First Door on the Left

Americans knew George W. Bush was an incurious man when they elected him, but the hearings of the 9/11 investigating commission, which turned yesterday from the F.B.I.’s fecklessness to the C.I.A.’s blurred vision, have brought that fact home in a startling way. The president is trying hard to present himself as a hands-on manager who talked terrorism incessantly with the director of central intelligence, George Tenet. (“I wanted Tenet in the Oval Office all the time.”) But Mr. Tenet had to concede yesterday that he was not in Crawford, Tex., for the Aug. 6, 2001, briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” Mr. Tenet told the panel he didn’t meet with Bush all that month, but the C.I.A. later said there had been two meetings. No one has been able to say whether Mr. Bush followed up in any way after he asked his intelligence agencies whether there was a domestic threat from Al Qaeda, and got a loud “yes” in response.

Incurious, yes. I believe you’ll agree that we have to add to that incompetent and illiterate.

The worst terrorist attack in our history occurred during this man’s watch. If he is re-elected, I can’t help but believe that there will be more.

For the sake of all our futures, he’s gotta go.

I have spent the past 24 hours or so trying to think of something to write about that “presidential” news conference last evening, and the only thing I could come with is: what a complete and total embarrassment!

Somebody please tell me that the bumbling fool who appeared on television last night is not really the leader of our country and the most powerful man on earth.

He said it best himself when he said “I am not very quick on my feet.” He’s not very quick in another other position either. The man has totally lost contact with reality. He still insists that his invasion of Iraq is part of the war on terror. He still insists that weapons of mass destruction will be found there. He completely believes that America’s mission from God is to lead the rest of the world to “freedom.” And he managed to say all that without the ability to form a complete sentence.

This election, according to Mr. Bush, will be decided upon who we think can best bring a satisfactory end to the war in Iraq and win the war against terrorism. Forget about the economy, the environment, the lost jobs and all that other crap. He is the great “war president” and for that reason alone we should vote for him. What bull.

Oh, and did you get a load of that tie? Who dresses this man?

John Kerry writes about his Strategy for Iraq in today’s Washington Post.

If I were still into the writing about the politics thing, which I pretty much am not, I might post Howard Dean’s op-ed piece published in The New York Times today.

Oh, what the hey…

by Howard Dean

Everyone expects this year’s presidential election to be decided by razor-thin margins in a few battleground states. Everyone also expects the candidacy of Ralph Nader to make the race between John Kerry and George Bush even closer. As I know from experience, however, voters have a way of proving everyone wrong.

Democrats are motivated to defeat the president this year. They’ve seen firsthand what three years of Bush administration policies have done to America. And they want to stop his policies from inflicting any more damage on working-class Americans, the environment, our international standing or a woman’s right to choose.

Many Democrats also admire Ralph Nader’s achievements, as I do. But if they truly want George Bush out of the White House, they won’t vote for Ralph Nader in November.

Ralph Nader has built a remarkable legacy as a consumer advocate. Because of his tireless work, we have federal consumer protection laws and a federal department dedicated to the protection of our environment, and millions of defective motor vehicles are off the roads. And I campaigned against the very same corporate special interests that he has been criticizing longer than almost anyone else.

But I don’t believe that the best way to do justice to Ralph Nader’s legacy is to vote for him for president. Re-electing George Bush would undo everything Ralph Nader has worked for through his entire career and, in fact, could lead to the dismantling of many of his accomplishments.

Voting for Ralph Nader, or for any third-party candidate for president, means a vote for a candidate who has no realistic shot of winning the White House. To underscore the danger of voting for any third-party candidate in elections this close, a statistic from the 2000 campaign may prove useful: a total of eight third-party candidates won more votes than the difference between Al Gore and George Bush nationwide.

When I ended my bid for the presidency, I asked my supporters to continue our quest for change in America. Our group, Democracy for America, is committed to exposing the ways in which the Bush administration’s policies are designed to prop up the privileged and please right-wing ideologues. Our agenda is rooted in hope and real American values — opportunity, integrity, honesty. This is the way to defeat George Bush.

Ralph Nader once said that your best teacher is your last mistake. Too many of us learned the consequences of not standing together four years ago. This November, we can elect a president who fights for average Americans. But we can achieve this goal only if we join together — and don’t repeat our last mistake.

George W. Bush received the following briefing on August 6, 2001. Then he went on vacation for a month.

Following is the text of the president’s daily brief for Aug. 6, 2001, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” as provided by the White House. Omitted material is indicated by ellipses.

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the U.S. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a . . . service.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (E.I.J.) operative told an . . . service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of bin Laden’s first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the U.S. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the F.B.I. that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack.

Ressam says bin Laden was aware of the Los Angeles operation.

Although bin Laden has not succeeded, his attacks against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Laden associates surveilled our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.

Al Qaeda members — including some who are U.S. citizens — have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two Al Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were U.S. citizens, and a senior E.I.J. member lived in California in the mid-1990′s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a . . . service in 1998 saying that bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

Nevertheless, F.B.I. information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The F.B.I. is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. C.I.A. and the F.B.I. are investigating a call to our embassy in the U.A.E. in May saying that a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

If you have not yet filed your federal income taxes (like the s/o), this is a friendly reminder that you only have five days left.

You’re welcome.

As you prepare to divvy up the money that will (supposedly) fund our government for another year, here are a couple of articles that will make you feel better (or not):

Shell Game

For Singles, April Really Is the Cruelest Month

Happy reading!

I’m growing a bit tired of the politics thing. George W. Bush and his cronies disgust me to no end and I’m not really a big fan of John Kerry, though I am pulling for him in this year’s election simply because it is so vital to the future of this country (and the world) that the Bushies be removed from office. I supported Howard Dean in the Democratic primaries and still wish he had been able to pull it off, but any Democratic administration will be infinitely better than the one we now have.

I am also beginning to question my place in the world. I have been unemployed since last July and the world out there seems to be getting along pretty well without me. Perhaps it’s just that I have outlived my usefullness. I like to think that I had some effect during over 30 years in the workforce, but I wonder. Nobody seems to be falling over themselves to hire me though, if I do say so myself, I am quite good at what I do.

That’s it for the self pity party. Thanks for indulging me there for a moment.

Anyway, I’ll likely not be writing about politics for a while unless the Bushies do something incredibly stupid or wrong (quite likely). I am not sure what I will be writing about. I guess we’ll both have to stay tuned to find out. I may be back into the politics thing tomorrow, but as of tonight I’m quite fed up with it.

With that I’ll bid you a good evening. The Ambien seems to be kicking in.

Explosive violence in Iraq and persistent questions about the administration’s handling of terrorist threats before Sept. 11, 2001, have plunged President Bush into one of the most difficult moments of his presidency, as he seeks to maintain public confidence in his leadership while facing what experts say are mostly unattractive options to put U.S. policy on track.

In the face of these challenges, Bush has yielded the stage, remaining largely out of sight at his Texas ranch as others in his administration explain his policies. Bush’s silence in the face of mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq and concerns about the administration’s timetable for transferring power to the Iraqis has brought criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.

“If it were I in charge over there, I would have him out early next week to explain this whole thing,” said a Republican strategist close to the Bush team who demanded anonymity as a condition of speaking freely about the administration. “He should restate what we’re doing over there. He needs to provide a bigger picture to give voters more confidence that we know where we’re going.”

“It is not helping them for the president to be out of the picture,” said Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, national security adviser in the Clinton administration. “If they think the American people are not troubled with what they see every day, starting with [the killing of four U.S. contract workers in] Fallujah, and then dead Marines and then the hostages — if they think that is not roiling the waters, they’re sadly mistaken. . . . We have too much at stake in Iraq to lose the American people.”

(snip)

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Bush is “absolutely” losing the public at a quickening pace. He said people are flooding him with pleas “to get us out of there.”

“It’s a disquieting feeling people have. They think the president does not have a plan, and he doesn’t. . . . We are on the verge of losing control of Iraq.”

Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) said events in Iraq suggest that Bush and other administration officials should anticipate a new line of questioning of the assessment, at the time of the invasion, that U.S. forces would be greeted as liberators and face only slight resistance. This assumption “clearly is in doubt” considering recent events, he said.

The questions have come most forcefully from Democrats but are shared by Republicans. “In both parties, members are concerned,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) “There’s not abject panic, but there’s deep concern, and there should be.”

When Mr. Bush appeared on the aircraft carrier beneath his “Mission Accomplished” banner, he was not lying — his mission had been accomplished. Saddam Hussein, the man against whom he held a personal grudge, had been removed from power. Beyond that, Mr. Bush did not then and does not now have any plans for his war in Iraq.

Molly Ivins writes this week about the mess we have gotten ourselves into over in Iraq. She ends her column thusly:

I like to think of myself as part of the “so what do we do now?” crowd, but it is like drinking gall. We could try what we clearly should have done from the beginning — put more boots on the ground. We’ve got 130,000 troops there now. (Remember when the Bushies told us it would be down to 30,000 by the end of last summer?) Gen. Eric Shinseki’s “several hundred thousand” prediction looks more prescient all the time. The trouble with that scenario is that it violates the First Rule of Holes (when you’re in one, quit digging.) Second, it may be too late.

Then there’s the old reliable, “Bug out now.” I always liked Sen. Aiken’s advice on how to get out of Vietnam: “in boats.” Yep, it could be time to declare victory and go home. That seems to be President Bush’s plan. He can just say, “Well, we took care of the weapons of mass destruction, so we’re outta here.”

As many others have pointed out, June 30 is just a ridiculous deadline. Even though we’re not planning to withdraw on June 30, damned if I can see how we’re going to hang onto what was supposed to be the great strategic advantage of this war. Those of you who follow neo-con thinking know this never was about weapons of mass destruction, it was supposed to give us a place to plonk ourselves down so we could restructure the entire region.

I suspect what we’ll wind up doing is the inevitable “muddle along” until our leaders can lie us out more or less gracefully. (George W. Bush will admit he made a mistake the day the Cubs win the World Series.)

If I were John Kerry, I would be having such horrible nightmares about winning the election — and actually having to ask an American soldier to be the last man to die for a mistake.

I’m with her in the “so what do we do now?” crowd. I used to be in the “we told you so” crowd, but I’ve decided it does very little good to go around saying that. What’s done is done. The Bumbling Bushies got us into this mess and now we have to figure a way out. Any ideas?

by Robert B. Reich

Musings about a second Bush term typically assume another four years of the same right-wing policies we’ve had to date. But it’d likely be far worse. So far, the Bush administration has had to govern with the expectation of facing American voters again in 2004. But suppose George W. Bush wins a second term. The constraint of a re-election contest will be gone. Knowing that voters can no longer turn them out, and that this will be their last shot at remaking America, the radical conservatives will be unleashed.

A friend who specializes in foreign policy and hobnobs with subcabinet officials in the Defense and State departments told me that the only thing that’s stopped the Bushies from storming into Iran and North Korea is the upcoming election. If Bush is re-elected, “[Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld are out of the box,” he said. “They’ll take Bush’s re-election as a mandate to wage the ‘war on terror’ everywhere and anywhere.”

The second term’s defense team will be even harder line than the current one. Colin Powell will go. Condoleezza Rice will take over at the State Department. Rumsfeld will consolidate power as the president’s national-security adviser. Paul Wolfowitz will run the Defense Department.

Domestic policy will swing further right. A re-election would strengthen the White House’s hand on issues that even many congressional Republicans have a hard time accepting, such as the assault on civil liberties. Bush will seek to push “Patriot II” through Congress, giving the Justice Department and the FBI powers to inspect mail, eavesdrop on phone conversations and e-mail, and examine personal medical records, insurance claims, and bank accounts.

Right-wing evangelicals will solidify their control over the departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services — curtailing abortions, putting federal funds into the hands of private religious groups, pushing prayer in the public schools, and promoting creationism.

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