The Bush Administration
Posted at 11:31pm on Jun. 16, 2008 "Bush Lied!
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
Er . . . no, he didn't:
. . . in spite of all the accusations of White House "manipulation" -- that it pressured intelligence analysts into connecting Hussein and Al Qaeda and concocted evidence about weapons of mass destruction -- administration critics continually demonstrate an inability to distinguish making claims based on flawed intelligence from knowingly propagating falsehoods.
In 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a report acknowledging that it "did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments." The following year, the bipartisan Robb-Silberman report similarly found "no indication that the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."
Contrast those conclusions with the Senate Intelligence Committee report issued June 5, the production of which excluded Republican staffers and which only two GOP senators endorsed. In a news release announcing the report, committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV got in this familiar shot: "Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation into war under false pretenses."
Yet Rockefeller's highly partisan report does not substantiate its most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that "top administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11." Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al Qaeda links were "substantiated by intelligence information." The same goes for claims about Hussein's possession of biological and chemical weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons program.
Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war critics, old and newfangled, still don't get that a lie is an act of deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats wish to contend they were "misled" into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.
In 2003, top Senate Democrats -- not just Rockefeller but also Carl Levin, Clinton, Kerry and others -- sounded just as alarmist. Conveniently, this month's report, titled "Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information," includes only statements by the executive branch. Had it scrutinized public statements of Democrats on the Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees -- who have access to the same intelligence information as the president and his chief advisors -- many senators would be unable to distinguish their own words from what they today characterize as warmongering.
It is nice to see that James Kirchick--and Roger Kimball--are pushing back against the dishonest "Bush Lied!" meme. But it bears pointing out that all of the information Kirchick laid out in his piece has been and continues to be available to a vast journalistic and Blogospheric realm. The failure of others to note and acknowledge the facts that Kirchick devastatingly lays out is a failure to respect truth itself. Indeed, the propagators of the "Bush Lied!" meme are behaving as dishonestly as they accuse the White House of having behaved.
Posted in Pre-War Intelligence | The Bush Administration | War — Comments (4)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:54am on Jun. 16, 2008 Ignore the Court
By Mark I
Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling in the consolidated cases of Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v. United States for the first time grants foreign-born enemy combatants of the United States, captured on the battlefield in the process of planning or participating in attacks against U.S. targets, the right to challenge the circumstances of their detention in federal court. It is difficult to overestimate the impact that this ruling will have on the prosecution of the war on terror and, indeed, all future armed conflicts. The specter of American troops Mirandizing enemy combatants on the battlefield, or being called back from the front to testify in civilian court about the manner that a prisoner was captured, and the practical impossibility each of those outcomes would present to the U.S. military, should trouble every American who is concerned about the nation’s safety.
President Bush, reacting almost immediately to the Court’s decision, said that his Administration, “would abide,” with the ruling, adding, “That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.” He spoke too soon, and did not go far enough. For the reasons cited above, and others, he should ignore this decision of the Court, and continue to apply the Military Commissions Act of 2006 as duly passed into law by Congress.
Read on...
Posted in detainees | Guantanamo | military tribunals | Supreme Court | terrorists | The Bush Administration | War — Comments (50) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:00pm on Jun. 10, 2008 Federal Jobs Illegal Immigrants Can’t Do
The President Gets It. Better Late Than Never
By Mark I
President Bush modified an Executive Order from the Clinton Administration yesterday to effectively bar illegal immigrants from working jobs on the Federal dole. All Federal contractors will now have to register for the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify program and check the status of all their workers and subcontractors’ workers before starting work on Federal contracts.
The E-Verify program is the bane of civil liberties and open borders groups because it uses the Social Security Administration’s database to actually cross check the often times fraudulent or stolen numbers provided by illegal immigrants on their employment applications. A Federal Court in San Francisco, natch, blocked part of Homeland Security’s program in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the San Francisco Labor Council, and the strange political bedfellows of the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That ruling, issued by Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer’s brother Judge Charles Breyer, has prevented the Social Security Administration from sending out over 140,000 “no match” letters to employers. The letters would have required employers to take steps to verify their employees’ identities within 90 days or else fire the workers.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said at the time that the ruling did not amount to a “holiday from law enforcement,” and that the Administration would do, “as much administratively as we can, within the boundaries of existing law,” to continue to crackdown on illegal immigration. The president rightfully took a lot of criticism from the right for his backing of the Senate’s disastrous “comprehensive” immigration bill, and many have been skeptical of the Administration’s stepped up enforcement of illegal immigration laws in the wake of that compromise’s failure in Congress. Sen. McCain, too, a champion of the Senate bill, professes to have seen the light on illegal immigration and now calls for securing the border before taking up any immigration bill. Yesterday’s move to secure federally contracted jobs for American workers is evidence that the Administration does get it, and is another huge victory for opponents of the comprehensive approach to immigration reform. Sen. McCain can show that he gets it too by pledging not to alter or rescind the order if elected.
Posted in illegal immigration | Immigration | John McCain | President Bush | The Bush Administration — Comments (12)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:36pm on Dec. 21, 2007 In Which We Are Reminded That The President Is, Indeed, Relevant
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
Just over a year ago, a chastened President Bush acknowledged that his party had taken a "thumping" in the congressional elections, and he greeted the new Democratic majority at the weakest point of his presidency.
But since then, Democrats in Congress have taken a thumping of their own as Bush has curbed their budget demands, blocked a cherished children's health initiative, stalled the drive to withdraw troops from Iraq and stymied all efforts to raise taxes.
Read on . . .
Posted in Congress | Congress | The Bush Administration — Comments (4)/ Email this page » / Read More »
