Bush's Distortions, Delusions and Distractions

BUSH: “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”

Here's my assessment on that quote: BULLSHIT.

The Al-Qaeda fear card is coming up more and more frequently as Bush gets further away from reality and the administration sits in their bunker trying to figure out how to salvage what little left there is to their pathetic term in office. The more they realize that the GOP will probably get a "whoopin'" again in 2008, the more they use fear and the threat of terror to try to justify their debacle in Iraq.

As Bob Woodward reports, even CIA Director Michael V. Hayden catalogued what he saw as the main sources of violence [for the Iraq Study Group] in this order: the insurgency, sectarian strife, criminality, general anarchy and, lastly, al-Qaeda. Though Hayden had listed al-Qaeda as the fifth most pressing threat in Iraq, Bush regularly lists al-Qaeda first.

Even "general anarchy" is ahead of al-Qaeda in his assessment of the situation. But the more trouble the administration gets into, the more they shout "al-Qaeda". Just this week, Harriet Meirs, on advice from the White House, disregarded a subpoena from the Senate Judiciary Committee and decided not to show up. ...AL-QAEDA!!!

"I can't fathom a private citizen getting a subpoena to come before this body and not showing up," said Rep. Stephen I. Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat. "What we've got here is an empty chair. I mean, that is as contemptuous as anybody can be of the government, of the process, of the country."

But will she be charged with contempt of Congress and arrested like any other "private citizen"? I'm guessing the answer is a big, fat NO. ... AL-QAEDA!!!

At least Sara M. Taylor, the former White House Political Director showed up in person to spit in the face of the committee: "I have a very clear letter from Mr. Fielding," Taylor began at 10:40 a.m., pointing to the letter from White House Counsel Fred Fielding that has "directed" Taylor not to testify about internal deliberations and external communications while she worked in the West Wing.

She finally did start answering some questions after she was reminded by Chairman Senator Leahy what sort of questions she could and couldn't answer. And her answers proved that either she is one of the "loyal Bushies" that Kyle Sampson categorized, or that her mind is just as full of holes as Alberto Gonzales'.

Speaking of Gonzales, Dahlia Lithwick from Slate.com reports, "In April 2005, Gonzales testified before the Senate that "there has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse" as a consequence of expanded FBI powers under the Patriot Act. We now learn that at the time, he was in possession of at least six FBI reports detailing unlawful surveillance, searches, and improper use of national security letters. It's tempting to write off Gonzales' failure to admit to these numerous abuses as yet another punch line. "Ooopsy. Lied again." Heh heh. Shrug. But at least grant that Gonzales' buffoonery serves a larger Bush administration purpose. His dereliction of duty takes our minds off the real story: the extent of the damage he and Bush have done to the Justice Department in a few short years.

...It's difficult to ascertain the precise moment in the Bush administration in which confessing not to have been doing one's job at all became the best defense against the claim that one did one's job badly. But given the choice between admitting to perjury or incompetence, you can bet that Gonzales will easily, indeed gleefully, cop to the latter."

It just doesn't stop... AL-QAEDA!!!

Gonzales: "Mistakes were made."

Alberto "Torture Boy" Gonzales promised to “find out what went wrong here" in the dismissal of federal prosecutors. As Kyle Sampson, chief of staff for Gonzales, resigned on Monday, there was a lot of buzz equating his resignation as being a fall guy on the heels of Scooter Libby taking the heat and his subsequent conviction. But Sen. Chuck Schumer called for Gonzo's resignation "for the sake of the nation."

“Attorney General Gonzales is a nice man,” Mr. Schumer said. “But he either doesn’t accept or doesn’t understand that he is no longer just the president’s lawyer but has a higher obligation to the rule of law and the Constitution, even when the president should not want it to be so.”

Gonzales promising to find out what went wrong is the equivalent of O.J. Simpson vowing to find his wife's killer. Even though e-mails show that White House involvement regarding the attorney firings began with correspondence between former WH counsel Harriet Miers and Sampson, there can only be two options in this matter: 1) Either Gonzales truly didn't know and therefore has no clue what going on under his nose in his office or 2) he knew full well and is equally responsible. Either way, it's a bad state of affairs.

And let's not forget that we are shown yet another example of the abuse of power in this Administration. What on earth could this amendment in the Patriot Act, enabling the President to replace federal attorneys for an indefinite period and bypassing Senate confirmation, have anything to do with the war on terror?

“We now know that it is very likely that the amendment to the Patriot Act, which was made in March of 2006, might well have been done to facilitate a wholesale replacement of all or part of U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who serves on the Judiciary Committee. “Who authorized all of this? Who asked for that change?”

Who indeed? Federal prosecutors are usually replaced when a new administration takes over. But it is unprecedented that a wholesale change of 93 prosecutors be replaced in the middle of an administration. Sure Clinton did it. So did Bush 41. But it was done at the outset of their tenures, and I defy anyone to find one example of eight prosecutors being dismissed simultaneously while they were either in the middle of investigations against Republicans or unwilling to leak information about investigations against Democrats.

*NOTE: My apologies to the Muppets for using an image of such a likable character in an article depicting such a vile one.