Category: George W. Bush

What a Whiny Bitch!!

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So, after nearly 3,000 Americans are killed by terrorists, he leads into a war against Iraq on false pretenses, a number of the White House staff out a clandestine CIA Operative, he allows a city to drown, and, “Here, watch this swing,” George W. Bush thinks that the worst day of his Presidency was when George Bush, still thin-skinned as ever, is still stewing of Kanye West:

MATT LAUER: You remember what he said?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yes, I do. He called me a racist.

MATT LAUER: Well, what he said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: That’s — “he’s a racist.” And I didn’t appreciate it then. I don’t appreciate it now. It’s one thing to say, “I don’t appreciate the way he’s handled his business.” It’s another thing to say, “This man’s a racist.” I resent it, it’s not true, and it was one of the most disgusting moments in my Presidency

MATT LAUER: This from the book. “Five years later I can barely write those words without feeling disgust.” You go on. “I faced a lot of criticism as President. I didn’t like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all time low.”

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yeah. I still feel that way as you read those words. I felt ’em when I heard ’em, felt ’em when I wrote ’em and I felt ’em when I’m listening to ’em.

MATT LAUER: You say you told Laura at the time it was the worst moment of your Presidency?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yes. My record was strong I felt when it came to race relations and giving people a chance. And– it was a disgusting moment.

I will actually agree with Bush that the criticism was wrong. What George W. Bush doesn’t care about is poor people, white or black.

Of course, the idea that he was more offended by the accusation of racism than he was about treason (outing CIA agent Valerie Plame), or incompetence (Katrina), or lying about weapons of mass destruction (Iraq) and killing thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, or dropping the ball before 911, is a meaningful tell.

You see, he felt that the accusation by Kanye West was unfair, but that the other criticisms had some merit, because even saw that there was an element of truth to them.

Still, what a remarkably small and petty man.

I Can Haz Prosecushuns?

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So, now George W. Bush has explicitly stated that he authorized torture:

George W. Bush’s casual acknowledgment Wednesday that he had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded — and would do it again — has horrified some former military and intelligence officials who argue that the former president doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of what he is admitting.

Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is “unequivocably torture”, said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years.

“As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War,” Irvine said. “Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life.”

Irvine told the Huffington Post that Bush doesn’t appreciate how much harm his countenancing of torture has done to his country.

Here’s a baseball metaphor to President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder: You are the umpires, Bush and Cheney are calling you a c*cks*ck*r.

You have no credibility when the worst of the criminals proclaim their crimes, and you do nothing.

This isn’t, “looking forward, not backward,” it’s moral cowardice, it’s being a criminal yourself, because by being an accessory to the cover-up you are an accessory to the crime.

What’s more, much like Ford’s pardon of Nixon, your insistence on denying the rule of law will encourage further law-breaking in the future.

OK, Now We Know that He Was Insane

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Blah, blah, blah!

We now have a report that George W. Bush told former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner that the Marshall Plan was a screwed up “Democrat plan”, and that the real way to help the economy is to start a war for some reason or other:

KIRCHNER: I said that a solution for the problems right now, I told Bush, is a Marshall Plan. And he got angry. He said the Marshall Plan is a crazy idea of the Democrats. He said the best way to revitalize the economy is war. And that the United States has grown stronger with war.

STONE: War, he said that?

KIRCHNER: He said that. Those were his exact words.

STONE: Is he suggesting that South America go to war?

KIRCHNER: Well, he was talking about the United States: ‘The Democrats had been wrong. All of the economic growth of the United States has been encouraged by wars.’ He said it very clearly.

(emphasis original)

This is why we cannot afford to have a military that is so overwhelming that we can invade any non-nuclear power on earth without a 2nd thought.

It’s like giving an 11 year kid with ADHD a loaded gun, and, if anything, the Sarah Palin/Teabagger wing of the Republican Party is even more delusional than Bush/Cheney.

It is inevitable that the minority party will eventually win, and when they do, these will be seriously disturbed people with a world view that could destroy the nation and the world.

Continuing to maintain a tool, and extending it with something like the “invasion in a box” Sea Basing concepts that are in development is a clear and present danger.

Bush-Cheney Were Even Crazier Than We Imagined

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During the Russian-Georgian war in 2008, Bush and His Evil Minions™ considered military strikes against Russia:

As Russian tanks rumbled into Georgia in 2008, a post-Cold War turning point was at hand.

George W. Bush’s national security team considered launching air strikes to halt the invasion. …………

…………

Thus we learn that “several senior White House staffers” urged “at least some consideration of limited military options,” such as bombing the mountain tunnel that served as Russia’s main supply line.

What part of the phrase, “Russia has around 10,000 nuclear warheads in its arsenal,” didn’t these guys get?

Great googly moogly!

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney Fly to Uruguay, Request Asylum

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No, it hasn’t happened yet, but we have a start.

You see, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the National Security Archive have found some 22 million missing White House emails from the Bush era.

Yes, I know, it still has to go through the National Archives, where it will take years* to catalogue then and screen for classified material:

Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush, according to two groups that are settling lawsuits they filed over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record keeping system.

The two groups made the announcement as they settled lawsuits that they filed against the Executive Office of the President in 2007.

But the public might not see any of the e-mails for quite some time because they will now go through the National Archives normal process for releasing presidential and agency records.

Of course, even if major revelations are present, that Barack Obama and Eric Holder will their do their level best to ensure that the rule of law is not enforced.

*My guess is that this will be finished a little bit after the 2012 elections.

Marine Generals Call Cheney a Fearful Bitch

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Retired Marine Corps Generals Charles Krulak and Joseph Hoar have penned an OP/ED titled, “Fear was no excuse to condone torture

In the fear that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to “take off the gloves.” As a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster.

But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas — and his scare tactics.

….

Let’s be clear here. These are retired Generals, criticizing not only a former Vice President of the United States, but the entire administration he was in, and they have chosen their words carefully.

When they choose to describe the decisions made by Bush and His Evil Minions™as having been made out of fear, they are saying that these are evil acts made by cowards who are out of their mind with fear.

Remember When I Said that George W. Bush Was Forming a Think Tank?

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Well, it gets better, because the person that he has charged with running this august institution is one James K. Glassman, a fact that I did not pay much attention to when I made the initial snark.

Clayton Littlejohn, Wonkette, and Matthew Yglesias caught the obvious irony: Mr. Glassman is the author of Dow 36,000, in which he and Kevin A. Hassett wrote in 1999, which predicted that the index would top thirty-six thousand in the next few years.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed today, about a decade later, at 9,441.27.

Mr. Glassman appears uniquely qualified to represent the ideas of George W. Bush.

Original post here.

Dick Cheney is Such a Whiny Bitch

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This is normally not a phrase I use, even with the most annoying members of my family, but I think that for Dick Cheney, it is very clear that his complaints about George W. Bush remove any doubt about the fact, and furthermore it places his comments about the repudiation of his Manichean, and quite frankly delusional, view of the world by the voters in the proper context.

We need to call him a bitch, because to call him anything else grants him a credibility and gravitas that he simply does not deserve.*

The man, who has an uninterrupted record of failure in his life, recommending that Ford dump Rockefeller as VP, moving to contractors in the military, invading Iraq, etc., is now saying that George W. Bush was not hard line enough for him:

“In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him,” said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney’s reply. “He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming. It was clear that Cheney’s doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times — never apologize, never explain — and Bush moved toward the conciliatory.”

Truth be told, I really think that this is really all about two words, “Scooter Libby,” and Cheney is upset, because he believes that without a full pardon, Libby may some day roll over on his flabby, lily-white ass.

He knows that Omertà means less in politics than it does in the Mafia, which means that it means nothing at all, and it terrifies him.

*Yes, I understand that the social dynamics of the situation, where in order to diminish a man you essentially call him a woman, and in order to diminish a woman, you essentially call her a man,† but you go to war with Dick Cheney with the societal norms you have—not the societal norms you might want or wish to have at a later time.
†See Clinton, Hillary and Pelosi, Nancy.

OK, There is Someone Stupider than Amity Shlaes

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Hard to believe, but true.

It turns out that Gregory Levey is stupider than conservative affirmative action baby Amity Shlaes, the woman who was fired by that Communist rag the Financial Times for extolling Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina in her reporting on the storm and its aftermath, because Mr. Levey is suggesting that Barack Obama should appoint George W. Bush as his Middle East envoy to aid in his diplomatic efforts in the region.

In related news, he suggested that Hannibal Lecter as chairman of the special White House committee on nutrition, Mary “Typhoid Mary” Mallon as head of food safety at the FCC, Timothy Leary as Drug Czar, and South Carolina Governor Rick “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” Sanford as head of the special working committee for ethics in government.

Great googly moogly.

Dick Cheney’s Death Squad Emporium

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We now know, because DCIA Panetta has told Congress, that the CIA had a secret program running for almost 8 years, and that they did not inform Congress of this, as required by law, on the orders of Dick Cheney.

It’s even gotten Dianne Feinstein,* who is generally remarkably hospitable to secrecy and executive authority saying that this was a clear violation of the law.

At this point all indications are that Cheney was setting up a death squad that would answer only to him.

Theoretically, it would only be used against al Qaeda, but remember that Bush and His Evil Minions™ defined “returning to terrorism”† as publishing an OP/ED in the New York Times.

I have no clue as to why it did not go forward, but we can be thankful about that, because they would have gotten it horribly wrong, because that is what the Bush administration did time and time again.‡

The thing is though, this is precisely the sort of thing that Cheney wanted to do, because it made him feel powerful, whether it worked or not.

They tortured because it gave Cheney and Rumsfeld a stiffy.§

It’s torture all over again: Now that the reports are coming out, it turns out that sugarless cookies worked better than torture, and Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Tennant knew this, but they were objectively pro-torture.

They wanted to do this, because it made them feel powerful, and ordering murders would have done the same thing.

The real question here is what stopped them, and the only answer that I have is that someone told them they could be in the cross hairs if they tried this, and that they, and theirs, were softer targets Osama.

*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers, though we have never met, either in person or electronically.

†Except, of course, the “Tipton 3” were never terrorists in the first place.

‡Once again, I am compelled to make the repeat the wisest thing that I’ve read this century:

But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:

  1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
  2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
  3. It wasn’t in some important way completely f#$@ed up during the execution.

Seriously. I’ve yet to see anything wiser yet, and I’m using the loose definition of the 21st century which includes the year 2000.

§Sorry for that mental image.

I Have to Admire this Legal Stragegy

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Muntadar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi shoe throwing journalist, has a novel defense against charges that he assaulted a foreign dignitary who was a guest of the Iraqi Prime Minister:

Zaidi, 30, who is charged with assaulting a foreign head of state, posited that Bush’s Dec. 14 trip to Baghdad was not an official visit by a foreign dignitary because he arrived in the country without prior notice and didn’t leave the Green Zone, which at the time was still under U.S. control.

“I am charged now with attacking the prime minister’s guest,” he said stoically, making his first public remarks since the incident. “We Arabs are famous for being generous with guests. But Bush and his soldiers have been here for six years. Guests should knock on the door. Those who come sneaking in are not guests.”

Roughly an hour into the hearing, Presiding Judge Abdul Amir al-Rubaie announced that he would postpone the proceeding until March 12 to seek an opinion from the Iraqi government about whether Bush’s swan song visit to Baghdad was, in fact, an “official” one.

True to form, and unlike the statements made by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao following a similar incident, when he asked for his show thrower to be released, Bush has made no statement regarding the fate of Zaidi, who has already been tortured by Iraqi authorities.

Classier Than George W. Bush

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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who after having a shoe thrown at him by Martin Jahnke, has, “requested British authorities dismiss charges against Jahnke and pardon him for his act of protest.”

Yes, the Chinese have the moral high ground over George W. Bush, who appears to think that the arrest, continued detention, torture, and threat of a long prison sentence against his shoe thrower, Muntazer al-Zaidi does not merit comment.