Today's chronicle of the great Zeitgeist Shift that started in January shows Dubya retreating on several foreign policy fronts, amid increasingly aggressive negativity emanating from the punditocracy. The collective headline could be:
Bush Caves.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/7877255.htm
But Bush has had to surrender ground on issues related to his leadership. On Sunday, aides confirmed that Bush would appoint a special commission to investigate intelligence failures in Iraq and elsewhere. The President, who had resisted the idea of an outside investigation, decided to name a panel in the face of pressure for an independent inquiry.
He also backtracked from his previous insistence on adhering to a strict May 27 deadline for a separate investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks. Faced with the possibility that Congress would force his hand, Bush agreed yesterday to give that commission 60 more days to complete its work, pushing the deadline closer to the November election.
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4012.shtml
Sympathy for W's plight is notably absent
<<If George W. Bush weren't such an arrogant horse's ass, you could almost feel sorry for him....... Dubya not only faces an increasingly tough re-election campaign against Democrats who smell blood, he also has a revolt in his own party, led by conservatives who are now saying "see, we told you we could do better."<br>
Poor Dubya? Not really. He deserves everything that is happening to him.>>
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/story_Editorial.php?storyid=55085
Gene L puts in his 2 cents also......
The drop in polls demonstrates damage to Bush's personal credibility - the "good Bush" paradigm
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls.html
Bush's A/D spread tumbles from 11% to 3% in a week
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20040203/5891766s.htm
<<Analysts also agree that the results spotlight vulnerabilities for Bush on the economy, on foreign policy and even on his attributes as a leader, his greatest strength since the terror attacks of 2001. In the end, the most damaging development for Bush may turn out to be the testimony last week by former chief U.S. arms inspector David Kay that intelligence warnings before the war about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were wrong.>>
In summary, the dissolution of Bush's credibility is accelerating, with the media showing much less reticence about attacking him is fairly graphic terms than they did just a month ago.
The Lie Du Jour:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-05-tenet_x.htm
Tenet contradicts Bush on the one key thing - no imminent threat.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&e=2&u=/nm/20040205/ts_nm/bush_dc_2
This was followed by the smoking gun - a virtual admission by Bush that he lied.
Meanwhile, Blair is imploding in parallel by similar statements from MI6
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=afp/britain_iraq_inquiry
Britain's government was forced on the defensive over its pre-war information on Iraq (news - web sites)'s weapons of mass destruction after Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) admitted even he had been in the dark about a key piece of intelligence.
Columns start openly calling Bush a deceitful bully
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/bookman/index.html
back then, the administration was more interested in fear than truth. It began a campaign to force the CIA to toe the company line, a campaign focused in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office. Pressure was exerted in private, including visits by Cheney to cross-examine analysts at CIA headquarters. It took place in public, as well, as mouthpieces in the conservative press attacked the CIA as Saddam-loving apologists. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld even created a whole new intelligence office to reinterpret evidence "overlooked" by the fools at CIA.
Inevitably, the agency gave in, with surrender coming in the form of a letter from Tenet that grudgingly allowed for the possibility of a bin Laden-Saddam link. That was all the administration needed. "Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam," President Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address. "It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."
A similar sequence of events can be traced involving Iraq's nuclear program. The CIA's honest assessment was that "Iraq has probably continued at least low-level theoretical R&D associated with its nuclear program," but little more.
Again, postwar analysis has confirmed the accuracy of that claim, but again, the administration didn't want accuracy. It wanted scary. It cowed the CIA and other agencies into silence, allowing Cheney, Bush and others to warn that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program, had sought to buy uranium, had tried to acquire ways to enrich that uranium. None of that was true, but it served its purpose.
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/elizabeth_sullivan/index.ssf?%2Fbase%2Fopinion%2F107598782
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Hence Bush loses major ground on the MOST NECESSARY lie - that he didn't twist and bully the CIA