most dishonest president since Nixon
He promised to honor and integrity to the White House. Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon.
Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as decent respect for the opinion of mankind. He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag draped coffins.
How did we get from September 12th, 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words Are All Americans Now and when we had the goodwill and empathy of all the world to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.
To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II.
discount ray bans right to ignore international law wherever it wished
cheap ray bans to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat and the assertion need be made by only one person, the president.
More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word to describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does.
Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens sooner or later to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.
One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded. We also know and not just from De Sade and Freud the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.
Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire policy in Iraq. But in order to understand the failure of our overall policy, it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we are as Americans? Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it more complicated than that.
There is good and evil in every person. And what makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations more than the people any other nation.
Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only angels in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation especially the temptation to abuse power over others.
Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is needed in our Constitution because every human being lives with an internal system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow citizens.
Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by Specialist Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower. When Darby asked him to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: Christian in me says it wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, love to make a grown man piss on himself.
What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by few bad apples, it was the natural consequence of the Bush administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America checks and balances.
The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the administration march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness and bungling at stirring up hornet nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name. President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is central front in the war on terror. It not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.]
The unpleasant truth is that President Bush utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict arguably focused the energies and resources of al Qaida and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition. The ISS said that in the wake of the war in Iraq al Qaida now has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is swelling its ranks.
The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals, and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so called Powell doctrine of overwhelming force.
There was also in Rumsfeld planning a failure to provide security for nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting.
Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake sales for body armor.
And the worst still lies ahead. Gen. Joseph Hoar, the former head of the Marine Corps, said, believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss.
When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar
fake ray bans uses the word then the rest of us damn well better listen.
Retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, who headed Central Command before becoming President Bush personal emissary to the Middle East, said recently that our nation current course is over Niagara Falls.
The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, think strategically, we are. Army Col. Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles while losing the war, Hughes added we ensure that we have coherence in our policy, we will lose strategically.
The White House spokesman Dan Bartlett was asked on live television about these scathing condemnations by generals involved in the highest levels of Pentagon planning and he replied, they retired, and we take our advice from active duty officers.
But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior general at the Pentagon as saying, current OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice. Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled to challenge their commander in chief in public.
The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, a lot of senior Army guys I quite angry with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush administration. He listed two reasons. think they are going to break the Army, he said, adding that what really incites him is don think they care.
In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe
cheap ray bans on the Bush team incompetence early on. the lead up to the Iraq war, and its later conduct, he writes, saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption.
Zinni book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to Bush including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was honored by Bush father for his service in Iraq, and his former domestic advisor on faith based organizations, John Dilulio, who said, is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the political arm. It the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.Articles Connexes：