Legacy Of Ashes

The Bush Legacy Project is off to a rough start. Despite a fresh set of talking points and a round of gauzy interviews, the public doesn't want a damn thing to do with this guy anymore. What has been done cannot be undone.

While the public is giving Obama a nice honeymoon, it’s finalizing its divorce from President Bush. A whopping 79% in the poll say they’re not going to miss him when he leaves office. That’s compared with 55% who said the same of Clinton in December of 2000. Moreover, almost half (48%) think that Bush will go down as one of the worst presidents in our history. Just 18% said that of Clinton and only 6% said that of Bush 41. But Bush 43 isn’t the only Republican who has taken a hit in the new NBC/WSJ poll. Dick Cheney leaves office with sporting an all-time low in his personal rating. And the Republican Party’s fav/unfav is 27%-52%, which is its lowest rating ever in the poll (by comparison, the Democratic Party’s is nearly reversed, 49%-28%).

The hubris of these people, thinking they can throw around a bunch of shady facts and figures and bamboozle the public into loving George Bush again. That ship has sailed. People may not know every single outrageous assault on the dignity of this nation perpetrated over the past eight years, but they certainly have a sense of the broad strokes - the failed wars, the economic collapse, the destruction of at least one American city (and Detroit is on the brink). Not to mention that there's no contrition or even connection to current world events in these Bush "exit interviews." They are as devoid of humanity as they are of substance. Ezra Klein had a good piece on this in the LA Times.

Asked to reveal what would surprise us most about his presidency, Bush replied that "every day has been pretty joyous." That is indeed surprising. Asked if Barack Obama's victory wasn't a repudiation of Bush's presidency, Bush allowed that some people may have voted for Obama in reaction to his presidency, but overall, "most people voted for Barack Obama because they decided they wanted him to be in their living room for the next four years explaining policy."

The most galling answer, however, came when Gibson asked if Bush had any regrets. "The biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq," he said, entirely in the passive voice. "A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington, D.C., during the debate on Iraq. ... I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess." In other words, Bush did not let the American people down. The intelligence community let Bush -- and, let's not forget, lots of others -- down.

Nixon decided to give the country closure. That meant sacrificing the comfort of hiding behind partisanship, and it meant admitting the failures of his presidency. To date, Bush shows no such inclination. And on this, he retains agency. Conflicting evaluations of his presidency will simply collide in the postmodern thunderdome of contemporary partisanship. "I don't spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history," he said to Gibson. "I guess I don't worry about long-term history, either, since I'm not going to be around to read it." Then he laughed, even though it wasn't very funny.

See, Nixon, in his Shakesperian way, admitted his crimes. Bush gave a medal to Chuck Colson.

Actually, to me the Condi Rice interview on NPR was even more galling, considering that she had the nerve to offer a defense of the Administration on torture:

Q: And Guantanamo wasn’t sort of the only issue that tarnished the U.S. image. There is also the treatment of terror suspects, waterboarding, other methods of torture or –

RICE: Well, you know that I’m going to have to object, because the United States has always kept to its international obligations, which include international obligations on the Convention on Torture. The United States, the President, was determined after September 11th to do everything that was legal and within those obligations, international and domestic laws, to make sure that we prevented a follow-on attack.

They keep insisting that the ends justify the means, that the only focus in the minds of the top officials in the Administration was to "keep the country safe," and thus they had to commit the war crimes. At the same time, they try to pin the abuse on a "few bad apples," saying their actions are inconsistent with the comportment of the United States in meeting its international obligations.

The two statements are incompatible.

The physical and mental abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was the direct result of Bush administration detention policies and should not be dismissed as the work of bad guards or interrogators, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Thursday.

The Senate Armed Services Committee report concludes that harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA and the U.S. military were directly adapted from the training techniques used to prepare special forces personnel to resist interrogation by enemies that torture and abuse prisoners. The techniques included forced nudity, painful stress positions, sleep deprivation, and until 2003, waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning [...]

Administration officials publicly blamed the abuses on low-level soldiers-- the work ''of a few bad apples.'' Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., called that ''both unconscionable and false.''

''The message from top officials was clear; it was acceptable to use degrading and abusive techniques against detainees,'' Levin said.

Arizona Republican and former prisoner of war Sen. John McCain, called the link between the survival training and U.S. interrogations of detainees inexcusable.

''These policies are wrong and must never be repeated,'' he said in a statement.

(That's right, man of honor and integrity John McCain popped up on this one. He has no right to say a word about it.)

And I should add, if the epitaph for the Bush Administration, so we are told, is "he kept us safe" (I guess every President has a 9-month mulligan on that), how can this be reconciled?

The military ignored steps before the invasion of Iraq that could have prevented the staggering number of casualties from roadside bombs, the Pentagon's acting inspector general charged Tuesday.

The IG's report says that the military knew years before the war that mines and homemade bombs, which the military calls "improvised explosive devices," would be a "threat . . . in low-intensity conflicts" and that "mine-resistant vehicles" were available.

"Yet the military did not develop requirements for, fund or acquire" safer vehicles, the report says. The military invaded Iraq in 2003 "without having taken available steps to acquire technology to mitigate the known mine and IED risk to soldiers and Marines."

Even after the war was under way, as the devices began taking a deadly toll and field commanders pressed for vehicles that were better protected from roadside bombs, the Pentagon was slow to act, the report says.

People may not know all the details, but they're very clear on their feelings. The Bush Legacy Project mirrors the Bush Presidency Project: a failure. That's not accountability, of course, and unless we start sending some people to jail these criminals will return like zombies to feast upon the body politic. The Bush reign isn't even over and some of his favorite Democrats are calling to retain all of his intelligence officials, which is disturbing beyond the point of reason.

I think we need our own "Legacy Project" to fill in the details and make sure this never happens again. The public is on our side and willing to listen.

Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) calls Feingold bill "a bullet right in the hearts of our troops"

This is exactly why Russ Feingold was so prescient in pushing the Iraq debate forward today; because the batshit insane Republicans will give a million commercials' worth of soundbites that will show their callousness, stupidity, and tone-deafness on this issue. We've already extracted at least two today. Here's the first.

Speaking about a Democratic proposal to force Iraq troop withdrawal within 120 days, Hutchison said Tuesday that such a proposal would "put a bullet right in the hearts of our troops who are there."

Really?

I think what puts a bullet right in the hearts of our troops are... bullets. Bullets shot by Iraqi insurgents. Bullets shot by Shiite militia. Bullets that have killed nearly 4,000 Americans. Bullets that could have been stopped by the body armor that she voted against providing those troops.

"Poor choice of words from a senator who voted against providing our troops with the body armor needed to stop bullets in the first place," said Rodell Mollineau, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Indeed, Reid's office was quick with the oppo research, producing a 2003 vote in which Hutchison joined other Republican senators to kill an amendment that would have provided $322 million for body armor and other equipment while reducing funds for Iraq reconstruction.

Get this, Hutchinson's office is spinning that she meant to say "bulls-eye". Which is of course, better. It's better to metaphorically target a troop for murder than to do the actual metaphorical killing yourself, you see.

This isn't even the only slip of the lip of the day. Huckleberry Graham, who has repeatedly pronounced that the Iraqi government would be reconciling its disparate factions any day now, has now claimed the job is done:

Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) returned this week from a trip to Iraq and was “brimming with optimism.” This morning on Fox News, Graham said he wishes Washington would be more like Baghdad:

"The truth is that political reconciliation in Iraq is going better there than it is here at home because of better security."

So, does Graham really want Washington to function more like Baghdad? Does he want to see one political faction assassinating the other’s officials? Politically-linked murders of judicial investigators, doctors, and politicians? Sectarian bombings of civilians trying to freely practice their religion?

I always wonder if that makes the Republicans the Shi'a or the Sunni in that scenario.

The point here is that Republicans somehow think this kind of talk bolsters their case on Iraq, when in fact they are completely out of touch. As an example, hundreds of American troops are dead because Congress and this Administration failed to do their job to provide equipment like armored vehicles in a timely manner. And those who want to pull us out of this nightmare, which at best will be a quagmire based on the input of all the experts, the ones interested in ending this occupation are the ones shooting a bullet into the hearts of the troops? This is was passes for the Republican side of this debate?

In that case, let's have this debate every day from now until November.

And The War Machine Rolls On

Wow, he admitted it. Bush basically agreed that his war is a Works Progress Administration laundered through the defense industry.

CURRY: You don’t agree with that? It has nothing do with the economy, the war — spending on the war?

BUSH: I don’t think so. I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs…because we’re buying equipment, and people are working. I think this economy is down because we built too many houses and the economy’s adjusting.

This isn't untrue at all. The bloated, outsized defense budget is being propped up by wars and threats of wars. It's how the Air Force can claim that $144 billion is not enough of a budget and that they need more for things like "dorm furnishings". If members of Congress object they want us to lose the war on terror. The Air Force can ask for more F-22 fighter jets because they can fearmonger about the threat of "emerging powers" like China, which is simply nuts, and simply a way to justify a weapons system that is absolutely unnecessary.

There is virtually no check on the war machine. The perfect example is the Bush Administration announcing a crackdown on contractor abuse with a loophole so big you can drive a Naval carrier group through it.

A Bush administration plan to crack down on contract fraud has a multibillion-dollar loophole: The proposal to force companies to report abuse of taxpayer money will not apply to work overseas, including projects to secure and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.

For decades, contractors have been asked to report internal fraud or overpayment on government-funded projects. Compliance has been voluntary, and over the past 15 years the number of company-reported fraud cases has declined steadily.

Now, the Justice Department wants to force companies to notify the government if they find evidence of contract abuse of more than $5 million. Failure to comply could make a company ineligible for future government work.

The proposed rules, which are in the final approval stages, specifically exempt "contracts to be performed outside the United States," according to a notice published last month in the Federal Register.

There are some hardcore regulations!

It's not that the military doesn't require funding and equipment, especially after years of war. It's that the expenditures are completely misplaced, going to contractors who police themselves and outdated weapons systems instead of what the troops need to save their lives.

Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes.

The study, written by a civilian Marine Corps official and obtained by The Associated Press, accuses the service of "gross mismanagement" that delayed deliveries of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks for more than two years.

We've known that MRAP vehicles are a priority for quite a while now. I don't know if it's not cost-effective or what. The point is that the war machine is self-sustaining. And as you can see from the Speaker of the House's criticisms of the Bush budget, this is a bipartisan problem. There are enough defense contractors spread around virtually every district in the country to give members of Congress a self-interest in keeping the status quo. The Republicans go on and on about government waste and earmarks (not the President's own earmarks, mind you), the Democrats talk about misplaced priorities, but that defense budget is sacrosanct. And until we change that dynamic, the bill we give to our children and grandchildren will not be substantially smaller.

Following the Money In Iraq

I recall Joe Biden staking his entire vote to fund the war in Iraq on the fact that we had to get these mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles to the troops to save lives. I wonder if he'll have anything to say about this:

U.S. troops in Iraq will receive at least 1,000 fewer special armored vehicles than expected this year due to the amount of time needed for shipment, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the Defense Department expected defense contractors to produce 3,900 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles this year. But only 1,500 would make it to the war zone -- down from the Pentagon's previous shipment target of 2,500 to 3,000.

"If we could get 1,500 to theater by the end of this year, that would be a positive development," Morrell said [...]

Morrell said it takes about 50 days to equip and ship a finished MRAP into the war zone. That includes 15 days for equipping and 35 for transport by ship.

This boggles the mind. During World War II we had a tank rolling off of the assembly lines by the tens of thousands. Today's military can't manage to get 1,500 into the theater of operations NEARLY FIVE YEARS after the beginning of war. This is a direct result of the horrible consequences of privatization, which contrary to popular belief creates plenty of corruption, as human greed and lax regulation creates a cocktail of waste and fraud.

A U.S. Army captain was charged on Thursday with accepting a $50,000 bribe to steer military contracts in Iraq, prosecutors said.

Austin Key, 27, of Watertown, N.Y., was stationed in Baghdad as a field ordering officer and oversaw the administration of service and supply contracts awarded by the U.S. Army worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Prosecutors accuse Key of demanding $125,000 from the owner of a business in order to protect the company's ability to win future contracts.

This happens in every war, but we have had practically no oversight for the majority of this conflict. And the people who bear the real brunt of that are our soldiers in the field, still waiting for the equipment that could protect them while the contractors get rich.

The Only Things You Should Read On Memorial Day

• Andrew J. Bacevich offers an example of the lost art of elegy, writing a paean to his son, who died in Iraq this month. Bacevich, an anti-war conservative, repeats his arguments against the war in the context of his son's honorable service. It's an angry letter, but one that perfectly expresses what we all feel these days:

The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people."

To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me. [...]

Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.

Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent. [...]

I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.

It's hard to argue with any of this, depressing and yet piercingly true.

• If you want news of how the occupation of Iraq is making us less safe, read this about the disillusionment of our GIs, who are tired of seeing Iraqi recruits turn into foes, training those that end up trying to kill them later.

The pivotal moment came, he says, this February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.

“I thought: ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.” [...]

“In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war,” said Sgt. First Class David Moore, a self-described “conservative Texas Republican” and platoon sergeant who strongly advocates an American withdrawal. “Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me.”

• Or you can take a look at its impact on international affairs, and how Iraq has become Terrorist U.

The Iraq war, which for years has drawn militants from around the world, is beginning to export fighters and the tactics they have honed in the insurgency to neighboring countries and beyond, according to American, European and Middle Eastern government officials and interviews with militant leaders in Lebanon, Jordan and London.

Some of the fighters appear to be leaving as part of the waves of Iraqi refugees crossing borders that government officials acknowledge they struggle to control. But others are dispatched from Iraq for specific missions. […]

Estimating the number of fighters leaving Iraq is at least as difficult as it has been to count foreign militants joining the insurgency. But early signs of an exodus are clear, and officials in the United States and the Middle East say the potential for veterans of the insurgency to spread far beyond Iraq is significant.

• If you want to know how those benchmarks are going, the answer is not so much:

Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic that member of parliament Husain al-Falluji of the Iraqi Accord Front [Sunni fundamentalist] said Friday that the IAF would never approve the new petroleum law until the constitution is first amended. He said that the party has made a firm decision in this regard.

The Sunnis won't allow an oil law without promised changes to the constitution. The Shiites won't allow any changes to the constitution that gives any more power of theirs to the Sunnis.

Welcome to Iraq!

• If you want to ruminate on the question of who supports the troops, read this:

While President Bush has been busy politically demagoging funding for the troops, CBS Evening News highlighted a disturbing report tonight that the administration waited over a year before acting on a “priority 1 urgent” request to send blast-resistant vehicles to Iraq, the so-called Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles.

Calling it “an outrageous delay,” CBS noted, “The Marines in the field asked for 1,200 MRAPs in February 2005 — but so far, they’ve received less than 100.” The report also noted that the problem is widespread and systemic [...]

In an open letter to President Bush, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) urged the administration to publicly make MRAP production a national priority. He wrote, “How is it possible that with our nation at war, with more than 130,000 Americans in danger, with roadside bombs destroying a growing number of lives and limbs, we were so slow to act to protect our troops? … We need to know how and why this happened so that it does not happen again.”

These vehicles would save the lives of the large percentages of those who die in roadside bomb attacks. During WWII we made a tank a week in this country. We mobilized for the war effort. Today we are comically ignorant of the needs of the soldiers to the point of not caring at all.

• Or if you want to just turn this day over to the soldiers, and think on how their lives were snuffed out in a failed occupation, you can read about the eight that perished over the weekend. Or the faces of all the fallen since the beginning of hostilities.

It's a lot of reading and it's the least you can do.