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Mon 28 Nov, 2005 11:39 am
Bullies in the White House Pulpit
Bob Burnett
11.28.2005
As the Bush Administration digs in its heels on Iraq, the tide runs stronger against it. At the beginning of the summer, there were protests led by Cindy Sheehan. Then, public sentiment turned negative on the war. After protracted waffling, Congressional Democrats united to demand a withdrawal timetable. Last week, Republic Senators began abandoning battleship Bush.
Yet even as it becomes apparent to everyone outside the White House that Iraq is a lost cause, George Bush and his faithful sidekicks fight on. In the frantic struggle to abate anti-war sentiment, their masks fall off. They are revealed as bullies.
A lot has been written about this presidency: It's penchant for secrecy and near-paranoid distrust of the media. It's anti-intellectualism and blind faith in neo-conservatism. It's sycophantic pandering to the power elite. It's nihilist pursuit of power. Yet, the most apt depiction of the President and his minions is that they are bullies. Overly aggressive men who seek to enhance their position by systematically abusing those who have less power.
A Psychology Today article summarized the voluminous research on bullies. Usually they are hotheads who believe that aggression is the best way to resolve conflicts. Often they perceive provocation where it does not actually exist. They start fights. They have a strong need to dominate and typically pick on those perceived as weaker. Longitudinal studies indicate that while bullies may start out with normal intelligence levels, their aggressive behavior ultimately impairs their intellectual functions. One psychologist observed that bullies "are experts at using short-term payoffs. They're not very good at long-range things that are in their best interest." Another simply declared, "They are losers."
If this sounds familiar, it's because many of these same observations have been made about the Bush Administration. They are domineering and perceive provocation where it does not exist. They emphasize short-term payoffs. The Administration attacked Iraq without provocation and then declared victory when they had no plan for the occupation.
Many observers attribute the Administration's unabashedly aggressive nature to two key advisers. One is Bush's political guru, Karl Rove. He's a game player who is not satisfied with merely winning. Rove seeks to annihilate those unfortunates who get in his way. His mark can be seen in the "Swift boat" ads that sunk John Kerry and the 2002 attack that defeated Max Cleland.
Jovial George and killer Karl have a strong personal bond. Writing in the May 1, 2003, edition of "The New York Review of Books," veteran political analyst, Elizabeth Drew, remarked, "One disturbing aspect of the close working relationship between Bush and Rove is that each man is capable of deep and lasting resentmentsÂ…there appears to be no one to interrupt the mutually reinforcing anger that runs between the two men."
The other overly aggressive adviser is Dick Cheney. Since the 2000 Presidential campaign, Cheney played "bad cop" to Bush's "good cop." Week after week, Bad Dick savored his role as the Administration's attack dog. Recently, Cheney lashed out at a decorated Marine war hero, Pennsylvania congressman Jack Murtha, calling his appeal for withdrawal, "irresponsible" and accusing him of "losing [his] backbone."
During his 2000 Presidential campaign George W famously promised to be "a uniter not a divider." Yet from day one the Administration abused those whom it perceived as unfriendly. The President avoided press conferences and disparaged the media. Bush supporters restricted audiences at his public speeches to true believers. Protestors were hassled and arrested. Recently, the Administration had the I.R.S. investigate churches whose ministers delivered sermons criticizing Bush policies.
The President promised to work cooperatively with Congress but instead fostered the most rancorous Capitol-hill environment seen in over a hundred years. In the House of Representatives, Democrats' dissenting views are ignored or ruled "out of order." House rules change on the fly so that votes will go the way the majority intends. Congressional committee chairs are appointed on the basis of loyalty and fundraising ability rather than competence. When legislation goes to a conference committee to iron out differences between House and Senate versions, Administration lackeys rewrite the bills to meet Bush specs before they are sent back for a straight up or down vote.
The Bush Administration savagely altered the rules for lobbying in Washington. Now, no interest group gets access to key members of Congress, or the Administration, unless they prove their loyalty to the GOP. Lobbyists must pay huge contributions to Republicans and purge their ranks of known Democrats.
When George W. Bush accepted the Republican nomination for President, he promised to differentiate his Administration from that of Bill Clinton. "After all of the shouting and all of the scandal, after all the bitterness and broken faith, we can begin again." Yet, this is a far more scandalous, divisive Presidency than that of Clinton. It has left a broad trail of acrimony and betrayal. Broken faith with America.
Ultimately, there is only one explanation for this unending stream of political malfeasance. George W. Bush and his cronies are bullies.
Ex-Powell Aide Criticizes Detainee Effort
Ex-Powell Aide Criticizes Detainee Effort
By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer
WASHINGTON
A top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees arose from White House and Pentagon officials who argued that "the president of the United States is all-powerful" and the Geneva Conventions irrelevant.
In an Associated Press interview, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said President Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the details" of postwar planning. Underlings exploited Bush's detachment and made poor decisions, Wilkerson said.
Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. He said Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard."
On the question of detainees picked up in Afghanistan and other fronts in the war on terror, Wilkerson said Bush heard two sides of an impassioned argument within his administration. Abuse of prisoners, and even the deaths of some who had been interrogated in Afghanistan and elsewhere, have bruised the U.S. image abroad and undermined support for the Iraq war.
Cheney's office, Rumsfeld aides and others argued "that the president of the United States is all-powerful, that as commander in chief the president of the United States can do anything he damn well pleases," Wilkerson said.
On the other side were Powell, others at the State Department and top military brass, and occasionally Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser, Wilkerson said.
Powell raised frequent and loud objections, his former aide said, once yelling into a telephone at Rumsfeld: "Donald, don't you understand what you are doing to our image?"
Wilkerson said Bush tried to work out a compromise in 2001 and 2002 that recognized that the war on terrorism was different from past wars and required greater flexibility in handling prisoners who don't belong to an enemy state or follow the rules themselves.
Bush's stated policy, which was heatedly criticized by civil liberties and legal groups at the time, was defensible, Wilkerson said. But it was undermined almost immediately in practice, he said.
In the field, the United States followed the policies of hard-liners who wanted essentially unchecked ability to detain and harshly interrogate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, Wilkerson said.
Wilkerson, who left government with Powell in January, said he is now somewhat estranged from his former boss. He worked for Powell for 16 years. Wilkerson became a surprise critic of the Iraq war-planning effort and other administration decisions this fall, and he has said his Powell did not put him up to it.
On Iraq, Wilkerson said Powell may have had doubts about the extent of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein but was convinced by then CIA Director George Tenet and others that the intelligence behind the push toward war was sound.
He said Powell now generally believes it was a good idea to remove Saddam from power but may not agree with either the timing or execution of the war.
"What he seems to be saying to me now is the president failed to discipline the process the way he should have and that the president is ultimately responsible for this whole mess," Wilkerson said.
Powell was widely regarded as a dove to Cheney's and Rumsfeld's hawks, but he made a forceful case for war before the United Nations Security Council in February 2003, a month before the invasion. At one point, he said Saddam possessed mobile labs to make weapons of mass destruction, but they have not been found.
Wilkerson said the CIA and other agencies allowed mishandled and bogus information to underpin that speech and the administration case for war.
He said he has almost, but not quite, concluded that Cheney and others in the administration deliberately ignored evidence of bad intelligence and looked only at what supported their case for war.
A newly declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002 said that an al-Qaida military instructor was probably misleading his interrogators about training that the terror group's members received from Iraq on chemical, biological and radiological weapons. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi reportedly recanted his statements in January 2004.
A presidential intelligence commission also has dissected how spy agencies handled an Iraqi refugee who was a German intelligence source. Code-named Curveball, this man, a leading source on Iraq's purported mobile biological weapons labs, was found to be a fabricator and alcoholic.
Wilkerson also said he did not disclose to Bob Woodward that administration critic Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, joining the growing list of past and current Bush administration officials who have denied being the Washington Post reporter's source.
Apologies for cherry-picking but does this:
Quote:Cheney's office, Rumsfeld aides and others argued "that the president of the United States is all-powerful, that as commander in chief the president of the United States can do anything he damn well pleases," Wilkerson said
mean that Cheney, Rumsfeld and others believe that the President is a dictator?
The idea was not to have someone inherit the throne but it seems GWB = Good Warm Bottom for a throne, feels he inherited the Presidency.
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