush sucked. Kerry kicked ass. That whooshing sound you hear is not the remnants of Hurricane Jeanne, but the collective sigh from desperate liberals across the land: we just may get our country back.
Favorite GW quote: "Being president is hard."
Yes. Apparently, so is talking in fluid sentences.
Press Gaggle by Scott McClellan
Aboard Air Force One en Route to MacDill Air Force Base, Florida
September 29, 2004[...]
Q Tony Blair has apologized for the evidence that brought the country into war against Iraq, apologizing since apparently some of it was wrong. Do you think the President will also apologize?
MR. McCLELLAN: The President has already talked about what Prime Minister Blair said. The President said we all thought we were going to find the stockpiles, and we're surprised that we did not. But also look at what Prime Minister Blair said and what the President has said: It was the right decision to go in and remove Saddam Hussein's regime from power; he was a threat that we could no longer afford to ignore and let -- and let him continue to deceive the world.
Q Was it appropriate to apologize?
MR. McCLELLAN: The President has already spoken to that issue, John. So he's already said that --
Q Did he apologize?
MR. McCLELLAN: He's already said that, I thought we would have found the stockpiles.
Q That's not an apology.
Q Is that an apology?
MR. McCLELLAN: Dick, he's already addressed this issue. It's the same -- Prime Minister Blair said what he's been saying, too. We all expected to find the stockpiles, but the decision to remove Saddam Hussein, as Prime Minister Blair reiterated again yesterday, was the right decision, because he was a threat and the world is better off with Saddam Hussein removed from power. And that's --
Q Can you say that's more an explanation or an apology? I don't think the statements are --
MR. McCLELLAN: The President said this quite some time ago, he spoke to this very issue quite some time ago. He said the same thing -- Prime Minister Blair said we all thought we were going to find the stockpiles. We all thought we were going to find the stockpiles. But it was the right decision to remove Saddam Hussein --
Q Where is the word sorry?
MR. McCLELLAN: -- from power, and that we're better off -- and we're better off because of it.
Q -- into a place where you use words like --
MR. McCLELLAN: I'd be glad to show you where he said that we all expected to.
Q It's the contrition --
MR. McCLELLAN: I think he's already said --
Q There's no apology.
MR. McCLELLAN: He's already talked to this very issue, Jodi.
The newspaper in President Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford threw its support on Tuesday behind Bush's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry.The weekly Lone Star Iconoclast criticized Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and for turning budget surpluses into record deficits. The editorial also criticized Bush's proposals on Social Security and Medicare.
"The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda," the newspaper said in its editorial. "Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry."
It urged "Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country." (Reuters)
We know that Bush doesn't do nuance and doesn't make mistakes. But when he starts to disagree with Karl, you know he's either off his rocker, or just plain dumb:
...Bush gave [an interview to] Bill O'Reilly of Fox News in which O'Reilly asked Bush whether he would still do the carrier landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln beneath the "Mission Accomplished" banner. At the time, 16 months ago, Bush referred to Iraq as a "victory" and declared an end to major combat there."Absolutely," the president replied in the interview, to air on Monday's "O'Reilly Factor." O'Reilly, apparently surprised, replied, "You would?" "Of course," Bush continued. "I'm saying to the troops, on this carrier and elsewhere, 'Thanks for serving America.' Absolutely. And by the way, those sailors and airmen loved seeing the commander in chief. . . . You bet I'd do it again."
In April, White House senior adviser Karl Rove told an editorial board meeting with the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio that the "Mission Accomplished" sign had been a mistake. "I wish the banner was not up there," Rove said. "I'll acknowledge the fact that it has become one of those convenient symbols." (Washington Post)
From today's New York Times, "Agencies Postpone Issuing New Rules Until After Election":
After a case of mad cow disease surfaced in Washington State late last year, federal regulators vowed to move swiftly to adopt rules to reduce the risks of further problems and restore confidence in the nation's meat industry.Some rules were adopted this year. But a few weeks ago, the Food and Drug Administration, after heavy lobbying from the beef and feed industries, took steps to delay - and to the concern of food safety groups, possibly kill - completion of the most controversial and perhaps most expensive proposal for cattle companies.
That proposal would sharply restrict what could be included in animal feed. Shortly after the administration slowed its consideration of the rule, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association broke its nonpartisan tradition and endorsed President Bush for re-election.
The F.D.A. decision was part of a broader pattern.
In recent weeks, federal agencies across the vast Washington bureaucracy have delayed completion of a range of proposed regulations from food safety and the environment to corporate governance and telecommunications policy until after Election Day, when regulatory action may be more politically palatable.
The delays come after heavy lobbying by industry organizations, including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the cattle and feed industries, the four regional Bell operating telephone companies, big health care providers and timber and mining interests.
Some groups have been making their case for regulations that would make it easier for miners and timber companies to develop forests, while others have been advocating wholesale telephone rate rules that could significantly increase prices to consumers. Many corporate executives, meanwhile, have been arguing against a proposal that would give shareholders the ability to remove directors of troubled companies.
Officials have decided to wait until after Election Day to respond to an appeals court decision that struck down rules that would make it easier for the largest media conglomerates to grow larger. And they are not expected to issue rules that will determine prescription rates and coverage under the new Medicare law until after the presidential election.
Both industry lobbyists and their critics say that the re-election of President Bush would probably lead to the adoption of some regulations favorable to industry and the rejection or watering down of others that industry considers objectionable. Consumer groups, environmental organizations and food safety experts, meanwhile, say that delays could lead to significantly weaker rules that could increase prices on some products, reduce safety and relax environmental protections.
While the delay of completing rules, known to lobbyists and policy makers as "slow rolling,'' is common in a campaign season, some environmental groups and consumer advocates say this year is different.
"Generally, regulatory submissions often get pushed off in election years,'' said Gene Kimmelman, a senior director of public policy at Consumers Union.
"What is unusual this time,'' he added, "is the clear pattern of holding back regulatory decisions that will benefit the largest industry players and will drive up prices and market place risks for consumers, ranging from telephones to drugs to the risks of contaminants of food. The pattern of slow rolling will ultimately benefit the largest players and hit consumers in the pocketbook.''
Mr Rumsfeld raised the possibility of partial elections publicly for the first time on Thursday in a session at the Senate Armed Services Committee."Let's say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three quarters or four fifths of the country but some places you couldn't because the violence was too great," he said.
"Well, so be it, nothing is perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet." (via the BBC)
Got that, Florida?
Fewer Iraqi security forces will be fully trained by the end of this year than cited by President Bush and it will take until July 2006 to fully train the police force, according to Pentagon documents.With interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi at his side, Bush said on Thursday that nearly 100,000 fully trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel are already working and this number would rise to 125,000 by the end of this year.
But documents prepared by Defense Department officials and given to lawmakers show that fewer than 100,000 will be trained by the end of this year.
The Pentagon also said on Monday that only about 53,000 of the 100,000 Iraqis on duty now have undergone training.
The documents, obtained by Reuters, show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. And it will be July 2006 before the administration's new goal of 135,000 fully trained police is met.
The White House stood by the 100,000 figure cited by Bush, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. (via Reuters)
From "What are we bid for a clue?", by Francis Volpe in the Carlisle, PA Sentinel:
There's a net loss of about a million jobs since 2001. Medicare and regular health insurance premiums are skyrocketing. Federal deficits are at a record level in absolute dollar figures.These are all signs of a stagnant economy. But Vice President Dick Cheney thinks the numbers would look better if the government would just count people selling stuff on eBay.
"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on Thursday. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay."
There was a lot of controversy about Cheney's other statement last week that a vote for John Kerry is a vote for another terrorist attack. The White House hurriedly distributed edited transcripts of that speech exchanging a period for a comma, and Cheney backtracked to the more reasonable position that the next attack is coming and people should choose who they think will respond better.
But I think the eBay comment is the one that really demands a second look.
That Cheney's eBay statement is factually accurate is beyond debate. But as is usual with the Bush administration, he uses a true fact to create a false impression.
Sen. John Edwards got to the heart of the matter when he answered Cheney. "If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking," Edwards said.
Because what Cheney is really talking about is counting the underground economy when we gather statistics.
Now I wouldn't mind knowing how much activity there is in the underground economy myself. Let's look at eBay. I did this by doing a search on "Dick Cheney" and I got 82 entries.
Some of these were collectibles -- autographed photos, campaign souvenirs and a copy of his wife Lynne's suppressed Wild West novel "Sisters." The latter had the highest bid at $255.
Then there were the anti-Cheney T-shirts and buttons, several featuring a verbatim quote of his R-rated outburst on the floor of the U.S. Senate. (My favorite was one depicting Bush and Cheney as Bevis and Butthead.)
Some of these entries were posted by people who run businesses, so they likely are counted in the statistics, Cheney's statement to the contrary. Others are clearly capitalizing on the opportunity to make a few bucks from stuff that once would have been put out for spring cleanup.
That latter example demonstrates that it's possible to harness the power of junk to fatten one's personal bottom line. I like that Cheney endorses renewable resources in this context, and I might suggest he consider transferring the idea to this administration's energy policy if he ever gets around to revising it.
But back to the point. Some folks are casual sellers. And it's a cinch that many of these people aren't reporting their eBay gains as income and therefore aren't paying income taxes on them.
That puts them squarely in the underground economy. Another way to be a part of it is to engage in illegal commerce. That includes bookies, people who peddle bootleg cable boxes and unlicensed computer software, the guy at the flea market with the counterfeit CDs and videos, the folks who take deposits for home improvements and skip town, and so on.
Now if Cheney thinks we ought to find a way to measure all that economic activity, well, OK. But I'm skeptical that the data will support the point he was trying to make last week.
He seemed to be saying that the weak statistics of the past few years cover up the fact that folks are relying on their entrepreneurial skills to put dinner on the table. But if he wants credit for all the handymen and laundry ladies who don't report their income, well, he'll have to add them on to all the statistics for the last 50 years.
That won't help the current economy compare more favorably to the boom times of the 1980s and '90s.
The underground economy is always with us, but my guess is that more people participate in it when real jobs are scarce. The harder it is to earn a paycheck, the more likely it is that people will peddle their junk instead of putting it out to the curb.
When they run out of Cabbage Patch Dolls and baseball card collections, they'll have to put their more valuable possessions up for sale to make ends meet. Like the computer they were using to post auctions on eBay. And so on down the economic ladder.
No doubt some folks do OK working the Internet auctions, although my experience has been that people who spend a lot of time on those sites end up spending as much -- or more -- than they earn. That's a pastime, not a profession.
And professions are what the job creation statistics tell us are trickling away rather than multiplying. The 144,000 jobs created last month were barely enough to cover population growth, let alone put any of the unemployed back to work.
So it occurs to me that the real argument to be made in this election is whether the next administration's employment policies will require Americans to periodically liquidate their possessions to keep up with rising prices.
We know where Cheney stands regarding that argument. Keep in mind that of those 82 Cheney-related auctions I found on eBay, not one of them was posted by Cheney himself.
From yesterday's Washington Post, "Bush Speech: Resolute or Clueless?":
In a soaring, eloquent, upbeat speech from the marble podium at the United Nations, President Bush yesterday put forth the purest distillation yet of his foreign policy views.And depending on your own world view, I'm betting you either loved it or hated it.
Was he strong, resolute, unyielding, unapologetic? Undeniably so. And in the view of his supporters, enough said.
But viewed in the context of how things have worked out, particularly in Iraq, his critics -- including many in the audience of world leaders yesterday -- found him misguided, simplistic, imperious and trigger-happy.
If the whole speech was a litmus test, this one sentence was the clincher:
"We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace," Bush said.
Some people see irony there. Others don't.
President Bush might have been able to say it was simply a slip of the tongue when he confused two terrorists in a campaign speech Monday in New Hampshire. Trouble is, he's made the same misstatement at least 10 times before.During remarks in Derry, N.H., Bush said the late terrorist Abu Nidal killed Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Jewish American who died after being tossed - along with his wheelchair - off a hijacked cruise liner named Achille Lauro in 1985.
"Do you remember Abu Nidal?'' Bush asked the crowd. "He's the guy that killed Leon Klinghoffer. Leon Klinghoffer was murdered because of his religion. Abu Nidal was in Baghdad, as was his organization.''
He repeated the mistake Monday evening at a campaign event in New York City: "Abu Nidal was a cold-blooded terrorist killer who killed Leon Klinghoffer.''
Actually, it was Abul Abbas, the leader of a violent Palestinian group, who killed Klinghoffer.
The White House had no immediate comment on the mix-up. (The Guardian)
Maybe that's why Dick Cheney keeps trying to connect Iraq with the September 11th attacks in his stump speeches, despite the fact that a bipartisan commission concluded otherwise - he's confusing Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden.
It's Ayad Allawi week. President Bush, starting with his address at the U.N. today, will try to present Mr. Allawi - a former Baathist who the BBC reports was chosen as prime minister because he was "equally mistrusted by everyone" - as the leader of a sovereign nation on the path to democracy. If the media play along, Mr. Bush may be able to keep the Iraq disaster under wraps for a few more weeks.It may well work. In June, when the United States formally transferred sovereignty to Mr. Allawi's government, the media acted as if this empty gesture marked the end of the war. Even though American casualties continued to rise, stories about Iraq dropped off the evening news and the front pages. This gave the public the impression that things were improving and helped Mr. Bush recover in the polls.
Now Mr. Bush hopes that by pretending that Mr. Allawi is a real leader of a real government, he can conceal the fact that he has led America into a major strategic defeat.
That's a stark statement, but it's a view shared by almost all independent military and intelligence experts. Put it this way: it's hard to identify any major urban areas outside Kurdistan where the U.S. and its allies exercise effective control. Insurgents operate freely, even in the heart of Baghdad, while coalition forces, however many battles they win, rule only whatever ground they happen to stand on. And efforts to put an Iraqi face on the occupation are self-defeating: as the example of Mr. Allawi shows, any leader who is too closely associated with America becomes tainted in the eyes of the Iraqi public.Mr. Bush's insistence that he is nonetheless "pleased with the progress" in Iraq - when his own National Intelligence Estimate echoes the grim views of independent experts - would be funny if the reality weren't so grim. Unfortunately, this is no joke: to the delight of Al Qaeda, America's overstretched armed forces are gradually getting chewed up in a losing struggle.
[…]
The Bush administration fostered the Iraq insurgency by botching the essential tasks of enlisting allies, rebuilding infrastructure, training and equipping local security forces, and preparing for elections.
[…]
If there ever was a chance to turn Iraq into a pro-American beacon of democracy, that chance perished a long time ago.
Can the insurgency be crushed? It's widely believed that in November, a few days after the election, the Bush administration will launch an all-out offensive against insurgent-controlled areas. Such an offensive will, for all practical purposes, be an attempt to conquer Iraq all over again. But unlike Saddam's hapless commanders, the insurgents won't oblige us by taking up positions in the countryside, where they can be blasted by U.S. air power. And grinding urban warfare that leads to heavy American casualties and the death of large numbers of innocent civilians will simply enlarge the ranks of our enemies.
But if the chance to install a pro-American government has been lost, what's the alternative? Scaling back our aims. This means accepting the fact that an Iraqi leader, to have legitimacy, must be able to deliver an end to America's military presence. Unless we want this war to go on forever, we will have to abandon the 14 "enduring bases" the Bush administration has been building.
It also means accepting the likelihood that Iraq will not have a strong central government - and that local leaders will end up with a lot of autonomy. This doesn't have to mean creating havens for hostile forces: remember that for a year after Saddam's fall, moderate Shiite clerics effectively governed large areas of Iraq and kept them relatively peaceful. It was the continuing irritant of the U.S. occupation that empowered radicals like Moktada al-Sadr.
The point is that by winding down America's military presence, while promising aid to those who don't harbor anti-American terrorists and retaliation against those who do, the U.S. can probably leave behind an Iraq that isn't an American ally, but isn't a threat either. And that, at this point, is probably the best we can hope for.
Paul Krugman in the New York Times
“I went to Washington to fix problems, not pass them on to future Presidents.”
George W. Bush
President's Remarks at Victory 2004 Rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota
September 16, 2004
Interesting. Because, from where we sit, Bush seems to have passed quite a few problems off to future generations and their leaders. Here are just a few:
The Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire in 2010 – long enough to get him through a potential second term while passing both the expanding deficit and potential tax increases to a new administration.
John McCain has said the U.S. military is likely to remain in Iraq for 10 to 20 years. The mess Bush has created in Iraq – an entirely avoidable war – will hinder administrations (and kill an untold number of boys and girls growing up in America right now) for years and years to come.
Instead of making real Medicare/drug price reforms, the Bush administration has created a policy that lowers prices at a rate so low they will be overtaken by inflation and gives tremendous concessions to the pharmaceutical industry. A future administration will need to start the entire process over again.
The Bush administration’s overhaul of the EPA, turning it into the Environmental Pardon Agency, has done irreparable harm to this nation’s public lands and completely voided the concept that the needs of today’s and future generations of citizens (to breathe clean air, to name one example) outweigh the needs of big business. Future presidents will have to clean up Bush’s environmental legacy.
When power fails, Op-Ed in today's Seattle Post-IntelligencerThe deaths of Iraqi civilians in air strikes Friday carry a message for all of us. American power has limits. When we try to move beyond human capacity in conducting military operations, tragedy ensues.
All of the escalating losses -- American, allied and Iraqi -- are terrible. The opposition forces have chosen barbarous tactics, often targeting ordinary people. Despite some mistakes, American men and women continue to conduct themselves with great honor.
Both this country and its friends, should recoil at the TV images of women and children wheeled through hospital halls after U.S. air strikes. Iraqi authorities say dozens of civilians died.
For all our power, we don't have the means to secure Iraq. Maybe it is beyond any country's power to achieve the kind of liberation for another people that the Bush administration said it wanted.
Raids have been occurring in cities and towns where we have lost control. It is no consolation to realize that guerrilla forces likely chose to blend themselves into the population.
That is what happens in such a conflict. And the insurgents gain sympathy when the people become victims.
During the early stages of the Iraq campaign, American commanders could legitimately boast that precision bombing had limited civilian casualties. In this latest phase, the bombing results should provoke strong moral and practical concerns among Americans.
No one knows how many new terrorists have been created by civilian deaths. But the numbers will increase if such incidents continue.
The latest draft U.S. government report about the lack of Iraqi weapons of annihilation ought to deepen moral qualms about of tactics that cause civilian casualties. The war supplanted United Nations inspections and sanctions, which were working despite Saddam Hussein's desire to develop weapons of mass destruction.
We have never believed the Iraq invasion represented a just war. Even among Americans who view the war as proper, there is a strong sense of the need to use legitimate means of conducting the war.
A year and a half after the invasion of Iraq, the world's greatest power has turned its military force to bombing raids that bring civilian casualties. That's a failure, strategic, moral and human.
The Vice President was in Oregon yesterday, and he gave his usual stump speech: five parts war on terror, two parts attack on Kerry, one part softball questions from the handpicked audience. During the war on terror part, Cheney referenced something he called the "Bush doctrine":
And he annunciated a new doctrine, a so-called Bush doctrine that we've adhered to ever since, and that was that not only would we go after the terrorists, but we would go after the terrorists, but we would also go after those who sponsor terror, and those who support terror, and those who provided sanctuary and safe harbor for terrorists.
If there is such a thing as a Bush doctrine, and the above is it, then the Administration has failed miserably in following its own doctrine. Given the above criteria, Iraq does not fit into the doctrine at all: Saddam Hussein did not sponsor the kind of terror we were interested in fighting, nor did he provide sanctuary for terrorists. In fact, the invasion of Iraq has hurt the war on terror more than it has helped:
* Terror attacks have increased throughout the world since we invaded Iraq
* Afghanistan essentially fell off the agenda
* Military resources are stretched perilously thin
* International distrust of America is at an all-time high
* More than 1,000 American lives have been lost
If this is the result of a "Bush doctrine," whether correctly followed or not, Cheney would be wise to stop advertising it.
A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday.The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.
"There's a significant amount of pessimism," said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments - concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts' conclusions - included in the document.
The intelligence estimate, the first on Iraq since October 2002, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council and was approved by the National Foreign Intelligence Board under John E. McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence. Such estimates can be requested by the White House or Congress, but this one was initiated by the intelligence council under George J. Tenet, who stepped down as director of central intelligence on July 9, the government officials said.
As described by the officials, the pessimistic tone of the new estimate stands in contrast to recent statements by Bush administration officials, including comments on Wednesday by Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, who asserted that progress was being made. (New York Times)
From an interview with Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School and former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, in the New York Times:
Q. The first phase - the discount card phase - of the new Medicare drug benefit is about to go into effect. Do you, as a newly minted senior, believe it will make prescription drugs more affordable?A. It's not going to have a major effect. These discounts are very small, maybe 10 to 15 percent. At the rate of inflation of drug prices, they'll be overtaken in a very short time.
Now, the main Medicare drug benefit that goes into effect in 2006 is designed to funnel billions of dollars to the pharmaceutical industry. It's an absolute bonanza for it. The pharmaceutical industry's lobbyists made certain that the legislation contained a provision barring Medicare from negotiating drug prices.
Interestingly, the federal government negotiates drug prices for the Veterans Affairs system and gets very low prices because it is a bulk purchaser. And Medicare would have been the biggest bulk purchaser of all - so it could have negotiated very low prices. That provision allows the drug companies to continue raising their prices faster than the inflation rate, and the drug benefit will soon become unaffordable.
From Press Gaggle with Scott McClellan, via the White House
September 13, 2004
Q What have you guys done to make North Korea any less of a threat? Aren't they as much of a threat now as they --MR. McCLELLAN: Well, that failed bilateral approach is the wrong way to go. What we did was the President got all the other nations in the region engaged in sending a clear message to North Korea that it needs to end its -- that it needs to abandon its nuclear ambitions. All five countries in the region are sending a clear message to North Korea, and they're all saying that they want a nuclear-free -- nuclear weapons-free peninsula.
Q Scott, where is that getting you?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we're continuing to make progress through the six-party talks. Those talks are ongoing. We expect that another round of talks will be coming up. And now, for the first time, you have all those nations in the neighborhood actively engaged --
Q Right, but that's not a new concept. The point is, you don't have any tangible progress.
MR. McCLELLAN: -- in a solution -- what this President is doing is confronting all the threats we face. And there are different strategies for confronting different threats. But we are pursuing a plan that will lead to the dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear weapons program, not a freeze.
Q Besides talk, name one piece of progress that you've made.
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry?
Q Besides talk, name one piece of progress --
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we've put forward, now, a dismantlement plan in the last round of talks. We're waiting on North Korea's response to those talks.
Q -- piece of progress --
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, what we saw over the last decade, under the 1994 agreed to framework was that North Korea had not abandoned its nuclear weapons ambitions. They were continuing to pursue nuclear weapons. So that policy was a failed approach. That's why the President went to the other nations in the region. China has been very involved in these efforts. China has stepped forward now to say, we want a nuclear weapons-free peninsula. And they've been actively engaged in those talks. So we're continuing to work through those talks and make progress to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons ambition.
Q In four years, have you been able to remove one nuclear weapon from North Korea or reduce the threat at all?
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry, what?
Q In four years, have you been able to reduce the threat at all in North Korea? Are they any less dangerous now?
MR. McCLELLAN: It's an issue that this President is leading the way to confront, by bringing all five parties in the region together in the six-party approach.
From today's Washington Post, "$3 Trillion Price Tag Left Out As Bush Details His Agenda":
The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.
Bush's pledge to make permanent his tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2010 or before, would reduce government revenue by about $1 trillion over 10 years, according to administration estimates. His proposed changes in Social Security to allow younger workers to invest part of their payroll taxes in stocks and bonds could cost the government $2 trillion over the coming decade, according to the calculations of independent domestic policy experts.And Bush's agenda has many costs the administration has not publicly estimated. For instance, Bush said in his speech that he would continue to try to stabilize Iraq and wage war on terrorism. The war in Iraq alone costs $4 billion a month, but the president's annual budget does not reflect that cost.
Bush's platform highlights the challenge for both presidential candidates in trying to lure voters with attractive government initiatives at a time of mounting budget deficits. This year's federal budget deficit will reach a record $422 billion, and the government is expected to accumulate $2.3 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported last week.
The president has had little to say about the deficit as he barnstorms across the country, which has prompted Democrats and some conservative groups to say Bush refuses to admit there will not be enough money in government coffers to pay for many of his plans.
[. . .]
The administration has been secretive about the cost of the war and the likely impact that the bulging defense budget and continuing cost of tax cuts will have on domestic spending next year. The White House put government agencies on notice this month that if Bush is reelected, his budget for 2006 may include $2.3 billion in spending cuts from virtually all domestic programs not mandated by law, including education, homeland security and others central to Bush's campaign.
But Bush has had little to say about belt-tightening and sacrifice on the campaign trail. Nor has he explained how he would reconcile all his new spending plans with the mounting deficit.
Today the ban on assault weapons expires. The President says he would have signed the bill if it came to his desk, but he knows full well that the Republicans in Congress will not allow a bill to pass. If Bush had pushed the issue, if he had shown the slightest bit of leadership in wanting to protect Americans from being killed by assault weapons, he could have made it happen. He chose not to.
In effect since 1994, the ban was not perfect, but it went a long way towards making the argument that semiautomatic weapons are not needed by hunters or homeowners. The law banned weapons with magazines containing more than 10 rounds. If there is a good reason for having more than 10 rounds, other than to kill someone, we would certainly like to hear it.
The students at Columbine High were killed with assault weapons. Al Qaeda training manuals encouraged operatives in America to purchase assault weapons. One in five police officers killed in the line of duty are shot with assault weapons.
Yes, the NRA punishes politicians who vote for gun control. But leadership is about standing up for the people, not those who have the money. Bush’s silence on this issue is nothing short of deadly.
