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An Amazing Time for Revelations!
Carl Jeffers
Over the last week to ten days, all of us have been treated to some of the most astounding series of revelations and statements that we have heard from any Administration within a similar period of time. Although the President’s approval ratings continue to drop, the administration is still lucky that some of these statements and revelations have remained somewhat below the radar screen for many Americans.
But with so many of these statements within such a short period of time, the questions is - how long before the luck runs out?
The series of events commenced with the President’s press conference that was stunning in its content. Let’s examine some of the President’s statements. First, President Bush said that “we got the Patriot Act passed over the objection of the Democrat leadership in the Senate” - WRONG! That statement is simply untrue. Democrats didn’t hold up passage of the Patriot Act - Republicans did. In fact, Democrats didn’t have enough power or votes to hold it up. It was the concerns and reservations of Republicans that held up the Patriot Act, including their own James Sensenbrenner ® Ohio, who vetoed the 90 day extension Democrats and Republicans had compromised on and insisted on only a 30 day extension. The President’s statement seems intended only to play the “patriotism card” again, on a subject the President has insisted should be spared any partisan political jockeying. And then there’s Katrina and the 11,000 trailers in Oklahoma that were needed in New Orleans. The President said “I told Chertoff to do something with them.” Are you kidding me? Chertoff (Director - Homeland Security), needs an order to do something with them. Let’s see. We have 12,000 people being evicted from hotels in the Gulf region, and we have 11,000 unused available trailers sitting idly by in another state just needing to be transported. You do the math. That is not leadership.
As to Iraq, the President said “Every war plan looks good on paper until you meet the enemy.” Our problem was that we didn’t even have a plan on paper for the aftermath of the invasion or for the implementation of the goals of our military action - goals which we seem to change every week. The President also said “THEY want to hit us again.” But THEY didn’t hit us the first time. The people we are fighting in Iraq, and indeed, their former leader, Saddam Hussein, had nothing to do with hitting us on 9/11, and I defy anyone now to explain how the war in Iraq is going after the “people who brought down the buildings” on 9/11 - the people who the President said would hear from “all of us soon.” And to wrap up the press conference, the President said it “would be up to the next President” to determine when the troops would come home - he also passed on the budget deficit problem to the next President to solve as well. It should come as no surprise that many would surmise that this information would have been even more helpful had it been revealed prior to the 2004 Presidential election.
Days later, the announcement was made that Andrew Card, the President’s Chief of Staff, would be leaving as a response to constant demands, mostly from within Republican and conservative ranks, for a shake-up in the Administration. But Andrew Card didn’t send troops to Iraq, didn’t respond or fail to respond to Katrina, and didn’t manage the Dubai Ports deal. What’s more, rather than bringing in outside new blood, the President is replacing him with Joshua Bolton, an insider at the White House perhaps as close to the President as Card.
Now we hear rumors that press secretary Scott McClellan and Treasury Secretary John Snow may be leaving. McClellan presents the same problem as Andrew Card, being primarily a decision defender rather than a decision maker. Now as to John Snow, his leaving won’t make much difference as he seems to have disappeared a year ago Christmas and hasn’t been heard from since.
Next, we learn that the day the Supreme Court decided the 2000 Presidential election in favor of the Bush campaign, Dick Cheney called William Cohen, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, and told Cohen he wanted a “briefing on one country and one country only. I want to know what’s going on in Iraq and I don’t care about anywhere else.” As I have said for two years, Iraq was on the neo-cons’ agenda long before 9/11 and 9/11 moved it to the front page.
Then, we learned that in a January 2003 meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, the President indicated that he was “determined to invade Iraq without a second resolution” (which he promised to get) and regardless of the findings of the UN Weapons Inspection Team (which he was prepared to ignore). Furthermore, he even suggested sending a plane up with UN ensignia on it hoping Saddam would shoot it down to give us a publicly justifiable excuse to invade Iraq. And the President gave Tony Blair our invasion date, even before Colin Powell made his presentation to the UN designed to present a last chance for Saddam to avoid war - under the circumstances a rather tall order. And this past weekend, Sec of State Condoleeza Rice acknowledged that we “have made thousands of tactical mistakes” in the war in Iraq, and as General Tony Zinni promptly pointed out on Meet The Press, “tactical mistakes are mistakes made by military personnel,” what we made were “strategic mistakes,” which are made by the leaders of the government.
And for breaking news, Rep Tom Delay has announced he will resign his House seat by mid-June rather than “allow liberal Democrats to steal the seat.” His reference to someone else “stealing” suggests he hasn’t read his own indictment as clearly as he might have.
And Republicans want to build a 700 mile wall along the border to keep out immigrants. But since Americans don’t want these jobs, we’ll have to hire illegal immigrants to build the wall to keep them out. No wonder most Americans think the country is on the wrong track.
The list goes on, but I think you get the idea. In fact, the best way to sum all of this up is to quote the suggested fall campaign theme for the Democrats that was made not by Ted Kennedy, not by Nancy Pilosi, and not by Howard Dean - No, this suggested theme came from none other than Newt Gingrich - HAD ENOUGH?