One of the best and most comprehensive indictments of our failed president is Eric Alterman and Mark Green's "
The Book on Bush". Yes, it is a couple of years old, but if you've been following this bunch of clowns, you know that most critiques of this administration are timeless. Watching Republicans try to run the government, conduct a war or respond to a disaster is like watching "Groundhog Day".
Like Alterman's earlier "What Liberal Media?" this book is extensively researched and filled with damning details. For example, all the stuff that really came to everyone's attention as a result of Richard Clarke's book and his testimony before the 9/11 panel is right there, chapter and verse, in "The Book on Bush", written and released months earlier.
More below the fold, including a very long excerpt describing Bush's simplistic and damaging approach to foreign policy...
Of course, the authors go further into chilling detail, like in this passage about the terror warnings put out by the administration shortly after 9/11:
Recall for a moment the degree of panic Americans experienced in the fall of 2001 following the initial attacks. In early October, the first of at least five envelopes containing deadly anthrax was opened at news organizations in New York and Miami. More mailings arrived at Capitol Hill later that month. Simultaneously, the media reported on possible al Qaeda plots to launch a "dirty bomb", or radiological weapon, in Washington, D.C. Twice that October the attorney general and FBI director went on national television to warn about the possibility of additional attacks.
With alarming consistency administration figures terrified Americans with near-certain, but curiously vague, warnings about upcoming attacks. Vice President Cheney explained that such an attack was "almost a certainty" and "not a matter of if but when". [...]
US authorities issued separate warnings that al Qaeda might be planning to target apartment buildings nationwide, banks, rail and transit systems, the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge. As a Time writer noted of the fearmongering: "Though uncorroborated and vague the terror alerts were a political godsend for an administration trying to fend off a bruising bipartisan inquiry into its handling of the terrorist chatter last summer. After the wave of warnings, the Democratic clamor for an investigation into the government's mistakes subsided."
Makes you wonder what they'll try to do this time to shut down the investigation into Plame or the eavesdropping case or (you name it). You know they haven't exhausted all of their options yet. Not nearly. Alterman continues on the credibilty of the warnings:
Indeed, the national security historian John Prados found "ample reason to suspect that some of these recent warnings of terrorist threats have been made for political purposes." In the case of alleged "dirty bomber" Abdullah al Muhajir -- a former Chicago gang member who was born Jose Padilla -- Prados notes that the subject was apprehended on May 8. "A desire to allay public fears should have led to an immediate announcement of the arrest. Instead the act was kept secret, allowing Donald Rumsfeld to have his cake and eat it too: The administration could raise the specter of al Qaeda nuclear attacks while not revealing that the man who constituted the threat was already in custody. Thus the arrest was only revealed when it offered maximum opportunity for turning attention away from inquiries into what went wrong before 9-11."
I know, I know, shocking stuff. The Bush administration actually putting politics above what's good for the country. Whodathunkit? Then there's the recklessness of the war itself, ostensibly fought to make America safer, but the intelligence we had suggested that invading Iraq would only put us in more danger and make desperate actions by Saddam more likely. As it was, he was contained. Not a happy ending, but it worked for a long time. Bush was so eager to kick some ass, though, that he avoided obvious precautions:
Before the war began, according to a secret report released by the White House as part of its postwar propaganda offensive, the CIA and other agencies were perhaps most concerned with the danger that Iraq "probably would attempt clandestine attacks against the U.S. homeland if Baghdad feared an attack." The agency even believed that Hussein was likely to use biological weapons in this case and had instructed his intelligence service to do so. The Bushites went ahead with the war anyway, leading one to the conclusion that either they did not believe their own intelligence reports or they were so committed to attacking Iraq that they were willing to risk the possibility of biological attacks against the United States in order to achieve their aim.
Reckless. Malign. Dishonest. Mean. Divisive. Cynical. Corrupt. That's the kind of administration in charge of this country right now. It is supremely amazing to witness the contempt they hold for the American people, especially the Moron Americans who still support them.
Finally, we get to my favorite extended passage, a summary of Bush's governing style. This really jumped out at me while I was reading the book, and it is a great example of why this book is still worth looking for and reading:
Bush's own aides believed that the president had "shown little interest in the details of the complex disputes in the [Middle East] region" and demonstrated "a viscerally negative reaction when officials try to delve deeply into issues."
The foundational belief for Bush's impressive self-confidence appears to lie in his personal belief -- following a bout of near alcoholism and a born-again religious experience -- that his decisions are divinely inspired. Commerce Secretary Don Evans, perhaps the president's closest friend, echoes a remark frequently made by speechwriter Michael Gerson, that Bush believes "he was called by God to lead the nation."
David Gergen, who served in four separate White Houses and was close to many in the Bush White House, would also observe, two years into the Bush presidency, that the occupant of the Oval Office believe he "somehow may be an instrument of Providence, that part of what he's on is a mission that has some sort of theological roots." [...]
David Frum, author of an almost worshipful memoir of his brief tenure as a White House speechwriter, could not help but admit that his hero was nevertheless "dogmatic; often uncurious and as a result ill-informed." (Frum also notes that during his time in the White House, "attendance at Bible study was, if not compulsory, not quite uncompulsory.") In the view of Richard Brookheiser, another Bush-admiring conservative intellectual, "Bush's faith means that he does not tolerate, or even recognize, ambiguity: there is an all-knowing God who decrees certain behaviors, and leaders must obey." His decisions, therefore, are limited by what Brookheiser generously terms these "strictly defined mental horizons." [...]
The final quality Bush manifested in foreign policy might be termed the "good man" syndrome. In Bushworld, foreign leaders -- and for that matter, nearly everyone, women included -- fell into the category of either "good man" or "evildoer," with little differentiation beyond that. "Good men" had "no hatred in their hearts" and could be trusted to be "with us." "Non-good men" could not, and hence were understood to be on the side of the "evildoers." In many cases, it didn't seem to matter whether a "good man" had any demonstrable positive qualities -- whether a commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights -- so long as he professed a belief in a higher power and distanced himself, if only rhetorically, from other evildoers.
One of the most remarkable demonstrations of this doctrine came in summer 2001 upon Bush's first meeting with Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB chief and elected strongman of Russia, who was, at the time, in the process of conducting a brutal war against separatists in Chechnya and attempting to wipe out his internal opposition and vestiges of a free press. Bush announced to the world that he fully trusted the former spymaster because "When I looked at him, I felt like he was shooting straight with me." Bush claimed to have gotten a sense of Putin's "soul" and found the former KGB boss a "remarkable leader" and an "honest, straightforward man ... who loves his family" and professed a sincere belief in God. [...]
When Bush wasn't feeling very affectionate, he would practice the politics of personal pique. In fall 2002, for instance, at the summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, Bush grew impatient with Mexican president Vicente Fox, who was withholding his support for Bush's plans to invade Iraq, in conjunction with the view of 80 percent of his nation. During the planned joint press conference, Bush "glowered during Fox's windup and looked annoyed at the unruliness of the camera crews," according to a Washington Post report. "The last straw was when a cell phone went off, which infuriates Bush ... In a breach of protocol, Bush cut off the translator before Fox's answers could be rendered into English" and walked away.
Bush threw another of these fits at a joint press conference with French president Jacques Chirac, though this time it was directed at a journalist, NBC's David Gregory, who had the temerity to ask a foreign leader a question in his own language -- just as most foreign reporters courteously did for Mr. bush. In this instance, the leader of the Free World whined, "Very good, the guy memorizes four words, and he plays like he's an intercontinental. I'm impressed. Que bueno. Now I'm literate in two languages."
Those were hardly isolated incidents, for Bush's feelings about other leaders seemed to be among the most important determinants of U. S. foreign policy. He refused to congratulate German chancellor Gerhard Schroder on his election victory because he did not like the way the campaign had been run, and would not speak to Schroder when he called to offer his congratulations following the 2002 Republican electoral victory. When Bush traveled to Evian, France, for a Western summit in spring 2003, his spokespeople let it be known that he had no intention of speaking to the leaders of Germany or France.
The post-Iraq policy, as Ms. Rice allegedly defined it, was "Punish France, isolate Germany, forgive Russia." Alas, as the pundit Anne Applebaum noted at the time, the policy made no sense whatever, even on its own terms of childlike pique: "Not only did the Russians support the French during the prewar squabbles at the United Nations, but a pair of Russian generals may also have advised Saddam Hussein, and Russian tracking equipment may have been used in the defense of Baghdad."
"As the president sees it, Putin was led astray by bad companions," a "top official" told a Wall Street Journal reporter. [...]
Bush once found himself confronted by a series of photographs of wounded Palestinian children by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Bush reportedly cried out, "I want peace. I don't want to see any people killed on both sides. I think God loves me. I think God loves the Palestinians. I think God loves the Israelis. We cannot allow this to continue." He then grabbed the hands of his guests and asked them to join him in prayer, as both sides looked on in an apparent state of shock.
But while God may have loved both the Israelis and the Palestinians as His children, Bush loved only the former. Or rater, only Israel was represented in Mr. Bush's eyes by a "good man" -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whom Bush deemed to be a "man of peace." As a result, Sharon, like Mr. Putin, was given a free hand to defy Bush's wishes and deal with his enemies however he saw fit, irrespective of God's purported affections. Virtually all the progress made toward peace under the Clinton administration dissipated as a result.
Bush's apparent belief in his own divinely inspired infallibility is enforced within the administration to meet any contingency, which means the president is never to blame for anything unfortunate that happens on his watch. If an "evildoer" cannot be found to blame, a scapegoat is always at hand -- together with an official denial that anyone associated with Bush would ever even imagine employing scapegoat tactics.
On the Middle East question, for instance, Bush's spokesperson, Ari Fleischer, went so far in February 2002 as to try to praise his own boss's inaction by blaming ex-president Clinton's energetic peacemaking efforts for the recent outbreak of murderous violence there. "You can make the case that in an attempt to shoot the moon and get nothing, more violence resulted," Fleischer explained to inquiring reporters. "That as a result of an attempt to push the parties beyond where they were willing to go, that it led to expectations that were raised to such a high level that it turned into violence." Fleischer was eventually forced to apologize for this statement, but his boss never did.
It never ceases to amaze me that the election of 2004 was even close enough for them to steal Ohio and win. Impeachment would be too kind. I sometimes wonder idly if, in his retirement, Bush will ever feel any sort of sense of shame. His supporters might (it is already happening), but even as they peel away little by little over the years and Bush's horrible legacy goes into the history books, I have a feeling this guy will never feel any regrets.