The Seventh Sense

"I Cant Heeeeear You"

The White House is full of children.

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA must determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment.  The EPA, under Bush Administration influence, had been dragging its heels on the issue, saying that it was not part of its duties.  The Supreme Court said, "Oh, yes it is".

So the EPA made its determination.  They studied the issue and concluded that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled.  They sent -- by email -- their findings to the White House, who would then have to, you know, do something about it.

But those clever people at the White House had a plan.  Knowing what the email contained, they decided not to open the EPA's email.  That was back in December (although we're only finding out about it now).

Following that clever ruse, the White House set out to pressure the EPA to water down their original conclusion:

This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.

Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Both documents, as prepared by the E.P.A., “showed that the Clean Air Act can work for certain sectors of the economy, to reduce greenhouse gases,” one of the senior E.P.A. officials said. “That’s not what the administration wants to show. They want to show that the Clean Air Act can’t work.”

The EPA, by the way, is supposed to be an independent agency.  From its website:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in the executive branch as an independent agency pursuant to Reorganization Plan #3 of 1970, effective December 2, 1970.

That means political branches can't mess with it.  But this is the Bush White House.  *Sigh*

Here's What Happened

The folks over at McClatchy newspapers are trumpeting their own horn about their reportage in the run-up to the Iraq War.  And well they should.  Unlike the rest of the media, they actually questioned the Bush Administration's "intelligence" and justification for an Iraq War. To them (and other astute political observers), Scott McLellan's book is nothing new.

But the "crimes" of the Bush Adminsitration turns out to be quite the laundry list:

OK, Scott, What Happened?

Here's what happened, based entirely on our own reporting and publicly available documents:

* The Bush administration was gunning for Iraq within days of the 9/11 attacks, dispatching a former CIA director, on a flight authorized by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, to find evidence for a bizarre theory that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. (Note: See also Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill on this point).

* Bush decided by February 2002, at the latest, that he was going to remove Saddam by hook or by crook. (Yes, we reported that at the time).

* White House officials, led by Dick Cheney, began making the case for war in August 2002, in speeches and reports that  not only were wrong, but also went well beyond what the available intelligence said at that time, and contained outright fantasies and falsehoods. Indeed, some of that material was never vetted with the intelligence agencies before it was peddled to the public.

* Dissenters, or even those who voiced worry about where the policy was going, were ignored, excluded or punished. (Note: See Gen. Eric Shinseki,  Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson and all of the State Department 's Arab specialists and much of its intelligence bureau).

* The Bush administration didn't even want to produce the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs that's justly received so much criticism since.  The White House thought it was unneeded. It  actually was demanded by Congress and slapped together in a matter of weeks before the congressional votes to authorize war on Iraq.

* The October 2002 NIE was flawed, no doubt. But it contained dissents questioning the extent of Saddam's WMD programs, dissents that were buried in the report. Doubts and dissents were then stripped from the publicly released, unclassified version of the NIE.

* The core of the administration's case for war was not just that Saddam was developing WMDs, but also that, unchecked, he might give them to terrorists to attack the United States. Remember smoking guns and mushroom clouds? Inconveniently, the CIA had determined just the opposite: Saddam would attack the United States only if he concluded a U.S. attack on him was unavoidable. He'd give WMD to Islamist terrorists only "as a last chance to exact revenge."

* The Bush administration relied heavily on an Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi, who had been found to be untrustworthy by the State Department and the CIA. Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress were given millions, and produced "defectors" whose tales of WMD sites and terrorist training were false, fanciful and bogus. But the information was fed directly to senior officials and included in official White House documents.

* The same INC-supplied "intelligence" used in the White House propaganda effort (you got that bit right, Scott) also was fed to dozens of U.S. and foreign news organizations.

* It all culminated in a speech by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 making the case against Saddam. Virtually every major allegation Powell made turned out later to be wrong. It would have been even worse had not Powell and his team thrown out even more shaky "intelligence" that Cheney's office repeatedly tried to stuff into the speech.

* The Bush administration tried to link Saddam to al Qaida and, by implication, to the 9/11 attacks. Officials repeatedly pushed the CIA for information on such links, and a seperate intel shop was set up under Defense Under Secretary Douglas Feith to find "proof" of such ties. Neither the CIA nor anyone else ever found anything resembling an operational relationship between Saddam and al Qaida.

* An exhaustive review of Saddam Hussein's regime's own documents, released in March 2008, found no operational relationship between Saddam and al Qaida.

* The Bush administration failed to plan for the rebuilding of postwar Iraq, as we were perhaps the first to report. The White House ignored stacks of intelligence reports, some now available in partially unclassified form, warning before the war about the possibilities for insurgency, ethnic warfare, social chaos and the like.

We could go on, but the rest, as they say, is history.

That's what happened.

And that's what history will record.

The McClellan Book

You know, it doesn't say anything that many of us didn't already know.  It's just nice to see someone on the inside of the Bush Administration admit that these things went on:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The incidents that first left then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan "dismayed and disillusioned" about Washington involved the surreptitious release of classified information, McClellan said Thursday.

The first of the "defining moments," McClellan told NBC's "Today" show, was when CIA operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked to the media.

The second, he said, was when he learned that President Bush had secretly declassified a report on Iraq so Vice President Dick Cheney and Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby could disclose it to reporters.

"We had been out there talking about how seriously the president took the leaking of classified information, and here we were learning that the president had authorized the very same that we were criticizing," McClellan said, the day after his controversial memoir hit bookstore shelves.

***

As White House spokesman, McClellan defended Bush's policies during much of the Iraq war, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the scandal that followed the leak of Plame's identity.

But he now says the administration was mired in propaganda and political spin and played loose with the truth at times.

In March 2007, Libby was found guilty of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements for lying about what he said to reporters about Plame. Bush later commuted Libby's 2½-year sentence prison sentence, but left in place Libby's fine and probation.

McClellan told "Today" on Thursday, "I had been assured -- and [then-senior adviser] Karl Rove and 'Scooter' Libby both -- I asked them point-blank, 'Were you involved in this in any way?' And both assured me in unequivocal terms, 'No, we were not involved.' "

"And Rove even told the president, and the president and VP directed me to go out and exonerate 'Scooter' Libby on this, and that's when I went to 'Scooter' and asked him the question," McClellan said.

***

McClellan also discussed how, he said, Bush decided to go to war against Iraq soon after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. The president ordered aides to make arrangements for it, McClellan told "Today."

"I think very early on, a few months after September 11, he made a decision that we're going to confront Saddam Hussein, and if Hussein doesn't come fully clean, then we're going to go to war. There was really no flexibility in his approach," McClellan said. "Then it was put on the advisers: How do we go about implementing this? How do we go about doing this?"

So, there you have it.  From someone on the inside.  They lied.  They leaked.  They manipulated.

Also:

In hindsight, McClellan views the war as a mistake by a president swept up by his own propaganda and a grand plan of seeding democracy in the Middle East by overturning Saddam Hussein's regime.

McClellan says Bush and his aides became so wrapped up in trying to shape the story to their political advantage that they ignored facts that didn't fit the picture. He blames it on a "permanent campaign culture" that pervades Washington.

Over 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead.  Because the Bush Administration was obsessed with a second term and engaged in groupthink.

What is "groupthink"?  It plagued the Johnson administration, too.  It is a term coined by social psychologist Irving Janis.  In order to make groupthink testable, Irving Janis devised eight symptoms that are indicative of groupthink.  They are:

1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
2. Rationalising warnings that might challenge the group’s assumptions.
3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of “disloyalty”.
6. Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
7. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
8. Mindguards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.

So, future presidents, what have we learned?

The wingnut blogosphere is blaming the messenger as they always do, attacking McClellan as a liberal, a liar, a charlatan trying to sell books, and claiming they never liked him anyway.

The White House is perhaps even more spittle-flecked than the bloggers, calling McClellan "disgruntled" and even a traitor.

And so it shall always be.

Shut The Hell Up!

Olbermann laid into Bush last night about the "no golfing while we're in Iraq" sacrifice that Bush is making.

Full transcript below the fold.

Bush Makes Ultimate Sacrifice For The War

President Bush finally admitted today that he has been touched by the true cost of war:

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," he said. "I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

UPDATE: Warren Street at Blue Girl, Red State says that Bush is lying about why he quit golf:

Actually, it is far more likely that Bush quit playing golf because he was suffering from knee problems throughout the latter half of 2003.

Street then links to a CBS News article published in December 2003:

Bush, 57, will have an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) test on Thursday, Dec. 18. The body-scanning device enables doctors to see internal organs in 3D.

The MRI is being performed on the advice of the President's regular White House physician. Last summer, Bush suffered a minor muscle tear in his right calf and that injury, along with aching knees, forced him to abandon his running routine. The calf strain healed by August when he had his annual physical, but the president said in September that he suspected he had a meniscus tear.

UPDATE II: Bush actually played his last round of golf on October 13, 2003.  We started bombing in August 2003.

UPDATE III:  One might well ask why golfing during wartime sends "the wrong signal", but recreational boating and fishing with the familly at Kennebunkport is just fine....

UPDATE IV:  Rude Pundit says:

Sure, it's easy to knock President Bush for his "If I play golf, soldiers' families will cry" remark to Politico. That foolishness is easily disposed of with this from a year ago:


Seriously, dude, just fuckin' golf. And don't use the war as an excuse for your weak-ass follow-through.

Lower, Lower, Lower

CNN/Gallup:

Poll: Bush most unpopular in modern history

A new poll suggests that George W. Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush his handling his job as president.

"No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president's disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

Ignominious Honor

Gallup:

President Bush has set a record he'd presumably prefer to avoid: the highest disapproval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove. The approval rating matches the low point of his presidency, and the disapproval sets a new high for any president since Franklin Roosevelt.

The previous record of 67% was reached by Harry Truman in January 1952, when the United States was enmeshed in the Korean War.

[...]

Views of Bush divide sharply along party lines. Among Republicans, 66% approve and 32% disapprove. Disapproval is nearly universal -- 91% -- among Democrats. Of independents, 23% approve, 72% disapprove of the job he's doing.

Gonzales Can't Get Hired

Heh:

Alberto Gonzales can't find a job.

The former attorney general has been on the market for more than six months, but The New York Times reports that he has yet to find a full-time gig in the private sector.

"The greatest impediment to Mr. Gonzales’s being offered the kind of high-salary job being snagged these days by lesser Justice Department officials, many lawyers agree, is his performance during his last few months in office," the paper says. "In that period, he was openly criticized by lawmakers for being untruthful in his sworn testimony. His conduct is being investigated by the Office of the Inspector General of the Justice Department, which could recommend actions from exonerating him to recommending criminal charges."

Wrong Track

This is a very astounding number:

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed "things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track." That's up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

Politically, this is very bad news for the incumbent party, which means the McCain people cannot be happy.  He's got to distance himself from Bush, something he's shown almost no serious signs of doing.

RELATED:  Robert S. McElvaine at the History News Network writes:

HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst.

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians
conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations. ...

In a similar survey of historians I conducted for HNN four years ago, Mr. Bush had fared somewhat better, with 19 percent rating his presidency a success and 81 percent classifying it as a failure. More striking is the dramatic increase in the percentage of historians who rate the Bush presidency the worst ever. In 2004, only 11.6 percent of the respondents rated Bush’s presidency last. That conclusion is now reached by nearly six times as large a fraction of historians.

Shorter Hindrocket

Shorter John Hinderaker:  Sure, for years Bush as been polling in the low 30's, but I prefer a more realistic and balanced approach to public opinion -- such as this poll, which asks only questions about those few things that Bush did right, conducted by a Republican research firm.