What?! . . .

C

CuriousGene

Supreme Allied Commander
Registered Senior Member
I can't believe not enough people in Congress are up in arms regarding how Bush is going to hand-pick the WMD panel. Talk about a further degradation of confidence and trust with the American people. An independent panel hand-picked by Bush himself? I can't believe this because Bush is one of the main figures the American people want to hold accountable for misleading us. I don't understand why more people in Congress have not spoken up against this undermining of American trust in our own White House. Oh but wait, Bush did consult some unnamed members of Congress . . . yes, I feel the warm welcome of trust already. I mean, did he even consult anyone in Congress???! This reminds me of the 2 year old, err I mean 10 year old, that Bush spoke of in his state of the union address.

Here's something that Daschle did say:

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, questioned the president's description of the commission.


"I think that it is important for us to have an independent commission, as I've said now on several occasions, but it truly should be independent," Daschle said.


"It sounds as if the president is going to call for one where he gets to appoint each of the members and dictate the design and ultimately the circumstances under which they do their work."
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Well, when Bush still has a 50%+ approval rating after all the bad things he has done, what do you expect? There’s no public accounting of Iraqi oil either; I don’t see anyone clamoring for that. Half the people are either beneficiaries or ignorant, the other half is shell-shocked into submission.
 
zanket said:
Well, when Bush still has a 50%+ approval rating after all the bad things he has done, what do you expect? There’s no public accounting of Iraqi oil either; I don’t see anyone clamoring for that. Half the people are either beneficiaries or ignorant, the other half is shell-shocked into submission.
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Yeah, I have to agree, this is all such shit. I can't believe our idiot president has such a high approval rating. Over 50%? Ridiculous. I must be surrounded by the other 50%. I'd like to meet some Republicans some day. :eek:

:m:
 
Clinton did the same thing when he hand picked his panel to investigate his screwing around with his suckrataries if you recall and did you say anything about that?
 
Call me crazy, but if I'm the boss and I'm trying to see how one of my supervisors screwed up.... I'd probably want to hand pick the people who investigate it so I can be sure I can trust them, etc.

I'd think that pretty obvious to a clear thinking individual. If you can't see it, I wonder why? Is it that you're not a clear thinker? It's probably not that you're blinded by your hatred of the president.
 
If I'm the boss and directed my underlings to lie.... I'd probably want to hand pick the people who investigate it so I can be sure of the outcome.

Actually I think Bush didn’t lie. He just used the old trick of kings. In earshot of your ambitious staff say, “Oh, who can help me with the Iraq dilemma? If only he was making nukes...”
 
You mean like the Warren commission that was appointed by the Democrats back in the 60's?
 
Wes, the problem with your take on this is that the president himself will need to be a subject in the investigation, so of course he is going to be the one who icks the panel, because that way he can get people who owe him their jobs. Remember when he put Kissinger on that panel he (finally) appointed to investigate 9/11 intelligence failures? Why was there no outcry about him appointing the worlds foremost authority on covering up executive misdeeds to that panel?
 
SpyMoose said:
Wes, the problem with your take on this is that the president himself will need to be a subject in the investigation
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Why? This investigation isn't about him. I thought it's about the intelligence community. My take on this is that he as the president, needs to see why our intelligenc gathering system is broken. If that is the case, he has no need to investigate himself.

so of course he is going to be the one who icks the panel because that way he can get people who owe him their jobs.
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This doesn't make any sense to me. You mean if he's a corrupt piece of shit then he wants to have his way with the information? If so I disagree with your assumption. He seems like a generally decent guy (especially as far as politicians go).

Sadly on top of the real world type of "down to business" approach that I condone, there are political considerations in this scenario. He's gotta do whatever he thinks is right bent to the "maximize this political opportunity" direction. Politics makes me sick. Seems like the ultimate catch 22.
 
Bush: Electable?

It's worth noting, on Bush's approval rating, that pundits are now looking to two poll results and discussing how they measure up in terms of approval. One result shows that Kerry could beat Bush in a head-to-head, 53 - 46. Another shows that Edwards, while still inside the margin of error, could do the same at 49 - 46. While I'm always happy to see a poll number supporting my preferred candidate (e.g. Edwards) I was struck for a moment last night while a CNN pundit (I can't remember which) went on about these poll results suggesting that Bush's approval rating could be below 50% (and no president with an approval above 50% has ever lost) come election day.

These are the first indications we have that the Bush junta is vulnerable. And it's still as much speculation as before. Intuitively, I know the Bush junta is vulnerable, but seeing the ripples on the pond is a bit comforting, no matter how unreliable such statistics are.

Notes around -

Cosmictraveler - Clinton? You're kidding, right? As to the Warren commission? I think the fact that so many folks won't just let JFK die reinforces the point of why such investigative bodies need to be more independent.

Wes - You're not crazy, but it is a question of conflict of interest.

SpyMoose - We chuckled about Kissinger here at Sciforums. And a few pundits did. Why was there no outcry? Because it supported the war wagon, which is what 3/4 of Americans apparently wanted.

In general - I'm learning a lesson of late. It's not that I've made any magical arguments during this period, but I'm watching a close friend, a lifelong Republican, undergoing the last phase of his disengagement from a GOP worldview.

He, like me, shares a childhood memory of a time when even suggesting that the US could come to something like this, a combination of corporate crime, suspect leadership, and intrusive government was considered offensive and grossly overstating the negative aspects of America. It took twenty years to get from A to Z on this one.

And through the war my friend would have said something akin to Dennis Miller's praise of Bush: he's a nice guy, a smart guy, who has been dealt a bad hand.

These days he's starting to wonder if maybe that bad hand isn't part of an ill-conceived plan to stack the deck. To both of us, the difference between what President Bush told Americans--and also what Secretary Powell told the UN--and the failure to find significant evidence of WMD threats is ... well, I can hear my father, or any number of people's fathers I knew, echoing in my mind: "My God, you must really think people are stupid. What's wrong with you? Do you really think that we're all so goddamned stupid that someone could just walk in and do that? Thanks a lot. It's nice to know how much you think of me."

My father, incidentally, woke up a few years ago cold-sweating the realization that yes, the people really are that stupid. It was commerce and economy that broke him. The WMD issue didn't surprise him because, well, he finally figured out that yes, people really are that stupid.

And it's not that they're stupid because they bit, hook, line, and sinker. Not by any means. Such a disparity between the intel and the apparent reality was inconceivable. Insane. Rather like saying, "Wait 'til next week when Jesus gets here and gives us His two cents on the situation." Right. It ain't gonna happen.

But if it does ...? Paint me pink and call me Pontius.

Rather, the stupidity comes from a childlike faith.

What blows my mind is that it's somehow indecent to suggest that Bush is a liar. I mean, that's part of what's at stake with this investigation. Only a couple of the pundits are reminding people, as Tenet's name takes some heat, that the intelligence community did protest the treatment of their work. The issue could still be with Bush.

And for all of the convenient "mistakes" the Bush administration has made, for all the informational inaccuracies that are apparently anybody's fault but the administration's, that by happy accident pander exactly to the administration's political needs and desires, it is still somehow indecent to suggest that President Bush is being dishonest?

Our politicians are snakes. We know this. Americans don't ever stop bitching about politicians. And what, because this man is the President, he's suddenly exempt from what has been known about politicians since Aristophanes' time at least?

In a mythical rendering of life and its symbols, my last transmission to humanity, from somewhere out on the rim of the solar system, will come as I look back toward my home and gasp, "My God, it's full of dolts ...."

I seriously don't get it. It's not like death and carnage is that much of a party, anyway. This administration is corrupt, it is demonstrably dishonest, it has found new ways to besmirch the office of the Presidency, it has pissed on American prestige and credibility, and all to pander to cronies.

But it's not Bush's fault. The intelligence community screwed up. Or it's media conspiracy. Or the Democrats. Or Saddam Hussein. Or homosexuals. Anyone, please, but blaming the Bush administration.

Or so it seems.

Bring me Rumsfeld. Bring me Bush. Bring me Cheney. Powell, Rice, and the rest can walk for all I care. Bring me the big three on a platter and lock them away as America's shame until the last breath dances free of their cowardly, lying lips and I will say that we've got a decent start toward justice.

But I understand. Given an administration that lies regularly with stunningly little cover, given an administration that panders to its cronies, given an administration hell-bent on turning the United States into the new Coruscant, I understand that the absolute only fair thing to do is to let those who have done wrong pick their own jury and determine the scope of the trial. That way, a serial child molester could have some friends censure him for thinking dirty thoughts about children, and thinking isn't illegal.

Indeed, I understand. Allowing someone with a massive vested interest to determine the scope and nature of an inquiry that conflicts with that vested interest is the only fair way to do it, isn't it?

Welcome to America. Please check your brain at the door.
 
I think the man should get the goddamn benefit of the doubt. If he is interested in doing is his job, he wants to fix the intelligence community. As such, part of his job is to appoint a commitee to figure out what the actual problem is, or you'll never be able to solve it. If I were him, I would do it myself or only allow someone who I trust to do it, or someone known to be nuetral. Considering the potential political ramifications, you gotta make a call as to which is the lesser evil: Pick them myself and take the criticism, or let someone else pick them and see how they can twist it against me.

If you know you didn't do anything wrong, and you know how sick and twisted all deez washington bitches be, which way do you go? Personally, i make the call to do it myself as at least that way I know what I'm facing. Put it in the hands of a potential enemy and you don't know how it can be spun.

*shrug*

I do agree there is a conflict of interest, but in this case I don't think there is a fair way to resolve it. If you give the benefit of the doubt (which is a stretch for many people I realize), then the conflict of interest is resolved. I have yet to see that he is as much of a snake as most of the washington regulars.
 
We must also remember that Bush has already accepted responsibility for the errors. Admittedly, most people missed it because he also launched his anti-gay crusade during the same news conference, a great Rove sleight of hand that everyone seems to have missed. It was a good move politically; I can give credit where credit is due.

But this administration resists all questions. Cheney, who allegedly has nothing to fear (?!), hides from an inquiry to determine the relationship between the energy policy and the crooks at Enron who wrote the memo that became the bulk of the policy? Powell presents false evidence to the UN? Bush cites ridiculously false evidence in a State of the Union address? I posted a topic recently about answering the question you wish you were asked. This is a fundamental principle of the Rove politik.

In allowing a reticent administration to establish a process whereby it will only address the issues that serve its political needs in such a context as to advance or secure the political position, we essentially concede that we do not wish the issues to be addressed directly.

One of the things that finally broke me when I last worked was an incident in which I could not force our mailroom to undertake security procedures--a simple task of walking down the hall and saying, "Boss, we have a problem"--in response to a suspicious box arriving at the height of terror-related mail concerns.

Two days later, the issue broke open when a boss asked, "What's this box?" Our entire administrative services department was shut down for the rest of the afternoon as, believe it or not, people from three separate offices gathered together in the hallway outside our mailroom forty-five minutes later, and held a meeting about what to do next.

For the next three days I did little but write memos explaining the chronology of the incident. Apparently, because I'm the trainer, some eight months into someone else's job, I'm held to answer for it.

So how do you explain that the actual handling of packages is not your job? How do you explain that you advised the staff on how to handle the package? How do you explain that all they had to do was walk fifteen feet down to another person's cube and say, "We have a package that we don't know how to handle"? How do you explain that the guy walked straghtaway down to that cube? How do you explain that you have no idea what took place in that discussion? How do you explain that you've been told it's taken care of? How do you explain that as the situation breaks to critical, you're told that nothing was done because, "I didn't want to cause a bunch of excitement. I mean, look at this, we're shutting down ...." How do you explain that you're so sick of these guys' incompetence that you're intentionally not following up on this situation in order to force them to do something right for once? How do you explain the relevance that all those other folks complaining about the way you're doing your job are right because you're wasting so much time trying to carry these two?

You don't. This incident went beyond job description. With knowledge comes responsibility, so I ended up taking heat for other people's incompetence. The only reason I wasn't fired was because of that mysterious conversation right after I told the guy to go initiate the process through that person. I had reasonable cause to presume that he was following my advice, but in the end I was never told what that conversation was about, just that it had nothing to do with any mysterious box.

So look at my position. Is it really right that I, who has the utmost stake in what happens as a result of determining what already happened, am writing the definitive report as to what happened?

And that's how I see Bush's position. It comes down to a sort of Ronald Reagan situation. Okay, Mr. Reagan, I understand that you were somehow out of the loop, but ... given how many of your staffers broke laws, and given how little you knew about it, what are we to think of your authority as the nation's executive?

Consider, for instance, the argument in defense of the administration, "Everybody thought they had weapons."

Well, who exactly was the intel point? The US. The British. If everybody's using Coalition intelligence that is faulty, well ... much like I see it with my fellow Americans, I'm not sure I blame "everybody" for accepting it. To imagine this degree of inaccuracy before this was nearly blasphemous. It was nearly impossible to seriously imagine this big of a blunder.

I heard a pundit reflect ... last night, I think ... something about, "We were told what weapons, where they were, and how many ... and they weren't." It's a fair point.

And what of 9/11? It's only under political pressure that Bush has backed the recommendation to extend the investigative commission's deadline. And think of it ... as the suggestion is that the Bush administration is the reason the commission is behind schedule, McClellan responds that, "We have been providing unprecedented cooperation." A great line, especially in an unprecedented investigation.

All politicians deceive. This is well-known. Comparatively, I find it odd that people should have wanted to hang Clinton for getting off while we should be giving Bush the benefit of the doubt in the face of warfare, pretext, and reality.

But even without the comparative: All politicians deceive. What about Bush breaks this pattern and invokes an unprecedented benefit of the doubt?

Daschle voiced the concern, noted in the topic post:
"It sounds as if the president is going to call for one where he gets to appoint each of the members and dictate the design and ultimately the circumstances under which they do their work." (CNN)
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There's a difference between saying, "Joe, figure out what went wrong," and, "Charlie, answer these ten questions for me, and nothing more."

Obviously, I think Bush has squandered the benefit of the doubt from before he took office. And with me, he does get some benefit of the doubt back if, at any point, the pattern that disgusts me so breaks. But right now it's like a simple rhythm section in a bad pop song, you know what comes next because you've heard it a thousand times before. The benefit of the doubt is given on an open consideration, but it is at this time, as I see it, counterintuitive.
 
Food for thought: " mey and bobay joe here support tha president "

if you live in a city or a more or less area where democrats party/values
are more liked do not equate that with others who live in republican/party/value
ares. Such as the west , midwest, south. If you feel everyone around you
wants him out of office that dont' mean people around in boise, idaho feel the
same way.
 
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