The Bush Administration continues to promote a Republican
culture of corruption by allowing leaker Karl Rove to roam the White House halls today. To this moment, so far as we know, Rove still has clearance to view national security secrets. Taxpayers are still paying Rove's salary, and he's still at the President's side, day after day.
So what does it take to get fired from the Bush White House? Well, according to the latest standard, don't commit a crime. (Anybody parsing that Nixonian one yet? Sounds like conviction not indictment.) As long as you're not a felon, enjoy the classified reading. Until President Bush changes his mind again. But this list proves that Bush has an evolving standard when it comes to firing.
In part thanks to the Center for American Progress, here are four Firing Offenses....
- Larry Lindsey, a top White House advisor, was fired when he told a newspaper that an Iraq war could cost $200 billion. (The Iraq War has directly cost over $181.5 billion as of today, and $200 billion will be reached by end of summer.)
- "General Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine general who was Bush's Middle East mediator, angered the White House when he told a foreign policy forum in October that Bush had far more pressing foreign policy priorities than Iraq and suggested there could be a prolonged, difficult aftermath to a war. He was not reappointed as Mideast envoy."
- Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill lost his job for disagreeing about Bush's tax cuts.
- General Eric Shinseki was "castrated" in large part because he estimated that the Pentagon would need "several hundred thousand troops" to successfully prosecute the Iraq War.
Those four are notable examples, but there are others. In short, the surest way to get shown the White House door is
not to leak the classified identity of a CIA undercover operative to reporters. It's to
tell the truth, particularly in areas of foreign policy, and particularly when that truth telling might save American lives and assure national security. Lying, especially about national security leaks, is the way to enjoy continued employment, with the utmost in executive protection.