51 Questions for President Bush
Published during the 2004 presidential campaign
Please see updated commentary following "51 Questions"
What We've Become
After World War II, the US was in a unique position of power relative to other nations. George Kennan, the leading architect of the Cold War, understood our situation and expressed it with icy plainness in Policy Planning Study #23, released to other members of the State Department in February, 1948: 'We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population... In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and out attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and benefaction.... The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.'"
Questions for the President
1.) Mr. President, a majority of Iraqis want U.S. troops to leave their country now. 47% of Iraqis believe that terrorist attacks on U.S. troops are an appropriate tool to oust American forces. What became of the floral wreaths that Iraqis were to bestow on American liberators?
2.) Mr. President, do you think most Iraqis foresee a takeover of their country by terrorist groups? Is it possible that Iraqis “know better,” and that your administration is using “a terrorist takeover” as a scare tactic to prolong an un-winnable war to forfend the humiliation of defeat?
3.) Mr. President, how do you interpret your former Commerce Secretary Paul O'Neill's statement that cabinet meetings in your administration were like watching "a blind man in a roomful of deaf people?"
4.) Mr. President, how do you interpret your former Commerce Secretary Paul O'Neill's pre-9/11 statement that "there was a conviction from the very beginning that Saddam Hussein had to go?"
5.) Mr. President, how do you interpret your former Commerce Secretary Paul O'Neill's statement that "It was all about finding a way to do it. (To overthrow Saddam.) Go find me a way to do this."
6.) Mr. President, how do you interpret your former Commerce Secretary Paul O'Neill's surprise that no one in your cabinet asked “Why Saddam?” or “Why now?” Mr. President, how should we interpret “insider” allegations that you foster an administrative environment in which anyone failing to confirm your suppositions becomes a victim of your withering anger, and is subsequently blackballed?
7.) Mr. President, given your willingness to “throw the finger” in public and given Karl Rove's raving determination to "fuck him like he's never been fucked before," (referring to an un-named political enemy), is it reasonable to assume you are an irascible, vindictive person?
8.) Mr. President, given that vice-President Dick Cheney shouted “the F word” at Senator Patrick Leahy across the Senate Floor, what do you think of Mr. Cheney's campaign statement that you would restore "dignity and honor to the Oval Office?” Why is it that parents can no longer permit their children open access to statements made by the vice-president of the United States on the floor of the U.S. Senate?
9.) Mr. President, since terrorists have no central government to negotiate an end to the War on Terror, it is reasonable to conclude that this smoldering “war” may never end. Without any clear prospect of definitive conclusion, why should Americans confer upon you all the wartime powers you deem fit to exercise? In the minds of many Americans you are more dangerous – and more grandiose -- than Richard Nixon when he claimed: "Whatever the President does is legal." Nixon, at least, claimed carte blanche in a war that was already “winding down.” You claim carte blanche in a war that could smolder forever. Judging from your management of that war, things are not going at all well. American Historian Henry Commager Steele observed: "Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment."
10.) Mr. President, do you think Americans should compromise traditional “checks and balances” among the three branches of government in order to legalize any action you decide to take in the "war on terror"?
11.) Mr. President, we have crossed a critical threshold first described by Republican President (and World War II hero) Dwight Eisenhower: “The problem in defense is how far you can go [in military spending] without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.” Your newly-proposed budget increases military spending while cutting “homeland programs” such as Medicare, education and even "First Responder" resources. You have eliminated 42 education programs while exacting yet a third annual cut in the EPA budget despite that agency's newly-legislated responsibilities. This litany could continue. Suffice it to say that the Department of Energy, charged with undertaking your newly-announced energy initiatives, has received NO new money to realize your hollow promise. Is it possible Mr. President that you yourself represent an untapped source of “natural gas?”
11.) Mr. President, you claim that the federal debt will soon decrease. To make this dubious claim, you must ignore massive “off budget” expenditures such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - soime estimates now putting that downstream cost at two trillion dollars. Americans realize that you have carefully tailored what can be called “Designer Debt” devising two hermetically-sealed, mutually-exclusive balance sheets; one "on budget" the other, "off budget." Notably, you can not even make headway with this “Gucci Ledger.” Since your use of the word “debt” is as devious as Bill Clinton's use of the word “is,” it “is” extraordinarily difficult to determine where we stand. Taking into account all federal expenditures -- “on budget” and “off budget” -- what is the actual bottom-line dollar amount of the federal debt? It is now argued that your administration has expanded the National Debt beyond the cumulative debt of all previous presidencies put together. http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=%5CNation%5Carchive%5C200511/NAT20051104b.html)
12.) Mr. President, you are the first commander-in-chief to wage war without increasing taxes. Additionally, your newly-proposed budget intends to make tax cuts permanent. (BTW.... the top 1% of America's wealthy now own 57% of the nation's industrial wealth, a figure that has risen from 34% since 1990.) As the nation plunges deeper into debt – and with your own administration predicting that the federal debt will soar again starting in 2010 – is anything wrong with this picture?
13.) Mr. President, your new Medicare drug plan has become a bureaucratic nightmare. Many previously-enfranchised people are now unable to secure necessary medicine while the Kafkaesque complexities of your plan are resolved. For years, many American citizens - and several state agencies -- have purchased drugs that were “Made in the USA” from Canadian pharmacies. Even after the expense of exporting and then re-importing these drugs, savings routinely approach 50%. Unless it was your intention to prolong U.S. Pharmaceutical profiteering, why did you not make “bulk-purchase price reduction” a cornerstone of the new Medicare drug plan as it has always been a cornerstone of Canada's National Health Care System?”
14.) Mr. President, on April 24, 2004, you told a Buffalo, New York audience: "Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires—a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so." http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040420-2.html Why did you tell this bold-faced lie, and then, a year and a half later, pretend there was nothing wrong with failing to get a warrant? Are not deception and hypocrisy, in themselves, cause for condemnation? Does this not constitute a high crime or misdemeanor? And a failure to uphold the Constitution?
15.) Mr. President, historian Will Durant was recently quoted by Mel Gibson: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” Why have you focused inordinately on the threat “without” while failing to enact homeland policies that might mitigate the decisive threat “within?”
16.) Mr. President, why does your administration focus the discussion of wiretapping on the wiretaps themselves rather than the fact that you flaunted the law that requires warrants, even during the two week, “after-the-fact” grace period permitted by law? No one argues your legal right to begin wiretapping. Yes, you have that right. At issue here is your legal obligation to secure a warrant during the two-week grace period following implementation of a wiretap. “It's not the wiretap, stupid! It's the warrant.”
17.) Mr. President, in recent testimony, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended your failure to secure hind-sighted wiretap warrants, saying the process is too “time-consuming.” Do you believe that saving a bit of time for a low-level functionary justifies your seemingly limitless urge to expand presidential power?
18,.) Mr. President, why should the people of New Orleans believe you have their best interests at heart when your inept administration ignored every siren cry of pending calamity?
19.) Mr. President, we now know that a number of American agencies predicted that Hurricane Katrina would be “the Big One,” that it would breach levees and wreak widespread death and destruction. Why – before visiting these ravaged communities -- did you first dilly-dally at your Crawford ranch, and then fly to a Republican fund-raising banquet in California?
20.) Mr. President, why did you stonewall Congress' investigation of the White House response to Katrina, refusing to supply requested documents and ordering all White House staff members to refuse to comply with any request for testimony?
21.) Mr. President, do you really think FEMA chief Michael Brown – whose previous job was the supervision of illegally-drugged Arabian race horses – did “a heck of a job” as you commented in Katrina's aftermath?
22.) Mr. President, most Americans see your unflinching determination to "reward loyalty" as your motivation for such appalling political appointments such as Michael Brown to head FEMA. Do you still think it was a good idea to appoint Mr. Brown because his college room-mate was a loyal supporter?
23.) Mr. President, how many more 'Michael Browns' have you put in positions of public authority?” How many more "Browns" are out there. http://www.noendinsightmovie.com/
24.) Mr. President, New Orleans is now soliciting Foreign Aid to rebuild. How does “the Big Easy's” perceived need to “beg” from other countries square with your vaunted focus on Homeland Security? (And isn't real Homeland Security synonymous with alternative energy independence? Where is your "Manhattan Project" for Energy Independence (already achieved by Brazil!)
25.) Mr. President, you have bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on appointees who were directly responsible for supervising the debacle of Iraq. Why did you choose to pay such honor to individuals who oversaw so many dishonorable results?
26.) Mr. President, why do you continue to employ Donald Rumsfeld despite his insistence on such low troop levels that American soldiers repeatedly run lethal risk, constantly fighting to re-take territory that cannot be held because inadequate troop levels require constant movement from one newly-inflamed “hot spot” to another?
27.) Mr. President, why do you continue to employ Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense when American generals -- and more recently, the Pentagon itself -- have declared Rumsfeld's “light force” in Iraq grossly inadequate for purposes of peacekeeping? With Mr. Rumsfeld's help -- and your ignorance of General Shinseki's pre-war call for twice as many troops -- you have insured the failure of Iraq and the spread of instability across the planet.
28.) Mr. President, what exactly did you mean by describing Iraq as a "catastrophic success?"
29.) Mr. President, do you believe that most Americans consider the Iraq War a "success?" Even a "catastrophic success?"
30.) Mr. President, a leaked document from a top official in Tony Blair's government asserts that you and your administration “fixed intelligence” to confirm your foregone conclusion that Iraq must be invaded. Did you – in any way – try to “fix intelligence” to justify the invasion of Iraq? http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/
31.) Mr. President. Here's a question you probably can't answer. Do you continue to support the Iraq war because it would be too psychologically devastating to admit your presumptuous role as a “hurry-up!” instigator of this completely needless carnage? U.N. weapons inspectors had found no indication of WMD in the runup to invasion and implored you for more time to continue their search. Why does it seem so plausible that you rushed into war because you knew the "house of cards" with which you justified the war would tumble within months?
32.) Mr. President, do you realize how many Americans are pained by the cock-strutting stupidity of your two most famous statements: “Mission Accomplished!” and “Bring 'em on!””
33.) Mr. President, are you ashamed of yourself for declaring “Mission Accomplished!” and “Bring 'em on?” (In the blue states, Mr. President, we call “swagger” “arrogance.” We also realize that “Pride comes before the Fall.”)
34.) Mr. President, during your presidential campaign, do you think your handlers would have silenced any citizens attending your rallies who chanted: “Mission Accomplished!” and “Bring 'em on?” If the answer is yes, what does it mean that your own words must now be consigned to The Memory Hole?
35.) Mr. President, if you knew “then” what you know now, would you still authorize the invasion of Iraq?
36.) Mr. President, what do you consider more catastrophic? Iraq? Or your administration's response to Hurricane Katrina?
37.) Mr. President, prior to invasion, why didn't you wait for the United Nations' Weapons of Mass Destruction Inspection Team to discover a single shred of incontrovertible evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction or a shard of incontrovertible evidence that a Program was in place to produce them?
38.) Mr. President, in hindsight do you think American interests would have been better served by giving UN weapons inspectors as much time as they requested to conclude their search?
39.) Mr. President, since U.S. Forces were already in excellent position to contain Saddam Hussein, why did you consider it necessary to replace a successful Policy of Containment with a policy of pre-emption even though containment had worked with the Soviet Union – a known nuclear threat -- for 50 years? (As we now know, your father's Policy of Containment also worked with Saddam Hussein in the ten years following the Kuwait war. In fact it worked so well that Saddam abandoned his WMD program without the presence of an occupying army!)
40.) Mr. President, it is documented that the CIA asked 30 Iraqi ex-patriots to travel from the United States to Baghdad to speak with relatives who had worked for Saddam's weapons program. All thirty “reported back” that there was NO active WMD program. They also reported that there had been no such program for the last ten years. Why did your administration highlight bogus claims concerning the procurement of “yellowcake uranium from Africa” -- and the fictional relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda -- simultaneously ignoring the massive body of contrary evidence revealed by these CIA emissaries?”
41.) Mr. President, do you realize that your policy of military pre-emption contradicts the pre-conditions for "just war" set forth in the Catechism of the Catholic Church? Are you aware that Catholic hierarchy has consistently condemned your invasion of Iraq as "illicit" and “immoral.”
42.) "Mr. President, given that Pope Benedict XVI has declared America's war on Iraq “illicit,” do you think Catholic soldiers have the right – perhaps even the moral obligation -- to request "conscientious objector status?" http://www.cjd.org/paper/benedict.html
43.) Mr. President, what do you think of the many scandals besetting your administration - Tom “The Hammer” DeLay, Jack Abramhoff, Lewis “Scooter” and the ongoing probe of Karl “Turd Blossom” Rove (to use your own "term of endearment") by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald?
44.) Mr. President, is it not risky – perhaps even reckless – that Karl Rove continues to have top-level security clearance when he may have misused that clearance, jeopardizing CIA field agents in the process.
45.) Mr. President, do you think the GOP's Fundamentalist Christian Base has good reason to wonder whether the calamity of Iraq, the election of Hamas, your abandoned plan to impose “regime change” on Syria (a country that does foster terrorism), and the American military's hamstrung inability to exit a third-world backwater is an indication that God does not look fondly on your mid-East policies?
46.) Mr. President, why do your exhortations to win the War on Terror sound so fearful, so terrorizing? When Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill – confronting a much more immediate and palpable threat – exhorted their respective nations to “fight the good fight,” citizens were uplifted. Back then, resistance to "Hitlerian Evil" was undertaken with a certain degree of good cheer. (Rosie the Riveter flexing her biceps is one small example.) Throughout the free world, a powerful esprit de corps prevailed. With the Bush-Cheney administration however, every time you (or the vice-president) open you mouths, liberals are discouraged and conservatives feel more terrorized than ever. Do you do this on purpose?
47.) Mr. President, you constantly remind Americans of “the terrorist threat” in ways that contribute to the terrorization of the citizenry. Is it possible you have become an unconscious ally of these despicable people?
48.) Mr. President, Nietzsche observed that “When fighting a monster, be very careful you don't become one.” Do the abuses at Gitmo and Abu Graib – coupled with your administration's vigorous refusal to support legislation banning torture – indicate that you and your staff (however compassionately you may conceive yourselves) have, in fact, become monstrous?
49.) Mr. President, your recently-chosen CIA director, Porter Goss, says he knows bin Laden's whereabouts but 'political realities' prevent his capture. Must we sustain the pretense that Pakistani leader Musharraf - the leader of a nuclear Islamic state - is determined to capture bin Laden?
50.) Mr. President, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower said: “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.” Yet your constant desire to expand executive power requires that citizens “take for granted” the benevolence of your self-aggrandizement. Is it not reasonable that your adamant refusal to submit to “checks and balances” endangers our liberties and democratic processes?
51.) Mr. President, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower said that “The problem in defense is how far you can go [in military spending] without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without." Do you agree with Ike's assessment? And if you do, where do you draw the line between constructive and destructive defense spending? Might the Katrina disaster represent the downside of destructive defense spending?”
***
In the end, the president's foreign policy arises from the same wellspring of “genius” that re-named “French Fries” “Freedom Fries.”
The stupidity and vapidity of this man are beneath contempt.
If only his policy of imperial pre-emption were so much “sound and fury signifying nothing.”
Instead, this aggressively-ignorant bully signifies less than nothing. With the help of Dick “Go fuck yourself!” Cheney, Bush has transformed the United States of America into a global bludgeon whose consistently counterproductive policies (financed by squandering the national treasure) make our world an increasingly dangerous place.
Not only has George W. Bush failed to lead in the War on Terror, he has become a de facto ally, an unparalleled poster boy for terrorist recruitment and the chief inspiration for Terrorist Training Camps world-wide.
***
Greetings,
The last line of this clip is devastating - right from the mouth of the perpetrator.
As Nietzsche warned: "When fighting a monster, be careful you don't become one."
Last week, I lunched with AC, a good friend and former Air Force General whose service as a military intelligence expert spanned WWII and Vietnam. Not many years ago, AC was invited to Camp David where he sequestered with the president to discuss “Military Strategy for the 21st Century.”
While enjoying the buffet at Spice and Curry, the General said: "Torture is useless. The administration puts it front-and-center to distract us from the real issues."
I'm intrigued by right-wing commentators who constantly focus "The Necessity of Torture" by positing "a 24 hour deadline” that “forces us” to extract crucial information “overnight” as the only way to prevent devastating attack.
Many Americans listen to this line of argument and wonder: "Yeah! How about that? How else are we gonna stop it?”
Any terrorist who possesses “sensitive information” has had months (and probably years) to concoct a plausible story that responds to “intercepted information” concerning a pending attack. Since any well-crafted story that can only be proved or disproved at the end of the 24 hour period, what better way to distract American officials from the kind of investigative pursuit that is more likely to bear fruit? (Concerning the utility of intelligence, I would mention Mr. Bush’s failure to act upon several "red-alert warnings" in the months before 9/11, high-level, U.S. intelligence community warnings that accurately predicted bin Laden’s imminent attack on American soil. http://www.slate.com/id/2098861/)
Like most arguments, the one I’ve just set forth is easily discarded, since - at bottom - “the bloodthirsty” are obsessed by blood.
And by God, they will have it!
In fact, they will swear on their eternal souls that God Himself wants it.
Not only that, they will proudly declare that God Himself demands it.
By now, facts are irrelevant: the accompanying emotion is everything.
Despite their “postures of piety,” it is not about God.
It is about unbridled ego.
And maniacal self-apotheosis.
The bloodthirsty generation to which we belong takes its cue from Ronald Reagan who said "Facts are stupid things" – a misquotation of John Adams who rightly observed: "Facts are stubborn things."
The most stubborn fact of all is that torture is a very good way to get very bad information – information so bad it can unleash completely-unnecessary wars from which we may emerge – at best – pyrrhic victors.
Sadly, “the bloodthirsty” cannot believe torture is a good way to get bad information because – above all -- they must justify their own blood lust.
Fact:
If we are “taken in” by bogus information coming from “good sources,” what sane person would expect better information from sources we know to be bad? Sources routinely represented as Satanic?
Over lunch, my General friend noted that the FBI is the American organization most adept at getting good information from reluctant informants. Notably, the FBI uses interrogation skills that do not include “harsh investigation” techniques.
"In fact," AC continued, "during WWII we always got our best information by making captives think we were going to torture them and then treating them really well, giving them cigarettes and chocolate, taking an interest in their lives, wives and families."
Although "the bloodthirsty" must deny the efficacy of “Civilized Gentility” since gentleness represents an “existential threat” to their blind insistence on torture, I challenge “the bloodthirsty” to find any group of American Generals -- active or retired -- who advocate the usefulness (or advisability) of torture.
On the other hand, “the bloodthirsty” will have no difficulty finding an abundance of American Generals who decry torture as a barbarous, counterproductive behavior that sets a treacherous precedent whereby enemies can justify the torture of our own troops.
The nearly unanimous voice of Generals who oppose torture, describing it as a degradation of American values and a benefit to enemy propaganda, is easy to locate.
This is not rocket science.
This is a call to set aside America's visceral penchant for bloodlust in order to engage Truth.
The National Lunacy that has afflicted our nation since 9/11 is a very real - and very ugly - thing. The upshot of our Collective Delusion is to believe that the consistent use of violence is the best way to protect ourselves. Once we “sign off” on torture and other forms of “preventive violence,” it becomes exceptionally difficult to reverse course since all humans are strongly inclined to see themselves - and their actions - as virtuous.
To acknowledge bad behavior – particularly when bad behavior maims and kills other human beings (including large numbers of innocent civilians) – it is then necessary to shoulder a leaden burden of guilt that would make Ajax himself would recoil.
Since 9/11, the ways that we have behaved as a nation – including our use of torture – diminish (and may well preclude) our ability to behave as dignified, free people.
Swept away by our burning desire to use violence as a means justified by the end, we actually foster terrorism, an demonstrable outcome detailed by a recent National Intelligence Estimate: “The Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse." http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0925/dailyUpdate.html
Pax on both houses,
Alan
***
Greetings,
Back before terrorism succeeded in its goal of terrorizing Americans; back before our foreign policy fostered the spread of terrorism; back before cowardice managed to masquerade as courage; back before abject fear-mongering displaced “the better angels of our nature;” back when Americans believed in the transformative power of Liberty, American historian Henry Steele Commager noted that "Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment."
When we compromise freedom “at home” to combat the lack of freedom abroad, we ignore Nietzsche's warning: "When fighting monsters, be careful you don’t become one."
It is our inexorable tendency to become what we perceive.
I marvel that so many citizens assent to the degradation of Franklin Roosevelt's principle, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," replacing it with the terrified -- and largely self-terrorizing -- belief that "Fear is the only thing we have."
I marvel even more that so many self-declared Christians have become "closet cheerleaders" for Armageddon even though the Apostle John could not have spoken more clearly: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love."
Punishment.
It is still about punishment.
In distilled form, it is about the punishment we call torture.
It is, emphatically, NOT about love.
At minimum, Christians should have the courage to confess their heart's desire - to use words as if they meant something.
Pax on both houses,
Alan
***
The Coup at Home, by Frank Rich
Excerpts:
In the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we’ve propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We’ve become inured to democracy-lite. That’s why a Mukasey can be elevated to power with bipartisan support and we barely shrug.
This is a signal difference from the Vietnam era, and not necessarily for the better. During that unpopular war, disaffected Americans took to the streets and sometimes broke laws in an angry assault on American governmental institutions. The Bush years have brought an even more effective assault on those institutions from within. While the public has not erupted in riots, the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often secretive increments. The results amount to a quiet coup, ultimately more insidious than a blatant putsch like General Musharraf’s.
More Machiavellian still, Mr. Bush has constantly told the world he’s championing democracy even as he strangles it. Mr. Bush repeated the word “freedom” 27 times in roughly 20 minutes at his 2005 inauguration, and even presided over a “Celebration of Freedom” concert on the Ellipse hosted by Ryan Seacrest. It was an Orwellian exercise in branding, nothing more. The sole point was to give cover to our habitual practice of cozying up to despots (especially those who control the oil spigots) and to our own government’s embrace of warrantless wiretapping and torture, among other policies that invert our values.
Even if Mr. Bush had the guts to condemn General Musharraf, there is no longer any moral high ground left for him to stand on. Quite the contrary. Rather than set a democratic example, our president has instead served as a model of unconstitutional behavior, eagerly emulated by his Pakistani acolyte.
"Tipping his hat in appreciation of Mr. Bush’s example, General Musharraf justified his dismantling of Pakistan’s Supreme Court with language mimicking the president’s diatribes against activist judges. The Pakistani leader further echoed Mr. Bush by expressing a kinship with Abraham Lincoln, citing Lincoln’s Civil War suspension of a prisoner’s fundamental legal right to a hearing in court, habeas corpus, as a precedent for his own excesses. (That’s like praising F.D.R. for setting up internment camps.) Actually, the Bush administration has outdone both Lincoln and Musharraf on this score: Last January, Mr. Gonzales testified before Congress that “there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.”
To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal.
This is most apparent in the Republican presidential race, where most of the candidates seem to be running for dictator and make no apologies for it. They’re falling over each other to expand Gitmo, see who can promise the most torture and abridge the largest number of constitutional rights. The front-runner, Rudy Giuliani, boasts a proven record in extralegal executive power grabs, Musharraf-style: After 9/11 he tried to mount a coup, floating the idea that he stay on as mayor in defiance of New York’s term-limits law.
What makes the Democrats’ Mukasey cave-in so depressing is that it shows how far even exemplary sticklers for the law like Senators Feinstein and Schumer have lowered democracy’s bar. When they argued that Mr. Mukasey should be confirmed because he’s not as horrifying as Mr. Gonzales or as the acting attorney general who might get the job otherwise, they sounded whipped. After all these years of Bush-Cheney torture, they’ll say things they know are false just to move on.
In a Times OpEd article justifying his reluctant vote to confirm a man Dick Cheney promised would make “an outstanding attorney general,” Mr. Schumer observed that waterboarding is already “illegal under current laws and conventions.” But then he vowed to support a new bill “explicitly” making waterboarding illegal because Mr. Mukasey pledged to enforce it. Whatever. Even if Congress were to pass such legislation, Mr. Bush would veto it, and even if the veto were by some miracle overturned, Mr. Bush would void the law with a “signing statement.” That’s what he effectively did in 2005 when he signed a bill that its authors thought outlawed the torture of detainees.
That Mr. Schumer is willing to employ blatant Catch-22 illogic to pretend that Mr. Mukasey’s pledge on waterboarding has any force shows what pathetic crumbs the Democrats will settle for after all these years of being beaten down. The judges and lawyers challenging General Musharraf have more fight left in them than this.
Last weekend a new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that the Democratic-controlled Congress and Mr. Bush are both roundly despised throughout the land, and that only 24 percent of Americans believe their country is on the right track. That’s almost as low as the United States’ rock-bottom approval ratings in the latest Pew surveys of Pakistan (15 percent) and Turkey (9 percent).
Wrong track is a euphemism. We are a people in clinical depression. Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon."
***
Thomas Merton
Raids on the Unspeakable, 1964
"One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the [Adolf] Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing. . . The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared. What makes us so sure, after all, that the danger comes from a psychotic getting into a position to fire the first shot in a nuclear war? Psychotics will be suspect. The sane ones will keep them far from the button. No one suspects the sane, and the sane ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons, for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that have come sanely down the chain of command. And because of their sanity they will have no qualms at all. When the missiles take off, then, it will be no mistake."
***
After listening to Cheney’s lucid, completely persuasive argument, please read the following piece concerning the monetary cost of Mr. Bush’s War of Choice. (According to initial estimates issued by the Bush administration, The Iraq War would cost 50 billion dollars.)
Of course, the monetary cost is the least of it.
***
Report Puts Hidden War Costs at $1.6 Trillion
By Jeannine Aversa AP
The economic costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to total $1.6 trillion — roughly double the amount the White House has requested thus far, according to a new report by Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic Committee.
The report, released Tuesday, attempted to put a price tag on the two conflicts, including "hidden" costs such as interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars, lost investment, the expense of long-term health care for injured veterans and the cost of oil market disruptions.
The $1.6 trillion figure, for the period from 2002 to 2008, translates into a cost of $20,900 for a family of four, the report said. The Bush administration has requested $804 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, the report stated.
For the Iraq war only, total economic costs were estimated at $1.3 trillion for the period from 2002 to 2008. That would cost a family of four $16,500, the report said.
Future economic costs would be even greater. The report estimated that both wars would cost $3.5 trillion between 2003 and 2017. Under that scenario, it would cost a family of four $46,400, the report said.
The report, from the committee's Democratic majority, was not vetted with Republican members. Democratic leaders in Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., seized on the report to criticize Bush's war strategy. The White House countered that the report was politically motivated.
"This report was put out by Democrats on Capitol Hill. This committee is known for being partisan and political. They did not consult or cooperate with the Republicans on the committee. And so I think it is an attempt to muddy the waters on what has been some positive developments being reported out of Iraq," said White House press secretary Dana Perino. "I haven't seen the report, but it's obvious the motivations behind it."
The report comes as the House and Senate planned to vote this week on another effort by Democrats to set a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq as a condition for providing another $50 billion for the war.
Reid said the report "is another reminder of how President Bush's stubborn refusal to change course in Iraq and congressional Republicans' willingness to rubber stamp his failed strategy — has real consequences at home for all Americans."
Perino, while acknowledging the dangers in Iraq, defended Bush's stance.
"Obviously it remains a dangerous situation in Iraq. But the reduction in violence, the increased economic capacity of the country, as well as, hopefully, some continued political reconciliation that is moving from the bottom up, is a positive trend and one that we — well, it's positive and we hope it is a trend that will take hold," Perino said.
Israel Klein, spokesman for the Joint Economic Committee, took issue with the White House's characterization of the panel's report.
"Instead of dealing with the substance of this report, the White House is once again trying to deflect attention away from the blistering costs of this war in Iraq," Klein said. "This report uses the nonpartisan CBO (Congressional Budget Office) budget estimates and was prepared by the JEC's professional economists using the same process this committee has always used, regardless of which party is in the majority."
However, the committee's top-ranking Republican members — Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rep. Jim Saxton of New Jersey — called on the Democratic leadership to "withdraw this defective report." A joint statement from the two Republican lawmakers said the report is a "thinly veiled exercise in political hyperbole masquerading as academic research."
White House Budget Director Jim Nussle accused Democrats of "trying to distort reality for political gain."
Oil prices have surged since the start of the war, from about $37 a barrel to well over $90 a barrel in recent weeks, the report said. "Consistent disruptions from the war have affected oil prices," although the Iraq war is not responsible for all of the increase in oil prices, the report said.
Still, the report estimated that high oil prices have hit U.S. consumers in the pocket, transferring "approximately $124 billion from U.S. oil consumers to foreign (oil) producers" from 2003 to 2008, the report said.
High oil prices can slow overall economic growth if that chills spending and investment by consumers and businesses. At the same time, high oil prices can spread inflation throughout the economy if companies decide to boost the prices of many other goods and services.
Meanwhile, "the sum of interest paid on Iraq-related debt from 2003 to 2017 will total over $550 billion," the report said. The government has to make interest payments on the money it borrows to finance the national debt, which recently hit $9 trillion for the first time.
The report was obtained by The Associated Press before its release. An earlier draft of the report, which also had been obtained by The AP, had put the economic cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars slightly lower, at $1.5 trillion.
"What this report makes crystal clear," said Joint Economic Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., "is that the cost to our country in lives lost and dollars spent is tragically unacceptable." Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the panel's vice chair, said of the Iraq war: "By every measure, this war has cost Americans far too much."
