Frank Rich: Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ...

[understandinglife]

November 27, 2005

Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ...

By FRANK RICH

GEORGE W. BUSH is so desperate for allies that his hapless Asian tour took him to Ulan Bator, a first for an American president, so he could mingle with the yaks and give personal thanks for Mongolia's contribution of some 160 soldiers to "the coalition of the willing." Dick Cheney, whose honest-and-ethical poll number hit 29 percent in Newsweek's latest survey, is so radioactive that he vanished into his bunker for weeks at a time during the storms Katrina and Scootergate.

The whole world can see that both men are on the run. Just how much so became clear in the brace of nasty broadsides each delivered this month about Iraq. Neither man engaged the national debate ignited by John Murtha about how our troops might be best redeployed in a recalibrated battle against Islamic radicalism. Neither offered a plan for "victory." Instead, both impugned their critics' patriotism and retreated into the past to defend the origins of the war. In a seasonally appropriate impersonation of the misanthropic Mr. Potter from "It's a Wonderful Life," the vice president went so far as to label critics of the administration's prewar smoke screen both "dishonest and reprehensible" and "corrupt and shameless." He sounded but one epithet away from a defibrillator.

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No debate about the past, of course, can undo the mess that the administration made in Iraq. But the past remains important because it is a road map to both the present and the future. Leaders who dissembled then are still doing so. Indeed, they do so even in the same speeches in which they vehemently deny having misled us then - witness Mr. Bush's false claims about what prewar intelligence was seen by Congress and Mr. Cheney's effort last Monday to again conflate the terrorists of 9/11 with those "making a stand in Iraq." (Maj. Gen. Douglas Lute, director of operations for Centcom, says the Iraqi insurgency is 90 percent homegrown.) These days Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney routinely exaggerate the readiness of Iraqi troops, much as they once inflated Saddam's W.M.D.'s.

"We're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," the vice president said of his critics. "We're going to continue throwing their own words back at them." But according to a Harris poll released by The Wall Street Journal last Wednesday, 64 percent of Americans now believe that the Bush administration "generally misleads the American public on current issues to achieve its own ends." That's why it's Mr. Cheney's and the president's own words that are being thrown back now - not to rewrite history but to reveal it for the first time to an angry country that has learned the hard way that it can no longer afford to be without the truth.

Link:

http://select.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/opinion/27rich.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

And, yes, I know the link will not work for folk who do not have access to the stupid NYT gateway.

As I've done each time I've posted an important missive from Mr. Rich and others, as soon as TruthOut or some other source makes the full text available, I will post the link.

It IS Tribunal Time In The United States of America -- and almost everyone 'gets it,' now.


Peace.

[understandinglife]

1. "The whole world can see that both men are on the run." -- The Decision Is

OURS: America, Or Not:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5443377

"The whole world can see that both men are on the run."

"What will someone read about America, one, five, ten or more years now.

The decision is ours."


Peace.

[seafan]

2. Thanks for posting this. Here's a link I found.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.impeach.bush/browse_thread/thread/6075499f652d0de0/5589b6ac33e4d02c?lnk=st&q=frank+rich&rnum=2#5589b6ac33e4d02c

[understandinglife]

3. Cool. Thanks!

Peace.

[understandinglife]

17. TruthOut.com link to the Frank Rich article:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112705Y.shtml


Peace.

[mod mom]

4. It is so frustrating to realize the extent of their lies and have to wait

for justice. People are dying, families ruined, our environment worsens as we wait. They appear to only pander to their koolaid drunk 30%, who despite videos, and printed material demonstrating their blatant lies, simply refuse to accept it.

Hope you had a wonderful thanksgiving, UL. I am thankful for all your thought provoking posts.

[understandinglife]

6. Thank you and I hope that ...

... you and your family had a wonderful thanksgiving, as well.

Additional comments pertinent to what you state, I just posted here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5443377&mesg_id=5458414

"We the People ..." will not escape the implications of Bush and the neoconsters' war crimes.

Either we act to hold them accountable or we will be held accountable with them.

We have way too much knowledge and the whole world knows we have that knowledge, so if we do not act, we will be painted by the same brush that history will use to paint Bush and his gang of war criminals.

I truly hope that in five, ten, fifty years if someone were ever to read these words they would also know that the people of America demanded and delivered these criminals to justice.

All certain other Nations have is the pledge "never again."

We have a few remaining moments to have the legacy of America be "We stopped the criminals, we brought them to justice, and we will never allow what they did to happen again."


Peace.

[mod mom]

11. Perhaps this is the message we should be sending the press: "either

we act to hold them accountable or we will be held accountable with them."

[understandinglife]

13. "either we act to hold them accountable or we will be held accountable ...

... with them." -- Yes, to the press, but also to each other.

It is the reality we all must confront and decide our actions, accordingly.


Peace, my friend.

[Time for change]

5. Thank you ul -- It's ok that the link doesn't work, because you put

together very good summaries.

Let's hope that they stay on the run until their term is over, which hopefully will be sooner rather than later.

[understandinglife]

7. "Conduct of Government policy in relation to the war against Iraq"

Walker's World: New crisis for Blair's War
By MARTIN WALKER
UPI Editor

WASHINGTON -- This will not be a happy Thanksgiving for President George Bush, but he need just look across the Atlantic to know it could be worse. His only reliable ally, Britain's Tony Blair, now seems to be facing the full-scale parliamentary inquiry into the Iraq war -- its justification, conduct and aftermath -- that Bush has been able to avoid.

Leading opposition figures from the Conservative, Liberal-Democratic, Scottish National and Plaid Cymru (Welsh) parties have banded together to back the cross-party motion titled "Conduct of Government policy in relation to the war against Iraq" to demand that the case for an inquiry be debated in the House of Commons. They seem assured of the 200 signatures required to get such a debate -- and then the loyalty of Blair's dismayed and disillusioned Labor members of Parliament will be sorely tested.

"This apparently modest motion may be the iceberg toward which Blair's Titanic is sailing," said Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond.

Labor Party rebels have already inflicted one unprecedented defeat on Blair in this parliamentary session, and on the issue of Iraq, he commands little confidence. One leading Labor rebel, Alan Simpson, MP for Nottingham, has already signed on to the motion.

<clip>

http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20051123-052153-2622r

Take special note of the following -- "That is why the Iraq imbroglio is now known among Labor MPs as "Blair's War," and why the prospect of a new inquiry holds out such perils for the serially embattled Tony Blair."


Peace.

[Stephanie]

8. " A simpler question might be: What was not a lie?"

And to think I used to loathe Frank Rich when he was a theater critic.



The more we learn about the road to Iraq, the more we realize that it's a
losing game to ask what lies the White House told along the way. A
simpler question might be: What was not a lie? The situation recalls
Mary McCarthy's explanation to Dick Cavett about why she thought
Lillian Hellman was a dishonest writer: "Every word she writes is a
lie, including 'and' and 'the.' "

[babylonsister]

9. Smooches to you yet again! Excellent, "and almost everyone

gets it, now!"
Wow, think of the consequences if that's true! :evilgrin: :bounce: :toast: Finally!

[DemReadingDU]

10. Thanks UL, great article by Frank Rich

Yet, there are still some people who fail to see those lies, it's as if they've been brainwashed. or braindead.

[Miss Chybil]

12. Amen, Mr. Rich. Amen. nt

[AuntiBush]

14. P & VP Got A Lot Of Nerve...

when they state those that disagree with them are "dishonest and reprehensible" and "corrupt and shameless."

It's the other way around.

[understandinglife]

15. CNN: "Abuse as bad as Saddam era"

Human rights abuses in Iraq are as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein if not worse, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has said.

"People are doing the same as (in) Saddam's time and worse," Allawi said in an interview published in Britain on Sunday.

"It is an appropriate comparison," Allawi told The Observer newspaper. "People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things."

<clip>

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/11/27/iraq.allawi/index.html

As "Chris in Paris" at AMERICABlog states:

What a great moment for freedom and democracy, GOP style. I'm sure that the families of the dead soldiers will be thrilled with hearing that their loved ones died to re-create the same mess that was there before. So there were no WMD and we replaced one brutal regime with another brutal regime, we're forking over billions of taxpayer dollars to help Big Oil take back business they lost thirty years ago and we have Americans, Brits and tens of thousands of Iraqis being killed, all for this. Brilliant.

Link:
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/11/people-are-doing-same-as-in-saddams.html

It IS Tribunal Time In The United States Of America


Peace.

[understandinglife]

16. The Decision Is Ours: America, or Not

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5443377

" ... if we don't act promptly with the knowledge of what has transpired, then we too are complicit with the war criminals."


Peace.

[mod mom]

19. Here is a link that describes the procedure for implementing War Crimes

Tribunals:

http://www.caii.com/CAIIStaff/Dashboard_GIROAdminCAIIStaff/Dashboard_CAIIAdminDatabase/resources/ghai/toolbox23.htm

[understandinglife]

23. Thank you very much. I will study this tonight.

Peace.

[understandinglife]

22. 'Trophy' video exposes private security contractors shooting up Iraqi ...

'Trophy' video exposes private security contractors shooting up Iraqi drivers

By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 27/11/2005)

A "trophy" video appearing to show security guards in Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians has sparked two investigations after it was posted on the internet, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

The video has sparked concern that private security companies, which are not subject to any form of regulation either in Britain or in Iraq, could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqis.

<clip>

In one of the videoed attacks, a Mercedes is fired on at a distance of several hundred yards before it crashes in to a civilian taxi. In the last clip, a white civilian car is raked with machine gun fire as it approaches an unidentified security company vehicle. Bullets can be seen hitting the vehicle before it comes to a slow stop. There are no clues as to the shooter but either a Scottish or Irish accent can be heard in at least one of the clips above Elvis Presley's Mystery Train, the music which accompanies the video.

<clip>

Last night a spokesman for the Foreign Office said: "Aegis have assured us that there is nothing on the video to suggest that it has anything to do with their company. This is now a matter for the American authorities because Aegis is under contract to the United States."

Link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/27/wirq27.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/27/ixworld.html

War crimes with background music by Elvis ...


Peace.

[mod mom]

29. I think stories such as this can be attributed to steroid use in Iraq. I

had heard that it was a problem there and found this article (theres others of course) to support it:

(08-01) 12:33 PDT ROME, Italy (AP) --


Italian police seized 215,000 doses of prohibited substances as they smashed a ring that supplied steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to customers around the world, including American soldiers in Iraq, a police official said Monday.


The U.S. military in Iraq had no immediate comment, but the popularity of steroid abuse has long been discussed as American troops and contractors in Iraq work out in gyms set up in bases and even in the mirrored halls of one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces.


Joe Donahue, program director for the Vietnam Vets of America Foundation, who spent 16 months in Iraq — often lifting weights in the Green Zone gyms — said steroids were on offer for those who wanted them.


"I had them offered to me by an Iraqi guy who sure as hell looked like he was using them," Donahue said. "There were guys I'm pretty sure were juicing, but not a lot of them."


http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/08/01/international/i123326D83.DTL

I believe the "roid-rage" is at least partially responsible for the horrific conduct .

[niallmac]

18. The NYT gateway is not stupid.

It's the NYT way of saying "We have devolved into a pretty crappy newspaper what with all our corrupt, compromised stances and reporters. Are you SURE you want to read this?"

That being said the article on our own corrupt and compromised leaders is a goodun! Thanks

[BamaBecky]

20. Tribunal Time? Yall come on down to Alabama, my friends

and meet some of our illustrious citizens! You know I know, UL, what's really going on, but these folks around here sure don't. A lot of them sign up for guard duty so they can be patriotic! Can't blame them they get their news for the Mobile Press Register! The Mobile Press Register lies to them DAILY! It's down right disgusting.

Bama

[mod mom]

21. kick

[understandinglife]

24. S Clemons: "Even nominating an anti-abortion conservative to the Supreme

... Court has made only a modest dent in the public's anger about America's Iraq mess.

But the Bush administration, thus far, has been unable to get away from the now constant drum beat from critics angry about the administration's abuse and misuse of Iraq-related WMD intelligence, its efforts to cover up this abuse, and its arrogance in matters like the Valerie Plame affair.

Link:

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001114.html

Now, if we can just focus all those angry Americans on one restorative task -- create a tribunal and prosecute these war criminals.

If ever a time for the likes of an Oprah or a Warren Buffett or some other big, non-politician personality to step forward and call for justice, now is definitely that time for America.

And, it's going to take a voice like that for folk to take notice in the timely manner the crisis requires.

How can this Nation not already have many "people of stature" clamoring for justice and retribution for the expansive crimes that have been committed by Bush and the neoconsters. Don't people realize that at Nuremberg in November of 1945, German commanders were prosecuted simply because they participated in PLANNING aggression against Austria and Czechoslovakia -- planning done in 1937!!!

Planning war of aggression is a crime. Committing war of aggression is another crime. Torturing people is a crime. .... How frigging long does the list have to get before we call a halt and prosecute.


Peace.

[earth mom]

25. Kicked & Recommended!

:kick:

[understandinglife]

26. Sy Hersh: "I'll tell you, the people that talk to me now are essentially

... frightened because they're not sure how you get to this guy (Bush).

They're beginning to talk about some of the things the president said to him about his feelings about manifest destiny, about a higher calling that he was talking about three, four years ago.

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5460751

Meet America's first nuclear-age, christo-fanatic war criminal.

Hey all you super-wealthy folk - you better charge and prosecute this guy (and his buddies) before he downsizes your markets.


Peace.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

27. It's a shame that in this day and age of ruthless and dangerous

misleadership, the NYT decides to limit its access to the writers who work to expose the truth. :argh:

[understandinglife]

28. Ironic, isn't it. Even more ironic is "TruthOut" being a source for ...

... the full text within hours of the NYT release of Rich, Krugman, Herber and Dowd Op-Eds.


Peace.

[DemReadingDU]

32. TruthOut is a great site

UL, you always find a great selection of articles to share with us, thanks!

[understandinglife]

30. Slate: "The Misleaders -- Who is Dick Cheney kidding?"

The Misleaders
Who is Dick Cheney kidding?

By Jacob Weisberg

Dick Cheney calls it "dishonest," "reprehensible" and "not legitimate" to claim that the administration misled the public about prewar intelligence. In his speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Nov. 21, the vice president added for good measure that "any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false."

<clip>

In retrospect, Cheney casts himself and his colleagues as uncritical consumers of what the CIA and DIA spoon-fed them. Bad intel, he gives us to understand, is like lousy weather — a shame, but nothing policymakers can do anything about. In fact, the Bush hawks were anything but victims of the intelligence community. They challenged any evidence that cut against their assumptions about Saddam, going so far as to set up their own unit within the Pentagon to reanalyze raw data and draw harsher conclusions. And remember that the trigger for the Valerie Plame scandal was the vice president's mistrust of the CIA.

Another giveaway is the administration's lack of outrage over the bad intelligence they now claim to have been victimized by. Only Colin Powell, before his U.N. speech, seems to have pushed back with any skepticism about charges he was being asked to retail. And only Powell has expressed any outrage after it became evident that his U.N. speech had been a case of garbage in, garbage out.

Powell's old colleagues now defend themselves by saying they didn't know their claims about Iraq weren't true. But the truth is most of them didn't care whether their assertions were true or not, and they still don't.

Link:

Could it be any clearer -- they planned and committed aggressive war. Period.

Mirandize'um & Book'um.


Peace.

[mod mom]

31. I believe what cheney was disavowing was not the CIA in entirety but

the good faction of dedicated patriots who serve their country in their roles. Remember (you just to pop over to Octafish's excellent post on the Kennedy Asassination and the connections to Poppy) to see how the Neocons and their forefathers benefitted from the covert activities within the organization. they were attempting to reconfigure the CIA and other organizations that can further their agenda.

[mod mom]

33. U of MI Historian Juan Cole:

Here is an excellent read: U of MI Historian Juan Cole urges congress to stop bush through their control of money:
<snip>

Even Bush allies such as former transitional Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, however, are already bringing his legacy into question. Allawi asserts that governmental abuse of human rights in Iraq today is even worse than in the time of Saddam. If yours truly had said something like that, Jeff Jarvis would have called me pond scum and Andrew Sullivan would have given me a Sontag award. Jarvis and Sullivan were big supporters of Allawi (who is alleged to have been involved in a terrorist attack in Baghdad in the 1990s that blew up a school bus full of children). So what do they have to say now that the bad news is coming from the secular, pro-American politicians and they aren't playing pollyanna any more? By the way, President Jalal Talabani rejected Allawi's charges, but then he heads the government that Allawi is critiquing.
Bush's legacy as a builder of democracy and promoter of rights in Iraq, all he has left going for him, was dealt another black eye by the emergence of a video that appears to show private security guards in Iraq firing at civilian vehicles for sport out on the road to the airport.

<snip>
Congress really has to step in here. Senators and representatives should demand that Bush get the ground troops out without turning control of the US air force over to Shiite clerics like Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Presidents cannot do anything without money, and Congress controls the money. The wiser and more knowledgeable heads on both sides of the aisle have to start telling Bush "No!" when he comes to them asking for another $100 billion so he can level another Sunni Arab city. He is counting on the public punishing "no" votes on military affairs. But the American public would at this point almost certainly be grateful for it. And apart from telling him "No!" they should put strict reporting requirements on how the money is used. For instance, only defensive operations should any longer be funded.


Let me finish with a word to W. As for your legacy two decades from now, George, let me clue you in on something--as a historian. In 20 years no Iraqis will have you on their minds one way or another. Do you think anyone in Egypt or Israel is still grateful to Jimmy Carter for helping bring to an end the cycle of Egyptian-Israeli wars? Jimmy Carter powerfully affected the destinies of all Egyptians and Israelis in that key way. Most people in both countries have probably never heard of him, and certainly no one talks about the first Camp David Accords anymore except as a dry historical subject. The US pro-Israel lobby is so ungrateful that they curse Carter roundly for all the help he gave Israel. Human beings don't have good memories for these things, which is why we have to have professional historians, a handful of people who are obsessed with the subject. And I guarantee you, George, that historians are going to be unkind to you. You went into a major war over a non-existent nuclear weapons program. Presidents' reputations don't survive things like that. Historians are creatures of documents and precision. A wild exaggeration with serious consequences is against everything they stand for as a profession. So forget about history and destiny and the divine will. You are at the helm of the Exxon Valdez and it is headed for the shoals. You can't afford to daydream about future decades.


http://www.juancole.com/2005/11/us-air-power-to-replace-infantry-in.html

[understandinglife]

34. Superb article. Thank you!!

Peace.