May 2007 Archives

Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich is not very impressed with former CIA Director George Tenet.

Although, I think portraying the president as Snidely Whiplash is quite an insult. To Snidely.

(h/t: Truthdig)

Does the President of the United States think this war is a game, or is he simply the most inarticulate person this great nation has ever dared to put into power? Taegan Goddard's Quote of the Day features the president, quoted in a New York Times story:

"I'm the commander guy."

Okay, it's probably both.

You know how President George W. Bush keeps telling us he listens to our commanders on the ground, and that is one of the reasons he just had to veto the war supplemental bill this week?

One of his former commanders takes exception. Here's what Major General Paul D. Eaton (Ret.) writes:

Respectfully, as your former commander on the ground, your administration did not listen to our best advice. In fact, a number of my fellow Generals were forced out of their jobs, because they did not tell you what you wanted to hear -- most notably General Eric Shinseki, whose foresight regarding troop levels was advice you rejected, at our troops' peril.

How's that worked out for us, Mr. President?

As Lieutenant General William E. Odom (Ret.), a former director of the National Security Agency noted in last week's Democratic Radio Address:

The conflict in Iraq is different. Over the past couple of years, the President has let it proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued.

"Thus, he lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money, and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies. The Congress is the only mechanism we have to fill this vacuum in command judgment.

"To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is 'absent without leave.' He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Rather, he engages in tit-for-tat games.

I am thankful some people are now having the courage to call the president on this horrible "leadership" quality. The American people need to come to grips with exactly what kind of person now works in the Oval Office.

Atrios rightly highlights a comment former CNN head Walter Isaacson made to Bill Moyers and makes the inevitable conclusion:

So, "big people in corporations" get to call up CNN and tell them what they should be doing with their news coverage.

Ah, the wonders of our so-called liberal media.

ThinkProgress highlights two 1999 interviews with then Governor George W. Bush in which our president has a completely different position on timetables and benchmarks. This Bush quote is particularly priceless:

“I think it’s also important for the president [Bill Clinton] to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they will be withdrawn.”

I wish the 2007 George W. Bush would go back and have a conversation with the 1999 George W. Bush and realize the earlier incarnation was correct.

Last night, Keith Olbermann took a critical look at all the progress the United States has made in Iraq since the first time President George W. Bush used the phrase in 2003. Crooks and Liars has the video.

James Fallows calls out White House advisor Dan Bartlett on a clear lie he tried to throw pass the American people in defending the White House from the all-too-late revelations of former CIA Director George Tenet. Bartlett told the AP:

“This president weighed all the various proposals, weighed all the various consequences before he did make a decision.”

Bull-bleep. Why do they even try to get us to buy this crap anymore?

Fallows follows up with a challenge to Bartlett:

I say plainly: that is a lie. To be precise about it, no account of the Administration’s deliberations, by anyone other than Bartlett just now, offers even the slightest evidence that this claim is true. Innumberable accounts offer ample evidence that it is false. I have asked this direct question to many interviewees who were in a position to know: was there ever such a meeting or discussion? The answer was always, No. The followup challenge to Bartlett should be: show us a memo, show us a policy paper, show us a scheduled meeting, show us notes taken at the time to substantiate the idea that the Administration ever seriously considered what the nation would gain or lose by invading Iraq, and what the alternatives might be. What the Administration actually considered, according to all known evidence, is how it would invade Iraq, and when.

Dear members of the so-called liberal media: James Fallows has just done the hard work for you. Dan Bartlett should not be able to appear behind a microphone for the rest of his life without being forced to face these questions.

Alas, I won't hold my breath waiting to see you do your jobs.

Former Senator Gary Hart asks Republican presidential pretender Rudy Guiliani some important questions:

Since you have based your presidential campaign almost exclusively on your reaction to terrorist attacks on New York City, and since you have recently accused Democrats of being on the defense against terrorism and therefore guilty of inviting more casualties, I have one question for you: Where were you on terrorism between January 31, 2001, and September 11th?

The first date was when the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century issued its final report warning, as did its previous reports, of the danger of terrorist attacks on America. The George W. Bush administration did nothing about these warnings and we lost 3,000 American lives. What did you do during those critical eight months? Where were you? Were you on the defensive, or were you even paying attention?

"America's So-Called Mayor" has been living in a glass house on the terrorism issue. His record is fair game -- and it is about time the American people started seeing the media dig into just what Rudy did to protect the city he led.

I don't think he will like the answer.

As Americablog's Joe Sudbay notes, this fourth anniversary of President George W. Bush's hubristic declaration that major combat operations were over in Iraq, is not exactly the national holiday Bush and Karl Rove must have assumed it would be.

Instead, the president is going to get a war supplemental spending bill he is likely to veto, at least 3,351 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the
Iraq war in March 2003, and the price tag for this war is about to pass through $500 billion.

Meanwhile, we also read headlines about NATO offensives against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Um, the Taliban? Isn't that also supposed to be a war we have already won?

President Bush, just how incompetent can one Administration prove to be?

Update: Think Progress reminds us where we stood four years ago, and where we stand today, on key benchmarks in the Iraq War. Those of us in the reality-based community are not surprised to see that things have gotten much worse in Iraq since Mission Accomplished Day.