I'm just the guy that can't stand cant. ___________

 
THE PECULIAR RULES OF THE BUSH AND CHENEY INTERVIEW

As President Bush and Vice President Cheney make their unusual joint appearance before the commission investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks today, the commission’s efforts to get at the truth will be complicated by the peculiar rules that Bush has placed on the interview.

These rules have more to do with saving Bush from embarrassment than anything else.

In one of the most pathetic implicit admissions of incompetence ever made by a president, Bush has refused to be interviewed separately, as requested by commission. The restrictions do not end there. Today’s Washington Post notes some of the restrictions demanded by the White House:

The president and vice president agreed to meet privately with the 10-member panel on the condition that they appear together.

....

The White House will not record or transcribe the interviews .... The Sept. 11 panel is prohibited from recording the interview but will be allowed to have one staffer taking notes.

As The New York Times notes in an editorial today, the rules that Bush is imposing on the commission’s interview of him range from the questionable to the ridiculous:

It would have been a pleasure to be able to congratulate President Bush on his openness in agreeing to sit down today with the independent commission on the 9/11 attacks and answer questions. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush conditioned his cooperation on stipulations that range from the questionable to the ridiculous.

The strangest of the president's conditions is that he will testify only in concert with Vice President Dick Cheney. The White House has given no sensible reason for why Mr. Bush is unwilling to appear alone. (When asked at his recent press conference, the president gave one of his patented nonresponses: "Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them.")

While Bush’s demand to have Cheney at his side is certainly odd, it is debatable whether that is the strangest rule that Bush (Or is it Cheney?) has laid down for the interview. Through contacts at the White House, the Self Made Pundit has obtained the complete list of rules for the Bush and Cheney interview. It appears the Times was underestimating just how peculiar these rules are.

Here is the complete list of The White House's Rules for the September 11 Commission’s Interview of Bush and Cheney:

1. Bush will appear only in the presence of Cheney.

2. If Cheney leaves the room to go to the bathroom, Bush may also leave the room or hide under the table, at his option, until Cheney returns.

3. Bush will not be put under oath to tell the truth.

4. Bush will not be expected to tell the truth.

5. The interview will be private, in a secure White House room behind closed doors.

6. The Commission members may not turn on the light in the room.

7. The Commission members may not turn down the sound on Bush’s stereo, which will have the volume turned to 11.

8. The interview will not be tape-recorded or transcribed.

9. Only one staff member may take notes.

10. The staff member taking notes may not use any mechanical devices, pens or sharpened pencils.

11. While the staff member taking notes may use an unsharpened pencil, he may not use paper.

12. Only commission members – and not the staff – may ask Bush and Cheney questions.

13. Commission members may not ask Bush any questions while Cheney is taking a drink of water.

14. Commission members may not ask Bush any questions that would require him to pronounce the words “strategy,” “nuclear,” “subliminal” or any other word of more than two syllables.

15. Commission members may not ask Bush any hypothetical questions, such as whether his joint appearance with Cheney would be barred under his proposed Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriages.

16. Commission members may not ask Bush any trick questions such as what he knew or did.

17. Commission members may ask Bush what he felt or what was in his heart.

18. Commission members may not ask Bush any personal or embarrassing questions, such as why in August 2001 he took the longest presidential vacation in more than 30 years after receiving numerous warnings of an impending terrorist attack, including a Presidential Daily Briefing memo entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US” on August 6, 2001.

19. Commission members are requested to act respectfully and remember they are interviewing the president of the United States.

20. Commission members are requested to try not to cry as they look at Bush and remember they are interviewing the president of the United States.


posted by Gary at 11:14 AM

 
BUSH’S SECRET WAR PLANS SABOTAGED THE WAR ON TERROR

Bob Woodward’s new blockbuster on President Bush’s secret decision soon after the 9/11 attacks to plan for war with Iraq reveals that one of America’s biggest obstacles to winning the war on terror is Bush himself.

Woodward’s new book – “Plan of Attack” – reveals that Bush ordered aides to develop a secret war plan for Iraq in November 2001, at a time when he was neglecting to commit sufficient military forces to crush Al Qaeda and capture or kill Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Faced with an opportunity to devastate the terrorist group that had murdered some 3,000 people on American soil, Bush got distracted and used the opportunity to settle old scores with Saddam Hussein, a boxed-in and defeated enemy of America. As the Associated Press reports:

President Bush secretly ordered a war plan drawn up against Iraq less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan and was so worried the decision would cause a furor he did not tell everyone on his national security team, says a new book on his Iraq policy.

Bush feared that if news got out about the Iraq plan as U.S. forces were fighting another conflict, people would think he was too eager for war, journalist Bob Woodward writes in “Plan of Attack,” a behind-the-scenes account of the 16 months leading to the Iraq invasion.

....

“I knew what would happen if people thought we were developing a potential war plan for Iraq,” Bush is quoted as telling Woodward. “It was such a high-stakes moment and ... it would look like that I was anxious to go to war. And I'm not anxious to go to war.”

Bush and his aides have denied accusations they were preoccupied with Iraq at the cost of paying attention to the al-Qaida terrorist threat before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A commission investigating the attacks just concluded several weeks of extraordinary public testimony from high-ranking government officials. One of them, former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, charged the Bush administration's determination to invade Iraq undermined the war on terror.

Woodward's account fleshes out the degree to which some members of the administration, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, were focused on Saddam Hussein from the onset of Bush's presidency and even after the terrorist attacks made the destruction of al-Qaida the top priority.

Woodward says Bush pulled Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld aside Nov. 21, 2001 – when U.S. forces and allies were in control of about half of Afghanistan – and asked him what kind of war plan he had on Iraq. When Rumsfeld said it was outdated, Bush told him to get started on a fresh one.

The book says Bush told Rumsfeld to keep quiet about it and when the defense secretary asked to bring CIA Director George Tenet into the planning at some point, the president said not to do so yet.

Even Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was apparently not fully briefed. Woodward said Bush told her that morning he was having Rumsfeld work on Iraq but did not give details.

Bush’s decision to begin preparations for war with Iraq in November 2001 help explain why at that time he did not commit sufficient forces in Afghanistan to crush Al Qaeda and capture or kill bin Laden.

Soon after Bush ordered Rumsfeld to prepare a fresh plan for war with Iraq, America learned in December 2001 that its Afghan allies were fighting Al Qaeda forces – including bin Laden – in the mountains of Tora Bora. Rather than commit sufficient American forces for a decisive victory over Al Qaeda, Bush was content to rely on the local Afghan forces to confront bin Laden and his troops. The result was bin Laden and most of his forces slipped away through the mountains.

It appears that Bush was more concerned with settling old scores in Iraq than in eradicating the Al Qaeda threat slipping away in Afghanistan. Bush may have feared that committing sufficient forces to Afghanistan to finish off Al Qaeda would threaten his desired war with Iraq. Bush’s secret plan for war with Iraq became the enemy to an effective war on terror.

Now, I suppose some people might criticize Bush for deciding to march into a war of choice – not necessity – without first engaging in a national debate about whether such an elective war was in our national interests.

Some people are probably going to criticize Bush for making such decisions without involving his own national security adviser and the director of the CIA in the analysis of whether a war with Iraq was wise.

And there are certainly going to be people criticizing Bush for neglecting to finish off Al Qaeda before tying American forces down in an elective war in Iraq.

But, while I believe Bush has been a miserable failure in the war on terror (not to imply that he has not been a miserable failure in any other area), as an open-minded pundit, I must admit that an argument can be made that such criticisms are unfair.

Perhaps it is unfair to criticize Bush for failing to engage in a national debate on whether to go to war with Iraq. After all, as Bush told Woodward, “I knew what would happen if people thought we were developing a potential war plan for Iraq .... [I]t would look like that I was anxious to go to war. And I'm not anxious to go to war.” So Bush was more interested in his image than in democracy. Is that such a big deal?

It probably is unfair to criticize Bush for not involving the Director of the CIA and his own national security adviser in the analysis of whether a war with Iraq was wise. As the Bush administration’s disastrous and bumbling job in trying to pacify Iraq for the past year demonstrates, Bush never engaged in any lengthy analysis before launching his Iraq adventure. Thus, Tenet and Rice weren’t really excluded from much.

And it is certainly unfair to hold Bush to standards – such as wisdom or even minimal competence – that he could never meet. Bush is an incurious, ignorant ideologue who is incapable of thinking strategically or even considering the likely consequences of his acts.

As Bush himself acknowledged in one of his rambling and evasive responses towards the end of Tuesday night’s presidential press conference, “maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be ....”

I guess Bush must have been on his feet when he decided it was more important to invade a marginalized Iraq than to crush the greatest terrorist threat to America.

Thanks to his secret plan, Bush got his war against Iraq, even if it was at the expense of the war on terror.
posted by Gary at 11:26 AM