WaxWorks
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Friday, April 30, 2004
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Let's Not Forget, As the Search Continues
According to Bob Woodward's book, Bush reportedly expressed skepticism at the intelligence on Iraqi WMD presented to him by George Tenet in December 2002. Let's not forget what his administration said BEFORE that date:
But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors -- including Saddam's own son-in-law, who was subsequently murdered at Saddam's direction. Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon...
Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors -- confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth.
--Dick Cheney, Speech Before the VFW, August 26, 2002
There's no way we could have possibly envisioned that the battlefield would change. And it has. And that's why we've got to deal with all the threats. That's why Americans must understand that when a tyrant like Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction, it not only threatens the neighborhood in which he lives, it not only threatens the region, it can threaten the United States of America, or Great Britain, for that matter. The battlefield has changed. We are in a new kind of war, and we've got to recognize that.
--Bush, Press Conference with Tony Blair, September 7, 2002
John Dean has compiled a nice list of Bush's statements on WMDs from 2002:
Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
--Bush, United Nations Address, September 12, 2002
Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons... We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.
--Bush, Radio Address, October 5, 2002
The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons... We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States.
The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" - his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
--Bush, Cincinnati, Ohio Speech, October 7, 2002
And then, even though there is no evidencfe that the intelligence had not improved since December, we have this:
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
--Bush, Address to the Nation, March 17, 2003
Remember, Clinton was impeached over an affair...
Thursday, April 29, 2004
God Bless the Onion
Bush To Iraqi Militants: 'Please Stop Bringing It On'
WASHINGTON, DC—In an internationally televised statement Monday, President Bush modified a July 2003 challenge to Iraqi militants attacking U.S. forces. "Terrorists, Saddam loyalists, and anti-American insurgents: Please stop bringing it on now," Bush said at a Monday press conference. "Nine months and 500 U.S. casualties ago, I may have invited y'all to bring it on, but as of today, I formally rescind that statement. I would officially like for you to step back." The president added that the "it" Iraqis should stop bringing includes gunfire, bombings, grenade attacks, and suicide missions of all types.
and this too.
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Bush and the National Guard: More Questions
Even I thought this issue had been put to rest. But apparently I was wrong. This article by James C. Moore from Salon.com tells the tale (I've posted most of the relevant parts because the article is for subscribers only):
The president and his staff are doing a very good job of convincing the public he has released all of his National Guard records and that they prove he was responsible during his time in Alabama and Texas. But the critical documents have still not been seen. The mandatory written report about Bush's grounding is mysteriously not in the released file, nor is any other disciplinary evidence. A document showing a "roll-up," or the accumulation of his total retirement points, is also absent, and so are his actual pay stubs. If the president truly wanted to end the conjecture about his time in the Guard, he would allow an examination of his pay stubs and any IRS W-2 forms from his Guard years. These can be pieced together to determine when he was paid and whether he earned enough to have met his sworn obligations...
Bush, who was due to report to his Houston air base for a physical on or before his July 6 birthday, failed to return from Alabama. He was subsequently grounded on orders from Maj. Gen. Francis Greenlief. And this is where the mystery begins.
Taking away a pilot's wings was not a minor decision. During the course of investigating this matter over the past decade, I was told by numerous Guard sources that pilots simply did not skip their physicals for any reason. Bush may have thought this was a good strategy for getting out of his obligation to the Guard. However, there had to be an investigation into his grounding. Normally, a formal board of inquiry would have been convened to examine the pilot's failure to keep his physical status current. At a minimum, a commanding officer would have been expected to write a narrative report on why one of his pilots had been taken off the flight duty roster. Either that report, or the findings of the board of inquiry, would then be sent to the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver and to the Texas Guard headquarters in Austin. A pilot simply did not walk away from all of that training with two years remaining on his tour of duty without a formal explanation as to what happened and why. This narrative report is the document the public has never seen and the Bush White House is unlikely to ever release. Disciplinary action taken against Bush ought to be a part of his personnel record. No such files have ever been disclosed...
Unlike lawyers, journalists pay little attention to concepts like chain of custody for evidence. In the case of the president's Guard records, whoever possessed them and had the motive and opportunity to clean them up is a critical question. When Bush left the Guard about a half year early to attend Harvard Business School, his hard-copy record was retained in a military personnel records jacket at the Austin offices of the Texas Guard. Eventually, those documents were committed to microfiche. A copy of the microfiche was then sent to the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver and the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. Those records are considered private, and they cannot be released to anyone without the signature of the serviceman or woman. The White House has never indicated that Bush has signed the authorization form. And this is what prompts unending suspicion.
The documents given to Washington reporters were printed from one of those two microfiches. According to two separate sources within the Guard who saw the printout and spoke with me, the microfiche was shipped to the office of Maj. Gen. Danny James, commander of the Air National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Va. James' staff printed out all of the documents on the film and then, according to those same sources, James vetted the material. Subsequent to being scrutinized by James (who commanded the Texas Guard and was promoted to Washington by Bush,) the records were then sent to the White House for further scrutiny prior to release to the news media...
Even if Bush had cleared the public viewing of his entire file, he ought not to have shipped it to James for printing and examination. According to Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, who was a strategic planning officer for the Texas National Guard during Bush's gubernatorial administration, James ordered a cleanup of the Bush Guard files in 1997. Burkett said he was waiting outside James' office when he heard a speakerphone conversation between the commander of the Texas Guard and Joe Allbaugh, Bush's chief of staff in Texas. Recounting the conversation, Burkett said he heard Allbaugh tell James to "clean up the governor's files and remove any embarrassments in case he wants to run for reelection or something higher."
"Karen [Hughes] and Danny [Bartlett] are going to be coming out to take a look at this file," Allbaugh said. "They're going to write a book."
In a telephone conversation with me late last year, James denied the conversation ever occurred. Burkett, nonetheless, said James repeated the orders the next morning around the coffee machine while Burkett, James and two other officers were having a conversation. I leaked Burkett's story to the national media shortly after filmmaker Michael Moore described the president as a "deserter" and set off a furor. White House reporters suddenly began asking questions and the Bush administration was compelled to respond. Allbaugh went on NBC News with correspondent Norah O'Donnell and called Burkett "some goober from West Texas."
But Burkett's story fits with what we know.
About 10 days after he overheard the conversation, Burkett said he was led to the museum on Camp Mabry by an old friend, Chief Warrant Officer George Conn. According to Burkett, he and Conn came upon Gen. John Scribner, who was standing next to a 10-gallon gun-metal-gray wastebasket. Scribner had the military personnel records jacket of George W. Bush open in front of him and was sorting through papers it contained.
"What are you doing?" Conn is said to have asked.
"Just going through this," Burkett recalled Scribner answering. "It looks like they are going to have to reconstruct this out of Denver."
In Burkett's recollection of this meeting, Conn took Scribner aside to talk and Burkett went through papers that had been placed in the trash. He said he saw critical documents, such as retirement and cumulative-points records, being discarded. He was unable to determine if the report on Bush's grounding was in the trash.
Scribner, who is now retired, refused to take questions from me. However, when the story broke nationally, he denied the incident.
"I have no memory of anything like that taking place," he said.
Burkett, though, had already taken up his claims about the Bush file cleansing in official channels, and there was earlier evidence to corroborate his claims. He had written a letter to Texas State Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, and, in testimony before legislators, spoke of numerous irregularities in the Texas National Guard. But no one wanted to hear it. The hometown boy, George W. Bush, was running for president, and everyone was getting on the bus.
A few years later, Dave Moniz of USA Today spoke with Burkett about allegations that the lieutenant colonel had witnessed a senior official at the Guard removing documents from Bush's military personnel records jacket. Burkett again said the papers bearing Bush's name were being dropped into a wastebasket. Conn, in interviews with Moniz, confirmed Burkett's description of events for the paper. For whatever reason, Moniz's editors chose not to run the story.
The key to proving Burkett's allegations was Conn. I contacted him in Europe via e-mail. He was nonresponsive to my inquiries. Conn did, however, offer a character reference on Burkett to Ralph Blumenthal of the New York Times, which described Burkett as truthful and honorable. Conn wasn't the only one who felt that way. Harvey Gough, another Texas Guard officer, recalled being told about the Bush file incident by Burkett right after it happened, and several others within the Guard attested to Burkett's integrity. Conn, in fact, had stuck by Burkett throughout his Texas senate testimony on Guard malfeasance, in his letter to the state senator, and while serving as a source for USA Today's eventual report. In seven years, Burkett's story has never changed. The only thing new is Conn's failure to support his friend. Why?
Conn is a civilian employee of the U.S. Army in Germany. The White House can pull any number of levers to influence his comments. Conn, undoubtedly, had reason to worry about his employment if he stuck by Burkett. Burkett, however, understands what he is confronting. He still considers Conn a friend. "But I can't expect him to give up his life for me over this," Burkett told me.
In an interview with the Boston Globe, Conn said Burkett's memory was inaccurate and no such encounter had ever happened. Reporter Michael Rezendes failed to explore why Conn may have decided not to back up Burkett. In a half hour conversation with me, Rezendes ended up using one terse quote in his piece where I described the standoff as a classic "he said, she said." He did not tell his readers all of the people I interviewed about Burkett's claims. Rezendes' piece was ultimately posted on the Bush/Cheney campaign Web site because it did such an effective job of discrediting Burkett.
A writer's job includes connecting the pieces. I told Rezendes that a combination of facts made Burkett's story believable. Reporters had discovered there were documents missing from the Bush file in Austin. Combine that fact with Karl Rove's history of deceptive political tactics, Burkett's impeccable reputation as an officer and a man, and his story is worth telling, even after Conn withdrew his affirmation of events. The information speaks for itself, and rather loudly. Burkett is in poor health, living on the edge of the desert in West Texas, and trying to enjoy his retirement after 28 years of service in the National Guard. His wife was an organizer in the state for Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Burkett is uncomfortable on camera, and, as a result of a virus contracted while on duty in Panama, is subject to physical collapse. This is hardly the profile of a man who would choose to make up a story and take on the White House.
Burkett's story about the manipulation of Bush's "retained record" has never changed nor has he ever wavered in its retelling. And the "retained record" of Bush's time in the Texas National Guard is what reporters were using to write their first stories on the presidential candidate. If it had been cleaned up, as Burkett alleged, the only place to find the complete file would be on the microfiche. This is undoubtedly why the president has not simply ordered the entire file printed out and released without restriction to news media outlets. The paper records, which may explain the grounding and prove the president did not serve sufficient time to meet his legal obligation to the Guard, have likely been removed from the Austin files. But the microfiche has the whole truth, and that's why its dissemination is being controlled.
I guess the next thing is for Bush to sign a release, and allow us to see the whole contents of the microfiche. Otherwise, all this talk about Kerry would be pretty hyprocritcal, no?
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Nurse Ratchet
A few words about Karen Hughes, chief fiction-writer for the Bush Administration. Hughes has gotten a very soft ride in the media, despite her repeated lies and exaggerations, not to mention just making stuff up, all in the name of creating a fictious image of Bush. I'll let Tucker Carlson, no-lefty himself, take it away, discussing the flak he got from Hughes about a profile he did about Bush in 1999 for Talk magazine:
Q: What about your profile of George W. Bush in Talk in 1999? That had to be the most damaging profile of him yet written -- swearing like a truck driver, making fun of Karla Faye Tucker's death penalty appeals, mimicking her saying, "Don't kill me!" -- because of its high profile, and because of your access to him. Did that bring you flak from conservatives?
Carlson: Well, it's always disconcerting when something you write is received in a way you don't expect. I have no problem hurting someone's feelings -- obviously, I work on "Crossfire" -- but when you don't expect to, it's disconcerting. As I put in the book, the day before I filed the piece my wife asked, "Aren't people going to think you're sucking up?" And that was my concern, that people would think it's a suck-up piece.
Q: And the response from team Bush?
Carlson: It was very, very hostile. The reaction was: You betrayed us. Well, I was never there as a partisan to begin with.
Then I heard that [on the campaign bus, Bush communications director] Karen Hughes accused me of lying. And so I called Karen and asked her why she was saying this, and she had this almost Orwellian rap that she laid on me about how things she'd heard -- that I watched her hear -- she in fact had never heard, and she'd never heard Bush use profanity ever. It was insane.
I've obviously been lied to a lot by campaign operatives, but the striking thing about the way she lied was she knew I knew she was lying, and she did it anyway. There is no word in English that captures that. It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness.
They get carried away, consultants do, in the heat of the campaign, they're really invested in this. A lot of times they really like the candidate. That's all conventional. But on some level, you think, there's a hint of recognition that there is reality -- even if they don't recognize reality exists -- there is an objective truth. With Karen you didn't get that sense at all. A lot of people like her. A lot of people I know like her. I'm not one of them.
Leave No Man Behind
Great new ad by Moveon.org comparing the Vietnam service of Bush and Kerry. My favorite part is the clip of the pilot kicking his feet in the air and I love the grainy, Boogie Nights-eque film quality evoking the '70s.
I'm not an election lawyer, but does this skirt the line pretty close on the "independent" nature of the 527s? I was always of the view that these groups could hammer Bush all they wanted, but once they advocated Kerry, they were crossing the line. Anybody know?
First Thoughts
I'm only about 5 pages into the Woodward book, and already things are popping out, driving me nuts.
First, it's amazing to me the lengths that Rove, Hughes, Bush, Cheney and Co. will go to keep up the fiction that Bush is the strong leader in this White House. Occasionally, the cracks show through and Woodward subtly picks up on it. Bush tells Woodward about the November 21, 2001 meeting that he had with Rumsfeld where he asks Rummy to begin drawing up plans for an invasion of Iraq, and Bush clearly paints the scene as if he is a strong war leader, alone coming to this decision in order to protect his people. Woodward notes, however, "In the interviews the president said he could not recall if he had talked to Vice President Cheney before he took Rumsfeld aside." Yet, in the next paragraph, Woodward's own skepticism about this statement shows through as he recounts how Bush told him that he meets with Cheney constantly during the day and Cheney has full access to him at all times. And Woodward makes it clear that Cheney was driving the Iraq invasion -- Cheney was absolutely obsessed with it. The idea that Bush didn't discuss this with Cheney before going to Rumsfeld is so fantastic that it's amazing Bush would even try to suggest it. That's how important this fiction is to the White House, and also how transparent it is, since Woodward clearly didn't buy it.
I'm also struck with how much this book confirms the veracity of Richard Clarke's book. Before the inauguration, Woodward writes that Cheney decides Bush should get a briefing from the outgoing Secretary of Defense William Cohen on what Cheney thought was the most important national security issue: Iraq. (Interesting that Cheney should decide this for Bush, huh?) Woodward reports that Cheney falls asleep during this briefing. Some people have pointed to the fact that this shows that Bush was in charge, but I interpret this differently. To me, it reinforces the idea that Cheney had already made up his mind about how to deal with Iraq that he didn't need to hear anything else on the subject.
Oh, by the way, Woodward writes that Bush received a second critical national security brief a few days later from George Tenet, on what Tenet thought were the three major threats to American national security. No. 1 was .... surprise, surprise... Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. #2 was the increasing threat of WMD and #3 was China. Iraq, Woodward writes, was barely mentioned.
As long as the Bush Campaign is keeping the Woodward book on its list of recommended reading, someone owes Richard Clarke a big apology.
Monday, April 26, 2004
Food for Thought
Guess who said this:
If Reagan "doesn't really cut defense, he becomes the No. 1 special pleader in town...The severity of the deficit is great enough that the president has to reach out and take a whack at everything to be credible...If you're going to rule out the other two [Social Security cuts and a tax increase], then you've got to hit defense."
Why, it's Dick Cheney, quoted in the Washington Post, 12/16/84.
And here's another gem:
FEBRUARY 1, 1990, THURSDAY
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING
SEC. CHENEY:[Introductory remarks omitted]
To give a quick history, Mr. Chairman, since I became Secretary last spring, we've been through a fairly major process of reducing the defense budget. In the package that we submitted last spring that I think was approved in broad outlines by Congress, we cut almost $65 billion out of the five-year defense program. The package that we're submitting today for '91 involves taking another $167 billion out of the defense program, for a total of about 231 billion [dollars]. That's roughly the difference between the Reagan line in January of '89 and the Bush line that's being submitted in January of '90.
The Defense Management Report contains reductions of 39 billion [dollars]. That's part of the 167 [billion dollars] above it. And the reductions in '91 amount to about $22 billion. Now, that is computed based upon taking the program that Congress approved for '90, just last year, running it into '91 -- that's 28 divisions for the Army, the 561 ships for the Navy, the B-2, and all of the other problems that were authorized in the budget by the Congress for Fiscal Year '90 -- and pricing them in '91; comes to about $317 billion. We're submitting a request for budget authority of 295 [billion dollars] -- roughly a $22 billion reduction in '91 numbers.
Something to mull over as the Bush Campaign attacks Kerry as weak on defense...
(Thanks to Atrios.)
If We're Talking About Truth About Medals, How About This?
Russert: This is what John Kerry had to say last year. He said that his colleagues are appalled at the quote "President's lack of knowledge. They've managed him the same way they've managed Ronald Reagan. They send him out to the press for one event a day. They put him in a brown jacket and jeans and get him to move some hay or move a truck, and all of a sudden he's the Marlboro Man. I know this guy. He was two years behind me at Yale. I knew him, and he's still the same guy.”
Did you know him at Yale?
President Bush: No.
--Meet the Press, February 8, 2004
Thanks to an exhaustively reported Boston Globe biography of Sen. John Kerry, we now know what he and President Bush talked about during a brief encounter at Yale. Neither recalls the chat, but Kerry pal David Thorne was there. No, the talk wasn't about girls or sports. He said that Bush "engaged Kerry" on the hot topic of busing--interesting since Kerry allies portray Bush as an intellectual midget. "I just remember fairly vividly," said Thorne, "they were having a conversation about busing. John had been participating in busing stuff, but George was very conservatively placed and thought it was a crazy idea."
--U.S. News and World Report, "Washington Whispers," May 3, 2004
A Matter of Degree
Well, now the Republicans are trying to drudge up a scandal, claiming that Kerry "lied" about whether or not he ever previously said he had thrown away his medals in the 1970s, as opposed to his ribbons.
And this is getting play with ABC News.
Yeah, I guess that's a pretty important issue, along the lines of whether or not someone was telling the truth when he denied having an affair with an intern out of fear of embarassment.
Now the issue of lying in order to commit our troops to war? Or the issue of lying about whether or not we were adequately focused on protecting our nation from terrorism pre-9/11, despite ample warnings? Or lying about outing an undercover CIA operative? Or lying about an election-year deal about gas prices? Or lying about the cost estimates for a new entitlement program?
C'mon, the media doesn't need to worry about those things. The public doesn't care. But whether or not someone said that they threw away medals only to later deny it? That's the kind of pressing issue the country needs to know about to decide our highest elected office.
