Links - BUSH and CHENEY

From Bwtm

George Bush is the worst President the US has ever had.

Contents 1 The Bush Legacy on video 2 War Crimes Prosecution 3 The Bush Legacy 4 The Bush Legacy archived April 2013 5 The Bush Legacy, archived September 23, 2009 6 The Bush Legacy, archived January 17, 2009 7 the Anti-Bush Future 8 Post election 9 Bush Regime Corruption 10 Bush Regime Incompetence 11 Bush hates the Environment 11.1 news 11.2 Bush on Conservation 12 BUSH lies leading up to Iraq war 13 Bush 14 Bush, archived December 14, 2008 15 Bush, archived August 01, 2008 16 Bush and Cheney, archived May 28, 2008 17 Condoleezza Rice 18 John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales 19 Barbara Bush 20 Laura Bush 21 Rove 22 Cheney 23 Cheney, archived September 06, 2009 24 Rumsfeld 25 links

The Bush Legacy on video

'Fahrenheit 9/11' - My Pet Goat - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rO3F6mZUaE

Dear mr president I got something to say another voice that you won't hear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ShBiyhxWsk

Does he ever smell his own bull shit? When The President Talks To God. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFot6SE0MCI

War Crimes Prosecution

Spanish judge reopens Guantanamo torture probe. while the Obama administration has stuck to its promise not to investigate whether Bush administration officials acted illegally by authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques, other countries are still interested in determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law. In Madrid, Judge Pablo Rafael Ruz Gutierrez handed down a 19-page decision Friday in which he said he would seek additional information — medical data, a translation of a Human Rights Watch report, elaboration on material made public by WikiLeaks, and testimony from three senior U.S. military officers who served at Guantanamo — in the case of four released Guantanamo captives who allege they were humiliated and subjected to torture while in U.S. custody. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/13/135861/spanish-judge-reopens-guantanamo.html#storylink=omni_popular

Amnesty International urges the governments of Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia to arrest former U.S. President George W. Bush during his expected visit to the region between December 1 and 5, 2011, for crimes under international law. Amnesty International considers that there is enough evidence in the public domain, from U.S. authorities and from George W. Bush himself, to trigger requirements for Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia to investigate his alleged involvement in and responsibility for torture, and to secure his presence during the investigation. "All countries to which George W. Bush travels have an obligation to bring him to justice for his role in torture," said Matt Pollard, senior legal adviser. http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/press-releases/amnesty-international-urges-ethiopia-tanzania-zambia-to-bring-george-w-bush-to-justice

Former President George W Bush was killed Sunday in a midnight raid carried out by Special Forces from a coalition of countries acting on a warrant issued by the World Court for War Crimes and torture. Bush was surprised in his bed room and killed with one shot to the chest and a second above his left eye. Former Whitehouse aid Karen Hughes was also killed. Bush's body was removed by the soldiers and it's whereabouts is unknown. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/05/economic-meltdown-villain-george-w-bush-s-staggering-debt-numbers.html

The American Civil Liberties Union respectfully urges you to refer to Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham the question of whether former president George W. Bush’s conduct related to the interrogation of detainees by the United States violated the anti-torture statute. See 18 U.S.C. § 2340A. In his recently published memoirs, President Bush discusses his authorization of the waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah. He states, for example, that he “approved the use of the [enhanced] interrogation techniques,” including waterboarding, on Abu Zubaydah, and that he responded to a request to waterboard Khalid Sheik Mohammed by stating: “Damn right.” George W. Bush, Decision Points 169–70 (2010). The Department of Justice has made clear that waterboarding is torture and, as such, a crime under the federal anti-torture statute. 18 U.S.C. § 2340A(c). The United States has historically prosecuted waterboarding as a crime. In light of the admission by the former President, and the legally correct determination by the Department of Justice that waterboarding is a crime, you should ensure that Mr. Durham’s current investigation into detainee interrogations encompasses the conduct and decisions of former President Bush. http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/ACLU_Letter_to_Attorney_General_Holder_Urging_Investigation_of_President_Bush_0.pdf

Former chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the "shame of a needless war" in Iraq. Freer to speak now than he was as an international civil servant, the Nobel-winning Egyptian accuses U.S. leaders of "grotesque distortion" in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when then-President George W. Bush and his lieutenants claimed Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by ElBaradei's and other arms inspectors inside the country. The Iraq war taught him that "deliberate deception was not limited to small countries ruled by ruthless dictators," ElBaradei writes in "The Age of Deception," being published Tuesday by Henry Holt and Company. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/09/entertainment/la-et-book-20110609

There was widespread support among scores of human rights groups and many others for recent efforts to have Switzerland open a preliminary investigation for torture against former President George W. Bush during his planned (and now canceled) visit to Geneva. Our belief is that Bush violated U.S. and international law when he authorized torture, including the water boarding of detainees. Torture is a crime under a federal statute, Torture Statute, as well as under the War Crimes Act, and the Convention Against Torture, of which the U.S. was a major proponent. The support for the investigation stems from Bush's open admission that the authorized water boarding, the necessity people feel to hold torturers accountable if we are to end torture, and the utter failure of the United States to investigate Bush and others. The U.S., as the most powerful country in the world, is an example to the world: If the U.S. can openly torture, so can every other country. There have been some naysayers to the attempts to internationally prosecute Bush and other officials. They have it wrong. They want a world in which if a country does not investigate its own torturers, then no other country should. They argue, as David Frum did in a recent column on this site, that efforts by the Center for Constitutional Rights and its partner legal organizations to seek criminal accountability of former President Bush in Switzerland amount to "law as a weapon of politics" and "assault upon the basic norms of American constitutional democracy." http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/02/19/ratner.bush.torture.case/index.html

The Bush Legacy

beheaded during the BUSH regime: Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, Jack Hensley, Eugene Armstrong, Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr

Bush’s inspiring, proselytizing Methodist is in fact a horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency. Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious. The president of the United States has identified closely with a man he sees as a mythic, heroic figure. In fact that man is a wily criminal one step out in front of justice. It perfectly reflects Bush the man . . . and Bush the president. http://harpers.org/blog/2008/01/the-illustrated-president/

Portrait of a failed president: Inside the art of George W. Bush. George W. Bush unveiled a new collection of paintings last week. Here's what they unwittingly reveal. http://www.salon.com/2014/04/07/portrait_of_a_failed_president_inside_the_art_of_george_w_bush/

Bush's Middle East 'crusade' hasn't been very good for Christians. One of the saddest unintended consequences of the U.S. invasion of Iraq has been the progressive de-Christianization of the country, home to churches that trace their lineage to the earliest days of the religion. In reporting on Christmas Day bombings in Christian areas of Baghdad, the New York Times noted that there were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 but that the number is now half that. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-christians-middle-east-iraq-bombings-20131226,0,438937.story http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/26/world/middleeast/baghdad-bomb-attack.html

When the opportunity came to kill bin Laden and decimate al Qaeda, less than one hundred special operations forces were deployed to pursue bin Laden in Tora Bora. Over those five days, hundreds – if not thousands – of al Qaeda and Taliban operatives crossed effortlessly into Pakistan and disappeared. The failure to prevent the escape of al Qaeda and the Taliban into Pakistan represented a catastrophic blunder that allowed America’s enemies to survive 2001. General Tommy Franks rebuffed numerous requests to reinforce the U.S. contingent because he believed that the light footprint model that so effectively pushed the Taliban from the cities of Afghanistan would be appropriate for the mission at Tora Bora. But this model of warfare was neither designed nor suitable for cordoning off swaths of land and capturing or killing the enemies within that region. Franks's errors showed that he did not understand the distinction between displacing the enemy and destroying it. The Battle of Tora Bora was also a failure of policy. General Franks’s decisions were a direct reflection of the guidance he received from the civilian leadership. In the planning sessions after the September 11 attacks, the objective that emerged for the war was to “remove Afghanistan as a safe haven for al Qaeda” – a fundamentally different objective from destroying al Qaeda. Furthermore, the top three civilians at the Department of Defense discouraged concentrating on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Secretary Rumsfeld instructed his civilian and military subordinates, “Don’t over-elevate the importance of al Qaida,” while Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz “warned against focusing narrowly on al Qaeda and Afghanistan.” To them, Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network in Afghanistan were not the primary targets but merely actors in a much broader global conflict aimed to prevent terrorist attacks by whomever and wherever they arose. But the largest mistake made by President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was their failure to examine and intervene in the affairs of the military. Throughout the Battle of Tora Bora, neither the president nor the secretary of defense was directly engaged in the most important operation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Indeed, how could an engaged president and secretary of defense – who questioned and prodded the military commander about the significant battles being waged, the location of Osama bin Laden, the possibility of his escape, the whereabouts of concentrations of al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, the reliability of local partners, the “knowns and unknowns,” and the tactics utilized by American forces – allow a battle for the existence of al Qaeda to be waged by ninety-three Western commandos and a contingent of generally untrustworthy Afghan rebels without any reliable force to seal the escape routes? From that point forward, nothing in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the war against al Qaeda has ever been the same. Twelve years later, as America’s longest war comes to an inconclusive and uncertain end, one question lingers: how could we let Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the Taliban survive 2001? http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/15/how-bin-laden-escaped-in-2001-the-lessons-of-tora-bora.html

After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors. But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals. It was kept secret and remains so today. President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood (this story by comparison is about 1,000 words). http://nypost.com/2013/12/15/inside-the-saudi-911-coverup/

Dan Rather Still Thinks It Matters That His Bush Story Was True. Hey, remember how Dan Rather slandered President George W. Bush by saying that back in 1968, he got into a “champagne unit” of the Texas Air National Guard thanks to special favors, and then he got away with not showing up for training and physicals and stuff? He basically took a year off from even showing up, and decided on his own that he didn’t need to actually fly jets. But then a bunch of rightwing blogs “proved” that the typeface of several documents in the report was UNPOSSIBLE for typewriters in the early ’70s, and Rather had to resign (except that some typewriters actually could use those fonts, but that came out later so it doesn’t count). It was a huge win for the rightwing blogosphere, and gave Free Republic several minutes of credibility for having proven Dan Rather’s entire report fake. Except, of course, for all the parts that were true, which was pretty much all of it, except possibly for those documents, for which the most that can be said is that because they’re photocopies, they can never be verified or disproven conclusively. Regardless of the status of those memos, the rest of the story held up — at worst, CBS shouldn’t have included the memos. This is something that politics nerds will argue about forever, like the question of whether Whittaker Chambers actually found Sacco and Vanzetti in a pumpkin on the grassy knoll. Read more at http://wonkette.com/536161/dan-rather-still-thinks-it-matters-that-his-bush-story-was-true

The Final Insult in the Bush-Cheney Marriage. In the final days of his presidency, George W. Bush sat behind his desk in the Oval Office, chewing gum and staring into the distance as two White House lawyers briefed him on the possible last-minute pardon of I. Lewis Libby. In March 2007, Libby, who had served as Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, was convicted of lying to federal officials who were investigating the leak of the identity of a C.I.A. officer. For the past two months Cheney had been pushing the president to grant Libby a full pardon before they left office. He would not let it go. Cheney brought it up again and again, first before Thanksgiving, then again around Christmas and finally throughout January 2009 as they prepared for the transition to the incoming Obama administration. His lobbying was so intense that the president made clear to his aides that he did not want to talk with Cheney about it anymore. Troubled by the decision hanging over him, Bush had asked the White House lawyers to re-examine the case to see if a pardon was justified. Fred Fielding, the White House counsel, and his deputy, William Burck, pored over trial transcripts and studied evidence that Libby’s lawyers had raised in his defense. Their conclusion was that the jury had ample reason to find Libby guilty. “If I were on that jury,” Burck told Bush, “I would probably have agreed with them. You have to follow the law, and the law says if you say something that is untrue, knowingly, to a federal official in the context of a grand jury investigation and it is material to their investigation, that’s a crime.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/magazine/the-final-insult-in-the-bush-cheney-marriage.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all&_r=0

Ten years ago this week, and six months after the United Stated launched a preemptive invasion of Iraq as part of the larger War on Terror, President Bush publicly conceded the administration had "no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with" the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States. At the time, polling results showed that after hearing the administration's push for war, a strong majority of Americans were convinced that ties existed between Saddam and 9/11. Indeed, the Bush White House had not been shy about suggesting the Iraq War was, in part, a war of revenge for the attacks of 9/11. (At least one Fox News host still touts the phony claim.) Those kind of bold prevarications ultimately led to the collapse of Bush's second term. It was the mishandling of the Iraq War that was likely responsible for Bush becoming the most unpopular departing president in American history. (Vice President Cheney's exit approval rating stood at a staggering 13 percent.) The black eye that Bush applied to the Republican Party seemed permanent. Now, after years of often-quiet indifference towards the 43rd president, the recent debate over the use of military force against the Syrian government has unleashed a wave of right-wing commentary about Bush's presidency. And surprise! Conservatives loved it. Claiming they pine for the days of Oval Office decisiveness, far-right pundits have been rhapsodizing about Bush's glory years and especially his star turn as a national security pro who turned away terror, as well as a foreign policy sage who made the Middle East a safer place. (And don't forget, he ran a nonpartisan White House.) Missing from the collective rewriting of history? Facts. Like the acknowledgement that more than 3,000 Americans died from terror attacks while Bush was in office, and that his Iraq War ranks among the most costly U.S. foreign policy blunders in recent history. (A decade later, Iraq remains besieged by violence.) http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/09/16/bush-is-back-and-iraq-war-was-a-huge-success/195890

Bush cancels Europe trip amid calls for his arrest. Amnesty International and other groups asked Swiss authorities to investigate the former president for torture. http://www.salon.com/2011/02/07/bush_amnesty_arrest/

How to debunk George W. Bush’s attempts at revisionism. Your definitive guide to the Bush cronies' talking points, and why all of them are insane. http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/bush_is_not_back_and_he_is_still_terrible/

The Bush Legacy archived April 2013

In 24 charts, the Washington Post reveals how George W. Bush's presidency screwed up the country and the rest of the world for many years to come. Health, employment, the GDP, public services, the Middle East, and almost every other measurable condition of civilization's health and welfare were severely damaged by Bush's policies, all of which were enacted to make rich people richer. In achieving that goal, Bush's presidency was a resounding success. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/24/george-w-bushs-presidency-in-24-charts/

Study alleges 'indisputable' use of torture under Bush. A nonpartisan review by the Constitution Project faults the George W. Bush administration for U.S. actions after 9/11. http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/16/nation/la-na-torture-20130417 http://detaineetaskforce.org/read/#/18

Since this month marks the ten-year anniversary of the War to Soothe George W. Bush’s Daddy Issues, and because our blood pressure has not skyrocketed to the point where it blew out the cuff the nurse strapped around our arm at our last physical, your Wonkette thought it would be fun to take a look back at the architects of that colossal fuck-up. Who were these paragons of American exceptionalism, and what are they doing today? Living quiet lives of reflection and repentance? Working every day with the wounded veterans who are such a large result of their policies? Standing in the dock at the Hague? Committing seppuku, the ritual suicide by disembowelment practiced by Japanese samurai when they brought shame and dishonor upon themselves and their nation? Read more at http://wonkette.com/505299/a-childrens-treasury-of-people-you-never-wanted-to-think-about-ever-again

The Bush Administration Know-It-Alls Who Failed to Heed Warnings Before 9/11. If a damning New York Times report is true, the Bush White House ignored many more threats before 9/11 than were previously revealed. Michael Daly on why the FDNY would never have listened to the IKEs—or those who believe ‘I Know Everything.’ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/11/the-bush-administration-know-it-alls-who-failed-to-heed-warnings-before-9-11.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html?_r=2

Paul Begala on George W. Bush’s Very Bad Economic Advice. Dubya might be skipping the GOP convention, but he’s not shy about sharing his thoughts on the economy. Too bad America would be better off without them. Where Dubya is concerned I have tried so hard to be Elvis Costello, who famously sang, “I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused.” But I just can’t get past the retching revulsion I feel about what this man and his policies did to our nation and the world. We will set aside the legacy of lost blood and treasure caused by his unwarranted invasion of Iraq for another day—perhaps when His Airheadedness decides to publish a book on national security. For now let us focus on the economy and the Bush Institute’s book. The institute’s executive director, James K. Glassman, who also wrote the introduction, is no stranger to failed economic prophecy. In 1999 he co-authored (with current Romney adviser Kevin Hassett) a book with the unintentionally hilarious title “Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market.” They almost got it right. Instead of a rise in the stock market there was a crash. The Dow went to 6,500, and 13 years after their book was published it is around 13,000. So they were only off by 23,000 points. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/29/paul-begala-on-george-w-bush-s-very-bad-economic-advice.html

Bush tax cuts

Bush war in Iraq

Bus war afghanistan

bush torture

bush recession

bush financial collaps

bush depression

bush filth

bush failure

It has been said that men such as Obama must be "twice as good" as the George W. Bushes of the world to succeed at the same job. So, as president, Obama listed his administration's accomplishments: preventing a second Great Depression while saving the auto industry, ending the Iraq war while getting Osama bin Laden, passing healthcare reform while reining in Wall Street. Two words came to mind: Mission accomplished. Obama's reelection is uncertain, but in only three years he has already proved himself to be twice the president his predecessor was in eight. Eugene Sison San Dimas http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-0126-thursday-20120126,0,6393757.story?page=2

The reasons for Bush's invisibility among Iowa Republican/conservatives are obvious. He was unpopular when he left office. With the help of Democrats, he piled up more federal debt than any of his predecessors. He vastly expanded the role and reach of government. He launched but did not "win" in the War on Terror. He and the Fed bailed out the big banks and financial firms on Wall Street and Europe. Still, it is precisely these and other policies which still frame the outlines of American public life nearly three years after Bush's helicopter that made one last circle over the Capitol on the day Barack Obama was sworn in. And yet, with the important and perhaps even crucial exception of Ron Paul, Republican candidates do not generally dispute the Bush framework, even though they don't mention his name. They want more tax cuts, not fewer; they advocate for a more aggressive policy toward Jihadists; like Bush, they shy away from specifically stating how they would balance the budget; and except for Paul and asterisk candidate Jon Huntsman, they do not specify, in any meaningful detail, how they would regulate Wall Street and the Fed in fundamentally different ways. The candidates say they are for "smaller government," but do not propose to do away with most of the government functions Bush expanded during his eight years in office. President Obama -- hemmed in by Republicans and his own amendable nature and desire to win moderate votes in swing states -- has done little to change the basic framework of domestic and foreign policy laid down, brick by brick, in the Bush Years. As a result, three years after he left office, Bush remains one of the most consequential, though paradoxically invisible, figures in modern American history. Fiscal policy in the U.S. remains shaped and confined by the massive and successful tax cuts that the former president and his GOP allies put in place in 2001 and 2003. Obama has tried -- ineptly, half-heartedly or both -- to change them, to no avail. He has been unable even to tweak the top rate for millionaires and billionaires. Those tax cuts have and will cost the Treasury as estimated $2.6 trillion in over a decade. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-fineman/george-w-bush-election-2012_b_1179655.html

Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq. Mushroom clouds, duct tape, Judy Miller, Curveball. Recalling how Americans were sold a bogus case for invasion. http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/leadup-iraq-war-timeline

Three generations from now, when our great-grandchildren are sitting barefoot in their shanties and wondering how in the hell America turned from the high-point of civilization to a third-world banana republic, they will shake their fists and mutter one name: George Effin' Bush. Ironically, it won't be for any of the things that liberals have been harping on the Bush Administration, either during or after his term in office. Sure, misguided tax cuts that destroyed the surplus, and lax regulations that doomed the economy, and two amazingly awful wars in deserts half a world away are all terrible, empire-sapping events. But they pale in comparison to what it appears the Republican Party did to get President Bush re-elected in 2004. "A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio's 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush," according to Bob Fitrakis, columnist at http://www.freepress.org and co-counsel in the litigation and investigation. If you recall, Ohio was the battleground state that provided George Bush with the electoral votes needed to win re-election. Had Senator John Kerry won Ohio's electoral votes, he would have been elected instead. Evidence from the filing suggests that Republican operatives — including the private computer firms hired to manage the electronic voting data — were compromised. http://www.benzinga.com/news/11/07/1789905/forget-anonymous-evidence-suggests-gop-hacked-stole-2004-election#ixzz1Sz6Vy9u0

Borrowing and spending the GOP way The big deficit facing the U.S. is mostly Republican in origin, the Congressional Budget Office says. The Bush tax cuts alone have added $3 trillion in red inkItalic text, yet the party wants to double down on its failed policy. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lofgren-budget-republicans-20110626,0,7490630.story

Since Osama bin Laden's killing on May 1, it has become shockingly clear that the terrorist leader did not spend most of the last decade on the run or hiding in caves. He was holed up in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad enjoying the comforts of family life with his twenty-something-year-old latest wife. And, while criticism has fallen on Pakistani authorities for being either complicit or incompetent, almost no attention has focused on the curious symbiotic relationship that has existed since 9/11 between Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush -- and even longer between the bin Laden family and the Bush family. At nearly every turn, President George W. Bush acted -- presumably with incompetence, not complicity -- in ways that enabled bin Laden to remain free, and the terrorist leader repaid the favor by surfacing at key political moments to scare the American people back into Bush's arms. Although Bush talked tough about getting bin Laden "dead or alive," he consistently failed to follow through. In November 2001, when bin Laden and his top lieutenants were cornered at the Tora Bora mountain range in eastern Afghanistan, Bush ordered the U.S. military to prematurely pivot toward planning the next war with Iraq. According to a later Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, Bush's order to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to freshen up the plans for an Iraq invasion literally pulled Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the Central Command, away from planning the assault on Tora Bora. The hunt for bin Laden was soon put on the back burner. As the Washington Post reported on Friday, "A few months after Tora Bora, as part of the preparation for war in Iraq, the Bush administration pulled out many of the Special Operations and CIA forces that had been searching for bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to several U.S officials who served at the time." Just six months after 9/11 and three months after bin Laden evaded capture at Tora Bora, Bush personally began downplaying the importance of capturing al-Qaeda's leader. "I don't know where he is," Bush told a news conference. "I really just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you." http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Curious-Bush-Bin-Laden-by-Robert-Parry-110507-550.html

“To be honest with you, we didn’t know where he was. It was incredibly frustrating. We never had anything vaguely close to usable intelligence. People in the military and the intelligence community are performance-oriented types. They want to accomplish the mission.” [On the failed operation at Tora Bora in December 2001] “We, along with everyone else, thought he was in Tora Bora when the operation started. And we thought we had enough forces—both military Special Ops, conventional military forces and the Afghan forces that were fighting with us. Obviously he was able to slip through, and that was a disappointment.” “[Rumsfeld] was hugely disappointed. He really wanted to catch him for what he had done. He never lost focus on getting him, despite what some folks said.” http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-06/george-w-bush-officials-on-osama-bin-laden-death/?cid=hp:mainpromo2

The cost of bin Laden: $3 trillion over 15 years. http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_exclusive/20110506/pl_yblog_exclusive/the-cost-of-bin-laden-3-trillion-over-15-years

The Bush tax cuts "helped to create a substantial part of the deficit." "The Bush tax cuts, with a $1 trillion 10-year price tag, contributed to this shift from budget surpluses to deficits," CRS said. Other contributors included the 2001 recession, the increase in defense spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. But the tax cuts "generated the largest 10-year increases in budget deficits," CRS said. http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/apr/29/dennis-kucinich/rep-dennis-kucinich-says-bush-tax-cuts-caused-subs/

A planned trip by former President George W. Bush to Switzerland this week has been canceled in the face of threatened large-scale protests and calls for an investigation into whether his administration committed human rights abuses in the fight against terrorism. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/world/europe/06bush.html

Neo-Con nitwit Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. called on President Obama and the Senate on Friday to solve what he called “the persistent problem of judicial vacancies.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/01/us/politics/01scotus.html?_r=1&hp

George W Bush will be most remembered as a racial bigot. He hated not only blacks but liberals and Muslims.

‘Damn right,’ I said. Eliot Weinberger. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n01/eliot-weinberger/damn-right-i-said

The Supreme Court's granting Bush the victory looks even worse today than it did 10 years ago, says Eric Alterman—even if historians weren't debating whether George W. Bush was the worst president ever or just since Grant. Passions are supposed to recede with time as wisdom and maturity, but the Supreme Court’s willingness to hand the presidency to George W. Bush looks even worse than it did 10 years ago, when passions flared and pundits feared for the future of the republic. The obvious problem with making Bush president was the fact of the Bush presidency, a catastrophe in so many directions at once that presidential historians argue today about whether Bush was the worst president in American history or merely the worst since Grant, Buchanan, or Johnson (Andrew, not Lyndon). http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-12-04/bush-v-gore-decision-looks-even-more-disgraceful-10-years-later/

Christian War on Muslims

Dead Certain. The Presidential memoirs of George W. Bush. Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/11/29/101129crbo_books_packer#ixzz16JjGuMgI

In "Decision Points," Bush describes the invasion of Iraq as something he came to support only reluctantly and after a long period of reflection. This is a flat-out lie. Anyone who paid any attention to the news at the time knew Bush was dead-set on war long before he sent in the troops in March 2003. And there is now an abundant amount of documentation, in the form of leaks, unclassified memos, witness interviews and other people's memoirs to prove it. That torture is even a subject of debate today is a testament to the devastating effect the Bush administration has had on our concept of morality. And in his book and on his book tour, far from hanging his head in shame, Bush is more explicit and enthusiastic than ever before endorsing one of torture's iconic forms. "Damn right," he quotes himself as saying in response to a CIA request to waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. "Had we captured more al Qaeda operatives with significant intelligence value, I would have used the program for them as well." Bush's two-part argument is simple; That waterboarding was legal (i.e., that it was not really torture); and that it worked. But neither assertion is remotely true. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/22/the-two-most-esssential-a_n_786219.html

In yet another act reminiscent of Soviet-style revisionism, Bush in his book does not mention this dinner and his performance there. If he indeed felt ill whenever he pondered the missing WMDs—as he insists in his memoirs—how could he turn this into a crass punchline? Asking that question provides the answer. He is fibbing in his book. Moreover, this small episode is proof of a larger truth: Bush's chronicle is not a serious accounting of his years as the decider. As for the hundreds of thousands of readers who shelled out $35.00 for the book, expecting the former president to level with them, the joke is on them. http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/11/bush-decision-points-wmds-iraq

George Bush condemned over claim torture saved British lives. George Bush faced international condemnation tonight of his claim that British lives were saved as a result of torture. The former US president said waterboarding three al-Qa'ida suspects provided crucial intelligence that prevented attacks on London. But critics said use of the controversial technique acted as a "recruiting sergeant for extremism" and ultimately "made the world a more dangerous place". And they questioned whether it is possible to prove what information was gathered as a result of torture and how valuable it was. Mr Bush set out to justify his controversial actions in his memoir, Decision Points, after two years of public silence since leaving the White House. In an interview with The Times, the 43rd US president said he authorised the use of waterboarding to extract information from self-confessed al Qaida boss Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He said the drowning technique helped to break up plots to attack Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf, adding: "Three people were waterboarded and I believe that decision saved lives." The comments reopened the bitter debate over the use of secret intelligence, mostly by counter terrorism officials, that may have been obtained by the torture of suspects. The British Government declined to comment directly on the claims but said it continued to consider waterboarding as torture, something it does not condone or allow others to do on our behalf. In a speech last month, the MI6 chief Sir John Sawers insisted his service had no links with torture, which he described as "illegal and abhorrent", but said officials must act on information that could save lives. Former Labour chairman of the Commons intelligence and security committee Kim Howells said he doubted Mr Bush's claims. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We think waterboarding is torture and I don't believe that the British security services people had anything to do with it. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/george-bush-condemned-over-claim-torture-saved-british-lives-2129528.html

British deny George Bush's claims that torture helped foil terror plots. British officials say there is no evidence that waterboarding saved lives of UK citizens, as Bush claimed in his memoirs. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/09/british-deny-bush-claims-foil-terror

Compassion for conservatism.

This would be less grim to talk about if Bush weren't still with us. But he is, in every way that matters. The Bush Doctrine lives. No leading American politician can disavow the two key aspects of the Bush Doctrine: that we cannot distinguish terrorists from the countries where they live, and that we must act preemptively against gathering threats before they materialize (propositions contradicting international law). Bush's memoir is arguably the most important book of the year because it reveals -- far better than do books by Charlie Savage, Isikoff and Corn, or Bob Woodward -- how he fundamentally reconceptualized the functions of the presidency, the balance of power among the branches of government, and the expectations and obligations of citizens, with lasting effects. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/the-prince-and-the-pauper_b_782881.html

Now Obama's bowing to a gaggle of tyrannical governments gathered at the U.N. under the Orwellian title "U.N. Human Rights Council." The council was formed at the U.N. in March 2007 as a vehicle to attack President Bush based on allegations of "torture" of terrorists. http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/11/hedgecock_obama_doing_what_he.php#more

Bush low point: 'Being called a racist' http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17438.html

Crown also got a mash-up of worn-out anecdotes from previously published memoirs written by his subordinates, from which Bush lifts quotes word for word, passing them off as his own recollections. He took equal license in lifting from nonfiction books about his presidency or newspaper or magazine articles from the time. Far from shedding light on how the president approached the crucial "decision points" of his presidency, the clip jobs illuminate something shallower and less surprising about Bush's character: He's too lazy to write his own memoir. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/12/george-bush-book-decision-points_n_782731.html#s180908

When the lieutenant governor of Texas threatens to “fuck” him in the legislature, Bush responds, “If you are going to fuck me, you better give me a kiss first.” You can tell he relished putting that one in. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-10/george-w-bushs-book-decision-points-reviewed

In the book, Bush's explanation of that morning is strikingly revisionistic and almost laughably implausible. Keep in mind that during those achingly long seven minutes, so dramatically recounted in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" there was no way to know that further attacks weren't under way. If there was ever a time for a president to leap into action, that was it. But instead he just sat there, as if waiting for someone to tell him what to do. Or, you can believe what he writes in "Decision Points": My first reaction was outrage. Someone had dared attack America. They were going to pay. Then I looked at the faces of the children in front of me. I thought about the contrast between the brutality of the attackers and the innocence of those children. Millions like them would soon be counting on me to protect them. I was determined not to let them down. I saw reporters at the back of the room, learning the news on their cell phones and pagers. Instinct kicked in. I knew my reaction would be recorded and beamed throughout the world The nation would be in shock; the president could not be. If I stormed out hastily, it would scare the children and send ripples of panic throughout the country. And with Bush essentially abrogating responsibility that morning, what happened? Why, vice president Dick Cheney took command from his bunker, of course. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/09/to-questions-he-cant-answ_n_781137.html

Bush recounted his mother's miscarriage—and how she had showed him the fetus in a jar. "She says to her teenage kid, 'Here's a fetus,'" Bush recounted to Lauer. Bush's recounting of the incident was brief, and Lauer did not press for logistics, leaving some questions unanswered, including who put the fetus in a jar? Where is it now? And why did Barbara decide to preserve her unborn child in a jar—and then show her son? http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-09/the-strange-bush-fetus-secret-barbara-bush-shows-george-w-bush-the-results-of-her-miscarriage-in-a-jar/?cid=hp:mainpromo8

Dear mr president I got something to say another voice that you won't hear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ShBiyhxWsk

Does he ever smell is own bull shit? When The President Talks To God. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFot6SE0MCI

Former US President George W Bush still has "a sickening feeling" about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, US media report. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11680239

This from the book. "Five years later I can barely write those words without feeling disgust." You go on. "I faced a lot of criticism as President. I didn't like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all time low." PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yeah. I still feel that way as you read those words. I felt 'em when I heard 'em, felt 'em when I wrote 'em and I felt 'em when I'm listening to 'em. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/02/george-bush-kanye-racist_n_777967.html

So what does A Charge Kept tell us about Bush? Well, Dick Cheney might have been considered Bush’s co-president, but after his introduction on Page 1, Cheney is only mentioned once in the whole book, in reference to a national-energy strategy. Laura Bush and her portfolio, by contrast, get five full pages. The first chunk of A Charge Kept—some 60 pages—is mostly about foreign policy, war, homeland security, and international relations. Harriet Miers is in the book; Scooter Libby, Michael Brown, and Ahmed Chalabi are not. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-08/george-w-bushs-white-house-memoir-a-charge-kept

Judge Andrew Napolitano said over the weekend that President Bush and Vice President Cheney should have been indicted over their administration's conduct around Guantánamo Bay. In an interview with Ralph Nader on C-SPAN, Napolitano blasted the former administration for suspending habeas corpus. "What President Bush did with the suspension of habeas corpus, with the whole concept of Guantánamo Bay, with the whole idea that he could avoid and evade federal laws, treaties, federal judges and the constitution was blatantly unconstitutional — and in some cases criminal," Napolitano said. "They should have been indicted. They absolutely should have been indicted. For torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrants. I'd like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you're under oath, lying is not a crime." Napolitano added that "the evidence...is overwhelming...that George W. Bush as President and Dick Cheney as Vice President participated in criminal conspiracies to violate the federal law and the guaranteed civil liberties of hundreds, maybe thousands, of human beings." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/14/andrew-napolitano-fox-con_n_645671.html

When President Clinton took office, the federal budget deficit was $290 billion—the largest deficit in American history. In January 1993, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the deficit would grow to $513 billion by 2001. Instead, President Clinton and Democratic economic policies balanced the budget. Clinton and his Democratic allies—(not one Republican voted for the Clinton economic plan in 1993)—turned the projected $513 billion deficit into a $281 billion surplus. We lifted 7 million people—including 4 million children—out of poverty and up into the middle class, producing the lowest poverty rate in a quarter-century. We created 22.5 million private-sector jobs, lifted the wages of working people and left Social Security with a projected $2.49 trillion surplus. Democratic economic policies under Clinton reduced the federal civilian payroll by 377,000 employees—the lowest level since the Kennedy administration. Under Clinton, federal spending as a percentage of GDP dropped from 22.2 percent to just 18.5 percent—the lowest level since 1966. Had we simply continued Clintonomics, we would have paid off the national debt. Not the annual deficit—we'd already eliminated that—but the entire national debt, in 2009. For the first time since Andrew Jackson (a Democrat, too, by the way) was president, in 1833. But now President Obama struggles mightily with staggering deficits—at a time when our economy is teetering on the brink of a double-dip recession. Something must have happened. Hmm... What could it have been? What fiscal disaster intervened between Presidents Clinton and Obama? Oh, right. I remember: The worst presidency of my lifetime. Or my father's lifetime. Or my late grandfather's lifetime (and he fought in World War I). Bush and Rove inherited the largest surplus in history. And they squandered it. Which surprised even me. I thought if Bush would be good at anything it would be inheriting things. It takes something special for the Architect of the Bush presidency, which caused the greatest fiscal reversal in American history, to accuse anyone else of profligacy. In Texas, we call it chutzpah. Others might say rank hypocrisy. But it's more than that. Mr. Rove, like so many Republicans, is a fiscal sociopath. Either that or the greatest parody artist of our time. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-02/karl-rove-fiscal-sociopath-paul-begala-on-bushs-financial-legacy/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsL1

IRAQ: Journalist who hurled shoes at President Bush says stunt had been carefully planned. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/06/president-bush-shoe-thrower-planned-stunt-for-years-he-says.html

National Security Experts Slam President Bush for Endorsing Torture. http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/media/usls/2010/statement/620/index.htm

'I'd do it again' former President Bush tells Grand Rapids crowd about waterboarding terrorists. http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2010/06/id_do_it_again_former_presiden.html

BUSH made the world a worse place. He made millions of people miserable, he killed a million people, he polluted the earth.

George W. Bush took a shot at fellow ex-president Jimmy Carter during this morning's closed-door reunion breakfast for Bush-Cheney alums, saying Carter "made my life miserable." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/26/bush-jimmy-carter-made-my_n_478419.html

In Haiti earthquake response, Bush distances himself from Cheney. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been the Obama administration's chief critic, often fueling talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh. But by agreeing to help President Obama raise money for victims of the Haiti earthquake, George W. Bush is playing by more genteel political rules. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0117/In-Haiti-earthquake-response-Bush-distances-himself-from-Cheney

On then-Gov. Sarah Palin: "I'm trying to remember if I've met her before. ... What is she, the governor of Guam?" Looking back, Latimer says that he doesn't necessarily want to take credit for some of the speeches he wrote for the Bush administration. "One of the things I was disappointed about was the quality and the level of speeches, because what we've done with presidencies is we've turned them into sort of infomercials, where presidents go out and constantly talk all the time. ... And it's actually, I think, diminished the presidential voice," he says. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113055346

The Bush Legacy, archived September 23, 2009

The attacks on McCain, Kerry and me, all decorated wounded combat veterans, are a shameful legacy of the Bush administration, and among the most shameful political stunts in the nation's history. Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/17/max-cleland-memoir-former_n_287674.html

Closing The Book On The Bush Legacy. Thursday's annual Census Bureau report on income, poverty and access to health care-the Bureau's principal report card on the well-being of average Americans-closes the books on the economic record of George W. Bush. It's not a record many Republicans are likely to point to with pride. On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially. http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/09/closing_the_book_on_the_bush_legacy.php

Obama's counter-terrorism advisor denounces Bush-era policies. John Brennan accuses the previous administration of promoting a 'global war' mind-set that served only to 'validate Al Qaeda's twisted worldview.' http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terrorism-brennan7-2009aug07,0,5394795.story

Bush-Era Debate: Using G.I.’s in U.S. Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants. Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force. A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests has few precedents in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property. The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/us/25detain.html?ref=us

Inside Bush and Cheney's Final Days. Hours before they were to leave office after eight troubled years, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney had one final and painful piece of business to conclude. For over a month Cheney had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush to pardon the Vice President's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. Libby had been convicted nearly two years earlier of obstructing an investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity by senior White House officials. The Libby pardon, aides reported, had become something of a crusade for Cheney, who seemed prepared to push his nine-year-old relationship with Bush to the breaking point — and perhaps past it — over the fate of his former aide. "We don't want to leave anyone on the battlefield," Cheney argued. http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1912297,00.html

Bush’s Secret NSA Spying May Have Tainted Prosecutions, Report Warns. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/07/psp/

In a highly publicized poll of over a hundred historians conducted in April, 2008, sixty-one percent of the professional historians rated Bush as the worst president in history; ninety-eight percent rated his Presidency a failure. http://politicallunacy.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/last-hurrah/

The GOP: divorced from reality. The Republican base is behaving like a guy who just got dumped by his wife. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-maher24-2009apr24,0,927819.story

Fact Sheet: Keeping America Safe From Attack. More Kool Aid? http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070523.html

A Spanish judge considering possible criminal action against six former Bush administration officials for torture at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay defied pressure to drop the case on Friday. http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLH62645

Permanent Democratic Majority: New Study Says Yes. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/13/pemanent-democratic-major_n_186257.html http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/03/progressive-map/ http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/01/01/best-of-tnr-2008-america-the-liberal.aspx

Judging the war on terror. The U.S., and now other countries, are conducting legal inquiries into Bush-era policies. The Obama administration has deleted the term "global war on terror" from the government lexicon but is finding it more difficult to wipe the slate on some of the dark activities that rhetoric was used to justify. Since his election, President Obama has said he would prefer to look forward instead of backward at charges that the Bush administration used illegal detention and torture to prosecute its campaign against terrorism. That's an understandable political impulse, but it may prove difficult to sustain. A Spanish court has opened criminal proceedings against six senior Bush administration officials accused of providing the legal framework to allow the torture of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, among them former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, former chief of staff to the vice president David S. Addington and John C. Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer who is now a UC Berkeley law professor. Several factors make this case likely to move forward, including that it is being handled by Judge Baltasar Garzon, a human rights crusader who issued the arrest warrant that led to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's detention in London in 1998. Furthermore, it centers on five citizens or legal residents of Spain, giving that country a specific claim to jurisdiction. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-torture4-2009apr04,0,3397737.story

Ex-State Dept. Lawyer: Bush Panicked After 9/11, Used Torture. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/27/guantanamo-torture-decrie_n_180123.html

Report Says Ex-Principal Put Pupils in Cage to Fight. A high school principal and his security staff shut feuding students in a steel cage to settle disputes with bare-knuckle fistfights, according to an internal report by the Dallas Independent School District. The principal of South Oak Cliff High School, Donald Moten, was accused by several school employees of sanctioning the “cage fights” between students in a steel equipment enclosure in a boy’s locker room, where “troubled” youth fought while a security guard watched, according to the confidential March 2008 report first obtained by The Dallas Morning News. Such fights occurred several times over the course of two years, the report said. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/us/20dallas.html?ref=us

Driving through Tenaha, Texas, doesn't pay for some. A lawsuit alleges that the town's police pull over motorists -- especially African Americans -- and extort money and valuables by threatening criminal charges or worse. Bush Limbaugh racist http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-texas-profiling11-2009mar11,0,507135.story

Terror-War Fallout Lingers Over Bush Lawyers. When John C. Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer, was selected by President George W. Bush in May 2004 to join a government board charged with releasing historical Nazi and Japanese war crimes records, trouble quickly followed. The Abu Ghraib torture scandal was exploding, and fellow panelists learned that Mr. Yoo had written secret legal opinions saying presidents have sweeping wartime power to circumvent the Geneva Conventions. They protested that it was absurd to name Mr. Yoo, who they believed might have sanctioned war crimes, to a war crimes commission. White House officials canceled the appointment, though it had already been announced in a news release, and kept the episode quiet. “We saved them from incredible embarrassment,” said Thomas H. Baer, one of the dissenting panelists. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/washington/09lawyers.html?_r=2&hp

Clarifying the war on terror. Obama should move away from abuses of the Bush era by adopting clear policies on four fronts. Asked about a possible investigation of the excesses of the Bush administration's war on terror, President Obama said, "I'm more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards." That may be harder after new revelations of affronts to the rule of law during the Bush years. Obama is unable to undo those abuses, but he can do more to assure the nation that he has repudiated them. On Monday, the Justice Department released a series of memos that provided legal cover for actual and potential violations of human rights and civil liberties -- not only of suspected foreign terrorists but of U.S. citizens. One memo, for instance, memorably asserted that "1st Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully." The revelations shocked constitutional scholars of all ideologies and served as a stunning illustration of how far the Bush administration was willing to twist American laws and traditions in the prosecution of its misbegotten war. As if that weren't enough, the government also announced Monday that the CIA destroyed 92 videotapes documenting the interrogation and confinement of two Al Qaeda members who were subjected to waterboarding. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-gitmo8-2009mar08,0,4288743.story

Even before the November 2008 defeat—even before the financial crisis and the congressional elections of November 2006—it was already apparent that the Republican Party and the conservative movement were in deep trouble. And not just because of Iraq, either (although Iraq obviously did not help). At the peak of the Bush boom in 2007, the typical American worker was earning barely more after inflation than the typical American worker had earned in 2000. Out of those flat earnings, that worker was paying more for food, energy and out-of-pocket costs of health care. Political parties that do not deliver economic improvement for the typical person do not get reelected. We Republicans and conservatives were not delivering. The reasons for our failure are complex and controversial, but the consequences are not. We lost the presidency in 2008. In 2006 and 2008, together, we lost 51 seats in the House and 14 in the Senate. Even in 2004, President Bush won reelection by the narrowest margin of any reelected president in American history. http://www.newsweek.com/id/188279/page/3

Bush Sr brands Moore 'slimeball' Speaking to WCSH-TV in Maine, US, the former president said Moore was a "total ass, slimeball". He added it was "outrageous, his lies about my family". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3741954.stm

Bush's big lies. Behind the sordid memos that purported to give legal justification for the war on terror. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-brooks5-2009mar05,0,2289353.column

Rush Limbaugh seditious traitor the leader of the Republican Party. The conservative radio host loves to talk about himself -- and the GOP base loves to listen, as the rapt throng at CPAC Saturday proved. That makes party bosses nervous. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/03/01/limbaugh/

Limbaugh: "I want the stimulus package to fail," "I want everything he's doing to fail." http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200902130013?f=h_top

Limbaugh: "The dirty little secret ... is that every Republican in this country wants Obama to fail, but none of them have the guts to say so; I am willing to say it" http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200902270021?f=h_top

Free the Bush memos. The Obama administration should make public the rest of the memos drafted by his predecessor's Office of Legal Counsel. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-jaffer26-2009feb26,0,5863871.story

Biden Says Bush Gave Al Qaeda Recruiting Tool. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/politics/20intel.html?_r=1&ref=us

Did Bush cause the financial crisis? He certainly presided over a widespread failure of regulation. On his watch, the US authorities did little to prevent the sale of millions of mortgages to people who could never afford them. They failed to police the market in mortgage-backed securities which has now collapsed with such devastating consequences. And credit default swaps, those multi-billion-dollar bets on other people going bust, went virtually unregulated. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7814704.stm

Bush Jacketless In Oval Office: Photo Uncovered After Bush Chief Of Staff Slams Obama's Informal Appearance (SLIDESHOW) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/05/bush-jacketless-in-oval-o_n_164513.html

Some call for Bush administration trials. Want ex-leader accountable on Iraq war. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/02/03/some_call_for_bush_administration_trials/

When they write their retrospectives about the era that ended with the 2008 election, economic historians will undoubtedly credit George W. Bush with almost single-handedly moving the country to embrace extremist conservatism. It’s a simple storyline: Cowboy president drives bewildered American herd over laissez-faire cliff. What such reductionism will ignore, though, is what we must remember now: namely, that Congress also played a decisive role in the stampede. As former House Republican leader Tom DeLay said, he and his colleagues deliberately started “every policy initiative from as far to the political right” as possible, so as to shift “the center further to the right.” The formula emulated Franklin Roosevelt’s fabled admonishment to allies: “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.” With Bush, congressional Republicans knew they had an ideological comrade in the White House. But they also knew he was confined by the (minimally) moderating desire for reelection and the (even more minimally) moderating limits of his national office. So, to reach their goals, conservatives had to compel their presidential friend to do what they wanted -- and compel him they did. When Bush’s tax cuts and deregulatory schemes hit the Capitol, Republicans inevitably expanded them to fully achieve the right’s objectives. Of course, that triumph was the country’s loss, as Republican policies thrust the political center off a conservative precipice and America into an economic freefall. And as we plummet, we are desperately groping for a lifeline. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/01/31/sirota/

Yes, Bush misled America (with assistance from the UK) into pointless, disastrous, politically-motivated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not to be confused, of course, with President John F Kennedy’s escalation of the Vietnam intervention, which he justified via the strictly non-political statement that ‘we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place’. Or with President Lyndon B Johnson misleading the world over the Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify launching the full-scale war in Vietnam that still makes Iraq and Afghanistan look small by comparison. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/6122/

Or, put another way, where exactly does a loyal Bushie get off talking about "respecting" the presidency? Did George W. Bush always wear a coat and tie? Sure. Good for him. But while he was wearing nice clothes and demanding that his staff do the same, he also oversaw a scandal-plagued White House that trashed constitutional norms and routinely ignored the laws that the president twice swore to faithfully execute. One respects the office by honoring its place in a constitutional system, not by wearing a suit. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_01/016690.php

"Number One voice for conservatism" Rush Limbaugh George W Bush wastes no time leading assault on Obama. Summary: With a Democrat back in the White House, Rush Limbaugh has wasted no time in hurling false and baseless attacks against President Obama, echoing his slanders and smears of President Clinton, his family, and his administration during the 1990s. Bush http://mediamatters.org/items/200901280001?f=h_top

Karl Rove recently described George W. Bush as a book lover, writing, “There is a myth perpetuated by Bush critics that he would rather burn a book than read one.” There will be many histories written about the Bush administration. What will they use for source material? The Bush White House was sued for losing e-mails, and for skirting laws intended to protect public records. A federal judge ordered White House computers scoured for e-mails just days before Bush left office. Three hundred million e-mails reportedly went to the National Archives, but 23 million e-mails remain “lost.” Vice President Dick Cheney left office in a wheelchair due to a back injury suffered when moving boxes out of his office. He has not only hobbled a nation in his attempt to sequester information—he hobbled himself. Cheney also won court approval to decide which of his records remain private. Barack Obama was questioned by George Stephanopoulos about the possibility of prosecuting Bush administration officials. Obama said: “We’re still evaluating how we’re going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions and so forth. ... I don’t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards. ... [W]hat we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.” Legal writer Karen Greenberg notes in Mother Jones magazine, “The list of potential legal breaches is, of course, enormous; by one count, the administration has broken 269 laws, both domestic and international.” Torture, wiretapping and “extraordinary rendition”—these are serious crimes that have been alleged. President Obama now has, more than anyone else, the power to investigate. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090127_too_big_to_fail_too_big_to_jail/

Investigate the Bush administration? Did the Bush administration break the law in fighting terrorism, and should Obama launch an inquiry to find out? Susan Estrich and Hugh Hewitt debate. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-hewitt-estrich27-2009jan27,0,6928557.story

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall. http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall/

A Loyal Bushie Burrows Into Obama's System. the central objective of burrowing is for political appointees to fly under the radar while Washington changes hands, it's often hard to tell when the practice is actually occurring. Consider the case of Kathie Olsen, who just made a very curious move: going from the No. 2 post at the National Science Foundation to the far less influential job of "senior advisor" in the NSF's Office of Information and Resource Management. As Science magazine observes, Olsen had already submitted her resignation to the Obama administration and would have been out the door had she not slipped into her new, seemingly secure post. And this isn't just any Bush appointee avoiding the need to find a new job -- Olsen was at the forefront of the former president's systematic denial of the human causes of climate change. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/01/a-loyal-bushie-burrows-into-obamas-system.php

President Bush was not subtle. He considered every corner of the world a zone of U.S. interests, designated various countries as enemies of the United States and declared wars on them as easily as blowing his nose. In the process, Bush made Russia show her teeth and become more authoritarian in response. Back in the 1980s, the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan destroyed our country. But it appears that Bush is incapable of drawing any lessons from history. The endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan sucked billions of dollars out of the U.S. economy, basically sucking it bloodless. The plunge the U.S. economy took brought down the rest of the world, and Russia is no exception. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-voices25-2009jan25,0,6500864.story

Bush legacy leaves uphill climb for U.S. parks, critics say. Some National Park Service veterans say it may take decades for the agency to undo policies that tended to favor commercial interests and energy projects over conservation. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-parks25-2009jan25,0,6965342.story

American conservatism has always had the problem of being misnamed. It is, at root, the political twin to classical European liberalism, a freedoms-based belief in limiting the power of government to intrude on the liberties of the people. It is the opposite of European conservatism (which Winston Churchill referred to as reverence for king and church); it is rather the heir to John Locke and James Madison, and a belief that the people should be the masters of their government, not the reverse (a concept largely turned on its head by the George W. Bush presidency). Over the last several years, conservatives have turned themselves inside out: They have come to worship small government and have turned their backs on limited government. They have turned to a politics of exclusion, division and nastiness. Today, they wonder what went wrong, why Americans have turned on them, why they lose, or barely win, even in places such as Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina. And, watching, I suspect Ronald Reagan is smacking himself on the forehead, rolling his eyes and wondering who in the world these clowns are who want so desperately to wrap themselves in his cloak. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-edwards24-2009jan24,0,3344794.story

Farewell to George W. Bush is smooth, but some cracks show. Obama and his predecessor are cordial, but the crowd reactions and the inaugural address display evidence of the controversies surrounding Bush's tenure. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-inaug-bush-cheney21-2009jan21,0,28850.story

Bush and history. The president defined himself by 9/11. But the terror attacks can't excuse his miscalculations. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-bush19-2009jan19,0,4054140.story

Bush’s strategy during the Florida recount that would put him in the Oval Office was to flex his family’s political muscle, manipulate Republican sycophants who oversaw state elections, and get the courts to shut down the vote count. Who can forget the shocking “white-collar riot” staged by a phalanx of Republican operatives who descended in a shouting, fist-pounding mob on a municipal office in Miami where ballots were being tallied? The intimidation worked to stop the counting that day. Bush has not expressed shame or sorrow at this mocking of democracy. The affront to the rule of law was established as precedent. The world would soon experience the same bullying tactics. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090120_its_over_--_and_not_a_moment_too_soon/

New president cheered, old one jeered. We are the Deciders. http://blogs.reuters.com/frontrow/2009/01/20/new-president-cheered-old-one-jeered/

"America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens." http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/multimedia/2009/01/gallery_inauguration?slide=12&slideView=2

I was here in 2001, too. That was during my youth, back before I became a journalist. At George W. Bush's first inauguration, I was there for the protests. Tuesday, I went back to where I was eight years ago, at 13th St. and Pennsylvania Ave. NW, across from the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, to see what had changed. The contrast could not have been starker. In 2001, protesters at the site took over risers intended for ticket-holders there to support the new president; the ticket-holders themselves mostly went elsewhere. And when Bush drove down Pennsylvania Ave. after he was sworn in, the motorcade had to spend much of the route at full speed to avoid a hail of boos. Today, I saw no protesters at the site, and the risers looked well-used. And everyone along the parade route was happy, celebrating. I heard one woman say to her child, "We did overcome." http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/?last_story=/politics/war_room/2009/01/20/bush_obama/

It was more than Democrats feeling their oats or African-Americans celebrating the unimaginable, more than revulsion at the gang of bullheads who held power for too long. It was a huge gasp of pleasure at a new America emerging, a country we all tried to believe in, a nation that is curious and venturesome, more openhearted and public-spirited. The crowd down below the podium had their opinions. There was a profound silence when Mrs. Bush was announced and walked out. People watched the big screen and when Mrs. Obama appeared, there was a roar, and when the Current Occupant and Mr. Cheney came out of the Capitol, a low and heartfelt rumble of booing. Dignified booing. Old black ladies around me tried to shush them -- "Don't do that!" they hissed -- but it's a democracy, and how will those men know how we feel if we don't tell them? But the great moment came later, as the mob flowed slowly across the grounds. I heard loud cheers behind me and there on the giant screen was the Former Occupant and Mrs. Bush saying goodbye to the Obamas in the parking lot behind the Capitol, the Marine helicopter behind them. The crowd stopped and stared, a little stunned at the reality of it. They saw it on a screen in front of the Capitol and it was actually happening on the other side. The Bushes went up the stairs, turned, waved and disappeared into the cabin, and people started to cheer in earnest. When the blades started turning, the cheering got louder, and when the chopper lifted up above the Capitol and we saw it in the sky heading for the airport, a million jubilant people waved and hollered for all they were worth. It was the most genuine, spontaneous, universal moment of the day. It was like watching the ice go out on the river. http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2009/01/21/inauguration/

From Waco, the Bushes were headed to their 1,600-acre ranch in nearby Crawford where Bush said he would look in the mirror and "be proud of what I see." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110ap_bush_texas_welcome.html?source=mypi

Throw a shoe, sing for peace: Protesters gather in D.C. Antiwar, anti-Bush, anti-Obama -- advocates of varied causes arrive at the capital to voice opinions, petition and stage political theater. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/inauguration/la-na-inaug-protests20-2009jan20,0,6742260.story

The President's Last Goodbye. Slate crashes Bush's farewell party. http://www.slate.com/id/2209137/

Bush's Final Approval Rating: 22 Percent. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/16/opinion/polls/main4728399.shtml

Dick Cheney nods off during George W. Bush farewell speech 1/15/09 (Updated with VIDEO) http://www.examiner.com/x-1028-Pet-News-Examiner~y2009m1d15-Dick-Cheney-nods-off-during-George-W-Bush-farewell-speech-11509 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug59gyUYock

"Republicanism is not the solution to our problem; Republicanism is the problem". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7819180.stm

Most see Bush presidency as a failure, poll shows. Sixty-eight percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Sunday said that Bush's eight years in the White House were a failure, with 44 percent saying this was because of his personal shortcomings and 22 percent blaming the failure on circumstances beyond his control. Thirty-one percent said they consider Bush's presidency a success. Half of those polled say the United States could be better off today if Al Gore had been elected president in 2000 rather than Bush, with 27 percent saying the country would be worse off if Gore had won. Twenty-two percent say things would be about the same. http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/18/poll.bush.presidency/index.html

Hopes for an Obama agenda. Many Republicans, like me, voted for Obama (I even contributed to his campaign). I've become disillusioned with the Republican Party in recent years as I've witnessed the party of Lincoln promote divisiveness, embrace incompetence and ignore a shrinking base. http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jan/18/lz1e18agenda2255-hopes-obama-agenda/?uniontrib

What Bush leaves behind. The outgoing president's place in history will depend on the outcome of wars he started but will not be around to finish. By Bush's own standards, his presidency has largely been a failure when it comes to domestic affairs. He sought to build a lasting Republican majority around a new brand of big-tent conservatism, but he leaves his party wounded and weakened amid the worst financial collapse since the Depression. He wanted to reform tax and immigration laws, Social Security and Medicare; none of that got done. His main domestic achievements come down to tax cuts and test-heavy education reforms; Obama has promised to scrap the first and overhaul the second. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcmanus18-2009jan18,0,6879153.story

For most of the 13 minutes he spoke, Bush offered surface-level observations. He provided one quote, noting that President Thomas Jefferson once remarked, "I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." It's no wonder Bush fancies this line. Given that he is passing to Barack Obama a country burdened with two unresolved wars and an economy in severe decline, Bush certainly would rather look forward (and hope his now unpopular presidency comes to be seen in better terms down the road) than face the present-day consequences of his actions and inaction. Ernest Hemingway, I believe, once observed that what one doesn't put on the page is as important as what one does. And what Bush did not discuss in his farewell address also defines his presidency. Here is a partial list: * Climate change * China * Russia * North Korea * Iran * Pakistan * Osama bin Laden * Nuclear weapons * Poverty * Health insurance * Foreclosures * Housing * Guantanamo * National debt * Budget deficit * Trade deficit * Wall Street * Financial regulation * Dow Jones * Retirement security * Social Security * Medicaid * Energy * Immigration * Automobile industry * Housing * Subprime credit * Wages * Jobs * FEMA http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-corn/what-bush-left-out-of-his_b_158381.html

The Bush Legacy, archived January 17, 2009

As the rehabilitation tour of George W. Bush finally, at long last, not soon enough for me, ends (we can only hope), tonight we will yet be treated to one more moment of pure alternative universe when our current president says a final farewell. The constant theme from Bush and Cheney, but also their apologists, as well as their bloviating sycophants on wingnut radio, is that Bush will be remembered for keeping America safe. When evaluating President Bush's presidency, everything for Republicans begins on September 12, 2001. Ignored is the PDB: Bin Laden Determined to Attack in U.S. Ignored is that Bush was on vacation when he got that warning, but stayed on vacation and did nothing. Ignored was the fact that Richard Clarke's position focusing on terrorism, which had been a cabinet level post during WJC's presidency, was neutered so that Clarke couldn't even get a substantive meeting on the threats we faced until it was way too late. Ignored is the fact that all summer there were hair on fire warnings about something big about to happen. Ignored is the fact that WJC and his national security team warned Bush about the threats and Al Qaeda, but because of Bush-Cheney's Anything But Clinton philosophy, they ignored the threats already known and went it alone. People paid with their lives. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/taylor-marsh/who-was-president-on-911_b_158253.html

Thursday night's valedictory speech was quintessential Bush: delusional from beginning to end. He made Afghanistan sound like a swell place to take a vacation when, in truth, only those with a death wish venture out these days without an armed convoy. He lauded Iraq as "a friend of the United States" -- without ever mentioning the fact that if Iraq has a BFF it is Iran, not America. He said his Medicare prescription drug plan "is bringing peace of mind to seniors." Hardly. It's been widely derided as a poorly conceived, chaotic mess. He claimed that, on his watch America's "air, water, and lands are measurably cleaner." Who is doing the measuring, the same eco-unfriendly companies to which he handed both his environmental policies and our public lands? This is a man whose administration refused to open emails from its own EPA because they contained information about greenhouse gas emissions that are endangering public health. In a particularly jaw-dropping moment, Bush asserted that when people "live in freedom, they do not willingly choose leaders who pursue campaigns of terror" -- a remarkable claim given the fact that Hamas, which has kinda been in the news lately, has leaders who "pursue campaigns of terror" and were willingly chosen by people given the freedom to elect who they wanted. Another striking moment was watching the great pride the president took in saying that even though we might not have liked all of his decisions, we have to admit that he "was willing to make the tough decisions." The Crawford Cowboy to the end. Yes, he made tough decisions... but what is the value in that if the decisions you make are consistently wrong? And Bush has made the wrong decisions again and again and again. He was wrong about Iraq and Saddam and WMD. He was wrong to take his eye off the ball on Afghanistan. He was wrong about tax cuts being the answer to our economic woes. He was wrong about Wall Street being able to regulate itself. He was wrong about Katrina. He was wrong about torture. He was wrong about extraordinary rendition. He was wrong about warrantless wiretapping. He was wrong about Gitmo. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The speech was spin at its most dangerous. It's easy to feel a pang of pity for a guy who was on top so long and is now heading out the door. But the more sympathy he evokes, the more susceptible we are to the lies he is telling. Before we know it, his revisionism becomes accepted as the truth. So if there was any value in the speech it was this: it should remind us of the importance of refusing to allow this delusional revisionism to stand. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/bushs-farewell-address-st_b_158382.html

Poll Finds Disapproval of Bush Unwavering. President Bush prepares to leave office with no evidence that public opinion toward him is softening during his final days in power, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. When asked about Mr. Bush’s performance over the last eight years, 22 percent of respondents said they approved. That matched Mr. Bush’s job-approval rating for much of last fall, the lowest of his presidency. In the current poll, 73 percent disapproved of his performance over the course of his two terms. Disapproval cut across party lines, with Democrats, independents and even 34 percent of Republicans critical of Mr. Bush’s performance. In contrast, Mr. Bush’s most recent predecessors left office with approval ratings ranging from 68 percent, for both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, to 44 percent, for Jimmy Carter. Mr. Bush’s father left with 54 percent. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/us/politics/17poll.html?_r=1&ref=us

Family and Lawyer Fear for Reporter Who Threw His Shoes at Bush. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/world/middleeast/16iraq.html?ref=world

Bush's goodbye is a festival of self-pity and delusion . Let's be honest: Thursday night Bush sounded like a kid reciting the high points of fourth grade, or a challenged patient graduating to a new level in some kind of mental health rehab institution. No one could watch that and not be shaken by it. I've had my political disagreements with my friend Chris Matthews, but he summed it up really well: It was an abomination, the depiction of a world of presidents in which "every kid gets a trophy who participates."http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/misc/2009/01/16/bush_farewell/

Unpopular but unbowed, President George W. Bush defended his tumultuous two terms in a farewell address to the nation Thursday night, claiming a hard-won record of achievement. Reaching back to the Sept. 11 attacks, when the public rallied behind him, Bush declared the United States will "never tire, never falter and never fail." Leaving office with the highest disapproval rating since Richard Nixon, Bush said, "You may not agree with some of the tough decisions I have made, but I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions." A bookend to eight years indelibly marked by terrorism, two wars and recessions, the 13-minute speech was Bush's last opportunity before he leaves office Tuesday to defend his presidency and craft a first draft of his legacy for historians. He spoke from the East Room of the White House with just 112 hours left in office. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_bushs_farewell.html?source=mypi

Harper’s Index. Number of news stories from 1998 to Election Day 2000 containing “George W. Bush” and “aura of inevitability”: 206. http://harpers.org/archive/2009/01/0082319

Democrats push for investigation of 'criminal' Bush adminstration. http://www.3news.co.nz/News/InternationalNews/Democrats-push-for-investigation-of-criminal-Bush-adminstration/tabid/417/articleID/86903/cat/61/Default.aspx

"We ought to make the pie higher." http://www.slate.com/id/2208132/

"I promise you this," Evans says. "Anybody that has a chance to sit down and visit with George Bush will come away saying, 'You know what? I really like that guy. He is really a good man.' " http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99172716

Bush's 'what ifs'. The president, at his final news conference, was blind to his failures but showed why voters elected him. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-bush13-2009jan13,0,4107995.story

Bush defends legacy in final press conference. The president, in what he calls 'the ultimate exit interview,' acknowledges some mistakes in action and rhetoric but maintains that he made the difficult choices necessary to defend the nation. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush13-2009jan13,0,3305646.story

Should the Torturers Go on Trial? http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090108_should_the_torturers_go_on_trial/

The 'misunderestimated' president? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7809160.stm

Final Air Force One trip for Bush. George W Bush has taken his last flight as US president aboard Air Force One. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7822661.stm

Rise and fall of Bush's popularity. Every US president's popularity among the American public is measured by approval ratings; opinion polls conducted weekly or monthly by a host of polling companies. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7814441.stm

The Myth of Bush As The Hero of 9/11. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-myth-of-bush-as-the-h_b_156092.html

President Bush saved U.S. lives? That's only more Karl Rove-style spin. http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/01/08/2009-01-08_president_bush_saved_us_lives_thats_only.html

Dubya, Drawn and Quartered. Will anyone miss George W. Bush when he finally leaves Washington this month? Well, Vanity Fair’s illustrators might feel a wistful twinge, as his failings and follies inspired some of their best work. This farewell slide show features our favorite depictions of the soon-to-be-former president. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/01/bye-bye-bush-slideshow200901

‘Misunderestimate’ Tops List of All-Time Bushisms. http://www.languagemonitor.com/politics/bushisms

Poll: Fair to speculate on Bush's legacy? Probably not, but it sure doesn't help that everyone's asking the question before the next guy takes over. The observation below by University of Texas political scientist Sean Theriault puts the talk of letting the historical perspective on the Bush presidency work itself out over time into, well, historical perspective. From the San Francisco Chronicle's Jan. 4 front-page feature on the Bush legacy: Conditions are worse now than when Truman left office, said Sean Theriault, a political scientist at the University of Texas. "The objective standards by which we can evaluate the presidency are just so bad. The economy is truly in tatters, and I don't think any Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, can dispute that. When Bill Clinton left office you could argue that Americans were generally pleased, but people thought he wasn't a beacon of integrity. But we can't have an argument about the success of Bush's economic policies." http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2009/01/bush-legacy-quo.html

The Myth of Bush As "The Hero of September 11". http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-myth-of-bush-as-the-h_b_156092.html

National Mall reflects magnificence and neglect. Republicans hate America. The sad decline of the historic promenade shows in trampled lawns and unfiltered pools. With 2 million visitors expected for the inauguration and 25 million yearly, the park service can't keep up. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-washington-mall8-2009jan08,0,2398.story

W. and the damage done. President Bush inherited a peaceful, prosperous America. As he exits, Salon consults experts in seven fields to try to assess the devastation. Republicanism is a mental disease. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/01/08/damage/

The cheerful idiot. As the Current Occupant imagines his legacy emerging golden and shining in a hundred years after all of us are deceased, you and I go on. http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2009/01/07/self_esteem/

A President Forgotten but Not Gone. WE like our failed presidents to be Shakespearean, or at least large enough to inspire Oscar-worthy performances from magnificent tragedians like Frank Langella. So here, too, George W. Bush has let us down. Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana whom Josh Brolin and Will Ferrell can nail without breaking a sweat. He’s the reckless Yalie Tom Buchanan, not Gatsby. He is smaller than life. The last NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Bush’s presidency found that 79 percent of Americans will not miss him after he leaves the White House. He is being forgotten already, even if he’s not yet gone. You start to pity him until you remember how vast the wreckage is. It stretches from the Middle East to Wall Street to Main Street and even into the heavens, which have been a safe haven for toxins under his passive stewardship. The discrepancy between the grandeur of the failure and the stature of the man is a puzzlement. We are still trying to compute it. The one indisputable talent of his White House was its ability to create and sell propaganda both to the public and the press. Now that bag of tricks is empty as well. Bush’s first and last photo-ops in Iraq could serve as bookends to his entire tenure. On Thanksgiving weekend 2003, even as the Iraqi insurgency was spiraling, his secret trip to the war zone was a P.R. slam-dunk. The photo of the beaming commander in chief bearing a supersized decorative turkey for the troops was designed to make every front page and newscast in the country, and it did. Five years later, in what was intended as a farewell victory lap to show off Iraq’s improved post-surge security, Bush was reduced to ducking shoes. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04rich.html?em

George W. Bush's legacy. A soldier, a teacher, a detainee, an AIDS worker and others reflect on how the president affected them. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-legacy4-2009jan04,0,6436489.story

A numerical look at the Bush years. Facts and figures on President George W. Bush, the nation's 43rd president, who will leave office to make way for President-elect Barack Obama on Jan. 20. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_bush_by_the_numbers.html

Bushisms over the years.

In this Aug. 4, 2002 file photo, President George W. Bush stretches out in his golf cart at the Cape Arundel Golf Club in Kennebunkport, Maine. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

President George W. Bush will leave behind a legacy of Bushisms, the label stamped on the commander in chief's original speaking style. Some of the president's more notable malaprops and mangled statements: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_bushisms.html

Analysis: Bush's personality shapes his legacy. Bush demands punctuality and disdains inefficiency. Incompetence is inefficient. The Bus response to Katrina was anything but punctual. This is a great article: it points out the true mental disease that conservative Republicans have. Bush thinks stubbornness is a virtue. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. Bush is mentally and spiritually ill. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_distinctly_bush_analysis.html?source=mypi

Obama Faces Legacy of Lawlessness at Justice. Career Lawyers Hired for Ideology Entrenched in Agency. http://washingtonindependent.com/23564/obama-faces-legacy-of-lawlessness-at-justice

Bush vows to keep working hard until Jan. 20. President Bush in his New Year’s message to the nation vowed to keep working hard in the less than three weeks that he remains in office. Bush, who has held several interviews in recent weeks that looked back at his presidency, used his last New Year’s message to “thank the American people for trusting me with the honor of serving our great country. “It has been a tremendous privilege, and together we have accomplished a great deal,” he stated. “Among other things, we have advanced the cause of human freedom; we have strengthened our military and our Nation's security; we have empowered parents to demand educational excellence for their children; and we have revolutionized the fight against poverty, corruption, and the scourge of disease around the world.” Bush also stressed that he was not yet done working. “Earlier this year, I promised that I would sprint to the finish of my time as president,” he stated. “We are working hard to keep that promise.” Bush, who will leave office on Jan. 20, praised the “peaceful transfer of power” as one “of the hallmarks of a true democracy.” What planet is this man on? Republicanism is a mental disease. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/bush-vows-to-keep-working-hard-until-jan.-20-2009-01-01.html

Two Advisers Reflect on Eight Years With Bush. Bolten and Hadley Decry 'Mythologies' "He's a good decision-maker," Bolten said. "If it's important enough to be a presidential issue, we ought to expose the president to more information and more views, and we ought to let him decide." Why did he make these decisions? killed 4,200 US soldiers, 1million Iraqis, abandoned Katrina victims, oil to $140 then back down to $40, sub prime mortgage, Madoff. He's the decider! Why did he make all these decisions? What is his goal? What is his mission? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/01/AR2009010101958.html?hpid=topnews

Spencer Ackerman asks whether this comparison is more insulting to Bush or to Palin. Matthew Yglesias says its no contest: I'm going to say "more insulting to Palin." Palin's something of a laughingstock, but Bush is a villain. I mean, he wrecked the world economy, he led to millions of Iraqis being forced to flee their homes, he's a total disaster and a disgrace. Palin gave bad answers in TV interviews. There's no real comparison. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/30/powell-aide-calls-bush-sa_n_154325.html

In the months after the 9/11 attacks, Dimock said, when his polling asked for a single word to describe Bush's presidency, the most frequent responses were "leadership" and "strength." After Katrina, he said, "the top word was 'incompetent.' " 58% of those surveyed scored Bush as "below average."

Katrina sent Bush's image into inescapable tailspin, former aides say. Surveys bolster officials' views, finding that the president's ratings went into a free-fall after the New Orleans disaster, with most Americans summing him up as 'incompetent.' http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-katrina31-2008dec31,0,6485897.story

Ex-aides say Bush never recovered from Katrina. Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government's poor handling of the natural disaster. "Katrina to me was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. "The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter." Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: "Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_bush_advisers_speak_out.html?source=mypi

Please go away! Recent bull from Bush has us counting the days. in an interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz, Bush muttered that rank swill about how Iraq was part of the war against terrorism. When Raddatz noted that al-Qaeda in Iraq wasn’t in Iraq until after the toppling of Saddam Hussein created a void for it to fill, Bush’s response was “So what?” Ladies and gentlemen, the American president. So what? So, Raddatz just drove a tank through your whole justification, you idiot. So what? So, these grieving families you say you’re getting all emotional about gave their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers for your bullshit political cause, you deviant. As of Monday, Dec. 22, the day the Washington Times’ apologetic story was published, 4,213 servicemen and women had died in Iraq, and tens of thousands more will live with debilitating physical and mental injuries for the rest of their lives. All this misery, thanks to the con job—bogus claims about Nigerian uranium, bogus aluminum tubes, bogus links between Iraq and 9/11, browbeating of intelligence analysts by Cheney’s team—that convinced the public that Iraq was a global threat. All that grief, all that blood, all those shattered lives—it’s on you, Mr. President; it’s on your hands. So what? So, spare us the calculated public revelation of your “clandestine,” emotional meetings. Spare us these continued lies about how we’re fighting them there so we won’t have to fight them here. We all know now that no one from Iraq was coming here in the first place. As of Monday, Dec. 22, there were just 29 days separating the American people and deliverance from George W. Bush. In our opinion, that’s 29 days too many. http://www.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/please_go_away/7622/

Bush Data Threatens to Overload Archives. The National Archives has put into effect an emergency plan to handle electronic records from the Bush White House amid growing doubts about whether its new $144 million computer system can cope with the vast quantities of digital data it will receive when President Bush leaves office on Jan. 20. The technical challenge was an inevitable result of the explosion in cybercommunications, which will make the electronic record of the Bush years about 50 times as large as that left by the Clinton White House in 2001, archives officials estimate. The collection will include top-secret e-mail tracing plans for the Iraq war as well as scenes from the likes of Barney Cam 2008, a White House video featuring the first pet. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/washington/27archives.html?_r=1&ref=washington

“In the time the Oval Office has been in my trust, I have kept near my desk reminders of America's character – including a painting of a West Texas mountain lit by the morning sun. It reminds me that Americans have always lived on the sunrise side of the mountain. We are a nation that looks to the new day with confidence and optimism. I am optimistic about our future, because I believe in the goodness and wisdom of the American people.” – George W. Bush http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/features/la-et-bestworst-rnc-2008-pg,0,5150066.photogallery

CNN Poll: Three out of four Americans glad to see Bush go. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/12/26/cnn-poll-three-out-of-four-americans-glad-to-see-bush-go/

Iranians join Bush shoe protest. The protesters threw shoes at caricatures of Mr Bush. Dozens of Iranians in the country's capital Tehran have held their own shoe-throwing rally in protest at US President George W Bush. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7800453.stm

By a vote of 180 in favour to 1 against (United States) and no abstentions, the Committee also approved a resolution on the right to food, by which the Assembly would “consider it intolerable” that more than 6 million children still died every year from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday, and that the number of undernourished people had grown to about 923 million worldwide, at the same time that the planet could produce enough food to feed 12 billion people, or twice the world’s present population. (See Annex III.)

The Bush administration, speaking for the U.S.A., therefore must consider it tolerable that 6 million children die every day - children who could be fed if we weren't wasting billions on stealth fighters, littoral combat boondoggles and non-effective defense against non-existant ballistic missiles from Iran.

Just so you get that, here it is again:

In favour: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia (Federated States of), Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Against: United States.

Merry Christmas to the World from Dubya and his chums - who are currently geeing up the notion that an increase in defense spending (say, to 4% of GDP) would be a great economic stimulus package! Actually, it wouldn't - defense spending "drains resources from the productive economy" and costs more jobs in other sectors than it creates.

How much better an economic stimulus - both for America and the world - it would be to mobilize American might for good instead of destruction, Dubya and his fellow travellers remain silent upon. http://crooksandliars.com/cernig/right-food

Don’t Be Fooled by Bush’s Farewell Tour. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081224_ellen_goodman_rocking_chairs/

Beating Up On President Bush: MSNBC Has Crossed the Line! http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/85535

White House Views on Past 8 Years Diverge. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/us/politics/25memo.html?em

Federal stock-fraud cases fall sharply. Probing securities crimes less common under Bush. http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2008/dec/25/1n25sec23542-federal-stock-fraud-cases-fall-sharpl/?uniontrib

Is George Bush Russian? For his big midnight madness farewell, he's burrowed political pals into safe civil service jobs -- safe for them, devastating for the departments that have to endure them. He's working to set up regulations for what the administration outrageously labels a ``right of conscience, which lets any medical professionals refuse to take part in any medical procedure they object to. They wouldn't even have to discuss legal and accepted medical procedures like abortion or birth control or artificial insemination. Even people whose job is to clean the instruments could refuse to do so. Can you say septicemia? And just today, the Bush administration gave its blessing to rules which could kill more of America's wild creatures than Deadeye Dick Cheney ever dreamed of gunning down. For 35 years -- since the Nixon administration -- the feds have required that such projects as dams, power plants, timber projects and the like also get the input from government scientists, to assess how any project could affect endangered species and the habitat they depend on to survive. Not any more. From the time the new rule takes effect -- in about 30 days, in other words only about a week before the Bush administration ends -- until the Obama administration can hurry up and undo Bush's nasty Gordian policy knots, it's Katie-bar-the-door for developers, and R.I.P., endangered species. Bulldozer versus snowy egret nest? Not remotely a fair fight. http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2008/12/is-george-bush.html

Bush a catalyst in America's declining influence. The president oversaw a period of eroding economic and political power, in which the rise of China, India and others was a major factor, but assisted by an aversion to him and his policies. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bush-world25-2008dec25,0,4293325.story

Is the Bush administration criminally liable for its lawlessness? The culpability for flouting national and international conventions against torture and spying is shared and is being addressed by the proper institutions. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-rumsfeld24-2008dec24,0,4191006.story

WH accuses Times of 'gross negligence' The White House on Sunday issued a blistering 500-word response to a scathing 5,000-word article on the front page of Sunday's New York Times that says President Bush and his style and philosophy of governing played a direct role in the mortgage meltdown that's crippling the nation's economy. The response accused the nation's largest Sunday paper of "gross negligence." "The Times' 'reporting' in this story amounted to finding selected quotes to support a story the reporters fully intended to write from the onset, while disregarding anything that didn't fit their point of view," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said in an e-mailed statement. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16787.html

White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire. The global financial system was teetering on the edge of collapse when President Bush and his economics team huddled in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for a briefing that, in the words of one participant, “scared the hell out of everybody.” It was Sept. 18. Lehman Brothers had just gone belly-up, overwhelmed by toxic mortgages. Bank of America had swallowed Merrill Lynch in a hastily arranged sale. Two days earlier, Mr. Bush had agreed to pump $85 billion into the failing insurance giant American International Group. The president listened as Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, laid out the latest terrifying news: The credit markets, gripped by panic, had frozen overnight, and banks were refusing to lend money. Then his Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., told him that to stave off disaster, he would have to sign off on the biggest government bailout in history. Mr. Bush, according to several people in the room, paused for a single, stunned moment to take it all in. “How,” he wondered aloud, “did we get here?” Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of homeownership, Mr. Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, “faced with the prospect of a global meltdown” with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed. There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk. But the story of how we got here is partly one of Mr. Bush’s own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials. From his earliest days in office, Mr. Bush paired his belief that Americans do best when they own their own home with his conviction that markets do best when let alone. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/21admin.html?ref=us

the Anti-Bush Future

Irish president’s kind words for Obama. In a visit with Times editors and reporters, Mary McAleese says America’s next president has “electrified” Europeans. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-mcaleese23-2008dec23,0,3711476.story

Post election

Bush Frustrated By Mother's Constant Questioning Of His Plans Post-White House. http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/bush_frustrated_by_mothers?utm_source=onion_rss_washpost

"Look, everybody likes to be popular," said Bush. "What do you expect? We've got a major economic problem and I'm the president during the major economic problem. I mean, do people approve of the economy? No. I don't approve of the economy. ... I've been a wartime president. I've dealt with two economic recessions now. I've had, hell, a lot of serious challenges. What matters to me is I didn't compromise my soul to be a popular guy." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_bush_popularity.html?source=mypi

Mid East press glee at shoe throw. The shoe thrower's arrest has prompted protests in his support. The hurling of a pair of shoes at George Bush by an Iraqi journalist has revealed the full extent of the US president's unpopularity in the Middle East's media, with newspapers across the region taking delight in his discomfort. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7785837.stm

Late-Night's Shoe-Throwing Joke Bonanza (VIDEO) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/16/late-nights-shoe-throwing_n_151416.html

Shoe Journalist's Arrest Sparks Iraq Protests. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98293176

Secret Service faces questions after Bush shoe incident. Agency officials say they are reviewing the Iraq assault but believe agents responded appropriately. Others say minor changes in procedure are likely. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-secretservice16-2008dec16,0,7896712.story

Bush ducks shoes in Baghdad. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-on-bush-shoe15-2008dec15,0,6213401.story

Bush’s Legacy Of Squandering Taxpayer Money. http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/21/bush-legacy-taxpayer-funds/

Bush the Infallible. When Gibson asked whether there would have been an Iraq war if Bush had known that Saddam had no WMD, Bush replied: “You know, that’s an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can’t do. It’s hard for me to speculate.” And when Gibson asked Bush what was his greatest accomplishment, he got this response: “I keep recognizing we’re in a war against ideological thugs and keeping America safe.” Observe the astounding selectivity of the president’s memory. Just imagine all the other do-overs he could have asked for. He might regret not paying more attention to the Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing memo, which was titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” and reported “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks.” He might wish he hadn’t put the nation’s emergency response capability in the hands of Michael Brown, a former executive of the International Arabian Horse Association, and then watched from afar as New Orleans drowned. The president might have volunteered, as he did in a previous interview, that his “Mission Accomplished” photo-op on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln was a moment he’d like to have back. But no. Instead, he told Gibson that his “biggest regret” was a mistake made by others: intelligence analysts who got it wrong about Iraq. The only inference we can draw is that if the intelligence had been more skeptical of Saddam’s WMD prowess, there might not have been an Iraq war. Bush’s “hard for me to speculate” dodge notwithstanding, this seems to be the story the outgoing administration wants to tell. Karl Rove recently sounded this same revisionist theme, saying that “absent weapons of mass destruction” there likely would have been no invasion. But there was plenty of skeptical intel about Iraq’s alleged WMD, particularly its nuclear program—the potential “mushroom cloud” that Condoleezza Rice so chillingly evoked. Shaky or ambiguous reports—such as the bogus document about Iraq’s attempt to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger—were presented as gospel. International nuclear inspectors, meanwhile, were inside Iraq doing their job. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081205_bush_the_infallible/

It might seem churlish, at this late date, to ask Bush to make a frank confession that a war that has killed more than 4,200 Americans was based on a mistake. After all, other figures in Washington -- including Secretary of State-designate Hillary Rodham Clinton -- were misled about the WMD threat. It's also possible that Bush believes that to admit he erred in invading Iraq would be to endorse the charge by his harshest critics that he deliberately deceived the American people about the threat posed by Hussein. Still, welcome as his latest remarks are, they fall short of the recognition of reality that would have been cathartic for Bush and for the nation. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-bush4-2008dec04,0,4495649.story

In an interview with his sister Doro Bush Koch, parts of which were aired on NPR, Bush stated that he “came to Washington with a set of values, and I'm leaving with the same set of values.” The president added that he “darn sure wasn’t going to sacrifice those values.” Bush returns to drinking and drugging. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/bush-says-he-leaves-white-house-with-values-intact-2008-11-28.html

For economy's sake, Pelosi needs to push for impeachment now. http://www.freep.com/article/20081125/COL10/81125018

Goodbye to the rotating cast of butchers manning the White House's legal abattoir, where the Constitution has been sliced and bled and gutted since September 11. Goodbye to the "unitary executive" theory and its claims that the president can do whatever he wants - even snatch an American citizen off the street and lock him up for life without charge, without legal representation, and without trial. Goodbye to the promiscuous use of "signing statements" (1,100 at last count) to declare that the law is whatever the president says it is, and that he'll enforce only those laws he likes. Goodbye to an executive branch that treats lawfully issued subpoenas like suggestions that can be ignored. Goodbye to thinking of John Ashcroft as the liberal attorney general. Goodbye to the culture of incompetence, where rebuilding a country we destroyed could be turned over to a bunch of clueless 20-somethings with no qualifications save an internship at the Heritage Foundation and an opposition to abortion. Goodbye to the "Brownie, you're doin' a heckuva job" philosophy, where vital agencies are turned over to incompetent boobs to rot and decay. Goodbye to handing out the Medal of Freedom as an award for engineering one of the greatest screw-ups of our time. Goodbye to an administration that welcomed gluttonous war profiteering, that was only too happy to outsource every government function it could to well-connected contractors who would do a worse job for more money. http://www.truthout.org/111208S

Obama's plans for probing Bush torture. President Bush could pardon officials involved in brutal interrogations -- but he may also face a sweeping investigation under the new president. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/11/13/torture_commission/

Bush Regime Corruption

In early July, the sale of the Aspen Lakes Ranch for $24.5 million deal made headlines in the Colorado High Country for being the most expensive single-family real estate transaction in Aspen since the summer of 2009. Just weeks later, the sale is back in the news. This time, the home is drawing attention after reports surfaced that its buyer is none other than former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry "Hank" Paulson. Real Aspen reports that Paulson was represented through Brian Hazen of Mason Morse Real Estate, though Hazen would neither confirm nor deny the identity of the ranch's buyer. Paulson faced criticism in late 2008 for skiing in Aspen and conducting business over the phone as Wall Street and the economy crumbled. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/12/henry-paulson-buys-aspen_n_643671.html

Reporting from Washington - The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her, according to officials in federal law enforcement and the Interior Department. The criminal investigation centers on the Interior Department's 2006 decision to award three lucrative oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a Shell subsidiary. Over the years it would take to extract the oil, according to calculations from Shell and a Rand Corp. expert, the deal could net the company hundreds of billions of dollars. The investigation's main focus is whether Norton violated a law that prohibits federal employees from discussing employment with a company if they are involved in dealings with the government that could benefit the firm, law enforcement and Interior officials said. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-norton17-2009sep17,0,6215749.story

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge claims in a new book that he was pressured by other members of President George W. Bush's Cabinet to raise the nation's terror alert level just before the 2004 presidential election. Ridge says he objected to raising the security level despite the urgings of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to a publicity release from Ridge's publisher. He said the episode convinced him to follow through with his plans to leave the administration; he resigned on Nov. 30, 2004. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090821/D9A6U8Q84.html

Several Bush officials work in areas related to former jobs. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-05-19-newjobs_N.htm?csp=34

In their study, the two University of Illinois researchers wrote that “whether by design or neglect, the result is the same: The removals and revisions of White House documents distort the historical record of what our government has said and done.” In the new study, the researchers traced five online documents that listed the number and names of coalition partners. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/washington/25documents.html?_r=1&ref=us

I Beg Your Pardon. The top prospects for a last act of Bush clemency. http://www.slate.com/id/2204984/

CIA Tactics Endorsed In Secret Memos. Waterboarding Got White House Nod. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/14/AR2008101403331.html

Former procurement chief indicted again. A former top Bush administration procurement official faces a fresh set of charges for allegedly lying to federal officials and obstructing an investigation into his relationship with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.The Justice Department re-indicted David Safavian, the former chief of staff for the General Services Administration and ex-administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget, on four counts of making false statements and one count of obstructing justice. Two of the false statement charges are new, while the other three counts date back to his original 2005 indictment. http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=41180&dcn=todaysnews

Insider’s Projects Drained Missile-Defense Millions. They huddled in a quiet corner at the US Airways lounge at Ronald Reagan National Airport, sipping bottomless cups of coffee as they plotted to turn America’s missile defense program into a personal cash machine. Duncan Hunter. Michael Cantrell, an engineer at the Army Space and Missile Defense Command headquarters in Huntsville, Ala., along with his deputy, Doug Ennis, had lined up millions of dollars from Congress for defense companies. Now, Mr. Cantrell decided, it was time to take a cut. “The contractors are making a killing,” Mr. Cantrell recalled thinking at the meeting, in 2000. “The lobbyists are getting their fees, and the contractors and lobbyists are writing out campaign checks to the politicians. Everybody is making money here — except us.” Within months, Mr. Cantrell began getting personal checks from contractors and later returned to the airport with Mr. Ennis to pick up a briefcase stuffed with $75,000. The two men eventually collected more than $1.6 million in kickbacks, through 2007, prompting them to plead guilty this year to corruption charges. Mr. Cantrell readily acknowledges concocting the crime. But what has drawn little scrutiny are his activities leading up to it. Thanks to important allies in Congress, he extracted nearly $350 million for projects the Pentagon did not want, wasting taxpayer money on what would become dead-end ventures. Recent scandals involving former Representative Randy Cunningham, Republican of California, and the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, both now in prison, provided a glimpse into how special interests manipulate the federal government. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/washington/12missile.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Gov't officials probed about illicit sex, gifts. Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties improperly engaged in sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said today. The alleged transgressions involve 13 former and current Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with -- and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from -- oil company employees, according to three reports released today by the Interior Department's inspector general. The investigations reveal a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" by a small group of individuals "wholly lacking in acceptance of or adherence to government ethical standards," wrote Inspector General Earl E. Devaney. Devaney's office spent more than two years and $5.3 million on the investigations. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oilsex11-2008sep11,0,3461812.story

Bush Regime Incompetence

Door thwarts Bush's exit. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7341273.stm

Paying for Eight Years of Bush’s Delusions. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081108_paying_for_eight_years_of_bushs_delusions/

Mideast peace must wait, U.S. says. Process will be handed off to next administration. Condoleezza Rice is useless. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081107/news_1n7mideast1.html

Three years ago this Friday began what UC Berkeley engineering professor Bob Bea has called "the greatest man-made engineering disaster" in the history of the United States. Bea with his partners devoted more than a year of pro bono work to investigating that disaster, which involved the flooding of up to 80% of a major American city for weeks, and the exiling of a third of its population to this very day. It was an event the response to which proved the commitment of the current government to a simple proposition: you can't rely upon the federal government to keep its promises, to come to the aid of a stricken region in its hour of greatest need. Is it possible Hillary Clinton hasn't read or heard about what happened to New Orleans? Or was it just not on her poll-tested list of bases to touch on her home-run trot following a triple? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/the-base-hillary-didnt-to_b_121654.html The report from the UC Berkeley engineering department says the corps lacked a coherent strategy for protecting the city. The organization’s storied technical prowess suffered when it was forced to deal with modern political realities, particularly in Louisiana, according UC Berkeley professor Bob Bea. http://articles.latimes.com/2006/may/19/nation/na-levee19

Bush heads to Texas as Gustav menaces. President Bush set out Monday to show the nation that his administration has learned the haunting lessons of Katrina, planting himself near the danger zone even before Hurricane Gustav hits the Gulf Coast. On the day he had planned to address the Republican National Convention, Bush headed instead to Texas, a staging ground for emergency response efforts and a shelter for Gulf Coast evacuees. The president is expected to visit Austin and San Antonio on the same day that Gustav, already a deadly force, was expected to make landfall in the United States west of New Orleans. He made no statement as he left the White House. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_bush_gustav.html?source=mypi

Georgia-Russia conflict a blow to Bush foreign policy. The president's reliance on diplomacy based on personal relations with leaders such as Putin and his push to establish democracies from the top down has proved not so viable. Bush talks like a dumbo. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pillars18-2008aug18,0,7994401.story

Salmonella probe likened to 'Keystone Kops' The government bungled the salmonella outbreak probe so badly, a House committee chairman said Thursday, that federal investigators reminded him of Keystone Kops. A colleague hoped the maligned tomato can get its good name back. The House Energy and Commerce Committee conducted its own investigation of the Food and Drug Administration's investigation of the salmonella scare. The outbreak has sickened more than 1,300 people this summer and set off a consumer scare that cost the produce industry more than $200 million. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20080731-1552-salmonella-probe.html http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/saintpaul/ http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/tomatoes.html

Bush hates the Environment

news

The snowmobiles of Yellowstone. Why does the Bush administration insist on wreaking environmental havoc on the park? These shenanigans deserve early reversal by the new administration. It's not that a month or so of too many snowmobiles will cause irreparable damage. It's that President Bush, who could be using his last days in office to leave a legacy or two worth recalling with pleasure, seems bent instead on wreaking as much environmental damage as possible, and making sure that what we remember most is his administration's disdain for the law, science and the public, as long as industry lobbies were satisfied. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-snowmobile29-2008nov29,0,3731176.story

Bush on Conservation

Q Mr. President, understanding what you say about energy supplies being tight and the debate over energy, which has gone on for years and will continue long through the campaign and into the next administration -- one thing nobody debates is that if Americans use less energy the current supply/demand equation would improve. Why have you not sort of called on Americans to drive less and to turn down the thermostat?

THE PRESIDENT: They're smart enough to figure out whether they're going to drive less or not. I mean, you know, it's interesting what the price of gasoline has done, is it caused people to drive less. That's why they want smaller cars, they want to conserve. But the consumer is plenty bright, Mark. The marketplace works.

Secondly, we have worked with Congress to change CAFE standards, and had a mandatory alternative fuel requirement.

So no question about what you just said is right. One way to correct the imbalance is to save, is to conserve. And as you notice my statement yesterday, I talked about good conservation. And people can figure out whether they need to drive more or less; they can balance their own checkbooks.

Q But you don't see the need to ask -- you don't see the value of your calling for a campaign --

THE PRESIDENT: I think people ought to conserve and be wise about how they use gasoline and energy. Absolutely. And there's some easy steps people can take. You know, if they're not in their home, they don't keep their air-conditioning running. There's a lot of things people can do.

But my point to you, Mark, is that, you know, it's a little presumptuous on my part to dictate to consumers how they live their lives. The American people are plenty capable and plenty smart people and they'll make adjustments to their own pocketbooks. That's why I was so much in favor of letting them keep more of their own money. It's a philosophical difference: Should the government spend their money, or should they spend their own money? And I've got faith in the American people.

And as much as I regret that the gasoline prices are high -- and they are -- I also understand that people are going to make adjustments to meet their own needs. And I suspect you'll see, in the whole, Americans using less gasoline. I bet that's going to happen. And in the meantime, technologies will be coming on the market that will enable them to drive and save money, compared to the automobiles they're using before. And as you notice, the automobile industry is beginning to adjust here at home as consumer demand changes. And the great thing about our system, it is the consumer that drives our system; it's the individual American and their collection that end up driving the economy.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/07/20080715-1.html

BUSH lies leading up to Iraq war

What just happened? Evidence. A secret that has been judiciously kept for five years just spilled out. All of what follows is new, never reported in any way: The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush -- a man still carrying a $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush's famous deck of wanted men -- has been America's secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger. The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, "resettled" Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million in what could only be considered hush money. In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD -- as Habbush had foretold -- the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and the Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a "small team from the al Qaeda organization." The mission was carried out, the letter was created, popped up in Baghdad, and roiled the global newcycles in December, 2003 (conning even venerable journalists like Tom Brokaw). The mission is a statutory violation of the charter of the CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting the CIA from conducting disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil. So, here we go again: the administration is in full attack mode, calling me names, George Tenet is claiming he doesn't remember any such thing -- just like he couldn't remember "slam dunk" -- and reporters are scratching their heads. Everything in my book is on the record, with many sources. And so, we watch and wait.... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ron-suskind/the-forged-iraqi-letter-w_b_117056.html

Two former CIA officers Tuesday denied that they or the spy agency faked an Iraqi intelligence document purporting to link Saddam Hussein with 9/11 bomber Mohammed Atta, as they are quoted as saying in a new book. The White House issued the statement on behalf of the former officials after a day of adamant denials from the CIA and Bush administration about the claim, made in "The Way of the World," a book by Washington-based journalist Ron Suskind. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_white_house_iraq.html?source=mypi

Bush's Iraq War Not Justified By Facts Says Colin Powell. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeRiEcXTzJE

Outside the administration, there was widespread belief that Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons, but less confidence on the nuclear question. The U.S. intelligence community was deeply divided over the issue. And, despite months of searching, U.N. inspectors -- both before and after the invasion -- failed to find any weapons of mass destruction. That was no surprise to Hans Blix, the U.N.'s chief weapons inspector for Iraq. "I said to Condoleezza Rice that we were not impressed by the intelligence," Blix recalled in an interview with NPR. "I remember she said, 'Intelligence is never 100 percent. But it is not the intelligence that is indicted. It is the Iraqis who are.'" The administration tried to bolster its case by making a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, which implied a connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. "We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases," Mr. Bush said in a October 2002, speech, his first major prime-time talk to help build public backing for a still unannounced war. Information from Discredited Sources http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5024408

Iraq WMD Timeline: How the Mystery Unraveled. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4996218

Former aide: Powell WMD speech 'lowest point in my life' Powell's speech, delivered on February 5, 2003, made the case for the war by presenting U.S. intelligence that purported to prove that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Wilkerson says the information in Powell's presentation initially came from a document he described as "sort of a Chinese menu" that was provided by the White House. http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/08/19/powell.un/

To make his case before the U.N., Bush dispatched the most credible official in his administration, Secretary of State Colin Powell. By the time Powell was assigned to make the case for war, he counted himself among the growing list of officials nervous about the quality of the WMD intelligence. Indeed, Powell may have been one of the best positioned officials to know that the threat from Iraq was being exaggerated. In February 2001, Powell personally had cited the effectiveness of the U.N. sanctions in crippling Saddam Hussein’s military capabilities. “Frankly, they have worked,” Powell said of the sanctions. “He [Hussein] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.” But Bush called on Powell to put his loyalty to the President first, over his own personal doubts. Col. Larry Wilkerson, Powell’s longtime friend and chief of staff, said Powell was upset with the White House instructions about what to highlight in his speech. “He came through the door that morning and he had in his hand a sheaf of papers and he said this is what I’ve got to present at the United Nations according to the White House and you need to look at it,” Wilkerson later told CNN. http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/020508a.html

Bush

Shoes thrown at Bush on Iraq trip. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7782422.stm

Bush, archived December 14, 2008

"Well, I think I was unprepared for war. I didn't campaign and say, 'Please vote for me, I'll be able to handle an attack.'" What an odd, self-pitying outbreak of candor for this strange president. I'm not sure how anyone could run for president and be "unprepared" for war. The job includes the title of commander in chief of the armed forces. It's true, though, that Bush didn't campaign as someone who would quickly start two wars, and commit the U.S. to a belligerent and reckless policy of unilateral preemptive attacks on our enemies based on perceived threats, not hostile actions (that's the "Bush doctrine," in case you're reading, Sarah Palin). This was a man who warned against nation building during the 2000 campaign, who said our foreign policy must be "humble," who seemed opposed to the Clinton administration's interventionist foreign policy whether in partly humanitarian missions like Bosnia, or defensive strikes against Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Osama bin Laden in Sudan. Few people who voted for Bush thought he was gunning to be a war president, based on his campaign rhetoric, so it was an incredible bait-and-switch when he became one. In retrospect, though, it seems clear that he arrived in the White House surrounded by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other twisted neocons who were determined to topple Saddam Hussein given any excuse, or none at all. http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/iraq_war/2008/12/03/bush_exit_interview/

Impeach Bush for Christmas. The White House censored her subversive Christmas tree ornament -- only to spread its anti-Bush cheer. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/12/03/white_house_ornament/

Bush regrets Iraqi WMD failure. Outgoing US President George Bush has said his biggest regret is the failure of intelligence over Iraqi weapons. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7759908.stm

"I'm sorry it's happening, of course," Bush said in a wide-ranging interview with ABC's "World News," which was airing Monday. "Obviously I don't like the idea of people losing jobs, or being worried about their 401(k)s. On the other hand, the American people got to know that we will safeguard the system. I mean, we're in. And if we need to be in more, we will." "I think I was unprepared for war," he said. "In other words, I didn't campaign and say, `Please vote for me, I'll be able to handle an attack.' In other words, I didn't anticipate war. Presidents - one of the things about the modern presidency is that the unexpected will happen." stfu moron http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_bush_interview.html?source=mypi

"I'd like to be a president [known] as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace," Bush told his sister, Dorothy Bush Koch, in a conversation recorded for the oral-history organization StoryCorps for the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. I'm sure that would be nice, but instead you will be remembered as the man who invaded a country that hadn't threatened it using lies and propaganda -- and ended up "liberating" millions of people from their lives. "I came to Washington with a set of values, and I'm leaving with the same set of values. And I darn sure wasn't going to sacrifice those values; that I was a president that had to make tough choices and was willing to make them," he said No, it wasn't a tough choice to invade Iraq or ignore Katrina or allow the financial system to run completely amuck. It was a unique combination of stupidity and malevolence, which will be studied for centuries by historians struggling to imagine how such a person was ever given such power by a supposedly democratic people. I believe he did go to Washington with a certain set of values -- after all he'd signed over 150 death warrants without even reading the paperwork. That's exactly the kind of person who would legalize torture and suspend the constitution. And naturally a man who would steal an election and then govern like he'd won in a partisan landslide would politicize the Justice Department. Surely anyone who would hire a thug like Karl Rove could be expected to spy on Americans and use the presidency for political purposes. Yes, his values are intact, no doubt about it, and his legacy is intact. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/109187/bush%27s_delusional_take_on_his_legacy/#more

Bush is often portrayed as (and is, actually,) the governor who executed more people than any other governor in modern history. Because, like the Lord, the Bush giveth and he taketh away. How would this born-again compassionate conservative sleep at night (or clear brush by day)? As he eloquently told a reporter outside of church, "If you're asking me whether or not as to the innocence or guilt or if people have had adequate access to the courts in Texas, I believe they have...had full access to a fair trial." Even those who don't care for the death penalty know that Texas is famous for its justice. A Chicago Tribune investigation done after Bush presided over 131 execution, found that only 40 inmates had lawyers who presented just one witness or no evidence at all during the trials' sentencing phase; less than half of them had lawyers who failed to enter as evidence the defendant's brain damage, low IQ or childhood abuse. And just one third of those executed had lawyers who were later disbarred, suspended or otherwise sanctioned. But Bush is so confident that sleeping lawyers are great at waking themselves up when anything important happens during their client's capital murder trial, that he finds the suggestion that Texas trials are unfair laughable--literally. When asked by reporters if he was troubled by the fact that some death row inmates' lawyers slept though part of their trials, Bush replied "with a chuckle." http://www.236.com/blog/w/katie_halper/bush_will_be_remembered_for_hi_10463.php http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut/212394

Empty pew: Why doesn't W go to church? Most Americans are aware that George W. Bush is a religious man. He is, after all, the man who presided over a religious revival of sorts at the Republican National Convention. He is the man who has pioneered what could be called cardio-diplomacy, judging world leaders--and, at times, entire nations--by their "hearts." He is the subject of at least four spiritual hagiographies currently in bookstores, and one religious documentary ("George W. Bush: Faith in the White House"). Most famously, Americans know him as the man who, when asked to cite the philosopher who had the greatest influence on him, named Jesus Christ. What most--including many of the president's fiercest supporters--don't know, however, is that Bush doesn't go to church. Sure, when he weekends at Camp David, Bush spends Sunday morning with the compound's chaplain. And, every so often, he drops in on the little Episcopal church across Lafayette Park from the White House. But the president who has staked much of his domestic agenda on the argument that religious communities hold the key to solving social problems doesn't belong to a congregation. http://dems.tribe.net/thread/577ea6b9-9ff9-4753-a5ec-02fa2062d86b

Rick Sanchez on CNN showed this video of world leaders at the G20 Summit refusing to shake hands with President Bush. Sanchez says "It's almost sad." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Y_ncOVlDw

The court-martial panel that convicted Gray sentenced him to death in 1988. On July 28, 2008, President Bush approved the order to execute Gray, the longest-serving inmate on the military’s death row. It was the first time a president had approved a military death sentence since 1957, and the decision came after the nation’s highest courts upheld Gray’s conviction and death sentence, and two petitions to the Supreme Court during the appellate process had been denied. http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/11/army_execute_120108p/

Lame Duck Bush Takes Aim at Environmental Protections. http://www.utne.com/2008-11-07/Environment/Lame-Duck-Bush-Takes-Aim-at-Environmental-Protections.aspx?blogid=26

Not that I haven't done dumb things myself. I have. And intend to keep on doing some of them. But the Current Occupant has slept through his own presidency. He has no idea what went wrong. He knows less about governance than a cat knows about a can opener. He cut taxes during a costly war and made serious debtors of our grandchildren and he has ignored the future as if it doesn't exist. He is now about as popular as wet socks and deservedly so. http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/10/22/abilene/

U.S Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald announces Burge's indictment and arrest on federal obstruction of justice and perjury charges. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95949923

On the January day in 2001 when George W. Bush became the 43rd president of the United States, 4.6 million Michiganians had a job. More than 850,000 of them worked in manufacturing, the sector that built the state's economy. Three days before, General Motors Corp. had reported a $5 billion profit for 2000. Today, as the Bush administration winds down its eighth and final year, there are more than 400,000 fewer jobs in the state. The number of manufacturing jobs has shrunk by one-third. GM's market value has plunged to 1920s levels. And Michigan Republicans are scrambling desperately to escape the shadow of eight years that have been anything but kind to Michigan. Bush attempted to smooth over the tension at a quick get-together with Michigan business owners in Grand Rapids this week. But leaders of his own party blame him for many of their problems. With GOP presidential nominee John McCain's decision to withdraw from Michigan this month, Republicans appear to have lost their battle to tie Barack Obama and other Democrats to Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the state tax increases she helped push through Lansing last year. http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081018/POLITICS01/810180349/&imw=Y

the president's disapproval ratings are at 70%, while only 25% gave him positive marks. Which would give him an historic margin of 45 points. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/2008/10/bush-hits-new-p.html http://webapps.ropercenter.uconn.edu/CFIDE/roper/presidential/webroot/presidential_rating.cfm

A Plague Upon the White House. By Robert Scheer. I am not a conventionally religious man, or even a very superstitious one, but I do wish George Bush would stop asking God to bless America. Every time he does, we seem to be visited with another plague, suggesting divine wrath over our president’s evil ways. How else to explain the persistent calamity that has marked this administration: a pointless but very costly war over nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the devastating New Orleans flood, the betrayal of the nation by the money-changers—from Enron to Goldman Sachs—that Bush welcomed into the temple of the White House? What’s next? Pestilence, frogs, locusts or incurable boils? Dare we risk four more years of catastrophic misrule by a “W” alter ego? For those indifferent to the serious implications of that question, I recommend Oliver Stone’s new bio-flick, which brilliantly captures the “banality of evil” that has controlled our political life these past eight years. This phrase from Hannah Arendt’s characterization of the mundane cruelty that so marked the daily experience of European fascism has a frightening applicability to the Republican leadership that has done so much damage to this nation’s reputation for democratic integrity. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081007_a_plague_upon_the_white_house/

Now, as he spends his last months in office trying to avert a global economic collapse, Mr. Bush has been telling people privately that it’s a good thing he’s in charge. “He said that if it was going to happen at all, he was glad it was happening under his presidency, because he had a good group of people in D.C. working for him,” Dru Van Steenberg, one of several small-business owners who met with Mr. Bush in San Antonio earlier this week. The president expressed the same sentiment, others said, during a similar private session in Chantilly, Va., the next day. “He said that whoever was going to take over in January was going to have a huge crisis on their hands the day they come into office,” Ms. Van Steenberg added. “He thought by this happening now, that perhaps everyone could see signs of improvement before the next president comes into office.” HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!! http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/business/11bush.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Bush loves torture. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7658045.stm

Keith Olbermann Special Comment: Bush is a liar or idiot. Olbermann reminds us of all of Bush (and Cheney's) Iran-related lies, just like they lied about Iraq. Keith spells it out: George Bush has no business being President. Dec 6th 2007 Special Comment Olbermann analyzes how Bush knew about the TRUE intentions of Iran and ignored it. and then lied about it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uz9PKu50wQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omQphkI4v3k transcript http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22134108/

George W Bush lazy forgetful pathetic shallow

In hometown for fundraiser, Bush tarries briefly on memory lane “I kind of remember it,” Bush said, adding, “The bedroom – actually I do remember the wood on the wall.” The president and first lady, both born in 1946, attended the same Midland school for just one year, in seventh grade. They did not really know each other until they met again in Midland, when they were 31, at a backyard barbecue of mutual friends. The Bushes married three months later. It was the 1970s, and Bush had returned to Midland to follow in his father's footsteps by getting into the oil business. He spent his early marriage in the city, and their twin daughters were born here. Bush did not have much success with his energy business and the family left about a decade later. While in Midland, he ran for Congress – in his first bid for public office and his only loss as a politician. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081005/news_1n5bush.html

Bush the arrogant. President Bush's latest permutation of crisis management is the last straw. But who best to roll back the excesses? As the Bush administration attempts to stabilize the nation's economy, we are witness to the final chapter of a period of perverse and dishonest leadership that has used its own crises to justify the expansion of its own power. This was a president who came to office on promises of modesty -- who championed a "humble nation," scorned nation building and promised a more limited role for government in the lives of its citizens. Then he presided over a six-year attempt to tear down and rebuild the nations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and now has embarked on the most profound expansion of the federal government's role in the private economy since the Depression. In both cases, the pattern is the same. Ineptitude led to crisis; crisis then became the argument for the radical expansion of executive power. The administration insisted that it exercise its new authority with a minimum of scrutiny by Congress, the courts or the public. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-bush28-2008sep28,0,182929.story

PRESIDENT BUSH: The CIA laid out a -- several scenarios that said, life could be lousy, like could be okay, life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like. The Iraqi citizens are defying the pessimistic predictions. The Iraqi citizens are headed toward free elections. This government has been in place for a little over two months, and the Iraqi citizens are seeing a determined effort by responsible citizens to lead to a more hopeful tomorrow. And I am optimistic we'll succeed. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/09/20040921-9.html

A few hours after George W. Bush dismissed a pessimistic CIA report on Iraq as "just guessing," the analyst who identified himself as its author told a private dinner last week of secret, unheeded warnings years ago about going to war in Iraq. This exchange leads to the unavoidable conclusion that the president of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency are at war with each other. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/27/cia.bush/index.html

President Bush called the assessment a guess, which drew the consternation of many intelligence officials. "The CIA laid out several scenarios," Bush said on Sept. 21. "It said that life could by lousy. Life could be okay. Life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58183-2004Sep28.html

George W Bush hypocrisy pathetic self-serving

We have endured eight years of an administration that seemed touched by religious ideology. Bush's claim to Bob Woodward that he consulted a "higher Father" before going to war in Iraq got many of us sitting upright, before our attention wandered again to less ethereal signs of his incompetence. For all my concern about Bush's religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist. Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. With the McCain team leading her around like a pet pony between now and Election Day, she can be expected to conceal her religious extremism until it is too late to do anything about it. Her supporters know that while she cannot afford to "talk the talk" between now and Nov. 4, if elected, she can be trusted to "walk the walk" until the Day of Judgment. http://www.newsweek.com/id/160080/page/2

Finger-Pointing in the Financial Crisis Is Directed at Bush. For his entire presidency, George W. Bush has tried to avoid the fate of his father, brought low by a feeble economy. Now, as the financial crisis radiates far beyond Wall Street, Mr. Bush faces an even grimmer prospect: being blamed, at least in part, for an economic breakdown. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/business/20prexy.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

Bush ignored Afghanistan at expense of Iraq war, Democrats say. Republicans say the U.S. is poised for victory in Iraq even as the country confronts problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Afghanistan involves a very complicated situation," said Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. "You've got border lands now in Pakistan approaching a level at which they are becoming now the new sanctuary for al-Qaida and Taliban operations. The political situation inside Pakistan complicates our ability to interfere with this new sanctuary. It's going to provide a challenge for us for the next many years." http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=793553

Palin's statements on climate change murky. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080912/ap_on_el_pr/palin_interview

In the interview Thursday, Palin: _Appeared unsure of the Bush doctrine — essentially that the United States must help spread democracy to stop terrorism and that the nation will act pre-emptively to stop potential foes. Asked whether she agreed with that, Palin said: "In what respect, Charlie?" Gibson pressed her for an interpretation of it. She said: "His world view." That prompted Gibson to say "no, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war" and describe it to her. "I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation," Palin said, though added "there have been mistakes made." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080912/ap_on_el_pr/palin_interview_15

More evidence of Bush's spying. Why the White House can no longer hide the truth about its warrantless surveillance of Americans. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/09/12/surveillance_alharamain/

HuffPost's "The Bush Years" Posters: A Powerful Tool for '08. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/huffposts-the-bush-year_b_75722.html

3 million civilians were killed in Southeast Asia. John McCain’s life is a story of service above self. Forty years ago in an enemy prison camp, Lieutenant Commander McCain was offered release ahead of others who had been held longer. His wounds were so severe that anyone would have understood if he had accepted. John refused. For that selfless decision, he suffered nearly five more years of beatings and isolation. When he was finally released, his arms had been broken, but not his honor. Fellow citizens: If the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain’s resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry left never will. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/americas/2008/vote_usa_2008/7595081.stm

Rolling with the punches. Californians remind me of Londoners. They're less jittery than the rest of us, and disaster doesn't terrify them. America has paid a terrible price for one family's decision to take a boy out of the public schools of Midland, Texas, and send him off to Chutney or Amway or whatever his prep school was called, and then to Yale, where he picked up a permanent grudge against people who were smarter than he. A Yalie who learned to pass for redneck, a Methodist who learned to pass for evangelical, he was cut out for politics, but what a lousy administrator and what a dull, uninspiring leader. Fewer people want more bushiness than want to see the return of infantile paralysis. And the truth is marching on. http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/08/27/california/

Nothing Romantic About It. Draft-Dodger’s Envy. Last week, the commander in chief of the US military, President George W. Bush, made the following comments to troops in Afghanistan about the War on Terror: I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you… in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks. For the naïve, war is romantic. It’s killing the bad guys, getting that perfect scar, dying heroically, being loved by beautiful women- all envisioned on celluloid, magazine covers, and stone walls. It takes a certain kind of person to want to be a warrior- someone who frames himself in this romanticism but also understands that it is false. http://2dinar.com/articles/92.html http://jasonirrdeployment.blogspot.com/

voting for a chicken http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/chicken.asp

Bush and Cheney are to blame for the price of gas. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20080823-0709-bush.html

Now watch this drive! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3p9y_OEAdc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJvRUL81ZU8&feature=related

What Bush Said in New Orleans Today, and What He Didn't Say. "Never before has our nation seen such destruction by nature."

It's almost three years after the federal levees failed and flooded 80% of New Orleans, and George W. Bush stood today in Jackson Barracks, the National Guard h.q. in the Lower Ninth Ward, and spoke those words. They were not an ad lib, they were part of his written text. His speechwriters and advisors found it advisable to ignore three independent forensic engineering studies, and the Corps of Engineers' own 6000-page report, and blame the flooding on "nature." He also said "we don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past," in regard to the Corps' work in rebuilding the levees and floodwalls. Yet there has not been a true accountability moment for the Corps, which one federal judge has said "knowingly" built a deficient system, under Congressional mandate, that failed to protect the city under conditions it was supposed to withstand. So we can ignore the reasons for the "mistakes of the past," and yet avoid repeating them? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/what-bush-said-in-new-orl_b_120223.html

Bush hates the environment. Bush officials sneak-attack nation's wildlife. A new regulation could neuter the Endangered Species Act -- and the administration knows it. http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2008/08/20/endangered_species_act/

Impeachment Won't Help; Only Revolution Will Save America. http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2008/08/impeachment-wont-help-only-revolution.html

U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, once a fervent supporter of the Iraq war, says it's time for U.S. combat troops to get out of Iraq. Miller, a Harrison Township Republican, said the United States has done all it can by toppling Saddam Hussein, providing the Iraqis the opportunity to create a constitution and elect a parliament, and training a competent Iraqi military force to provide security. "We ought to take him up on his offer," she said. "It's been (President) Bush who keeps saying that they are a sovereign government and that we should do what they say. If they tell us to go, we'll go." http://www.macombdaily.com/stories/081008/loc_local02.shtml

Bush has acted on 422 natural disasters. Administration's pledges for relief put at $87 billion. During his 7½ years in office, President Bush has declared 422 major disasters – severe storms, tornadoes, wildfires and floods – or more than one a week. That's 11 percent more than President Clinton's disaster declarations and 130 percent more than President Reagan's during their full two terms in office. All those natural disasters translate into more federal government spending. Under Bush, the government has committed to spend $87 billion in disaster relief funds to help states and localities clean up after floods, fires and storms, compared with Clinton's nearly $29 billion. Even after adjusting for inflation, the Bush administration has spent 2½ times more than the Clinton administration on disaster relief. Most of the money goes to Bush cronies. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080810/news_1n10bush.html

Bush in the dock? Don't count on it. But that doesn't mean the next president can't hold this administration accountable. It's not that Bush, Cheney and Co. don't deserve to end up in the dock. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who was commissioned by the Pentagon in 2004 to investigate the abuses at Abu Ghraib, recently concluded that "the commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. ... A government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. ... There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes." In any case, neither Democrats nor Republicans have the stomach for criminal proceedings against high-ranking current or former officials who still retain substantial public support. Meanwhile, no international tribunal is ever likely to have jurisdiction over the U.S. participants involved in the abuses. But that doesn't mean we should give up on accountability. John McCain and Barack Obama should be urged to establish a high-level, nonpartisan "truth commission" with robust subpoena powers early in 2009. That commission should investigate, hold hearings and issue a public report on responsibility for torture, war crimes and other abuses committed during the Bush administration. Such a panel wouldn't satisfy those who'd like to see Bush and Cheney in prison garb, but it would be a major step toward undoing the damage the administration did to our reputation as a nation committed to human rights. And as more incriminating details come out -- and they will -- some Bush-Cheney fan club members might even turn in their membership cards. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks31-2008jul31,0,3697634.column

Bush's visit to South Korea spurs protests, points to political divide. President Bush's trip to South Korea sharpened a political divide yesterday: Middle-aged Christians and aging veterans in military uniforms prayed and waved U.S. flags, while young South Koreans battled riot police in downtown Seoul, shouting “Bush Out!” http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080806/news_1n6bush.html

President Bush on Wednesday brushed off the raucous demonstrators who protested him as he opened a three-nation visit to Asia, saying it's a sign of citizens living in a country where they are free to speak their minds. The dueling demonstrations by prayerful, flag-waving supporters and rowdy protesters doused by police water cannons reflected sharp political divisions in the U.S.-South Korean relationship, which has endured volatile moments this year, but is still reliable and vital for both sides. "I enjoy coming to a free society where people are able to express their opinions - and your country is a free society," Bush told South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_bush_asia.html

President Bush is so emphatic about going to the Olympics in China that one might think flying halfway around the globe to attend the games is what presidents do. But never before has a U.S. leader shown up at an Olympics on foreign soil – and Bush is doing more than just dropping by. He is planning to soak in as much as he can, with large parts of his Beijing schedule devoted to watching athletes compete. For this president, perhaps the most avid in a long line of White House sports buffs, it is an event that begins and ends with sports. Yet politics have intruded in Olympics past, from Cold War boycotts to terrorism, and host China is right at the intersection of debates over human rights, security and trade. Even the Olympic torch relay fell victim to protests in Europe and the United States. The risk, as human rights activists argue, is that Bush's attendance legitimizes the Chinese government. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080803/news_1n3bush.html

The Bush legacy. In global battle against AIDS, millions saved. President Bush cemented his own legacy this week, signing into law a dramatic expansion of his already unprecedented effort against AIDS in Africa and other desperate regions. His program is saving literally millions of lives, and it will stand as his greatest bipartisan foreign policy achievement. Approved with lopsided majorities by the House in April and the Senate last month, Bush signed the bill on Wednesday. It authorizes spending $48 billion over the next five years to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria – the three diseases of poverty – in the areas of the world that most need help. The $48 billion represents a more than threefold expansion of the program that Bush first announced in his State of the Union address in 2003 and was approved by Congress later that year. At the time, the Bush initiative was overshadowed in the headlines by the nation's focus on Iraq and the economy, despite the fact that the original $15 billion initiative was the largest commitment ever by any nation for a global battle against a single disease. Five years later, the new initiative is again overshadowed, and again by the focus on the economy and Iraq. And – for Bush, at least – that is a shame. In 2003, just 50,000 of the millions of people infected with the AIDS virus in all of sub-Saharan Africa were receiving life-saving antiretroviral drugs. Today, 1.7 million Africans are receiving the drugs, and the program is supporting care for nearly 7 million, including 2.7 million children orphaned by AIDS. In Haiti, one of the poorest nations on the planet, barely 100 people were receiving the drugs in 2003; now 13,000 are treated. With less than six months remaining in the Bush presidency, the rest of his legacy remains at best cloudy. But the impressive results of his battle against the scourge of AIDS cannot be denied. Its impact, in real lives saved, will be felt for many years to come. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080801/news_lz1ed1bottom.html

Bush, archived August 01, 2008

I still find it hard to believe that George W. Bush, to his eternal shame and our nation’s great discredit, made torture a matter of hair-splitting, legalistic debate at the highest levels of the United States government. But that’s precisely what he did. Three previously classified administration memos obtained last week by the American Civil Liberties Union add to our understanding of this disgraceful episode. The documents are attempts to justify the unjustifiable—the use of brutal interrogation methods that international agreements define as torture—and keep those who ordered and carried out this dirty business from being prosecuted and jailed. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080729_bushs_legacy_of_torture/

Bush Drilling Proposal is a Hoax Unworthy of Serious Debate. Bush shits where we eat. The president knows, as his own administration has stated, that the impact of any new drilling will be insignificant -- promising savings of only pennies per gallon many years down the road. Americans know that thanks to the two oilmen in the White House, consumers are now paying $4 a gallon for gas. But what Americans should realize is that what the president is calling for is drilling as close as three miles off of America's pristine beaches and in other protected areas. The president has failed in his economic policy, and now he wants to say, 'but for drilling in protected areas offshore, our economy would be thriving and the price of gas would be lower.' That hoax is unworthy of the serious debate we must have to relieve the pain of consumers at the pump and to promote energy independence. Today, the New Direction Congress will vote on legislation to bring down gas prices by taking crucial steps to curb excessive speculation in the energy futures market. The president himself could lower prices by drawing down a small portion of our government oil stockpile, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The New Direction Congress will continue to bring forth responsible proposals to increase supply, reduce prices, protect consumers, and transition America to a clean, renewable energy independent future. http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=1466%20

Bush to leave a record deficit of $482 billion. Full cost of wars is not included in government figures. The White House predicted yesterday that President Bush would leave a record $482 billion deficit to his successor, a sobering turnabout in the nation's fiscal condition from 2001, when Bush took office after three consecutive years of budget surpluses. White House budget director Jim Nussle blamed the rise on unexpectedly slow economic growth, sharp declines in housing prices and an unanticipated increase in inflation. Other factors include war costs and tax rebates. The worst may be yet to come. The deficit announced by Nussle does not reflect the full cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the potential $50 billion cost of another economic stimulus package, or the possibility of steeper losses in tax revenues if individual income or corporate profits decline. The new deficit numbers also do not account for any drains on the national treasury that might result from further declines in the housing market. The White House forecast was prepared before passage of the huge housing assistance package that Bush has promised to sign. Nussle predicted yesterday that the deficit would more than double in the current 2008 fiscal year – to $389 billion, from $162 billion in 2007 – before shooting up to $482 billion in the 2009 fiscal year, which begins in about two months. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080729/news_1n29deficit.html

God talks to Bush: Okay, I'll tell you a story. I was in Bucharest, Romania. There were 200 and -- about 200,000-plus people there in a town square that had come to hear the president of the United States say these words: "An attack on one is an attack on all." That happens to be Article 5 of the NATO treaty. This country had emerged from communism, had been admitted into NATO, and they were anxious to see the president basically say, "We're allies and we'll protect each other from harm." This is a square that was a pretty dimly lit square because it was raining. But there was one balcony that was lit very brightly, and so I asked the guy walking out there, I said, "What's that balcony?" He said, "That's the balcony where the tyrant (Nicolae) Ceausescu had given his last speech." And he and he wife were awful people. They were true tyrants. And it was lit because people always want to remember the difference between freedom and tyranny, so it's kind of a memorial to that last speech. President (Ion) Iliescu introduced me, I walk up to the podium -- and a full rainbow appears. I'm talking full-spectrum rainbow. And it was a startling moment, so I turned back to Laura, who was sitting behind me there, and I said, "Look at that." Of course 200,000 heads whip around to look at it too. I was so amazed that my opening comment of the speech -- I ad-libbed -- was, "God is smiling on Bucharest," because the rainbow ended exactly behind the balcony where the tyrant had given his last speech. God told Bush to invade Iraq resulting in the death of up to 1,000,000 Iraqis, 5,000,000 are refuges from Bush's War. God told Bush to torture prisoners and listen in illegally on US citizens. God told Bush to exclude liberals and independents from government jobs. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/2008/07/ballistic-bush.html

Now you can look at that any way you want to look at it. I'll tell you how I looked at it: I looked at it as a sign that freedom is beautiful. That freedom brings peace. That freedom is not ours alone. That freedom is universal.

An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General. http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/s0807/final.pdf

Bush OKs execution of Army death row prisoner. President Kennedy was the last president to stare down this life-or-death decision. On Feb. 12, 1962, Kennedy commuted the death sentence of Jimmie Henderson, a Navy seaman, to confinement for life. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-execution29-2008jul29,0,2880348.story

Crimes and Misdemeanors. Each scandal is represented by a colored circle that encompasses the people who are implicated. As it's easy to see, many of the players here are mixed up in two, three, or more of the alleged crimes. Hence all the overlapping circles (Venn-diagram heaven!). The best way to make sense of this legal tangle is to mouse over the title of an individual scandal, which will highlight everyone implicated. For example, the wiretapping bubble ensnares George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Ashcroft, John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales. At the same time, Ashcroft and Gonzales fall into the overlapping circle for monkey business related to DoJ hiring. Mouse over a person's name for information on how each person is involved. Mouse over the title of each circle for specifics about the particular scandal. And if all else fails, fall back on this golden rule of wrongdoing in the White House: All roads lead to Gonzales. http://www.slate.com/id/2195892/

An ABC-TV outlet in Houston, and now the Houston Chronicle, have posted a video taken at a political fundraiser for Pete Olson, featuring George W. Bush last week -- capturing some embarrassing/revealing moments after, he noted, he had asked cameras to be turned off. The first moments form the July 18 event find him speaking almost incoherently in admitting, for once, that his friends in big business had screwed up: "There's no question about it. Wall Street got drunk ---that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras -- it got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments." Then, making light of the foreclosure crisis, he said: "And then we got a housing issue... not in Houston, and evidently not in Dallas, because Laura's over there trying to buy a house. [great laughter] I like Crawford but unfortunately after eight years of sacrifice, I am apparently no longer the decision maker." No one is saying how ABC's Miya Shay got the video or how it emerged. UPDATE: The YouTube version of the video is now axed, but it is easily viewed at ABC site here: http://politicalblog.abc13.com/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/banned-bush-video-surface_b_114363.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgEuuypvzpY

Bush is about to waste a second crisis, this one on energy addiction. I am reliably told by a Bush administration official that there is an old saying in Texas that goes like this: “If all you ever do is all you've ever done, then all you'll ever get is all you ever got.” Could anyone possibly come up with a better description of President Bush's energy policy? America is in the midst of its worst energy crisis in years and what is the big decision our Decider has decided? Drum roll, please: Our Decider decided to lift the executive orders banning drilling for oil and natural gas off the country's shoreline – even though he knew this was a meaningless gesture because a congressional moratorium on drilling passed in 1981 remains in force. The economist Paul Romer once said to me that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” President Bush is well on his way to being remembered as the leader who wasted not one but two crises: 9/11 and 4/11. The average price of gasoline in the U.S. last week, according to the Energy Information Administration, was $4.11. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080723/news_lz1e23friedma.html

Although it's great to see Bush take on our nations concerns, I must call out five dumb things he said during Tuesday's press conference. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/olivia-zaleski/bush-on-the-environment-t_b_112973.html

Congress quickly overrides Bush's veto of Medicare bill. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080716/news_1n16medicare.html

Bush, Congress get record lows in AP-Ipsos poll. A soured public has given President Bush and Congress record low approval ratings in the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll, underscoring the toll taken by fretful economic woes and long-lasting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The survey, released Tuesday, also set a new AP-Ipsos floor for the number of people saying the country is heading in the right direction. Just 16 percent said the country is moving the right way, a virtual tie with the 17 percent who said so last month. In addition, 28 percent said they approve of the job Bush is doing, tying his low in the AP-Ipsos survey set last April. Congress fared even worse: A new AP-Ipsos low of 18 percent said they were happy with Congress' work, down a steep 5 percentage points from last month. Underscoring the breadth of the gloom, dissatisfaction with the country's direction stretched across party and ideological lines. Only three in 10 Republicans and fewer than one in 10 Democrats and independents said the country is heading the right way. Only one in five conservatives and even fewer moderates and liberals said they are happy with things. Just 63 percent of Republicans and 46 percent of conservatives approved of Bush's handling of his job, strikingly low numbers. About one in five Republicans and conservatives voiced strong approval for the president, while one in 10 Republicans and three in 10 conservatives said they strongly disapproved. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20080715-1449-appoll-bush-congress.html

Bush's Banned Interview: An Insight Into Insanity. I believe that Republicanism is a mental disorder, people who voted for BUSH must be crazy, they are sick twisted people. Simple gun control test: if you voted for BUSH you are too crazy to buy a gun. BUSH voters should be taxed at a higher rate. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-cohen/bushs-banned-interview-an_b_111804.html

"What didn't go right?" President Bush's absurd question underscores the arrogance of an administration whose "limited government" agenda is responsible for the disastrous federal response to Katrina. http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/blumenthal/2005/09/08/limited_government/index.html

Bush Finds the Pool of Goodwill Has Gone Dry. The record of Bush's final months in office doesn't stack up very well compared to Clinton and Reagan. http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/politics/2008/07/10/bush-finds-the-pool-of-goodwill-has-gone-dry.html

How does President Bush lie? In the face of overwhelming evidence, it's astounding that people such as James Kirchick, in "Bush never lied to us about Iraq," continue to defend the president against accusations that he intentionally misled and outright lied to the American people in making the case for war with Iraq. Consider first the implications of the famous Downing Street memo from July 23, 2002. Briefing Tony Blair about his recent talks with Washington, Britain's top intelligence officer stated that U.S. "military action was now seen as inevitable. ... But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." A month later, in August 2002, the administration set up the White House Iraq Group, designed solely to sell the public on the imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein. In essence, it was a marketing campaign to sell the war by escalating the rhetoric and misleading the public. And lying. And boy, did they. Here are statements from the administration in 2002 as they beat the drums for war. Dick Cheney said: "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use ... against us." Condoleezza Rice: "We do know that [Hussein] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon." Donald Rumsfeld: "[Hussein's] regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons." These statements were designed to cultivate in Americans fear of Iraq's imminent threat, the keystone of Bush's push to war. They were grossly and intentionally misleading, suggesting that the administration possessed incontrovertible facts on which were drawn these definitive conclusions. In reality, the facts were known to be ambiguous at best. Absolutely no intelligence existed at the time that would allow anyone to reach such concrete conclusions. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-bolton27-2008jun27,0,3186043.story

President Bush was interrupted on several occasions by protesters who called him a fascist and war criminal during a 4 July celebration. Speaking at the home of former president Thomas Jefferson, Bush was heckled during a ceremony where people from 30 countries lined up to be sworn in as US citizens. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7491278.stm watch to the very end to see the smirk on his face.

An emotional Bush at last Fourth of July as president. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/2008/07/an-emotional-bu.html

Addressing new citizens and a handful of protestors at Monticello, Bush endorses free speech. http://c-ville.com/index.php?cat=1991704080566501&act=post&pid=12030407084438786

Bush heckled at Monticello 0:45. Protesters holler as the president speaks at a citizenship ceremony at Monticello. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/07/04/vo.bush.protesters.cnn

A recent report on retail sales shows a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season across the country -- and I encourage you all to go shopping more. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061220-1.html http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/12/20/bush-presser.html

The president's popularity rating is at an all-time low -- 23% of all registered voters, according to the latest Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll, discussed here last week. Those numbers are down from February, when he had an approval rating of 35%, and contrast with November 2001, just after the 9/11 terror attacks, when his popularity rating among registered voters was at 85%. But President Bush senses less hostility out on the road lately, according to U.S. News & World Report, and has told aides he senses an uptick in popularity that is not yet reflected in the polls. One senior advisor, saying the president feels less "antipathy" from crowds along motorcade routes, put it this way: "He feels there has been a shift in attitudes out there that's not reflected in polling data." http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/2008/06/bush-thinks-pol.html

Juvenile Injustice: DOJ ‘Faith-Based’ Grants Were Steered To Bush Allies, Says ABC http://blog.au.org/2008/06/25/juvenile-injustice-doj-faithbased-grants-were-steered-to-bush-allies-says-abc/

75% blame Bush's policies for deteriorating economy. The figure includes large numbers of dissatisfied Republicans and represents a sharp increase in pessimism over the last year. Higher fuel prices have sharpened the criticism. Three out of four Americans, including large numbers of Republicans, blame President Bush's economic policies for making the country worse off during the last eight years, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released Wednesday, reflecting a sharp increase in public pessimism during the last year. Nine percent of respondents said the country's economic condition had improved since Bush became president, compared with 75% who said conditions had worsened. Among Republicans, 42% said the country was worse off, while 26% said it was about the same, and 22% thought economic conditions had improved. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-poll26-2008jun26,0,7304218.story

PRESIDENT BUSH: The CIA laid out a -- several scenarios that said, life could be lousy, like could be okay, life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like. The Iraqi citizens are defying the pessimistic predictions. The Iraqi citizens are headed toward free elections. This government has been in place for a little over two months, and the Iraqi citizens are seeing a determined effort by responsible citizens to lead to a more hopeful tomorrow. And I am optimistic we'll succeed. Listen, I understand how tough it is. The Prime Minister understands how tough it is -- he has to live with the few who are trying to stop the aspirations of the many. And we are -- we're standing with the Iraqi people because it's in our nation's interests to do so. We're standing with the people of this good country because we understand that, as Prime Minister has said, that we must defeat them there; otherwise we'll face them here at home. And we'll prevail. We will succeed. It's an historic opportunity. And that's why I'm so honored to be with the Prime Minister. It's an historic opportunity not only to change this good country for the better and secure America, but it's an historic opportunity to set example for people in the broader Middle East that free societies can, and will, exist. And I want to thank you for your leadership, sir. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/09/20040921-9.html

"Just guessing." The contents of the two assessments had not been previously disclosed. They were described by the officials after two weeks in which the White House had tried to minimize the council's latest report, which was prepared this summer and read by senior officials early this month. Last week, Mr. Bush dismissed the latest intelligence reports, saying its authors were "just guessing about the future, though he corrected himself later, calling it an "estimate. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/politics/28intel.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1214269575-e+BRYStA4MftnFH/tIRKKw

Countdown to Crawford http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/

Bush slams Dems for ‘obstructing’ new oil production. Bush is a cry baby. Conservation would save more oil than his shortsighted drilling plan would ever produce. He has ignored this for years. Bush is incompetent and a cry baby. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/bush-slams-dems-for-obstructing-new-oil-production-2008-06-21.html

McClellan: Bush must blame himself for mistrust. If the nation doesn't trust the Bush White House, it's the president's and Dick Cheney's own fault, Bush's former spokesman told Congress Friday. From life-and-death matters on down - the rationale for war, the leaking of classified information, Cheney's accidental shooting of a friend - the government's top two leaders undermined their credibility by "packaging" their version of the truth, former press secretary Scott McClellan said. He described the loss of trust as self-inflicted, telling the House Judiciary Committee that Bush and his administration failed to open up about White House mistakes. The focus of the panel's hearing was the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, and McClellan said that was a good example of the administration damaging itself by backtracking on a pledge be upfront. "This White House promised or assured the American people that at some point when this was behind us they would talk publicly about it. And they have refused to," McClellan said. "And that's why I think more than any other reason we are here today and the suspicion still remains." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_cia_leak_probe.html?source=mypi

Bush Says He Still Believes Iraq War Was The Fun Thing To Do. Despite harsh criticism from both sides of the political aisle, the U.S. populace, and former members of his own administration, President Bush once again defended his 2003 decision to invade Iraq, saying that, in the end, it was the fun thing to do. "On Sept. 11, 2001, we as a nation faced a difficult decision, an important decision, a decision between what was fun and what was wrong," Bush said during a speech before Pentagon officials Wednesday. "We could have backed down and allowed the terrorists to win. But instead, we stood up to the challenge before us, and we said, 'Bring it on—bring the good times on!'" "Mark my words," Bush continued. "When the dust settles and the smoke clears, history will look back on the Iraq War as a total blast." http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bush_says_he_still_believes_iraq

General Accuses WH of War Crimes. The two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability. In his 2004 report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees." He called the abuse "systemic and illegal." And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in the New Yorker, he was rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement. Now, in a preface to a Physicians for Human Rights report based on medical examinations of former detainees, Taguba adds an epilogue to his own investigation. The new report, he writes, "tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individual's lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/06/18/BL2008061801546.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Bush is weak on terrorism. You can't fight terror with terror, torture and lies. The demands of the 9/11 terrorists (bin Laden) were 1) US troops out of Saudi Arabia; 2) disrupt US economy and 3) Start war. Guess what? they scored a hat trick. Bush surrendered to the on all three. We are no safer than we were on August 6, 2001 when Bush received the "bin Laden determined to attack inside US" memo and then Bush ignored it and went on vacation. How many more of those memos has he ignored?

Bush never lied to us about Iraq. The administration simply got bad intelligence. Critics are wrong to assert deception. Soooo. he didn't lie, he's just a butt head. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kirchick16-2008jun16,0,4808346.story

http://www.flickr.com/photos/96426447@N00/2576494352/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangorfuji9500/2585383892/

Death, poverty, war, pain, ignorance, blind patriotism, joblessness, and abandoned homes. And guess what? We're writing it down on the Internets. Your history, Mr. President, is being written at this very moment by those of us who are watching our homes collapse in value and our friends and relatives sent to places like Ramadi and Fallujah and, in some cases, Walter Reed or worse. Your history, Mr. President, isn't going to be settled and published decades from now. It's being published immediately and without the fog of memory to obscure the ugly details. These ugly details are exhaustively researched and easily accessible. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/sorry-mr-president-but-yo_b_106596.html

Bush farewell trip to Europe unlikely to yield new deals. Expert: 'People are looking beyond him'. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080608/news_1n8bush.html

During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a "confused" pep talk: "Kick ass!" he quotes the president as saying. "If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can't send that message. It's an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal." "There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/01/AR2008060101961_pf.html

A White House spokesman had no comment.

Bush ignores commencement protests. 15 faculty members wear T-shirts that say, ‘We Object’ GREENVILLE, S.C. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24910460/

So now comes Scott McClellan, once the most loyal of the Texas Bushies, to reveal “What Happened,” as the title of his book promises, to turn W. from a genial, humble, bipartisan good ol’ boy to a delusional, disconnected, arrogant, ideological flop. Although his analytical skills are extremely limited, the former White House press secretary — Secret Service code name Matrix — takes a stab at illuminating Junior’s bumpy and improbable boomerang journey from family black sheep and famous screw-up back to family black sheep and famous screw-up. How did W. start out wanting to restore honor and dignity to the White House and end up scraping all the honor and dignity off the White House? It turns out that our president is a one-man refutation of Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller “Blink,” about the value of trusting your gut. Every gut instinct he had was wildly off the mark and hideously damaging to all concerned. It seems that if you trust your gut without ever feeding your gut any facts or news or contrary opinions, if you keep your gut on a steady diet of grandiosity, ignorance, sycophants, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, those snap decisions can be ruinous. We already know What Happened, but it feels good to hear Scott say it. His conscience was spurred by hurt feelings. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01dowd.html?em&ex=1212465600&en=741f7cebc82f23e5&ei=5087%0A

President Bush's approval ratings have dropped to an all-time low in California, according to a new Field Poll. The poll released Saturday by the Field Research Corp. found that only 25 percent of the 1,052 registered voters surveyed approved of Bush's performance as president. Sixty-nine percent disapproved. Bush's previous low mark was 26 percent, reached in Field polls taken in March and August last year. In the new poll, 86 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of independents gave Bush a failing grade. He did better among Republicans, with 52 percent approving his performance and 37 percent disapproving. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20080531-1054-ca-bushpoll.html http://www.field.com/fieldpollonline

Only 17 percent of those questioned said they thought the country was generally going in the right direction.

The telephone poll was taken between May 17 and May 26. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

Events in the Middle East over the last two weeks are all the proof you need. Here's what the president said: "Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century. "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history." Although officially President Bush denied he was talking about Obama - and the Democrat's stated willingness to talk with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - John Yang, at NBC News, reported, "Privately, White House officials said the shoe fits the Democratic frontrunner." American historian Brian P. Murphy told the Boston Globe, "I can't imagine there's a precedent for a sitting president to go before the legislative body of a foreign government and launch a political attack on a major-party nominee running to succeed him." It was a shabby performance in an improper, overseas forum. He didn't care. Of course, the reference to appeasement was an attempt to smear by making a comparison between Senator Obama and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's capitulation to Hitler at Munich in 1938. http://www.truthout.org/article/george-bush-sea-desert

McClellan Responds to White House Criticism. Later on Thursday, Ms. Perino was asked by a reporter aboard Air Force One about a passage in Mr. McClellan’s book that involved the exposure of the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, Valerie, as a C.I.A. agent. The reporter said the book said that a question about the issue was shouted to Mr. Bush as they were boarding Air Force One. Mr. McClellan says the question prompted him to ask Mr. Bush directly if he was the one who had authorized the leaking of her name. The passage says Mr. Bush told Mr. McClellan, “Yes, I was.” Ms. Perino answered the question, saying: “I don’t know. Obviously, I wasn’t there, and obviously I don’t know the context.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/washington/30scottcnd.html?ref=us

Bush and Cheney, archived May 28, 2008

Ex-White House spokesman Scott McClellan attacks Bush in his new book. Long considered among the most loyal of Bush's assistants, McClellan writes that the president was 'not open and forthright' about the Iraq war. The White House is shocked by the lashing. Scott McClellan, who was on the podium as press secretary during both the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, rips the administration in a new book, saying the president was "not open and forthright" about the war and that the administration was relying on "propaganda" and "manipulating" public opinion in the run-up to war. Officially, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino called McClellan's disclosures "sad" and "puzzling," and added: "This is not the Scott we knew." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-mcclellan29-2008may29,0,4677381.story

In an editorial on a new GI Bill, which passed the Senate ahead of recess, and Bush’s opposition to the legislation as written, the paper said that “having saddled the military with a botched, unwinnable war, having squandered soldiers’ lives and failed them in so many ways, the commander in chief now resists giving the troops a chance at better futures out of uniform.” http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/white-house-rips-nyt-for-misleading-editorial-2008-05-26.html

Six Degrees of Scott Bloch: A Scandal ScorecardMay 14, 2008Several Bush administration officials have become ensnared in an interlocking set of investigations into allegations of Hatch Act violations, whistleblower misconduct and other prohibited personnel practices. At the center of these investigations is Scott Bloch, head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. Characters drawn into the drama include former General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and top Bush adviser Karl Rove.If you're having trouble keeping track of the connections between all of these people, we've developed a handy guide to help you. http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=40002

White House challenges release of visitor logs. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_white_house_secrecy.html?source=mypi

When a Republican president is in power, people at the top of the income distribution experience much larger real income gains than those at the bottom--a difference of 1.5 percent per year going from the bottom to the top quintile in the income distribution. The situation is reversed when a Democrat is in power: those who benefit the most are the lower income groups. If you are in the bottom quintile, the difference between having a Democratic or a Republican president in office is an income gain (or loss) of more than 2 percent per year! Strikingly, compared to Republicans, Democratic presidents generate higher income gains for all income groups http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2008/03/american-politi.html http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2008/04/larry-bartels-r.html

Seven Years of Scandal. The latest plot twists are stunners, even as they unfold against the scandalous backdrop of the Bush administration’s sorry regulatory record. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080408_seven_years_of_scandal/

[P]ublic opinion about George Bush has touched not one but two outer edges of the known galaxy of presidential popularity. First … he scored the highest approval ratings of any president since World War II. Then … he plunged to the lowest level of public esteem ever measured, in the same postwar era…. If you go by approval ratings, father and son are practically the same person. The only significant differences are that the 43rd president's belly-flop was spread over two presidential terms rather than one and that it was a slightly exaggerated version of the 41st president's trajectory. http://www.slate.com/id/2188146/

Cheney's on the road: Pack the Diet Sprite, keep the TV tuned to Fox News. On overseas trips, including this one in the Middle East, Cheney spends a lot of time on a noisy C-17, a gray military airplane that is not as conspicuous as the blue-and-white Air Force Two, a much smaller Air Force One look-alike. Inside the C-17, Cheney spends hour after hour in his trailer in the middle of the cavernous plane. Known as the “silver bullet,” it has a bathroom and a couple of sleeping and sitting areas where Cheney likes to read books, briefing papers and newspapers, listen to music and spend time with his wife. comment: Is there a specific name for the mental disorder that causes people to spew vitriolic venomous remarks about an intelligent, caring, successful and patriotic man who has given up millions to serve his country? Could it be some form of liberal psychosis? http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20080330-0745-cheney-ontheroad.html

Iraq decisionmaking as courageous as pardoning Richard Nixon, Cheney says. "The president had to go up -- chose to go up before the Judiciary Committee of the House and testify in order to put down the rumors that somehow there had been a deal between he and President Nixon, that if he would pardon Nixon, then he would get to be president himself," Cheney continued. "I rode up there with him that day and sat in the hearing room while he answered all those questions. I know how much grief he took for that decision, and it may well have cost him the presidency in '76." "Thirty years later, nearly everybody would say it is exactly the right thing to do, that if he'd paid attention at the time to the polls he never would have done that," he added. "But he demonstrated, I think, great courage and great foresight, and the country was better off for what Jerry Ford did that day. And 30 years later, everybody recognized it. "And I have the same strong conviction the issues we're dealing with today -- the global war on terror, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq -- that all of the tough calls the president has had to make, that 30 years from now it will be clear that he made the right decisions, and that the effort we mounted was the right one, and that if we had listened to the polls, we would have gotten it wrong." http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Cheney_compares_Iraq_decisions_with_Richard_0325.html

Bush’s Legacy of Failure. That idiotic “what, me worry?” look just never leaves the man’s visage. Once again, there was our president, presiding over disasters in part of his making and totally on his watch, grinning with an aplomb that suggested a serious disconnect between his worldview and existing reality. Be it in his announcement that Iraq was being secured on a day when bombs ripped through that sad land or posed between his Treasury secretary and the Federal Reserve chairman to applaud the government’s bailout of a failed bank, George Bush was the only one inexplicably smiling. Failure suits him. It is a stance he learned well while presiding over one failed Texas business deal after another, and it served him splendidly as he claimed the title of president of the United States after losing the popular, and maybe even the electoral, vote. It carried him through the most ignominious chapter of U.S. foreign policy, from the lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to an unprecedented presidential defense of torture. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080318_bushs_legacy_of_failure/

nterview of the Vice President by Martha Raddatz, ABC News. Shangri-La's Barr Al Jissah Resort & Spa. Muscat, Oman. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/03/20080319-5.html

He began by laughingly calling the latest news on the economic meltdown "a interesting moment" and ended by saying that "our energy policy has not been very wise" and that there was "no quick fix" on gasp-inducing gas prices. "You know, I guess the best way to describe government policy is like a person trying to drive a car in a rough patch," he said. "If you ever get stuck in a situation like that, you know full well it's important not to overcorrect, because when you overcorrect you end up in the ditch." Dude, you're already in the ditch. http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/79876/

The Bush Tragedy. http://www.slate.com/id/2186343/

A seemingly ho-hum rules dispute between Philadelphia's public housing agency and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has led to accusations of favoritism and corruption against a member of President Bush's Cabinet. According to the city housing authority director, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson has threatened the agency's funding since it refused to award a vacant lot worth $2 million to Kenny Gamble, a soul-music producer-turned-community developer. Jackson, forgoing protocol, toured the site with Gamble in September 2006 without inviting local officials to join them, and later personally called Philadelphia's mayor at the time for help, according to an amended federal lawsuit filed against HUD last month by the Philadelphia Housing Authority. "This is extraordinary. He's the president's representative, and he's personally coming out, on his own, to take a firsthand look into a contract dispute?" housing authority Director Carl Greene said Thursday. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080301/D8V4SVRO1.html

Cheney fights release of videos. The VP's office worries depositions of two aides in a Golden man's civil lawsuit may show up on YouTube. "As courts have recognized, using digital technology, a video recording can easily be 'cut and spliced,' so as to embarrass and even humiliate a witness," Cheney's lawyers wrote in a U.S. District Court filing. "That much can readily be seen from a visit to YouTube. . . . A simple query using the search term 'deposition' yields over 400 video clips, in which many of the deponents are made to look boorish, mendacious, or unintelligent." http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_8220304

Critics: Bush's budget harms Great Lakes. President Bush's proposed budget would shortchange efforts to clean up the Great Lakes and prevent the worsening of problems such as sewage overflows and exotic species invasions, critics said Wednesday. Federal spending for Great Lakes water quality programs would be slashed 16 percent from this year's total under the president's fiscal 2009 spending plan released this week, advocacy groups said. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1501ap_budget_great_lakes.html

Lawmakers complain Bush budget cuts fire prevention money. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02/05/news/nation/15_07_382_4_08.txt

US should have taken British advice on war, says Andrew. PRINCE Andrew has criticised the US for not learning from Britain's experiences on how to avoid problems following the Iraq war. In an unusual move for a member of the Royal Family, the Duke of York said the conflict had led to a "healthy scepticism" towards the George Bush administration. http://news.scotsman.com/world/US-should-have-taken-British.3742935.jp

the failures in Bush's foreign and military policy stem from two great misconceptions: that the world changed after Sept. 11, when it didn't, and that the United States emerged from the Cold War stronger than before, when in fact it was weaker. Those in charge of his policies cared little about the details of warfare, knew little about the realities of the Middle East, and had not thought through what made freedom work in their own country, much less what might make it work elsewhere. http://www.slate.com/id/2183426/entry/2183424/nav/tap3/

Was encounter with Cheney a touch, a slap or a shove? A Colorado man had an encounter with the vice president, but no one, including Secret Service agents, agrees on what happened. Could Cheney be forced to testify? http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cheney4feb04,0,2222844.story

Support is slow for Bush's Mars plan. Some scientists question goals. Four years after President Bush called for Americans to return to the moon and then voyage on to Mars, NASA is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to design, build and test the spacecraft that would make it possible. But the effort has yet to capture the public's imagination as the Apollo project did in the 1960s, something tacitly acknowledged recently when NASA hired a New York advertising firm to help “brand” the program, now dubbed Constellation. Moreover, some top space-exploration advocates, policy experts and scientists, including some who initially supported the program, are questioning whether it can ever achieve its goals at a price taxpayers will accept. The doubters are so worried that they have organized a conference for Feb. 12-13 at Stanford University to debate the issue. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080203/news_1n3mars.html

Bush Legacy: Setting a Standard in Fear-Mongering. When I left the Bush administration in 2003, it was clear to me that its strategy for defeating terrorism was leaving our nation more vulnerable and our people in a perilous place. Not only did its policies misappropriate resources, weaken the moral standing of America, and threaten long-standing legal and constitutional provisions, but the president also employed misleading and reckless rhetoric to perpetuate his agenda. This week's State of the Union proved nothing has changed. Besides overstating successes in Afghanistan, painting a rosy future for Iraq, and touting unfinished domestic objectives, he again used his favorite tactic - fear - as a tool to scare Congress and the American people. On one issue in particular - FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) - the president misconstrued the truth and manipulated the facts. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020308Z.shtml

But the end of the current administration will also mark the moment we get a full answer to what has thus far been a little-examined question: What happens to the folks who crafted and carried out Bush's most radical and inept policies? Will they be shunned as the failures they are? Or welcomed into the bosom of the permanent Beltway establishment and a comfortable eminence grise post-White House existence? http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=244edcc8-28e6-4756-a57f-63ebcef5b60d

Bush pushes for three trade pacts. At a luncheon at the Bel-Air home of venture capitalist Elliott Broidy and an early dinner in Hillsborough on the San Francisco peninsula, Bush expected to raise more than $3.2 million for the Republican National Committee, a party official said. Bush also planned fundraising stops Thursday and Friday in Nevada, Colorado and Missouri. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush31jan31,0,2219336.story

Bush says faith helped him beat drinking. "First is to recognize that there is a higher power," Bush said. "It helped me in my life. It helped me quit drinking." "That's right, there is a higher power," Mosely said. "Step One, right?" Bush said, referring to the Alcholics Anonymous twelve-steps program. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080129/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_alcohol_addiction_2

Smirk of the Union. A small and beaten man spoke to Congress and the nation last night, convinced in his own mind he's a hero. http://www.alternet.org/story/75340/?page=1

Fact-Checking Key Assertions in the State of the Union Address. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/28/AR2008012803175.html?hpid=topnews

Fox News fetes legacy-conscious Bush in one hour program. http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Fox_News_fetes_President_Bush_in_0128.html

PRESIDENT BUSH – Overall Job Rating in recent national polls http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm

George W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a “born again Christian.” It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled “A Charge to Keep.” Bush was so taken by it, that he took the painting’s name for his own official autobiography. So Bush’s inspiring, prosyletizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency. Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious. The president of the United States has identified closely with a man he sees as a mythic, heroic figure. But in fact he’s a wily criminal one step out in front of justice. It perfectly reflects Bush the man. . . and Bush the president. http://harpers.org/archive/2008/01/hbc-90002237

From Norman Rockwell to Abu Ghraib. To understand how Bush justifies a torture policy that is the bane of our nation, consider the sentimental cowboy art that decks his Oval Office walls. http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/04/26/torture_policy/print.html

Why the Saudis Hate Bush. http://www.alternet.org/audits/73999/

Bush Era's Last Legs: Will Anything Change When He Goes? A year from now, given the pathetic state of American politics and the U.S. news media, one can almost envision the start of a George W. Bush nostalgia as his presidency comes to an end. Neocon columnists and think-tank experts are sure to hail his courage and wisdom. It’s also unlikely that either a President McCain or a President Clinton would do much to set the record straight. Whether the pattern is like 1988 (when George H.W. Bush succeeded fellow Republican Ronald Reagan) or like 1992 (when Democrat Bill Clinton followed George H.W. Bush), the focus will be on the future, not the past. Rose-colored glasses will be put firmly in place about George W. Bush, just as they were regarding Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, in order to avoid bitter partisan disputes about their legacies. As the Clinton team told me back in 1993, “we don’t want to refight the old battles of the 1980s.” Many of the same players show no indication that they would take a different position regarding the battles of the Bush II presidency. http://www.alternet.org/election08/74491/?page=1

The sad reality about America’s historical amnesia – if not outright hostility toward the hard truths of history – will mean that few, if any, lessons will be learned from the eight years of George W. Bush. That, in turn, will leave open the likelihood that the same mistakes will be repeated again.

President Bush Says Usama Bin Laden May Not Be Captured During His Time in Office http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,325234,00.html

Attorneys probe deepens. The federal investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys could jolt the political landscape ahead of the November elections, according to several people close to the inquiry. http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/attorneys-probe-deepens-2008-01-22.html

Robert Fisk: Bloody reality bears no relation to the delusions of this President. As a bomb explodes in Beirut and Israel kills 19 in Gaza raids, Bush takes his Middle East peace mission to Saudi Arabia (and signs off $20bn weapons deal with repressive regime) http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3342174.ece

Exclusive: President Bush in Saudi Arabia. The President on Middle East Trip, High Oil Prices and Why an Israeli-Palestinian Peace Deal Is Possible. "Look, I know I've been accused of being a hopeless idealist. On the other hand, I don't see any alternative, if you believe it's an ideological struggle." http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Politics/Story?id=4136209&page=1

Bush: U.S. should have used bombing to help Jews in Auschwitz http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/01/12/news/nation/3_41_451_11_08.txt

Legal FictionsThe Bush administration's dumbest legal arguments of the year. http://www.slate.com/id/2179934

U.S. attorney firings open doors for the 9. A year ago, a Justice Department scandal forced them into new careers. Despite some bitterness, they've landed on their feet. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-usattys9dec09,0,2732264.story?page=1&coll=la-home-center

Open Letters to George W. Bush. Letters to the president from his ardent admirer Belacqua Jones http://blogs.salon.com/0004024/

If you ever suspected Karl Rove was nuts, now you know he is. Ever since escaping the asylum, he’s been running around like a madman, blaming the Iraq war on Democrats. http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5

Emergency responders face deep aid cuts http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071130/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/security_grants

Un-Cheney Heart Isn't it time for the vice president to get a heart transplant? http://www.slate.com/id/2178644/nav/ais/

More than 30 years of U.S. peacemaking have produced few successes http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/11/24/military/13_09_3511_23_07.txt

Giving Thanks Inside the Bubble. By Dan Froomkin http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/11/20/BL2007112000871_pf.html

"The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America’s Future” http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/16/1419245

Help! I Hate Myself for Hating Bush http://blog.washingtonpost.com/stumped/?hpid=opinionsbox1

Pakistan censors poetic salute to Bush http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/05/wpoem05.xml

criminologists have long recognized that premeditated, sadistic treatment of animals is a strong predictor of criminal and homicidal violence. http://www.alternet.org/story/67663/

Matthew Dowd helped win the White House. Now he views the administration with a mixture of anguish and contempt. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-dowd14nov14,0,6304127.story?coll=la-home-center

Part 2 of an excerpt from "The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future." http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/11/08/house_of_bush/index.html

Part 1 of an excerpt from "The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future." http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/11/07/house_of_bush/

Picking up after failed war on terror, Bush's campaign to wipe out terrorism is a costly mess. Here are five steps to move on. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-bacevich6nov06,0,7058482.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Add Blackwater to Bush misadventures hidden by a veil of secrecy http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/11/03/opinion/commentarycal/21_58_4811_2_07.txt

Attempting to demonstrate fiscal toughness now, in the seventh year of his presidency, carried the risk being criticized for doing too little, too late or as waging a transparently partisan attack against the Democrats who now run Capitol Hill. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_Bush_Veto.html?source=mypi

Bush to Democrats: 'We are at war' http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_Bush.html?source=mypi

Laura Bush accuses Dems of demagoguery on SCHIP http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/laura-bush-accuses-democrats-of-demagoguery-on-schip-2007-10-28.html

Dean Lashes Out at GOP Over Health Plan http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071027/D8SHLC880.html

Why Those Who Love America Are Feeling Brokenhearted http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102507E.shtml

Which of the attacks I have just described would they prefer we had not stopped? http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071023-3.html

Straitjacket Bush, The president's warmongering remarks on the Iranian threat suggest he is psychotic. Really. http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-brooks24oct25,0,1949551.column?coll=la-home-commentary

How Bush wrecked conservatism http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/10/23/conservatism/index.html

Who Will Rule Us After the Next 9/11?The reality of NSPD-51 is almost as bad as the paranoia. http://www.slate.com/id/2176185/nav/tap3/

``Of course I feel hostile. My only son was killed and I can't get an answer, Jones, 44, says she replied. http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20071010/pl_bloomberg/awwpmilea_ag_1

Chris DeMuth, Hack Extraordinaire http://www.slate.com/id/2175768/nav/tap3/

Your duty is to defend America's reputation in the world. To do so, you must persuade the Bush administration to renounce its abhorrent and hypocritical policy on torture. http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/10/11/torture_letter_to_hughes/

As Bush Staffers Leave, Questions About Legacy Abound http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/06/AR2007100601521.html?hpid=topnews

You're equally American if you believe in an Almighty or don't believe in an Almighty. That's a sacred freedom. http://timesonline.typepad.com/faith/2007/08/top-50-bushisms.html

Ex-Bush lawyer: Eavesdropping illegal http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/334028_spy03.html

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/63632/

Bush's 2003 conversation with the Spanish prime minister shows his smug determination to invade Iraq at all costs. http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/09/28/aznar_iraq/

Protests at President Bush at UN http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/86136

Is our Prezzidint learning? http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/perino-blasts-offensive-question-after-bush-speech-snafu-2007-09-25.html

On Iraq, Bush thinks his way is best http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070925/news_lz1e25kondrac.html

Bush urges U.N. to spread freedom http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_Bush.html?source=mypi

Rummy: “We view the appointment as fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, disinterested enquiry, respect for national and international laws and care for the opinions, property and lives of others to which Stanford is inalienably committed,” the petition reads. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/education/21stanford.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

Ms Rice made it clear that the Bush administration was not interested in the views of the Pope on the immorality of launching military offensive. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7002988.stm

Bush hammers Dems on MoveOn.org ad http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/bush-blasts-dems-on-moveon.org-ad-2007-09-20.html

Annotate This… President Bush's Sept. 13 Speech to the Nation http://www.antiwar.com/orig/zunesleaver.php?articleid=11629

Why Is Bush's Kid Brother Neil Getting Federal Funding? http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091407H.shtml

Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/06/bush_wmd/

How Bush betrays Reagan http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/09/04/bush_and_reagan/

“The Terror Presidency,” he weakened the presidency he was so determined to strengthen. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/magazine/09rosen.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin

Draper offers little additional insight http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/02/AR2007090201422.html?hpid=topnews

CheneyBush's "Mercenary" Legions http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082907K.shtml

To invoke Vietnam was a blunder too far for Bush http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2156380,00.html

one of the worst foreign policy blunders in our history http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=35782

Bush Falters http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/19/AR2007081901720.html?hpid=topnews

Ranch fashion http://www.statesman.com/search/content/life/stories/style/08/09/0809ranchfashion.html

Bush's Optimism Persists http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=35336

What to Do With Cheney? The politics of impeachment http://www.antiwar.com/utley/?articleid=11440

26 percent of California voters approve of the job Bush is doing http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070815/news_1n15field.html

rove bbc http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6944781.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4679979.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6944040.stm

it pleases the mob ROVE resigns http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010465

Michael J. Gerson is accused of taking credit for words he did not write http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/10/AR2007081002403.html?hpid=topnews

George W. Bush's missing year http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/09/02/allison/index.html

Columnist says Bush administration fears Powell will emerge as anti-war critic http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Columnist_says_Bush_administration_fears_Powell_0809.html

Carl Bernstein: Bush More "Disastrous" Than Nixon http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=221074

Bush Defaces Flag (Again) http://dcdl.org/2006/06/22/bush-defaces-flag-again

George Bush, Hegelian http://www.slate.com/id/2171670

this voice has never acknowledged its previous errors. polls http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1649312,00.html

"if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_CIA_Leak_Trial.html?source=mypi

Bush's approval rating plunges to new low http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Bush_s_approval_rating_plunges_to_n_06212007.html

don't sell it on ebay http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2007/05/bush_to_mother_.html

Some Q's, no A's from Rice http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/05/28/opinion/editorialscal/52707180901.txt

where have all the leaders gone http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=wherehavealltheleadersgone

remember the rug http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070419/bush-musings

409 days of vacation http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070407/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_s_escape_1

rove: bush legacy of lies http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802184.html

Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear stronger in the region than at any time since the U.S. invasion. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/washington/28security.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

cheney bombed http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=43907

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/25/153120/172

punk http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_Asia_Cheney.html

http://nymag.com/news/politics/Bush/26993/index10.html

http://hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/022107/surge.html

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=43770

bush is a moron http://www.slate.com/id/2160225/pagenum/all/#page_start

osama http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=10547

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Stages_of_Cruelty

"It Can Happen Here" http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/02/19/conason/

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-ellsberg3jul03,1,6463178.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10498

little criminal bush http://www.alternet.org/story/46794/

today's presidential boy blunder http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/01/14/opinion/jacobs/17_21_271_13_07.txt

shit for brains http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070113/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush

evil, stupid idiot: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/297162_bush25.html

Eric Keroack http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061204/news_1m4letter.html

The Bush administration's latest, and most appalling, assault on habeas corpus. http://www.slate.com/id/2154675

Embittered Insiders Turn Against Bush http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/18/AR2006111801076.html

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/291697_bushanalysis09.html

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/22/bush-stay-the-course/

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/24/bush-dismisses-bloodshed-in-iraq-as-just-a-comma/

Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice: I've had my fill of politics. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/254785-condoleezza-rice-ive-had-my-fill-of-politics

http://warcriminalswatch.org/index.php/the-culpable/36-the-culprits/54-rice-condoleeza

When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaves her post, probably in January, 2009, she will have forged a dramatically different foreign policy for the United States. The stiletto-heeled proponent of the Rice Doctrine is fond of pinning interestingly artful sobriquets on her ideas. For example, the policy of U.S. agents snatching suspects off the streets of foreign countries and taking them to third countries which sometimes practice torture to force revelation of information is called "rendition." Ms. Rice staunchly defends it. The policy of starting wars with troublesome enemies is called "pre-emptive action." She's a big proponent when the administration deems it necessary. Now she has come forth with "transformational diplomacy." The idea is not just to have ambassadors and diplomats stationed in foreign posts report to the United States what is going on around the globe but to have them act to influence what goes on in their host nations to spur the emergence of capitalism. http://www.toledoblade.com/Opinion/2006/01/22/The-Rice-Doctrine-of-foreign-diplomacy.html

Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/Opinion/2006/01/22/The-Rice-Doctrine-of-foreign-diplomacy.html#jzZG55SSUyMFhgQS.99

Condi Rice: Nutjob http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/23/condoleezza-rice-on-gaddafi-death-bush-freedom-agenda-won.html

Condoleeza Rice: Arch Traitor. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-morrison-rice-20101023,0,4939482.column

Condoleezza Rice: Architect of War and Torture. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-11/condoleezza-rice-extraordinary-ordinary-people-review/?cid=hp:mainpromo6

Capping four years as the Bush administration's top diplomat, a teary-eyed Condoleezza Rice bade a spirited farewell Friday to an assembly of several hundred State Department employees. "And that's why I know that one day there is going to be a world in which every man, woman and child will be free from tyranny," she said. "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090116/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/rice_farewell_1 http://www.nationalreview.com/coulter/coulter.shtml

Republican Neo-con Rice: No trip to Middle East planned. "not our problem" "who cares?" http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/rice-no-trip-to-middle-east-planned-2009-01-02.html

Rice: Much Of Bush’s Foreign Policy Agenda Deserves An ‘A+’. When pressed further, Rice responded by saying, “It’s not a popularity contest.” While the U.S. is indeed well-regarded in India, Rice’s claim that the U.S. is “well regarded” in China is puzzling. The Pew Survey that Braver noted found that in China, the U.S. is viewed favorably by just 41 percent of the country. Similarly, just 30 percent of China has confidence in the Bush administration. A BBC poll from April of this year found similar results for many other nations around the world. Overall, the Bush administration’s foreign policy agenda has seen few successes. U.S. influence abroad is predicted to decline over the next 20 years. The U.S. military is weaker now than it was five years ago, while the State Department is suffering from staffing shortages and low morale. The recent violence in Israel dramatically highlights the fact that Bush largely ignored the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/28/rice-a-plus/

Arabs lavish jewels on Secretary of State Rice. President George W. Bush's foreign policies may be unpopular in the Middle East, but Arab leaders showered his top diplomat with jewelry worth far more than a quarter of a million dollars last year. While Bush himself didn't fare nearly as well, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raked in at least $316,000 in gem-encrusted baubles from the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia alone, making her one of top recipients among U.S. officials of gifts from foreign heads of state and government and their aides in 2007. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1152ap_rice_gifts.html?source=mypi

Rice Adviser: Iraq Invasion Was 'F*cking Stupid' Over at the Washington Independent, Spencer Ackerman continues his enlightening "Rise of the Counterinsurgents" series with "A Counterinsurgency Guide for Politicos." The Indy has obtained a copy of a forthcoming manual on counterinsurgency strategy written by David Kilcullen, a "former Australian Army officer who is now an adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice." More bluntly, Kilcullen, who helped Petraeus design his 2007 counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, called the decision to invade Iraq "stupid" -- in fact, he said "fucking stupid" -- and suggested that if policy-makers apply the manual's lessons, similar wars can be avoided in the future. "The biggest stupid idea," Kilcullen said, "was to invade Iraq in the first place." http://washingtonindependent.com/view/the-cricketers

John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales

John Ashcroft, Arch-traitor http://www.npr.org/2011/09/11/140360443/ashcroft-war-on-terror-won-one-day-at-a-time

Ashcroft can be sued over arrests, appeals court rules. A 9th Circuit panel says the ex-attorney general violated the rights of citizens held as material witnesses without cause after 9/11. Rights advocates praise the ruling in Abdullah Kidd's case. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ashcroft-rights5-2009sep05,0,2169737.story

THE BUSH SIX About a year ago, a book came out in England that made a fascinating prediction: at some point in the future, the author wrote, six top officials in the Bush Administration would get a tap on the shoulder announcing that they were being arrested on international charges of torture. If the prediction seemed improbable, the background of the book’s author was even more so. Philippe Sands is neither a journalist nor an American but a law professor and a certified Queen’s Counsel (the kind of barrister who on occasion wears a powdered horsehair wig) who works at the same law practice as Cherie Blair. Sands’s book, “Torture Team,” offers a scathing critique of officials in the Bush Administration, accusing them of complicity in acts of torture. When the book appeared, some scoffed. Douglas Feith, a former Pentagon official, dismissed Sands as “a British lawyer” who “wrote an extremely dishonest book.” http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/04/13/090413ta_talk_mayer

Gonzales Defends Role in Antiterror Policies. Mr. Gonzales has been portrayed by critics both as unqualified for his position and instrumental in laying the groundwork for the administration's "war on terror." He was pilloried by Congress in a manner not usually directed toward cabinet officials. "What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he said during an interview Tuesday, offering his most extensive comments since leaving government. You authorized torture violating the Constitution of the United States, you authorized illegal spying on US Citizens in violation of the Constitution of the United States, you failed to uphold your oath of office. In one of his final acts before leaving office, Mr. Gonzales denied he was planning to quit, even though he had told the president of his intention to resign. Asked about the misleading comment Tuesday, he said: "At that point, I didn't care." you shit where we live. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123068159621944041.html

Another blow to Justice Department. Another stunning report has documented the bold and illegal influence of politics at the Justice Department over the past eight years. For decades, Republican and Democratic attorneys general had protected from political influence the hiring of career prosecutors and administrative judges. There was an unbroken rule, embodied in law, regulation and department policy, that no political questions would be asked of those who wanted to serve in career – as opposed to political – positions in the department. We demanded of our Justice Department, in its core prosecutorial and adjudicative functions, that it be separate from politics. Until the Bush administration. Last month, we learned that political functionaries deputized by Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales had screened the best and the brightest coming out of law schools, judicial clerkships and other positions to weed out those who appeared to be Democrats or who might hold liberal ideas; favor was shown to Republicans, members of the Federalist Society, and those considered to be good and loyal conservatives. As the department's Office of Inspector General and its Office of Professional Responsibility noted, this is illegal. It also breaks the promise of justice that is above politics and undermines the department's best values. Now, an equally graphic report by the same two offices concludes that in 2003 the apolitical process for selecting immigration judges and prosecutors was stood on its head. A chief aide to Attorney General Ashcroft (and later to Attorney General Gonzales) “outlined a new process for hiring (immigration judges) that listed the White House as the sole source for generating candidates.” http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080731/news_lz1e31gorelic.html

Barbara Bush

In 1984, Bush told the press that she could not say on television what she thought of then Vice-Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, but "it rhymes with rich".

During her husband's 1992 presidential campaign, Barbara Bush stated that abortion is a personal matter and argued that the Republican Party platform should not take a stand on it, saying that "The personal things should be left out of, in my opinion, platforms and conventions." Her personal views on abortion were not known, although her friends reported at that time that she "privately supported abortion rights".

Commenting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bush said, "Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is."

On March 18, 2003, two days before the beginning of the war on Iraq, ABC's Good Morning America asked her about her family's television viewing habits; she replied: "I watch none. He [former President Bush] sits and listens and I read books, because I know perfectly well that, don't take offense, that 90 percent of what I hear on television is supposition, when we're talking about the news. And he's not, not as understanding of my pettiness about that. But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or that or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that, and watch him suffer.”

While visiting a Houston relief center for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina, Bush told the radio program Marketplace, “Almost everyone I've talked to says, 'We're gonna move to Houston.' What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas... Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality, and so many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this (as she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Bush#Outspoken_commentary

Laura Bush

Mrs. Bush: Bush presidency not a failure. First lady Laura Bush says she disagrees with critics who say her husband's presidency was a failure. In an interview aired Sunday on Fox News Sunday, Mrs. Bush says she knows her husband's eight years in office was not a failure, and says she doesn't feel as if she needs to respond to people who view it that way. She says history will judge the two-term presidency of George W. Bush. Mrs. Bush notes that under her husband's watch, the nation has been kept safe from attack since Sept. 11 and that his administration toppled Saddam Hussein and liberated millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq from oppressive governments. She also talked of her husband's work to provide treatment for disease to millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa. Laura Bush is a moron, she is content to support her meglomaniac husband while he sends troops to their deaths in Iraq all for his stupidity and ego. http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2008/dec/28/laura-bush-legacy-122808/?zIndex=28805

Hillary Clinton's pride and arrogance were clearly expressed in her concession speech on June 7. She spoke as if she alone has paved the way for a woman to run for president. Her campaign has always been all about her. In contrast to Clinton, and while that concession speech was being made, Laura Bush was working in Afghanistan to raise money for that war-torn nation. Ironically, while Hillary's speech was front-page news the first lady's peace mission was relegated to a tiny article inside the news section. In my opinion, Laura Bush's international trip should have been on the front page. LINDA WEST San Diego LAURA BUSH MADE THIS PLEDGE SEVEN YEARS AGO. RESULT: MORE US SOLDIERS KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN THAN IN IRAQ LAST MONTH. LAURA BUSH IS AN EMBARRASSMENT TO OUR COUNTRY. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080614/news_lz1e14letters.html

Rove

Karl Rove's punditry: where facts go to die. Karl Rove has a well established history of peddling blatant misinformation in order to paint former President Bush (and thus, himself) in a better light. So it probably should have come as no surprise that Rove recently said of the Bush tax cuts, "The biggest percentage tax cuts went to the people at the bottom," and whined that President Obama was "distorting" Bush's record on the issue. Take a second to let that sink in; According to Rove, contrary to the impression of, oh pretty much everyone (like the Brookings institute, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Center for Tax Justice, for example), Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 actually went mostly to "people at the bottom." That would be quite a revelation; I mean it wasn't the poorest Americans that Bush called "my base." But that's how Rove told it: But, as is the case with so many of Rove's forays into punditry, it's just not true that Bush's tax cuts were geared toward the poor. Indeed, in 2004 the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (under the direction of 2008 McCain presidential adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin) found that due to the provisions of the Bush tax cuts, the highest fifth of income earners would see would see their share of income tax payments fall from 82.5 percent in 2001 to 79.1 percent in 2010 (the last year before the law the income tax provisions of the laws sunset). The falling share of income tax liabilities is even more pronounced for the richest 10 percent, the richest 5 percent and the richest 1 percent of taxpayers. Meanwhile, CBO estimated that the lowest three fifths of income earners would all see their share of the income tax payments move in the other direction -- that is, increase -- over the decade: http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007100002

Karl Rove book event in Franklin attracts protesters, supporters. http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100521/WILLIAMSON01/5210343/-1/nsitemapXML/Karl-Rove-book-event-in-Franklin-attracts-protesters--supporters

More trouble for Karl Rove on his book tour. In Las Vegas, former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove is again startled by an antiwar activist's attempt at a citizen's arrest. http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2010/0416/More-trouble-for-Karl-Rove-on-his-book-tour

Rove signs book amid security, protests. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/apr/01/rove-signs-new-book-amid-tight-security-protests/

Karl Rove Book Signing Canceled After THIS Protest. Protesters scream 'war criminal' at Bush administration official. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-viral-rove-book-signing-story,0,5653791.htmlstory

Karl Rove heckled, called 'war criminal' at book event. http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/30/rove.protest/?hpt=T2

Anti-war protester carrying handcuffs tries to arrest Karl Rove at Calif. book signing. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-rove-heckled,0,3373888.story

Rove fought back. "With all due respect, this goes to show the totalitarianism of the left. They don't believe in dialogue, they don't believe in the 1st Amendment," he told the crowd." At one point, Rove told a protester, "Get the heck out of here.... This man is a lunatic." Rove was eventually forced to leave the stage, and those who came to hear him speak did not get their books signed. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/03/karl-rove-battles-protesters-at-beverly-hills-book-signing.html

Going Rove: Courage and Consequence is full of falsehoods. http://mediamatters.org/research/201003080030

and he's fat too.

Prosecuting Karl: Rove Directly Implicated in U.S. Attorneys Firings. http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1-/4495-prosecuting-karl-rove-directly-implicated-in-us-attorneys-firings.html

Divisive visit by Karl Rove stirs pot. Karl Rove speaks against Employee Free Choice Act as many protest outside. http://www.pjstar.com/news/x2133280384/Rove-speaks-at-Hotel-Pere-Marquette-while-union-members-rally-outside

Rove Defends Bush: He's Not Worst President Of Past 50 Years. Rove is worthless. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/03/rove-defends-bush-hes-not_n_148153.html

Rove: We Wouldn't Have Invaded Iraq If We Knew The Truth About WMDs. In what was a remarkable admission that contradicted - to a large extent - the past statements from his onetime boss, former Bush strategist Karl Rove said on Tuesday evening that had the President known Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, the United States would not have gone to war. "In the aftermath of 9/11 the concern was about a tyrant accused of enormous human rights abuses," but who also possessed weapons of mass destruction, said Rove. "Absent that, I suspect that the administration's course of action would have been to work to find more creative ways to constrain him like in the 90s." The remarks, delivered at a debate in New York on Bush's legacy, came amidst a vigorous defense by Rove on behalf of the war's purpose and outcome. At no point was it mentioned that the administration -- specifically Vice President Dick Cheney -- reportedly advanced faulty or poorly sourced information to fit the conclusion that Iraq possessed WMD, or that intelligence reports from the run-up to the war suggested that such a case was flimsy. Later in the event, Rove argued that Saddam Hussein was supporting terrorism, poised a grave threat to the region, and had systematically duped the international community into assuming he was armed. Rove is an idiot. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/02/rove-we-wouldnt-have-inva_n_147923.html

Do you think John McCain attacked too much or not enough? Dissecting the campaign that way is not helpful. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/magazine/16wwln-Q4-t.html?_r=1&scp=7&sq=karl%20rove&st=cse&oref=slogin

Dear Karl, You're a moron, Since I'm the guy largely responsible for giving you a reputation as being very smart, then it seems appropriate that I also deliver the news that, as it turns out, you aren't too bright. Actually, I think you may be downright dumb. Yes, I know you can spout statistics and theoretical analytics and you have a grand and glorious memory. But you know what, pal, you just ain't packin' the gear we all thought you carried. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/hey-karl-thanks_b_142232.html

Why Karl Rove Should Go to Jail. Karl Rove ignored a Congressional subpoena last week, leaving the country rather than testify under oath. Enough is enough. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-linda-sanchez/why-karl-rove-should-go-t_b_113417.html

How Karl Rove played politics while people drowned. Hurricane Katrina posed a huge test to Bush's administration. But instead of bailing out Louisiana, Karl Rove played Blame the Democrats. http://www.salon.com/books/excerpt/2008/06/06/rove_katrina/

Cheney

Monday's hunting trip to Pennsylvania by Vice President Dick Cheney in which he reportedly shot more than 70 stocked pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks at an exclusive private club places a spotlight on an increasingly popular and deplorable form of hunting, in which birds are pen-reared and released to be shot in large numbers by patrons. The ethics of these hunts are called into question by rank-and-file sportsmen, who hunt animals in their native habitat and do not shoot confined or pen-raised animals that cannot escape. Read more: http://www.wtae.com/Humane-Society-Statement/-/9681798/7714682/-/g18lr0z/-/index.html

In 2004, Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards tore into his counterpart's congressional voting record, calling out Cheney for his vote against freeing Mandela. Shortly after, Cheney historian John Nichols said that he'd spoken to Mandela about Cheney's record and worldview. Like many, Mandela was concerned: He’s very blunt about it he says one of the many reasons why he fears Dick Cheney’s power in the United States, and Mandela does say, he understands that Cheney is effectively the President of the United States, he says, one of the many reasons that he fears Dick Cheney’s power is that in the late 1980’s when even prominent Republicans like Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich were acknowledging the crime of Apartheid, Dick Cheney maintained the lie that the ANC was a terrorist organization and a fantasy that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist leader who deserved to be in jail. Frankly it begs very powerful question. If Dick Cheney’s judgment was that bad in the late 1980’s, why would we believe that it’s gotten any better in the early 21st century? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/05/dick-cheney-nelson-mandela-terrorist_n_4394071.html

We Are Living in the World Dick Cheney Made. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-fineman/dick-cheney-documentary_b_2806670.html

Former US vice president deems Canada too dangerous for speaking visit. Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney canceled a Canadian speaking appearance because of security concerns sparked by demonstrations during a visit he made to Vancouver last fall. Cheney was scheduled to talk about his experiences in office and the current American political situation at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on April 24. But Ryan Ruppert of Spectre Live Corp. said on Monday that Cheney and his daughter Elizabeth had begged off through their agent. “After speaking with their security advisers, they changed their mind on coming to the event,” Ruppert said. He said they had “decided it was better for their personal safety they stay out of Canada.” Last Sept. 26, Cheney was forced to stay holed up in the Vancouver Club for seven hours before it was deemed safe for him to leave. Demonstrators blocked the entrances and at one point scuffled with police. Cheney critics accuse him of endorsing the use of water boarding and sleep deprivation against detainees while serving in former President George W. Bush’s administration. Before the Vancouver event, Human Rights Watch urged the federal government to bring criminal charges against Cheney, accusing him of playing a role in the torture of detainees. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/former-us-vice-president-deems-canada-too-dangerous-for-speaking-visit/2012/03/12/gIQAhiR17R_story.html

It ought to be a 576-page apology. Few people have strutted and fretted upon the stage longer, or done more damage, than Dick Cheney. And yet I am glad he has written his memoir, because it allows us to have a much-needed debate about Cheney's policies. And yet Cheney's side of the debate is neither full nor candid. Perhaps even more telling than what he puts into his book are the things Cheney leaves out. Here is a brief compendium of other parts of the record that Cheney either ignores entirely or glosses over: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/07/dick-cheney-s-memoir-is-a-love-letter-to-himself.html

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is accusing former Vice President Dick Cheney of taking "cheap shots" at him and others in a new book. Powell was the nation's top diplomat during the first four years of President George W. Bush's administration. Cheney's book, "In My Time," is set for release Tuesday. Cheney writes that he thinks Powell tried to undermine Bush by criticizing administration policy to people outside the government. Powell said during an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday that he routinely gave his opinion and his best advice on issues to the president. While Cheney writes that Powell's resignation was "for the best," Powell signaled he had always planned to leave the administration after the 2004 election. He suggested Cheney is almost condescending in his remarks about Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice. Last week, Cheney predicted "there are gonna be heads exploding all over Washington" upon the release of his book. "That's quite a visual," Powell said of the former vice president's choice of words. "[It's] the kind of headline I would expect to come out of a gossip columnist or the kind of headline you might see one of the super market tabloids write. It's not the kind of headline I would have expected to come from one of the vice presidents of the United States of America." He added, "I think Dick overshot the runway." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/28/colin-powell-dick-cheney-book_n_939548.html

Cheney, who as president of the Senate was present for the picture day, turned to Leahy and scolded the senator over his recent criticism of the vice president for Halliburton's alleged war profiteering. Cheney is the former CEO of Halliburton, and Democrats have suggested that while serving in the Bush administration he helped win lucrative contracts for his former firm, including a no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq. Cheney's office has said repeatedly that the vice president has no role in government contracting and has severed all financial ties with the Texas-based oil services conglomerate. Cheney was chief executive officer of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. He resigned when he became George Bush's running mate. In response to Cheney, Leahy reminded Cheney that the vice president had once accused him of being a bad Catholic, to which Cheney replied either "f--- off" or "go f--- yourself." Friday, June 25, 2004 http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/24/cheney.leahy/index.html

Dick Cheney Heckled: CPAC Speech Interrupted By Protesters Calling Former Vice President 'War Criminal' http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/10/dick-cheney-heckled-cpac-_n_821714.html

One of the unexpected legacies of the Bush administration is its vice president's gradual descent from widely respected senior statesman—back in 2000, even liberal Barbara Boxer called him a nice guy—to Idi Amin, Junior. You know things are going badly for your image when George Lucas says that Darth Vader was a better person—and people believe him. Over the past decade, Cheney's public relations have been the political equivalent of the Hindenburg crashing into the Titanic while passengers watched a Detroit Lions game. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-12/the-dick-cheney-you-dont-know

God wants him to fail. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/14/dick-cheney-heart-surgery_n_646521.html

Miss me yet? Obama may well make — or is already making — his own mistakes. And he will bear responsibility for them. But they must be seen in the context of the larger narrative that the revisionists are now working so hard to obscure. The most devastating terrorist attack on American soil did happen during Bush’s term, after the White House repeatedly ignored what the former C.I.A. director, George Tenet, called the “blinking red” alarms before 9/11. It was the Bush defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who lost bin Laden in Tora Bora, not the Obama Justice Department appointees vilified by Keep America Safe. It was Bush and Cheney, with the aid of Rove’s propaganda campaign, who promoted sketchy and often suspect intelligence about Saddam’s imminent “mushroom clouds.” The ensuing Iraq war allowed those who did attack us on 9/11 to regroup in Afghanistan and beyond — and emboldened Iran, an adversary with an actual nuclear program. The Iran piece of the back story doesn’t end there. As The Times reported last weekend, Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, kept doing business with Tehran through foreign subsidies until 2007, even as the Bush administration showered it with $27 billion in federal contracts, including a no-bid contract to restore oil production in Iraq. It was also the Bush administration that courted, lionized and catered to Ahmed Chalabi, the Machiavellian Iraqi who lobbied for the Iraq war, supplied some of the more egregious “intelligence” on Saddam’s W.M.D. used to sell it, and has ever since flaunted his dual loyalty to Iran. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/opinion/14rich.html?ref=opinion

Salm: Dick Cheney should be tried as a war criminal for waterboarding stance. Read more: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-02-15/columns/arthur-salm-columns/salm-dick-cheney-should-be-tried-as-a-war-criminal-for-waterboarding-stance#ixzz0g5VmWoQh

A half-dozen former senior Bush officials involved in counterterrorism told me before the Christmas Day incident that for the most part, they were comfortable with Obama's policies, although they were reluctant to say so on the record. Some worried they would draw the ire of Cheney's circle if they did, while others calculated that calling attention to the similarities to Bush would only make it harder for Obama to stay the course. And they generally resent Obama's anti-Bush rhetoric and are unwilling to give him political cover by defending him. Matt calls Baker's willingness to set aside some of the more unnecessary journalistic niceties and capture this group collectively in this way to be "a good break with convention that more reporters should engage in." He's right, and this sort of thing is welcomed. To take it a bit farther, though, one of the things that's most annoying about the most recent instance of Politico's Mike Allen taking dictation from former Vice President Dick Cheney is that Cheney is in no way attempting to influence counterterror policy or make the nation more secure. That can't be done by following his advice, which is to use the word "war" more often. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/04/bush-officials-admit-they_n_410446.html

Rather, what Cheney is clearly trying to do is influence the politics, so any reporter worth his salt should be able to simply listen to Cheney and accurately report that the former vice president has been reduced to demagoguery. It's really just stupid to pretend that there's some great policy debate unfolding between the current White House and the previous White House. It's nice that Baker finds a way to acknowledge this.

It’s pathetic to break a New Year’s resolution before we even get to New Year’s Day, but here I go. I had promised myself that I would do a better job of ignoring Dick Cheney’s corrosive and nonsensical outbursts—that I would treat them, more or less, like the pearls of wisdom one hears from homeless people sitting in bus shelters. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/cheney_in_winter_20091230/

America's most hated political figure, former Vice President Dick Cheney, has inserted himself into the news again. He said something about Obama, and terror. That has been a wonderful 2009 trend, reporting on what Cheney mumbles. Cheney should not be taken seriously by anyone. We should, as sensible adults, all agree on that. He is a known liar. He orchestrated the hiring of the most disastrously incompetent and venal members of the administration. Just about every illegal and simply idiotic thing the Bush administration did, besides perhaps their response to Hurricane Katrina, is directly his fault. He sunk that presidency. He has no credibility. You cannot assert that Iraq has nukes and that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were gay for each other over and over and over again and then be taken seriously on matters of national security, because those assertions were known to be false at the time. http://gawker.com/5437177/a-treasury-of-terrifying-hyperbole-by-dick-cheney

Cranky Cheney at it again. "As I've watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war," Cheney told Politico. "He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won't be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won't be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won't be at war." The White House responded that Obama was aware that we are at war with Al Qaeda and similar groups, but that he "doesn't need to beat his chest to prove it." The response was a bit glib. Obama's initial reaction was low-key, and at least one of his officials -- hapless Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano -- did once try to rechristen acts of terror as "man-caused disasters." http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2009/12/cheney-criticizes-obama-terrorism-strategy-again.html

Notes from former Vice President Dick Cheney's interview with the FBI about the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity were finally released on Friday afternoon after a lengthy legal battle. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued the Justice Department last year to obtain the interview notes; a judge finally ordered their release on October 1. In the interview, Cheney demonstrated a behavior common among Bush administration officials under investigation: he couldn't remember much of anything. Here's a non-comprehensive list of 22 things Dick Cheney claimed he couldn't recall about the Plame case, in the order they appear in the FBI's notes: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/10/22-things-dick-cheney-cant-remember-about-plame-case

Vice President Dick Cheney told the FBI he had no idea who leaked to the news media that Valerie Plame, wife of a Bush administration critic, worked for the CIA. An FBI summary of Cheney's interview from 2004 reflects that the vice president had deep concern about Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador in Africa who said the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI in the probe of who leaked Plame's identity to the news media. At the end of Libby's trial, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said that "there is a cloud over the vice president" regarding the leaking of Plame's identity. In the FBI interview, the vice president's memory of key events appeared hazy. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CHENEY_CIA_LEAK?SITE=CADIU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is the latest Democrat to push back against an attack from former Vice President Dick Cheney on the White House's Afghanistan decision-making. "After eight years of neglecting Afghanistan as vice president, Dick Cheney is coming out of retirement to criticize President Obama ... This from the man who in 2002 told America, 'The Taliban regime is out of business permanently.' I think this is one time I wish Dick Cheney had been right, but tragically he wasn't, and he isn't today, and that's why we have to make the tough choices about Afghanistan now," Kerry told the Council on Foreign Relations. "Make no mistake, because of the gross mishandling of this war by past civilian leadership, there are no great options for its handling today." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/26/kerry-rebuts-cheney-your_n_334184.html

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/26/kerry-rebuts-cheney-your_n_334184.html

Democrats pushed back forcefully against Dick Cheney on Sunday for comments the former vice president made accusing President Barack Obama of "dithering" on Afghanistan. Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) called the attack "outrageous" and ironic. "To listen to Dick Cheney, who was the mastermind of the most failed decade of foreign policy that this country's had at least in my political lifetime, perhaps my whole lifetime, perhaps my parents' lifetime too, to listen to him when they talk about dithering... when their mistake was to attack Iraq and lose sight of Afghanistan... eight years of failure of [Hamid] Karzai, implicitly is eight years of failure and dithering by that administration." Brown was echoed by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) who called Cheney's remarks "out of bounds" and proclaimed that the former V.P. simply lacked the credibility to be taken seriously on the issue. "It's just important that the president make the right decision," said Levin during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. The two senators seemed to relish the chance to throw some punches Cheney's way; the target allows Democrats to invoke the political contrast that won them the past two elections. Even Republicans seemed in a bind over Cheney's words. Appearing alongside Brown, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) questioned why Obama would "not follow the advice of all of his generals" and suggested that the president was "exposing [soldiers] without the proper help that they've just got to have." But, he added, "I would never want to call my president dithering." Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/25/dems-counter-punch-cheney_n_332987.html

In short, to call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program’s legal underpinnings and safeguards. Such accusations are a libel against dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country’s name and in our country’s cause. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future, in favor of half-measures, is unwise in the extreme. In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed. For all that we’ve lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings – and least of all can that be said of our armed forces and intelligence personnel. They have done right, they have made our country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them. Cheney and Bush are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousand innocent people. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,569006,00.html

Today, National Security Network Senior Adviser Gen. Paul Eaton (Ret.), who served more than 30 years in the United States Army and from 2003-2004 oversaw the training of the Iraqi military, responded to Dick Cheney's accusations on Afghanistan from last night:

"The record is clear: Dick Cheney and the Bush administration were incompetent war fighters. They ignored Afghanistan for 7 years with a crude approach to counter-insurgency warfare best illustrated by: 1. Deny it. 2. Ignore it. 3. Bomb it. While our intelligence agencies called the region the greatest threat to America, the Bush White House under-resourced our military efforts, shifted attention to Iraq, and failed to bring to justice the masterminds of September 11.

"The only time Cheney and his cabal of foreign policy 'experts' have anything to say is when they feel compelled to protect this failed legacy. While President Obama is tasked with cleaning up the considerable mess they left behind, they continue to defend torture or rewrite a legacy of indifference on Afghanistan. Simply put, Mr. Cheney sees history throughout extremely myopic and partisan eyes.

"As one deeply invested in the Armed Forces of this country, I am grateful for the senior military commanders assigned to leading this fight and the men and women fighting on the ground. But I dismiss men like Cheney who inject partisan politics into the profound deliberations our Commander-in-Chief and commanders on the ground are having to develop a cohesive and comprehensive strategy, bringing to bear the economic and diplomatic as well as the military power, for Afghanistan -- something Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld never did.

"No human endeavor can be as profound as sending a nation's youth to war. I am very happy to see serious men and women working hard to get it right." http://www.nsnetwork.org/node/1442

BY CHARLES C. KRULAK AND JOSEPH P. HOAR In the fear that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to ``take off the gloves. As a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster. But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas -- and his scare tactics. We have seen how ill-conceived policies that ignored military law on the treatment of enemy prisoners hindered our ability to defeat al Qaeda. We have seen American troops die at the hands of foreign fighters recruited with stories about tortured Muslim detainees at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. And yet Cheney and others who orchestrated America's disastrous trip to ``the dark side continue to assert -- against all evidence -- that torture ``worked and that our country is better off for having gone there. http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1227832.html

Cheney Plays to His Crowd. Cheney regrets not dropping a nuke on Iran. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090902_cheney_plays_to_his_crowd/

Cheney, archived September 06, 2009

Liz Cheney can't handle the truth. During her remarkable summer media blitzkrieg, a stunning grasp of made-up facts. Liz Cheney, the easily exasperated eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has become a one-woman TV juggernaut in 2009, racking up more airtime than a cloud as she defends her daddy's administration records. And boy, is she wrong. Unlike so many TV pundits who spin and slide around the facts, Cheney makes no fuss about completely ignoring them, and sticking to talking points that have little relation to the truth. Take her appearance Sunday, on ABC's "This Week," which was riddled with the sort of misstatements, obfuscations and downright lies that have now become a staple of her TV performances. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/08/31/big_liar/

Cheney lashes out at Obama administration. The former vice president says he is offended by the Justice Department's decision to investigate the CIA's interrogation methods. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cheney31-2009aug31,0,7750628.story

Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/us/politics/12intel.html?_r=1&ref=world

Was The CIA Hiding Cheney's "Executive Assassination Ring"? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/09/was-the-cia-hiding-cheney_n_228864.html

http://pst.rbma.com/content/Bizarro?date=20090627

Tapes prove Cheneys are making stuff up. http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/05/isikoff-liz-cheney-wrong/

Cheney's Role In CIA Briefings Unusual, But Legal. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104887802

Levin: CIA Torture Documents Cheney Wants Don’t Prove Squat. http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/levin-cia-torture-documents-cheney-wants-dont-prove-squat/

Colin Powell hit back at Dick Cheney and other critics over the president's plan to close Guantanamo Bay on Sunday. Scoffing at the notion that U.S. jails couldn't house suspected terrorists, he said that the facility has become a blight on America's image. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/24/powell-hits-back-at-chene_n_207158.html

In an interview airing this Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," former Bush Administration Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told John King that he thinks former Vice President Dick Cheney is wrong in his assertion that the Obama administration has made the country less safe. Ridge also expressed disappointment in President Obama's characterization of the Bush administration. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/22/tom-ridge-cheney-is-wrong_n_206782.html

"I don't think there's any question it goes to Cheney. I'm increasingly of a mind that a lot of it goes to Cheney and stops there. Not just because of the president's disinclination to do detail, but I also think that Cheney kept some things from the president. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/col-wilkerson-for-nationa_b_206883.html

The lie Cheney told about A.Q. Khan. http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/05/cheney-lies-in-defense-of-torture/

Cheney's assertions of lives saved is hard to prove. Arguing against Obama's policies, he says that the Bush administration's approach to terrorism spared 'perhaps hundreds of thousands.' Experts say no evidence of that has emerged. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cheney23-2009may23,0,2634231.story

Cheney Lost to Bush. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/opinion/22brooks.html?em

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242.html

Cheney said Gitmo detainees revealed Iraq-al Qaida link. Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of Iraq, asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn't true. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/68315.html

But the media's focus on the sheer spectacle of the ex-veep's antics, and on the Republican vs. Democrat feud he's stoking, underestimates the way Cheney's principles still inform many of the country's most crucial policies. Like the creatures in the "Alien" films, Cheney has planted some vicious spores in the bellies of his successors, which threaten to tear them apart as they mature. Can the new administration truly reverse Cheney's transformation of the United States into a 21st century empire, with the president an imperial figure above the law? http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/05/13/cheney/

"If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh. My take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-cheney-limbaugh11-2009may11,0,6685850.story

Former Vice President Dick Cheney defended the Bush administration's use of waterboarding on Thursday, saying that, contrary to arguments made by Barack Obama, the techniques were a necessary last-resort measure to get information from detainees. "I don't believe that's true," Cheney said, when asked to respond to Obama's statement that interrogators may not have needed to resort to torture. "That assumes that we didn't try other ways, and in fact we did. We resorted, for example, to waterboarding, which is the source of much of the controversy, with only three individuals. In those cases, it was only after we'd gone through all the other steps of the process. The way the whole program was set up was very careful, to use other methods and only to resort to the enhanced techniques in those special circumstances." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/07/cheney-mistake-for-gop-to_n_199330.html

The Bush administration's "lawless response to terrorism" has not only undermined the United States' moral credibility and standing abroad and provided Al Qaeda with its best recruiting material, it also has weakened the U.S. coalitions with foreign governments that it needs most to fight the threat posed by Islamist extremism, a senior Obama Justice Department official said Tuesday. The remarks by Todd Hinnen, deputy assistant attorney general for law and policy in the department's National Security Division, went well beyond some of the earlier criticisms of the Bush administration by President Obama and his political appointees. And they came on a day when Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. was pressing the case for a sharp course correction away from Bush administration policies toward one that officials said was more in keeping with the rule of law. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-justice29-2009apr29,0,2579112.story

‘We Could Have Done This the Right Way’ How Ali Soufan, an FBI agent, got Abu Zubaydah to talk without torture. http://www.newsweek.com/id/195089

How much DON'T we know because Cheney used torture?

Taking on torture. An investigation into the abuse of suspected terrorists is vital, but it must be conducted with care. Did US torture endanger any Americans? 5,000 US Troops have died, why? http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-torture27-2009apr27,0,6092738.story

It’s perfectly possible that the documents Cheney says he’s asked for don’t exist. It’s perfectly possible that the documents Cheney actually asked for don’t prove what he says they do. It’s perfectly possible that we may never see these documents. It’s perfectly possible that we will never find out if what Cheney is now claiming is true. Cheney may even know this. This really is a hall of mirrors. More media skepticism is warranted on this story, say I. http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/we-may-never-see-the-docs-cheney-claims-will-prove-torture-works/ http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/obtained-cheneys-request-detailing-the-two-cia-docs-he-wants/

Torture-Fan Cheney Securing Worst Veep Title. 12/22/2008 @ 10:54pm Twenty-three percent of Americans surveyed by CNN say Dick Cheney is the worst vice president in history. Another 41 percent say Cheney has been a poor No. 2. So, as the draft-dodging, corporation-coddling, obscenity-spewing, torture-sanctioning shredder of the Constitution prepares to leave the position he should have been forced from by Congress, almost two-thirds of Americans rank Cheney as bad or worse than Spiro Agnew. But that was before Cheney acknowledged on national television that he had violated his oath to defend a Constitution that bars cruel and unusual punishment by promoting the use of waterboarding. When asked about the use of torture, Cheney told ABC News, "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it." Those are the words not merely of the worst vice president in history but of a man who still can -- and should -- be impeached. http://www.thenation.com/blogs/state_of_change/391466/torture_fan_cheney_securing_worst_veep_title

Cheney's Right: Release Everything. http://www.thenation.com/blogs/state_of_change/429388?rel=hp_picks

CIA official: no proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks. The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos. That undercuts assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials that the use of harsh interrogation tactics including waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, was justified because it headed off terrorist attacks. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66895.html

Is Cheney Winning the Torture Debate? http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/is-cheney-winning-the-torture-debate/?scp=2&sq=terror%20fbi&st=Search

Cheney Vs. Obama: Americans Overwhelmingly Disagree With Former VP. Dick Cheney finds himself, once more, on the wrong side of polling data. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll asked respondents whether they agreed with the former vice president's remarks that Barack Obama's policies were making the country more vulnerable to attack. The response: a resounding "no." Only one-quarter (26 percent) of respondents said that the "actions Barack Obama has taken as president have increased the chances of a terrorist attack against the U.S." Nearly three-quarters of respondents (72 percent) said they had not. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/13/cheney-vs-america-public_n_186295.html

Turley: Cheney war crimes probe would be 'shortest in history' http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Turley_Obama_get_low_grade_on_0324.html

Go back into hiding, GOP begs Dick Cheney. Congressional Republicans are telling Dick Cheney to go back to his undisclosed location and leave them alone to rebuild the Republican Party without his input. Displeased with the former vice-president's recent media appearances, Republican lawmakers say he's hurting GOP efforts to reinvent itself after back-to-back electoral drubbings. The veep, who showed a penchant for secrecy during eight years in the White House,has popped up in media interviews to defend the Bush-Cheney record while suggesting that the country is not as safe under President Obama. Rep. John Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.) said, “He became so unpopular while he was in the White House that it would probably be better for us politically if he wouldn’t be so public...But he has the right to speak out since he’s a private citizen.” Another House Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity said he wasn’t surprised that Cheney has strongly criticized Obama early in his term, but argued that it’s not helping the GOP cause. The legislator said Cheney, whose approval ratings were lower than President Bush’s during the last Congress, didn’t think through the political implications of going after Obama. Cheney did “House Republicans no favors,” the lawmaker said, adding, “I could never understand him anyway.” http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/go-back-into-hiding-gop-begs-dick-cheney--please-2009-03-23.html

Cheney’s office declined to comment for this article.

A Face Only a President Could Love. Dick Cheney’s public image has hardened into a grim caricature that longtime friends and colleagues don’t recognize: when did the whiz kid with the lopsided smile who ran Ford’s White House turn into the secretive, merciless, Machiavellian figure in the news today? In interviews with Cheney, his wife, and other intimates, the author explores the disconnect and learns about the transforming forces in the vice president’s life—his heart problems, the fortune he made at Halliburton, 9/11—as well as the deep roots of a personal far-right philosophy that Washington tried not to see. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/06/cheney200606

Cheney: Obama terrorism policies make U.S. vulnerable. The former vice president defends the Bush administration's approach to suspected terrorists as he sharply criticizes Obama on a host of issues. Cheney said the Obama administration is returning to the Clinton administration's approach of treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter, rather than a "war." He warned that such an approach represented a de-escalation of the effort. "They're very much giving up that center of attention and focused that's required," he said. He defended Rush Limbaugh, describing the conservative radio personality as "a good friend. I love him." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-cheney16-2009mar16,0,1586849.story

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday defended the Bush administration’s record and sharply criticized President Obama for policies Cheney said make the country less safe. In his first television interview since leaving office, Cheney said Obama has taken steps since his inauguration that the former vice president could not support. Asked if they make the country less safe, Cheney replied bluntly: “I do.” http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/cheney-defends-record-blasts-obama-2009-03-15.html

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s bombshell earlier this week that Vice President Dick Cheney controlled an “executive assassination ring” continues to reverberate throughout Washington, with Nixon aide John Dean going so far as to accuse the former VP of murder if the charges are true. http://rawstory.com/news/2008/John_Dean_Bush_and_Cheney_neutered_0313.html

“Yuh. After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen. "Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ... "Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths. "Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us. "It’s complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It’s a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you’ve heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized. "In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people. "I’ve had people say to me -- five years ago, I had one say: ‘What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don’t get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder? What happens if I get before a committee?’ "But they’re not gonna get before a committee.” http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassination_ring

For Mr. Cheney, the failure to win a pardon was a stinging loss that led him to offer a rare public rebuke of Mr. Bush’s judgment, saying of Mr. Libby in an interview with The Weekly Standard last month that “I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon,” and that “I disagree with President Bush’s decision.” Mr. Libby was convicted of four felony counts in March 2007 for perjury and lying to investigators looking into the leak of Valerie Wilson’s employment with the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Bush commuted Mr. Libby’s sentence, wiping out the 30-month prison term imposed by a judge. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/us/politics/18cheney.html?ref=us

Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed. In an interview Tuesday with Politico, Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration’s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects. And he asserted that President Obama will either backtrack on his stated intentions to end those policies or put the country at risk in ways more severe than most Americans — and, he charged, many members of Obama’s own team — understand. “When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18390.html

Carl Levin vs. Dick Cheney. U.S. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Detroit) announced Vice President Dick Cheney needs to be investigated for signing off on torture. And he plans to pressure Barack Obama to do just that by launching a probe with teeth. As the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Levin's opinion carries significant weight. Along with former POW U.S. Sen. John McCain, Levin just headed up an investigation into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Cheney told ABC News in an exit interview that he "supported" waterboarding: "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it." Levin said he was "astounded" by the revelation. http://blog.mlive.com/capitolchronicles/2008/12/carl_levin_vs_dick_cheney.html

Cheney’s Legacy of Deception. In the end, the shame of Vice President Dick Cheney was total: unmitigated by any notion of a graceful departure, let alone the slightest obligation of honest accounting. Although firmly ensconced, even in the popular imagination, as an example of evil incarnate—nearly a quarter of those polled in this week’s CNN poll rated him the worst vice president in U.S. history, and 41 percent as “poor”—Cheney exudes the confidence of one fully convinced that he will get away with it all. And why not? Nothing, not his suspect role in the Enron debacle, which foretold the economic meltdown, or his office’s fabrication of the false reasons for invading Iraq, has ever been seriously investigated, because of White House stonewalling. Nor will the new president, committed as he is to nonpartisanship, be likely to open up Cheney’s can of worms. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081223_cheneys_legacy_of_deception/

Open and Shut Cases. Dick Cheney's unique gift for making hard questions easy and vice versa. Well, guess what? The efficacy of torture is not a close question anywhere outside of Fox television anymore. Darius Rejali has definitively studied the question and showed that torture does not elicit truthful confessions. In his book How To Break a Terrorist, former interrogator Matthew Alexander agrees that abusive interrogation techniques don't work and endanger Americans. FBI Director Robert Mueller recently told Vanity Fair's David Rose that he doesn't "believe it to be the case" that enhanced interrogation stopped any attacks on America. And the stunning bipartisan report issued earlier this month by the Senate armed services committee confirms that lawyers in every branch of the military consistently warned top Bush officials that torture wasn't effective. The handful of people—including Dick Cheney—who are still blathering about how well torture works do so in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary. http://www.slate.com/id/2207070/

Cheney says Congress failed struggling automakers. Vice President Dick Cheney blamed Congress for failing to bail out the auto industry, saying the White House was forced to step in to save U.S. car companies. In an interview broadcast Sunday, Cheney said the economy is in such bad shape that the car companies might not have survived without the $17.4 billion in emergency loans that President George W. Bush approved on Friday. "The president decided specifically that he wanted to try to deal with it and not preside over the collapse of the automobile industry just as he goes out of office," Cheney said in an interview broadcast on "Fox News Sunday." Lawmakers "had ample opportunity to deal with this issue and they failed," Cheney said. "The president had no choice but to step in." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_cheney.html?source=mypi

Cheney's delusions. His defense of waterboarding, Guantanamo and the Iraq invasion is indeed Darth Vader-like. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-cheney20-2008dec20,0,5166966.story

Judge orders Cheney to preserve records. A federal judge today ordered Dick Cheney to preserve a wide range of the records from his time as vice president. The decision by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is a setback for the Bush administration in its effort to promote a narrow definition of materials that must be safeguarded under by the Presidential Records Act. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cheney21-2008sep21,0,1913331.story

Cheney Unchained. THE BEST DETAILS FROM BARTON GELLMAN'S NEW BOOK ON THE VICE PRESIDENT. http://www.slate.com/id/2200403/

Conflict Over Spying Led White House to Brink. Five government lawyers had gathered around a small conference table in the Justice Department command center. Four were expected. David S. Addington, counsel to Vice President Cheney, got wind of the meeting and invited himself. If Addington smelled revolt, he was not far wrong. Unwelcome questions about warrantless domestic surveillance had begun to find their voice. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/13/AR2008091302284.html?hpid=topnews

Cheney and his counsel would struggle for months to quash the legal insurgency. By the time President Bush became aware of it, his No. 2 had stoked dissent into flat-out rebellion. The president would face a dilemma, and the presidency itself a historic test. Cheney would come close to leading them off a cliff, man and office both

Cheney drops by base for tour of operations. VP was between fundraising stops. Presidential and vice-presidential trips typically combine official business with political business. That way, the federal government pays for part of the travel. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080814/news_1m14cheney.html

Hersh: Cheney & Co. Discussed How to Trigger War With Iran. http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/31/cheney-proposal-for-iran-war/

Cheney at exclusive Alabama club for fundraiser Several major sponsors pulled advertising and black groups threatened pickets in 1990 after Shoal Creek founder Hall Thompson said the then all-white club wouldn't be pressured into accepting blacks as members ahead of that year's PGA championship, held on Shoal Creek's course. Thompson later apologized, and Shoal Creek accepted a black insurance executive as an honorary member to defuse the situation. Club officials now say four of its 600 members are black, and the USGA recently staged its U.S. Junior Amateur Championship at Shoal Creek. Cheney's luncheon appearance, meant to raise money for GOP candidates in Alabama, was closed to the public and the media. Invitations said tickets were $500 and $2,000, and Bryan said the fundraiser "greatly exceeded" its goal of $150,000. http://www.dailycomet.com/article/20080801/APN/808010912

Bush administration’s relationship with researchers has been contentious. Early in the Bush administration, James E. Hansen recalls being invited to brief Vice President Dick Cheney on the subject of global warming. Hansen was a veteran NASA scientist, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and a widely respected expert on climate change. In 1988, in testimony before Congress, he had declared himself “99 percent” certain humans were to blame for global warming. His words carried weight, helping elevate climate change to front-page news and fueling the first international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “So I thought the White House invitation meant the vice president and his advisers would be responsive to the information I had, that they were actually interested in hearing the data,” Hansen said during a visit to San Diego to receive the 2008 Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. But Hansen was wrong. He said Cheney and others barely paid attention. “I was naive. They only listened to the things they wanted to hear. It seemed like they had already made up their minds. The science was irrelevant.” Critics have repeatedly accused the White House and federal agencies operating at its direction of ignoring, misrepresenting or suppressing research. They have complained of censorship and of science policy corrupted by political ideology. “This administration, in my view, has been the worst for science and medicine in the last 100 years,” said Dr. Evan Snyder, a renowned stem cell researcher at The Burnham Institute in La Jolla. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080731/news_1c31hansen.html

Cheney said telling Americans to do more with less is not enough. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy," he said. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-05-01-cheney-usat.htm http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/july-dec01/cheney_7-18.html

Vice President Dick Cheney got good news Saturday from doctors who said his heart was beating normally for a 67-year-old man who has had four heart attacks. "The vice president's cardiac status remains stable," Cheney press secretary Megan Mitchell said after the nearly two-hour annual checkup. Doctors at George Washington University Hospital gave Cheney a physical exam and an electrocardiogram, which is a test that detects and records the electrical activity of the heart, Mitchell said. They also took images of stents that were placed in arteries in the back of his knees when Cheney underwent surgery in September 2005 to repair an arterial aneurysm. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_cheney_checkup.html

Cheney wanted cuts in climate change testimony. Seeking to play down the effects of global warming, Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed to delete from congressional testimony references about the consequences of climate change on public health, a former senior EPA official claimed Tuesday. The official, Jason K. Burnett, said the White House was concerned that the proposed testimony last October by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention might make it tougher to avoid regulating greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20080708-1424-cheney-climate.html

Cheney aide denies writing interrogation memos. Vice President Dick Cheney's top adviser on Thursday refused to claim any responsibility for the adoption of harsh interrogation methods following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks during a combative exchange with congressional Democrats. David Addington, chief of staff to the vice president, said he merely responded, "Good, I'm glad you're addressing these issues," to the lawyer who wrote memos providing a legal basis for harsh interrogation techniques of terror suspects. Addington appeared along with the lawyer, former Justice Department attorney John Yoo, before a House Judiciary subcommittee investigating the role of Bush administration lawyers in approving interrogation procedures. The tactics were far harsher than those traditionally used by the U.S. military. The Associated Press learned in April that administration officials from Cheney on down signed off on the techniques after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1153ap_terrorism_interrogations.html?source=mypi

Latest Cheney Tape May Contain Evidence Of His Whereabouts http://www.theonion.com/content/news/latest_cheney_tape_may_contain

Rumsfeld

‘Donald’: A Black Site of Rumsfeld’s Own. http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/donald_a_black_site_of_rumsfelds_own_20110217/

They had day jobs as judges, carpenters, and clerks—and the former defense secretary sent them into Iraq and Afghanistan as citizen soldiers, to spread goodwill. Then they paid the ultimate price, victims of bureaucratic confusion and Rumsfeld’s sporadic interest. Mark Benjamin and Barbara Slavin of the Center for Public Integrity report in this week's Newsweek that: • The citizen soldiers of the military's Civil Affairs units were rushed to the front without adequate training and equipment. • They make up only about 5 percent of the Army's Reserve forces but account for 23 percent of the combined fatalities among reservists in Iraq and Afghanistan. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-02-06/donald-rumsfelds-ghost-soldiers-how-he-abandoned-civil-affairs-units/

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) gave a curt response Thursday to reports that former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld had some unkind things to say about him in his new book, Known and Unknown. "Thank God he was relieved of his duties," McCain said. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/03/john-mccain-donald-rumsfeld-book_n_817982.html

Veterans were honored all across America Thursday, while the most famous veteran of our ongoing wars continues to be dishonored. The case of Pat Tillman, whose death by friendly fire led to seven investigations, two books, two congressional hearings and a recently released documentary film, continues to vex, six years after he was killed at dusk on the unwelcoming rocky terrain of Spera, Afghanistan. Tillman’s family and friends are no closer to learning the full truth about what happened in Pat’s death and its aftermath; they know only that he was killed by “friendly fire” (terribly unsuitable words for a horribly unfriendly act) and that there was a coverup of the circumstances of his death that reached the highest levels of the military and the Bush administration. This remains an ugly mess of a tale in which deceit is king, and the so-called military code of honor has become a farce. This is blatantly obvious to anyone who has read the 4,000 or so pages of investigative documents, replete with contradictions, incriminating testimony, leads that were dropped, holes so big you could drive a fleet of Humvees through them, and enough villainous characters to populate a Russian novel. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/dishonoring_pat_tillman_20101111/

Rumsfeld 'Bible texts' criticised. Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been accused of using quotes from the Bible in his briefings to George W Bush during the Iraq War. The quotes were placed on the cover of the briefings alongside images of US soldiers, GQ magazine has reported. President Bush was criticised for using the word "crusade" to describe the US "war on terror". Critics said he risked giving Muslims the impression that the war was a clash between Christianity and Islam. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8056207.stm

AND HE SHALL BE JUDGED. Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has always answered his detractors by claiming that history will one day judge him kindly. But as he waits for that day, a new group of critics—his administration peers—are suddenly speaking out for the first time. What they’re saying? It isn’t pretty. http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_9217

Donald Rumsfeld's Judgment-Happy, Scary, Biblical Defense Briefing Art. This isn't crazy, or terrifying: alongside Robert Draper's GQ piece on Donald Rumsfeld being called out by former colleagues, they're running covers of his White House morning defense briefings. You have to see these. Draper notes that the briefings were "a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House." You have to wonder: was Rumsfeld sitting over a well-to-do Department of Defense intern, going through loads of pictures and trying to decide what colors he wanted which quotes to be? Or did he do it himself? Either way, these things have more in common with the Zodiac Killer than anything any kind of defense briefing should even remotely look like. Graphic designers, turn away. These aren't pretty, in so many ways. http://gawker.com/5258524/donald-rumsfelds-judgment+happy-scary-biblical-defense-briefing-art

When Donald Rumsfeld heard about plans to force detainees at Guantánamo Bay to stand for hours on end, in order to soften them up and make them talk to U.S. interrogators, he made a joke about it. "I stand for 8-10 hours a day," the then-defense secretary wrote on Dec. 2, 2002, at the bottom of a memo authorizing military officials to use extreme techniques against prisoners. "Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" As a newly released Senate Armed Services Committee report makes clear, the effects of Rumsfeld's cavalier attitude toward what the report calls "detainee abuse" -- and what international law would probably call torture -- didn't just stop at the military prison on Cuba. The techniques Rumsfeld approved for use at Guantánamo oozed into prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, undermining decades of U.S. policy about humane treatment of detainees and leading to some of the worst outrages of the Bush administration, including the Abu Ghraib abuses, which Salon has covered extensively. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/04/22/madden/

The Noose Tightens. Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and other top Bush officials could soon face legal jeopardy. http://www.newsweek.com/id/176044

Beware Rumsfeld's Snow Job. The former defense secretary's revisionist op-ed. http://www.slate.com/id/2205435/

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