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Mon 22 Mar, 2004 12:13 pm
It's time for the president to play the 'name names' game
Sunday, March 21, 2004
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
George Bush wants John Kerry to name the foreign heads of state Kerry says told him privately they'd like to see an end to the Bush administration.
That's fascinating, don't you think?
Bush wants Kerry to name names.
I'm dreaming this, right?
"If you're going to make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign," Bush told reporters in Washington this week, "you've got to back it up with facts."
Really?
If Bush wants to know which foreign leaders might have confided that they wouldn't mind seeing the Bush Doctrine end in November, all he has to do is pay attention to world affairs for a few minutes. Even before the abominable Madrid train bombing 10 days ago, distrust and outrage at U.S. policies had been shown to be reaching new levels of hostility from France to Morocco, from Germany to Jordan, from Russia to Pakistan.
"The wounds have not healed among the allied publics since the end of the war and, in fact, things are a little worse," Andrew Kohut told The New York Times the other day. Kohut directs the Pew Research Center for the People and Press, which surveyed world opinion on the matter. He then added, "there are trends that speak to a more long-term and continuing disconnect between the old allies."
Maybe Kerry ought to comply with Dubya's request, if only to save him the mental effort of figuring this stuff out for himself. The greater challenge to Kerry is restraining himself from firing some questions back. Unlike Kerry, I don't have the requisite restraint.
So, for the chief executive who suddenly wants names named, who suddenly flirts with some understanding of the merits of full disclosure and transparency after more than three years of running the most secretive government in American history, a few similar questions:
Who met with Dick Cheney in the first days of this administration to formulate America's energy policy?
Name names.
Which corporate titans wielded the key influences that have resulted in the most enviro-hostile administration in memory, the highest gas prices in memory and a myopic oil-junky foreign policy?
Name names.
(Oh, that's right, I've got to wait until the Supreme Court rules on this one. In the meantime, Cheney can go duck hunting with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, so they can get their story straight on why I don't need to know this.)
Who was on board for the notorious Saudi airlift?
Name names.
Who allowed a planeload of influential Saudis to fly out of the country Sept. 13, 2001, with all commercial air traffic grounded and before any formal investigation into the hijackings had fully begun?
Name names.
Who outed Valerie Plame, the CIA operative whose terrorist tracking operation was destroyed because her husband had the nerve to say part of your State of the Union address was a fiction designed to build support for Bush War II?
Name names.
Who decided not to allow soldiers returning from Iraq at Walter Reed Hospital to be interviewed by representatives of the Disabled American Veterans unless a government official was present?
Name names.
Who directed Thomas Scully, the Medicare administrator, to tell Richard Foster he'd be fired if he didn't withhold the actual cost of the prescription drug benefit package that passed Congress with a $400 billion price tag, some $130 billion less than Foster knew it would cost?
Name names.
Whom is National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice protecting by not testifying publicly before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks?
Name names.
Who came up with the idea that your own testimony before the commission should not exceed one hour, the amount of time you generally spend working out every day?
Name names.
Who actually saw you complete your National Guard obligations in Alabama during the Vietnam War?
Name names.
Who, at any level of any government agency, has received any form of discipline, let alone been fired, as a direct result of the massive intelligence failures that led to Sept. 11?
Name names.
Who forgot to restrain you from repeating the fiction that you watched on television from a Florida schoolhouse as the first plane hit the World Trade Center building the morning of Sept. 11, even though no video of the first plane hitting was discovered until the next day?
Name names.
OK, I'm out of space. If he cares to, John Kerry can take it from here.
Kennedy says White House should name names, not Kerry
Published Monday, March 22, 2004
POLITICAL NOTEBOOK: Kennedy says White House should name names, not Kerry
By JENNIFER C. KERR
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
Memo to Republicans: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has a deal for you.
After the back-and-forth over which foreign leaders support Democrat John F. Kerry for president and his refusal to name any as Republicans would like, Kennedy offered what sounded like a possible deal on Sunday.
The Massachusetts Democrat and supporter of his Senate colleague's presidential bid offered to let the White House go first by naming members of the vice president's energy task force, and the Bush administration officials who revealed the identity of a CIA employee whose husband has criticized the administration's Iraq policy.
Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and other Republicans have called on Kerry to name his foreign supporters.
Kennedy said the White House needs to do some naming of its own.
"When is the vice president going to give us the names of those people on his task force in energy that jacked up the price for consumers and provided windfall profits for the energy industry?" Kennedy said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "When is the White House going to give us the name of the person that leaked the name to the newspapers, endangering the life of Valerie Plame, who was a CIA agent?"
Vice President Dick Cheney has refused to release information about closed-door meetings of his energy task force, which crafted the administration's energy policy. The case is pending before the Supreme Court. The name of CIA agent Valerie Plame appeared in a July 14 piece by syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who said senior administration officials told him she worked for the agency.
Kennedy suggested that the White House easily can find out who supports Kerry.
"All we have to do is go down the list of members of the United Nations and find out where the support is. The CIA knows it. They work for the president. They can give them the names of all of those countries," he said. "And all you had to do was look at what happened yesterday in the demonstrations all over the world. This is not a mystery to them."
Hundreds of thousands of people across Europe protested Saturday against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, marking the first anniversary of the war.
An opponent of the Iraq war, Kennedy said the Bush administration used misinformation, manipulation and distortion to launch the operation, which he said "is costing us in credibility all over the world."
He said Kerry, as president, would help restore that credibility.
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