Bush on Appearances of Criminal Impropriety

CLAIM:
"What is even more important is the duty of public officials to obey the existing laws, and I'm afraid your own record does not inspire confidence."
- George W. Bush, 3/15/00

FACT:
The President and Vice President have both retained lawyers and have been questioned in a criminal investigation into whether administration officials were involved in “what could be a violation of federal law” when they deliberately leaked the name of a covert CIA operative.
- CBS News, 6/24/04 & 6/05/04; NY Times, 9/29/03

New Report on Cronyism In Iraq

Check out this piece in the American Prospect I co-authored with my good buddy Judd Legum, whom I work with at the Center for American Progress - it details how Bush specifically picked partisan loyalists and corporate cronies (instead of independent investigators) to oversee taxpayer money in Iraq.

Document Destruction

An outrage:

"Military records that could help establish President Bush's whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon...It said the payroll records of "numerous service members," including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. No back-up paper copies could be found, it added in notices dated June 25. The destroyed records cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Mr. Bush's claims of service in Alabama are in question. The disclosure appeared to catch some experts, both pro-Bush and con, by surprise. Even the retired lieutenant colonel who studied Mr. Bush's records for the White House, Albert C. Lloyd of Austin, said it came as news to him...There was no mention of the loss, for example, when White House officials released hundreds of pages of the President's military records last February...Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director who has said that the released records confirmed the president's fulfillment of his National Guard commitment, did not return two calls for a response."
- NY Times, 7/9/04

And if you believe this was just an accident, I've got some real estate to sell you...

Things That Make You Go Hmmm...

Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants, operating from hideouts suspected to be along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, are directing a Qaeda effort to launch an attack in the United States sometime this year. - NY Times, 7/9/04

QUESTION: If this is the case, and we face an imminent threat of a terrorist attack in America, why do we have 140,000 troops in Iraq, and just 13,500 troops in Afghanistan?

A Picture Worth $1.1 Billion?

Check out this picture:

The caption: "US President George W. Bush walks away from a briefing with the media, refusing to answer questions after he was asked about Enron and the reported indictment of former CEO Kenneth Lay, who was a close adviser and fund-raiser for Bush and his father, earning him the presidential nickname of 'Kenny Boy.'"

At least to West Coast consumers, this is picture might be worth at least some of the $1.1 billion Enron bilked from them.

GOP Sinks to a New Low

U.S. Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) just went to the House floor and essentially accused those who want to reform the Patriot Act of not caring about the 3,000 Americans who were killed on 9/11. His comment, coincidentally, followed a passionate statement in support of an amendment reforming the Patriot Act by Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who represents Manhattan.

The Shays quote is not available yet on the web, but when it is, I will post it - let's hope he doesn't retroactively "revise and extend" his remarks for the record.

If you have C-SPAN, you should watch the debate going on. The Republican leadership is impugning the patriotism and national security credentials of those who are supporting efforts to prevent the government from being able to secretly search library/bookstore records of ordinary Americans who aren't even a target of an investigation. The White House has threatened to veto the measure if it passes. Read more about the issue in today's Progress Report.

Cause and Effect on Vets Policy

While this Bush policy of trying to prevent veterans outreach may not have caused the full problem, it certainly contributes to it:

THEN:
On top of shortchanging veterans health care funding, the Bush administration in 2002 ordered VA officials "to cease efforts to enroll new patients into its health care system." The directive said it was "inappropriate" for local VA workers to attend health fairs, open house and community meetings in order to educate veterans about what they are eligible for and enroll them in health care programs.
- Source, VFW Magazine, 9/02

NOW:
"Hundreds of thousands of vets nationwide potentially are missing out on disability payments from the VA [that they are owed] - and the agency's efforts to find them have fallen far short. Knight Ridder analysis of the VA's own survey data puts the number of those veterans [not receiving benefits they are eligible for but don't know about] at about 572,000...officials with state and nonprofit veterans agencies say the federal government does little to find vets who left the military years or decades ago."
- Knight-Ridder, 7/1/04

Gwen Ifill: Conservative Parrot

Check this Gwen Ifill statement out from Meet the Press on 6/27/04:

MS. IFILL: Well, as David Brooks pointed out in The New York Times yesterday, in Europe, Michael Moore goes about very widely bashing America and bashing Americans as being stupid and not knowing how to put one foot in front of the other and he's received like a conquering hero. They love this. They want to hear this. Now, that's fine. They think he's a documentarian. They think he is bringing them facts. Now, they don't vote in American elections, but there is a wider question to be raised about the impact of Americans who take that abroad in a time of war.

Remember, Gwen Ifill is supposed to be an objective PBS journalist. She has completely parroted the right-wing mischaracterizations of Moore's movie, given them credence, and then implicitly criticized Moore for voicing opposition at a time of war. This is exactly the same kind of McCarthyism peddled by John Ashcroft ("Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve") and the White House fear-mongers (Americans "need to watch what they say, watch what they do - This is not a time for remarks like that").

The Journalism of Rupert Murdoch

Check out the front cover of today's Rupert Murdoch-owned NY Post. They reported before anyone that Kerry chose Gephardt, going as far as putting the story on their front cover, even though they had no attributed source. As we now know, they were wrong.

Adding insult to injury, if you look at the front of their website at this moment, they have their own front cover story, adjacent to the AP newswire confirming that Kerry chose Edwards.

There is no clearer example of why never to trust the Rupert Murdoch "journalism" of the NY Post or Fox News.