Bush Report: No Interest in Asking

This is from Bob Woodward's book, State of Denial, from which I have previously quoted (June 14th.) This is from Chapter 22. David Kay, who was put in charge of finding the WMD in Iraq after General James "Spider" Marks couldn't find anything, had a meeting at the White House in which he told Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Rice that he hadn't been able to find any evidence of WMD either. Bush told him to keep looking.

"Kay left the meeting shocked at Bush's lack of inquisitiveness. Kay had a PhD, had taught at high levels and was used to being asked challenging, aggressive questions. A lot of the trauma in getting a graduate degree is surviving the environment of doubt, skepticism and challenge.

"'He (Bush) trusted me more than I trusted me,'Kay later recalled. 'If the positions had been reversed and this is primarily personality, I think I would have probed. I would have said, 'What have you done? What haven't you done? Why haven't you done it? ' You know, 'Are you getting the support of the Department of Defense?' The soft spots. He didn't do it.'"

Interestingly, this is exactly the reaction Paul O'Neill, the first treasury secretary had after his first meeting with Bush.

Jack Report: Celebrating the Summer Solstice in Philadelphia

If you live in the Philadelphia area, you really should go to the Summer Solstice Party starting at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday and continuing until 5:00 a.m. on Sunday. My favorite string quartet, the Jack Quartet, is playing at 8:30 p.m. at the Kimmel Center.

Bush Report: Tempting Faith

David Kuo is a conservative Christian who has worked for a number of right wing icons, such as the author and pundit,William Bennett, former Senator and Attorney General, John Ashcroft, and as a
speechwriter for the president, George W. Bush. After Bush was elected in 2000, Kuo worked in the White House as a special assistant and as deputy director of the Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives. Kuo's boss in the White House was John Dilulio, who spilled the beans about the crass politics of the top Bush people (he called them "Mayberry Machiavellis") in an October, 2002 letter to an Esquire Magazine writer.

Kuo's 2006 book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, is yet another of the books I have been reading from Bush insiders whose consciences have forced them to tell the truth, while I'm waiting for Scott McClellan's book to become available. In fairness, Kuo continues to admire Bush as a person; he just thinks his administration was a failure. Here is what he has to say from pgs. 227-229:

"During the 2000 campaign, a communications guy had come up with the idea to have short slogans placed on a screen behind the president at every appearance. It continued once he took office. For faith-based speeches, for instance, there was typically a blue screen with light blue letters spelling 'Compassion in Action.' Even someone with the news on mute understood what the speech was about. There was also the visual. Concern about the scenery or setting behind the president was hardly new to our press shop. What was new were the former TV news and entertainment producers who worked tirelessly on the lighting and setting to appeal equally to those who glanced at the TV and those really watching.

"Keeping the media busy was easier. They were fed a constant barrage of little announcements with big ones sprinkled in. The big ones were then quickly followed by more little announcements. There wasn't any letup. Also, because the communications shop kept reporters at arms length, the reporters didn't get the inside information or tips to give them a heads up for what was coming next. Already struggling reporters were always behind.

"The approach allowed the White House to make grand announcements and then do nothing to implement them with impunity. Nowhere was this clearer than in compassion announcements. In May, 2001, for instance, the president announced a new $3 billion drug treatment initiative. By December 2003 not a dime had been spent. The 2003 State of the Union address announced our three programs -- but they promptly disappeared. Two years later, the president announced yet another new program to help prevent teen violence. It was touted as a $100 million program. That "$100 million," however, was to be pulled out of the already dramatically underfunded Compassion Capital Fund. It was a mirage. (And one that continues: Whatever became of President Bush's three enormous promises after Hurricane Katrina? It is easy to remember his speech, in short sleeves in New Orleans, with that old building lit up behind him .. . . but anything else?)

"I had been around politics long enough not to be shocked. The announcements were smart politics because absolutely no one called them on anything (with the exception of the infamous 'Mission Accomplished' banner when the president declared the Iraq War essentially over.) As a Christian, however, what appalled me was that this was occuring under the aegis of both the president's faith and his heartfelt plea to "restore honor and dignity" to the White House. It wasn't about honor or dignity, it was raw politics of the sort that old-time political bosses would applaud. Even sadder, the Christian community that elected George W. Bush didn't see any of this. They couldn't; they trusted their Christian brother too much.

"Christians trust their Christian president. This is true of their evangelical political leadership. But of greater consequence, for Christian moms who home-school their kids and Christian dads coaching soccer and everyone who follows the Dobsons and Robertsons and Falwells, George W. Bush can really do no wrong. They assume that since he professes Jesus that he won't do the kinds of things other politicians have done -- break promises, cover up mistakes, parse words, say half truths, be a politician. They figure he has surrounded himself with a staff full of other evangelicals, to provide him with fellowship and accountability. That, after all, is the image carefully conveyed to them through religious surrogates.

"They would be wrong on all fronts. George W. Bush loves Jesus. He is a good man. But he is a politician, a very smart and shrewd politician. And if the faith-based initiative was teaching me anything, it was about the president's capacity to care about perception more than reality. He wanted it to look good. He cared less about it being good."

McCain Report: In His Own Words

Want more of the same? Vote John McCain

Bush Report: State of Denial

This is a quote from Bob Woodword's book on the Bush White House, State of Denial, which I'm listening to in my car. (I've only had a few near misses from trying to write down quotes while trying to stay in my lane. So far, so good.)

"White House spokesman, Ari Fleisher, said on September 5, 2002, 'The President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it.' Fleischer announced again on January 9, 2003, 'We know for a fact that there are weapons of mass destruction there.' In his weekly radio address on February 8, Bush said, '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.'"

Meanwhile, the man in charge of searching for WMD, U.S. Army General James “Spider” Marks, was frustrated at how little information he had.

"The intelligence they had on the WMD just wasn't good enough. This is unsat(isfactory), unsat, unsat!' he said. 'This is not working.'"

Marks was told there were 946 sites in Iraq that had WMD and his men were supposed to go in and find and neutralize them, but there were given practically no specifics about what they were supposed to find. Maybe not surprising, since they found nothing; nada; zip. Maybe the guys in the Pentagon already knew what we all found out too late; the WMD was a big hoax. Marks has said in an interview with CQ, in 2006 that the people in the Pentagon responsible for planning the Iraq invasion "ostensibly" cared about WMD, but their "give-a-shit level was really low."

Want another 100 years of the same? Vote McCain.

Groceries Report: Words You Will Never Hear From My Lips

Overheard at our local Aldi's this morning:

"Honey, do ya want the che-ese pu-uffs or the che-ese cu-rls?"
"The che-ese cu-rls."

(Not that my purchases were all completely pure. I just have different sins.)

Bush Report: "They haven't thought this through"

More from Paul O'Neill, George W. Bush's treasury secretary, close personal friends of Cheney and Rumsfeld before he joined the Bush administration and became disillusioned at their way of governing. This is O'Neill talking about the run up to the Iraq invasion, (from pages 327-328):

"O'Neill who had sat through scores of NSC meetings was deeply fearful about the United States 'grabbing a python by the tail, by dropping a hundred thousand troops into the middle of twenty-four million Iraqis and an Arab world of one billion Muslims. Trust me, they haven't thought this through,' he said. He was still hoping there would be 'a real evidentiary hearing and a genuine debate' before troops were committed. He knew that it wasn't likely."

Experience anyone? If you want more of the same, vote McCain.

Bush Report: The Price of Loyalty

You may recall that while waiting for the library's copy of Scott McClellan's astonishing mea culpa about his lies as George W. Bush's press secretary, I have been reading accounts by other Bush Administration insiders about what has really been going on for the last eight years. Today's excerpt is from Ron Suskind's biography of Paul O'Neill, Bush's first treasury secretary. The book, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill, was written with the cooperation and approval of O'Neill, a life-long Republican, an old friend of Dick Cheney; hardly a left-wing liberal looking to take potshots at the Bush Administration.

At pages 57-58 of the book, O'Neill tells about a meeting he had with Bush on the afternoon of Wednesday, January 24, 2001, the third day of the Bush Administration. He had prepared a memo about economic policy and sent it to the White House in advance of the meeting. O'Neill thought they would talk about the memo and then discuss whatever came up. He started out with a 15-minute overview on the state of the economy; Bush didn't say anything, so he talked about proposed tax cuts. O'Neill expected about a dozen questions and was ready with the answers, but, "Bush didn't ask anything. He looked at O'Neill, not changing his expression, not letting on that he had any reactions -- either positive or negative."

So, O'Neill moved on to related matters: tariffs and free trade. "The President said nothing. No change in expression. Next subject."

"I wondered, from the first, if the President didn't know the questions to ask," O'Neill recalled, "or did he know and just not want to know the answers? Or did his strategy somehow involve never showing what he thought? But you can ask questions, gather information, and not necessarily show your hand. It was strange."

Not until O'Neill started talking about Bush's "No Child Left Behind," program, did Bush say anything. When O'Neill said, "There's nothing more important than nurturing our human potential as a nation -- our future depends on it," Bush shifted in his wing-back chair and said, "Right, that's the concept of disaggregation. I have that covered." O'Neill wondered whether he should point out that the president was misusing that term, but decided not to.

One has to wonder: what are the 26 percent of the American public that still approves of Bush's job performance thinking? Aren't they paying any attention? Maybe they're waiting for the expose from Laura.

Clinton Concession: What do you think?

Here's Hillary Clinton's concession speech Saturday (it's about half an hour long.) Regular readers know that I have not been a fan of hers for many years -- actually, since I heard her speak in our town in 1992 when she was campaigning for Bill. Some of you have been Hillary supporters. What do you think about her concession speech? Is she being gracious and will she be on board the Obama campaign, doing everything she can to help him, or will it still be all about her?

Bush Report: A Failure of Leadership

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 11 of Richard A. Clarke, the former counter terrorism chief under Clinton and Bush about the missed opportunity for leadership by the Bush Administration:

After September 11, Americans were told to shop, not to sacrifice. Far from being asked to pay additional taxes to fund the war on terrorism, Americans were told they would pay fewer taxes and we would pay for the war and additional security by passing the costs to our grandchildren.

Want more of the same? Then vote McCain.

Bush Report: Against All Enemies

Here is another excerpt from the Richard A. Clarke book that I describe below in my May 31 report. This is from Chapter 9:

"When Clinton left ofice, many people, including the incoming Bush Administration leadership thought he (Clinton) and his administration were overly obsessed with Al Queda. After all, Al Queda had killed only a few Americans, nothing like the hundreds of Marines who died at the hand of the Beirut terrorists during the Reagan Administration or the hundreds of Americans on Pam Am 103 killed by the Libyans in the first Bush Administration. Those two acts had not provoked retaliation. Why was Clinton so worked up about Al Queda? In January, 2001, the new administration thought Clinton's recommendation that their highest priority be the elimination of Al Queda was, well, rather odd, like so many of the Clinton actions."

The argument against Obama is that he has insufficient experience in the national government. Bush was being advised by two of the most experienced Washington hands in history -- Cheney and Rumsfeld. Maybe experience isn't all it's cracked up to be.

No More "Deranged Narcissism"

Although I was happy last night that Obama has clinched the votes needed to be the Democratic presidential nominee, I went to bed feeling sick to my stomach. The discomfort was due to my dismay at Clinton's graceless speech Tuesday night. She had lost the nomination, and if she really had as much concern for working men and women as she has been claiming the last few weeks, then she needed to admit defeat and start the process of motivating her followers to work hard for Obama's election in November.
Instead, we got what Jeffrey Toobin, the New Yorker writer and CNN commentator referred to as the "deranged narcissism" of the Clintons,in which Sen. Clinton was introduced as "the next president of the United States," talked about winning the last primary of the season, when in fact the voting wasn't even over and she did not win it, and claimed she had won more popular votes than anyone else, a dubious claim that includes popular votes for her in Michigan where her name and none of the other candidates' names were on the ballot and doesn't include any votes for Obama, even though, clearly, many of the voters who voted for "undecided" rather than Clinton were Obama supporters.
I went to bed thinking that Clinton is willing to tear the party apart even further to make sure that Obama doesn't win in the fall, so that she can run again in four years. I still do not trust her, but I'm feeling a little better today after the reports that she intends to concede and endorse Obama on Saturday. I am still worried about the price of that concession. Has she been successful in forcing her way onto the ticket, as the vice presidential candidate? She has indisputably been trying. I think Clinton's presence on the ticket would guarantee defeat in November. It would energize the Republican right wing, which is not happy with McCain, but hates Clinton even worse. It would keep Bill in the news. If Hillary could not keep Bill on message, there is no way Obama could do so.
I don't see what Clinton would bring to the ticket, or, if Obama/Clinton were elected, to the country. Her vaunted "competence" is so much myth. She has screwed up everything she has touched, from the failed health care initiative, early in the first Clinton administration to her own campaign. There is no way she should have lost this campaign. She started out with a 30 point lead in the polls. The Democratic party belonged to Bill Clinton. Hillary had all the connections; all the experience in national campaigns and she lost to a little known first termer who raised more money; put together a better staff; had a better strategy and executed his strategy far better.
I will hold my breath until Saturday. I won't really believe that she is conceding until I hear it. And, I won't really believe that she is not doing everything she can to sink Obama's chances until he is inaugurated next January 20th.

Ask Aunt Tillie: Is It Okay To Call God "Mother"?

Blogger's Note: Since this blog is somewhat Amishcentric, I get questions from time to time from readers about Amish life and culture, which I refer to my Aunt Tillie, an opinionated, but humble Amish woman. We usually take readers' questions, but here is a question I asked Aunt Tillie myself and her answer. As always, the views of Aunt Tillie are her own and may not reflect Crockhead's views, so please don't get mad at me if you don't like her answer. Please leave a comment or email me if you have questions you want me to refer to her in the future.

Dear Aunt Tillie:

I just finished reading a book called Is It Okay To Call God "Mother" by Paul R. Smith. You seem to be a fairly open-minded woman. What do you think?

(Signed) Your nephew, Crockhead

Dear Nephew:

Don't you think for one minute that just because I don't have more than an eighth grade education, I don't know when my leg is being pulled. Why in the world would you want to call a man "Mother?" You want to blame women for what God has done? Oh, no, you don't buddy. I won't stand for it. We Amish don't usually make predictions on who is going to heaven and who is going to hell, but I'm pretty confident you won't need a coat for where you're going!

(Signed) Aunt Tillie

Bush Report: His Own Worst Enemy

Okay, break is over; back to work.

I was stunned this week when the news came out about Scott McClellan's tell-all book about his days as George W. Bush's chief spokesman. Of all the Bush press spokesmen, first Ari Fleisher, then McClellan, Tony Snow and now Dana Perino, McClellan seemed the least likable, but also the least likely to turn on Bush. His dogged repetition of talking points that were obviously slanted, if not outright lies, got very tiresome. After the news this week, I now believe that McClellan's problem was that he has a conscience. His internal discomfort about the lies he was asked to spread about the Bush White House was displayed with every muscle in his face.

Those who claim that McClellan turned on Bush to further his own career, have not paid much attention to what happens to whistle blowers. Nobody likes a snitch, and after some short term publicity, most wind up wishing they had kept their mouths shut. In this case, the mainstream press does not like McClellan stating that it should have asked more hard questions. While a weasel will always be a weasel, the revelations by McClellan ring true. The Bush Administration had an advance look at the book so they have had plenty of time to come forward with evidence to rebut McClellan's book. By and large, their counter attack has consisted of fake sorrow ("This isn't the Scott McClellan we knew") but little, if any, demonstration that what he has said is untrue.

Another interesting point I have been pondering is how McClellan is only the latest of a long line of Bush insiders to come clean with what has been happening in the White House for the last eight years. I had not read any of their books, but decided I need to educate myself, so I put my name in the queue for the McClellan book at the library. I am number 13 on the list, so in the meantime, I decided to check out some of the other books.

The first one, which I am actually listening to as a book-on-tape, is Richard A. Clarke's book, Against All Enemies. Clarke, you may or may not recall, had a long career, starting with Ronald Reagan's administration. He was named as the chief counter-terrorism adviser under Bill Clinton's administration and continued in that post at the beginning of the Bush Administration, although Bush came into office paying little attention to terrorism and downgraded his position from cabinet level. Clarke says in the first chapter that it took from January, 2001, when Bush was inaugurated until the week before the 9/11 attacks to even get a cabinet level meeting about terrorist threats.

Clarke was in charge of coordinating the response to the 9/11 attacks and determining what needed to be done to make sure such attacks were not successful again. This is what he says in Chapter One happened the day after 9/11:

"I expected to go back to the (White House) to a round of meetings examining what the next attack could be; what our vulnerabilities were; what we could do about them in the short term. Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than going after Al Queda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to try to promote their agenda about Iraq."

Here we are, five years after the invasion, more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives lost; hundreds of billions of dollars spent and no end in sight, and the best the defenders of the invasion can come up with is that "everyone" thought we should go into Iraq. No, "everyone" didn't think that. Richard A. Clarke didn't. Barack Obama didn't. Hillary Clinton did. John McCain did.

When I get to McClellan's book, I'll quote directly from the book, but my understanding from the news reports is that he admits that the truth was misrepresented to the American public. How much more evidence do we need until the American public will demand some accountability for the lies?

JACK Report: "Complex music that doesn't intimidate"

There was a nice review of JACK Quartet's concert last week in Sarasota, Florida in the Sarasota Herald Tribune. There are a lot of blurbs that could be pulled out: "young and enormously gifted," "thoughtful talents," "a formidable technical challenge for the quartet, which they met with ease, and pleasing to the large and attentive audience," "clean sonorities, rich tone and playful rhythms produced by the quartet were capitvating." The money quote though is the headline: "Complex music that doesn't intimidate."

The guys are off now until early August when they are doing a residency with the Muir String Quartet in Park City, Utah; then back to New York City for a concert at (le) poisson rouge, a multimedia art cabaret on the site of the old Village Gate; then to Mexico for the Festival Internacional Chihuahua.

It makes an old Dad proud.