Bush Broke the Army?

Officials said Casey, who appeared along with Army Secretary Pete Geren, personally requested the public hearing - a highly unusual move that military analysts said underscores his growing concern about the health of the Army, America's primary fighting force.

Casey, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wanted a public forum even though he has ample opportunity to speak to lawmakers in closed-door meetings.

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Bush Quietly Advising Hillary?

UGHH, nausea alert -- very disturbing:

President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president.

In an interview for the new book “The Evangelical President,” White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.’ ”

Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.”

“Especially if it’s a Democrat,” the chief of staff told The Examiner in his West Wing office. “He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”

To that end, the president has been sending advice, mostly through aides, aimed at preventing an abrupt withdrawal from Iraq in the event of a Democratic victory in November 2008.

“It’s different being a candidate and being the president,” Bush said in an Oval Office interview. “No matter who the president is, no matter what party, when they sit here in the Oval Office and seriously consider the effect of a vacuum being created in the Middle East, particularly one trying to be created by al Qaeda, they will then begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy.”

To that end, Bush is institutionalizing controversial anti-terror programs so they can be used by the next president.

“Look, I’d like to make as many hard decisions as I can make, and do a lot of the heavy lifting prior to whoever my successor is,” Bush said. “And then that person is going to have to come and look at the same data I’ve been looking at, and come to their own conclusion.”

As an example, Bush cited his detainee program, which allows him to keep enemy combatants imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay while they await adjudication. Bush is unmoved by endless criticism of the program because he says his successor will need it.

Bush Tries to Lecture World on Human Rights

UNITED NATIONS — President Bush implored the United Nations on Tuesday to recommit itself to restoring human decency by liberating oppressed people and ending famine and disease.

Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly, the president called for renewed efforts to enforce the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a striking point of emphasis for a leader who's widely accused of violating human rights in waging war against terrorism.

Bush didn't mention the U.S. prisons in Afghanistan or at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. practice of holding detainees for years without legal charges or access to lawyers, or the CIA's "rendition" kidnappings of suspects abroad, all issues of concern to human rights activists around the world.

"At first read, it's little more than an exercise in hypocrisy. His words about human rights ring hollow because his credibility is nonexistent," said Curt Goering, the deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA. "The gap between the rhetoric and the actual record is stunning. I can't help but believe many people in the audience were thinking, 'What was this man thinking?' "

Still, some groups, such as the bipartisan One: The Campaign to Make Poverty History, praised Bush for calling for a recommitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Bush Is an Amazingly Big Ass

Bush:

“I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. Military.

“And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad.

“And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like Move-On-Dot-Org — or **more** afraid of irritating them, than they are of irritating the United States military.”

“That was a sorry deal.”

The Cowboy Who Is Scared of Horses

What a freak.

36 Countries with Troops in Iraq?

A clear lie?

ThinkProgress caught Chris Matthews' reaction to President Bush's claim that there are 36 nations with troops on the ground today in Iraq. And we're curious too. What the hell is the president talking about? Which countries are these? There are two countries with a real troop presence in Iraq: the US and the UK. And the Brits make up only a tiny fraction of the overall 'coalition' force. Early on there were Spanish, Italians, Poles and a lot of other countries -- not with a lot of troops but with enough to give some token international participation. But pretty much all of those countries have left now.

The (Non-Conspiracy) Bush 6 Year Post-9/11 Scorecard

Regarding the attacks:

Ignored persistent warnings of an imminent terrorist attack.

Continued reading The Pet Goat and lingered in the classroom after being informed of the attacks.

Went up in Air Force One after having been informed it was a likely target.

Spent the day in a panicky runaround, leaving it to others to reassure and inform a shocked nation.

Later sold photographs of self on same day for purposes of Republican fundraising.

Purposely misled rescue workers and volunteers about the safety of the air quality around Ground Zero.

Declared, like Wyatt Earp, to capture Bin Laden "dead or alive."

Told the rest of the world either they were "with us or against us," like Superman or something ...

Ignored the fact that most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia; pretended they were from Iraq.


Regarding Afghanistan:

Refused the help of NATO.

Squandered numerous opportunities to capture bin Laden, allowing him to escape at Tora Bora and elsewhere.

Opened and maintained a prison at Guantánamo that violated U.S. and international law, branding the United States as a rogue nation.

Rejected a more effective strategy of police work and targeting killings for mass bombings that helped alienate the population.

Allowed the Taliban to regroup and rebuild.

Allowed Al Qaeda to regroup and rebuild.

Allowed heroin production and exports to increase.

Allowed country to lapse back into chaos and threaten nuclear-armed Pakistan.


Regarding America:

Insisted on the right to arrest American citizens and hold them indefinitely without right to habeas corpus, thereby invalidating virtually the entire Constitution.

Kidnapped individuals for the purpose of "rendition" and certain torture, violating national laws at will.

Opened secret torture prisons in former police states and lied about it.

Wiretapped American citizens without warrant or lawful authority.

Monitored the actions of loyal patriotic organizations without warrant or lawful authority.

Attacked patriotism of everyone who questioned mindless path to self-destruction and attacked media sources who informed Americans of the actions of their government as having "blood on their hands."

Set up ineffective, scandal-plagued Department of Homeland Security.

Failed to protect obvious targets like nuclear and chemical power plants, ports, and the like.

Hyped phony arrests of unserious nutcases as victories in war on terrorism.

Refused New York City sufficient funds to protect itself from future attack.



Regarding Iraq:

Lied about evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

Lied about ties to Al Qaeda.

Lied about Iraq's nuclear weapons program.

Lied about infamous "Prague meeting."

Lied about lying about all of it.

Attempted to destroy reputation of loyal government servant, Joe Wilson.

Lied about willingness to fire anyone involved with doing so.

Allowed and probably promoted the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons.

Failed to provide troops with sufficient body armor, vehicular protection.

Insisted on repeated stop-loss orders.

Cut medical spending for wounded veterans, resulting in substandard care for the wounded.

Refused to allow photographs of honored war dead.

Refused to attend funerals of killed soldiers.

Refused to give a military recruitment speech.

Told Americans to go shopping; offered further tax breaks to the wealthy, asking sacrifices of no one but soldiers and their families.

Misled Congress for purposes of securing war authority.

Failed to send sufficient troops for post-invasion occupation.

Failed to heed any postwar planning recommendations.

Failed to ensure restoration of order, post-invasion.

Failed to secure weapons sites, post invasion.

Failed to reach out to population.

Refused to count numbers of civilian dead and wounded.

Failed to set up functional government, police force, etc.

Arrested innocent individuals for the purpose of torture.

Lied, once again, about ties to Al Qaeda.

Failed to re-assess failed strategy, refused to replace incompetent subordinates.

Failed to heed message of 2006 congressional elections to draw down war, escalated it instead.

Failed to heed both Iraqi and U.S. population's repeatedly polled preference for withdrawal.

Squandered sympathy of entire world, drastically sinking global opinion of the United States.

Squandered hundreds of billions -- and, ultimately, trillions -- of dollars, destroying a functioning nation.

Strengthened Iran.

Strengthened Syria.

Strengthened Libya.

Weakened Israel.

Weakened Jordan.

Weakened Egypt.

Killed more than 3,000 Americans.

Wounded nearly 30,000 Americans.

Killed and wounded untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Provided recruitment material for terrorists the world over.

Continually attacked the patriotism of those who suggested alternatives that might have avoided much of the above.

Redoubled "determination," "strength," "grit," etc., every time any of the previous disasters was discovered.


And perhaps most amazingly of all: Got most of the mainstream media to go along with almost all of it ...


Modified slightly from Altercation (added "and lingered in the classroom after being informed of the attacks", moved Guantanamo to the Afghanistan section and added in a line about Abu Ghraib to the Iraq section).

Bush's Bad Day in Australia

While he THINKS he's in charge, it's clear he is not.

AWOL on Iraq Intelligence

Months before the Iraq invasion, President Bush apparently ignored a 2002 Oval Office briefing in which CIA director George Tenet provided the president with intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, according to former Clinton advisor and Salon columnist Sidney Blumenthal.

Reporting in Salon, Blumenthal writes that according to his sources, two former CIA officers,"Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again."

Blumenthal also adds that the intelligence from that day was left out of the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which definitively stated that had WMD.

"The president had no interest in the intelligence," a CIA officer disclosed. "Bush didn't give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up."

"No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq," Blumenthal writes. "The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD."

Completely Delusional on WMD

Bush thought Saddam had WMD as late as July 2006.

Bush Says We're "Kicking Ass" in Iraq

Nice to know the grown-ups are in charge.

Bush Cries A LOT

and other WPE stories-- ""I wouldn't be president if I kept drinking. You get sloppy, can't make decisions, it clouds your reason, absolutely. I still remember the feeling of a hangover, even though I haven't had a drink in twenty years.""

Bush can't recall why Iraqi army disbanded

WASHINGTON -- One of the most heavily criticized actions in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was the decision, barely two months later, to disband the Iraqi army, alienating former soldiers and driving many straight into the ranks of anti-American militant groups.

But excerpts of a new biography of President Bush show him saying that he initially wanted to maintain the Iraqi army and, more surprising, that he cannot recall why his administration decided to disband it.

"The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Bush told biographer Robert Draper in excerpts published in Sunday's New York Times.

Draper pressed Bush to explain why, if he wanted to maintain the army, his chief administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, issued an order in May 2003 disbanding the 400,000-strong army without pay.

"Yeah, I can't remember; I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?' " Bush said, adding: "Again, Hadley's got notes on all this stuff" -- a reference to national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley.

LATimes: The Surge has Failed

BAGHDAD -- The U.S. military buildup that was supposed to calm Baghdad and other trouble spots has failed to usher in national reconciliation, as the capital's neighborhoods rupture even further along sectarian lines, violence shifts elsewhere and Iraq's government remains mired in political infighting.

In the coming days, U.S. military and government leaders will offer Congress their assessment of the 6-month-old plan's results. But a review of statistics on death and displacement, political developments and the impressions of Iraqis who are living under the heightened military presence reaches a dispiriting conclusion.

Despite the plan, which has brought an additional 28,500 U.S. troops to Iraq since February, none of the major legislation that Washington had expected the Iraqi parliament to pass into law has been approved.

The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has increased, not decreased, according to the United Nations' International Organization for Migration and Iraq's Ministry for Displacement and Migration.

Military officials say sectarian killings in Baghdad are down more than 51% and attacks on civilians and security forces across Iraq have decreased. But this has not translated into a substantial drop in civilian deaths as insurgents take their lethal trade to more remote regions.

Worst President Ever

Really, there is no doubt.

It's not that he is dumb, per se, but he has a fatal lack of conscience, a fatal lack of responsibility and seems to be completely incapable of using language appropriate to his position.