No, not the editorial board of course, but in today's (8/15/05) Chicago Tribune, the paper's Perspective section offers a veritable buffet of cogent, well-argued Bush bashing.
Out of six op-ed essays, only one (by an associate of the Heritage Foundation) offers anything positive to say about Bush, Iraq, or the Roberts nomination.
Below the fold I've provided some capsule summaries, quotes, and links. Definitely worth reading.
Of course, the paper's editorial board continues blindly on in its support for Chimpy McFlightsuit, apparently refusing to read its own paper. As I posted elsewhere earlier tonight, it would be difficult for them to read anything, what with wearing rose colored glasses and having their heads situated firmly up their asses.
In a piece titled
Measuring The President, Charles W. Murdock, professor at Loyola University School of Law writes:
A colleague recently reminded me that, after the 2004 election, I had remarked that President Bush will go down in history either as one of our greatest presidents or one of the worst. He asked whether I still held that somewhat paradoxical view. My response was that events could tip the story either way, but they now seem to be working against the president.
Murdock goes on to indicate why:
There is growing agreement that we went to war on a false premise that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that we went with too few troops. What if the former undermines our credibility in getting other governments to support us in pressuring Iran and North Korea, which either have nuclear weapons or are moving toward that objective, to come to the negotiating table?
...What if the Iraq invasion has radicalized tens of thousands more Muslims, not just in the Middle East, but in Europe and the United States, leading to terrorists attacks and suicide bombings in this country as well as England?
... What if the combination of misstatements about the Iraq war and the economy, coupled with the conviction of Karl Rove for obstruction of justice, led to a crisis of confidence in government and calls for the impeachment of President Bush?
...the darker scenario is no longer pure fantasy.
... Democrats have been criticized for not proposing a solution for Iraq. But there is no good solution now that we have gone to war and botched it.
... Not securing Hussein's stockpiles of weapons was beyond incompetent.
...the refusal of the Bush administration to deal with security at chemical and nuclear facilities and to reroute trainloads of hazardous chemicals around densely populated areas. Corporate profits seem more important than security.
Then, in a piece titled simply Prediction, retired Army colonel E.W. Chamberlain III writes
We will be out of Iraq before the congressional election of 2006. We'll either be completely out or well on our way out with a specified end date.
... A Republican-dominated Congress will force the president to end the war as a demonstration of their power, or they will lose their ascendancy as the Democrats use the war and its costs and lack of tangible success as a rallying cry in the 2006 elections. The Democrats would be foolish not to.
In his predictions for a postwar Iraq, the writer is chilling:
Probably even before the U.S. withdraws, the "democratically elected" Shiite government in Iraq will be aligned rapidly with Iran and will receive open and massive support. The Saudi Arabian government will continue to support the Sunni insurgency, as it does today, but the support will become open.
... The remnants of the Sunni insurgency will flee to Saudi Arabia. There they will foment discord because the Saudi royal family did not do enough and allowed the Sunnis to be defeated in Iraq. The royal family will be overthrown in a violent revolution in Saudi Arabia led by Sunni clerics who long have chafed under the pro-Western rule of the House of Saud. The Sunni clerics will emerge as the dominant power in Saudi Arabia. Americans and all other Westerners will be killed or, at best, ejected from Saudi Arabia, which has enough native petrochemical engineers and knowledgeable oil field workers, and can find other non-Westerners to run the oil fields. No Westerner need apply.
Of course, we need not fear another attack here at home from Osama bin Laden as all this occurs, because he will have fulfilled his fatwa. The only thing bin Laden ever said he was after was to remove the Westerners from Saudi Arabia, the Land of the Holy Places. This will be done when the clerics assume control of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden will win the war on terrorism by achieving his goals with our unwitting help.
In Iraq Fallout, Dennis Jett, who is dean of the University Of Florida International Center and a former U.S. ambassador to Peru and Mozambique writes
Nearly half the American people have figured out something that President Bush cannot admit: The war in Iraq is hurting, not helping, the war on terrorism.
... A better understanding of the impact of the war can be found in the comics than in some parts of Washington. In a recent "Doonesbury," journalist Roland Hedley asks a hooded jihadist whether he would concede that by fighting in Iraq, Americans would not have to fight the terrorists on our own streets. The terrorist responds "the war in Iraq is such a godsend for us. It's the greatest recruiting tool in the history of terrorism."
... The administration is at least consistent in its tone-deafness to the reaction to its policies. It refuses to consider closing the detention center at Guantanamo even though it has become another symbol and rallying cry for anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world.
... Bush is the first president in 175 years to have gone a full term without casting a veto. What kind of impression would it have abroad if his first use of the veto was to strike down a bill simply because it contained a provision prohibiting torture and violations of our treaty obligations?
... The president must stick with his argument that fighting in Iraq is helping the war on terrorism for a simple reason: He has run out of rationales for his invasion. The weapons of mass destruction did not exist, and UN inspections and sanctions had contained Hussein's ambitions to acquire them. There were no significant ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda under Hussein, but there sure are now.
So even though there were also no links between Iraq and Sept. 11, the president has to keep invoking memories of that day. His only hope is to scare the American people into continuing to believe he has chosen the best course, even though all the evidence is to the contrary.
Michael Tackett, the Tribune's Washington Bureau Chief, reminds us of how nearly four years ago Bush used an executive order to effectively kill the Presidential Records Act of 1978, effectively shielding much of his administration from public scrutiny of their actions as part of his father's administration.
Read another way, it also shielded the public and the Senate (which might be called upon to confirm a presidential appointee) from having the full picture of a nominee's background.
...It now seems to have been precisely the president's intent. The White House is refusing to release all the documents related to the government service of Bush's first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, federal Appeals Judge John Roberts.
And finally, Clarence Page poses some questions he'd like to ask Bush if Dubya would grant him the type of meeting he's denying Cindy Shehan. This has been diaried elsewhere so I won't excerpt from it.
But go read these. No, as a member of this site you won't find much that you haven't known for a couple of years, but you may just have your breath taken away a bit by the brutal forthrightness of some of these writers, especially considering their high profile in a bastion of the RWCM