Monday, March 22, 2004
A Trail of...What, Exactly?
In his interview last night on 60 Minutes, Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism coordinator, said some of the most damning things we can ever recall hearing about a sitting president. If true, and publicized, it would certainly be enough to bring about Bush's defeat in November, if not get him impeached before then.
Of course, the right-wing smear machine is surely prepared to drop their usual load of dung on Clarke forthwith. Or perhaps they'll kill the story with silence, though that will be a good trick with his upcoming testimony. We shall see.
In any event, Clarke's contention that George Bush is doing "a terrible job on the war against terrorism" -- and that was one of the least damaging things he said -- got us thinking about Bush's track record on, well, just about everything.
We're stumped here at 201k, trying to think of any enterprise in which George W. Bush has been involved that wasn't somehow tainted. Any.
His business dealings, from his "oil executive" career to his "ownership" of a baseball team, are rife with questionable stock sales, SEC investigations, and seemingly unmerited advances, stock awards, and promotions.
His "election" to the presidency was the most controversial in the country's history. His administration's pre-9/11 "highlights" include the highly contentious "Energy Task Force" and its yet-to-be-determined connection to the west coast energy "crisis", a cozy connection with the major players in the largest corporate fraud in history, and an environmental policy that was written by the companies it's meant to regulate and which precipitated the first international wave of anti-Americanism of his term.
Bush's post-9/11 performance has been a disaster that literally rivals anything in modern history. Missing in action for hours the day of the attacks, Bush eventually responded with a public-relations campaign meant to cover for his appalling lack of leadership. Meanwhile his staff was scheming to use the attacks as a pretext for waging their predetermined agenda of a war in Iraq.
What followed -- the intentional misleading of the American people and the world regarding Iraq's supposed WMD and connections to Al Qaida, the debacle that is the occupation, and the attempts by the administration to thwart any investigation into what it knew about the impending attacks, or its use of intelligence in promoting the Iraq war -- stands as perhaps the greatest misuse of power exercised by an American president in history.
So the question we're asking is: has George W. Bush ever been invloved in any professional activity that wasn't somehow questionable?
Of course, the right-wing smear machine is surely prepared to drop their usual load of dung on Clarke forthwith. Or perhaps they'll kill the story with silence, though that will be a good trick with his upcoming testimony. We shall see.
In any event, Clarke's contention that George Bush is doing "a terrible job on the war against terrorism" -- and that was one of the least damaging things he said -- got us thinking about Bush's track record on, well, just about everything.
We're stumped here at 201k, trying to think of any enterprise in which George W. Bush has been involved that wasn't somehow tainted. Any.
His business dealings, from his "oil executive" career to his "ownership" of a baseball team, are rife with questionable stock sales, SEC investigations, and seemingly unmerited advances, stock awards, and promotions.
His "election" to the presidency was the most controversial in the country's history. His administration's pre-9/11 "highlights" include the highly contentious "Energy Task Force" and its yet-to-be-determined connection to the west coast energy "crisis", a cozy connection with the major players in the largest corporate fraud in history, and an environmental policy that was written by the companies it's meant to regulate and which precipitated the first international wave of anti-Americanism of his term.
Bush's post-9/11 performance has been a disaster that literally rivals anything in modern history. Missing in action for hours the day of the attacks, Bush eventually responded with a public-relations campaign meant to cover for his appalling lack of leadership. Meanwhile his staff was scheming to use the attacks as a pretext for waging their predetermined agenda of a war in Iraq.
What followed -- the intentional misleading of the American people and the world regarding Iraq's supposed WMD and connections to Al Qaida, the debacle that is the occupation, and the attempts by the administration to thwart any investigation into what it knew about the impending attacks, or its use of intelligence in promoting the Iraq war -- stands as perhaps the greatest misuse of power exercised by an American president in history.
So the question we're asking is: has George W. Bush ever been invloved in any professional activity that wasn't somehow questionable?
