"Bush is Awesome" Part II: Revenge of the Shrub Pruners

[shereads]

Adjusting the awesomeness meter downward a wee notch is Dan Froomkin's column, "White House Briefing," in today's Washington Post.

(Btw, what's this nonsense about the Saudis and a possible link with 9/11 and a Bush cover-up? Is Sen. Graham crazy? I know he keeps detailed notebooks about his daily movements including bathroom visits, but the Saudi royals inadvertently funding 9/11 and the Bush family helping cover their tracks? That's just silly. Dubya may not be the brightest lump in the embers but surely he wouldn't incriminate himself in treason to avoid personal and political embarrassment...Would he? Could he? Surely not.)

The news has been kind to the White House for a few weeks, with media attention largely focused on the Republican convention and the attacks on John Kerry's war record.

But today is looking pretty tough.

Headlines blare the news that the death toll in Iraq has crossed the 1,000 milestone.

There are also big headlines about Bush's record $422 billion budget deficit and the multi-trillion-dollar deficit projections for the future.

Then there are all the stories about Vice President Cheney's jaw-dropping statement yesterday that a Kerry victory would result in more terrorist attacks. Even his own staff is qualifying it.

Bush's spotty National Guard record during the Vietnam War is turning into a full-fledged media conflagration, with more stories out today and "60 Minutes" weighing in tonight.

Plus, Sen.Bob Graham (D-Fla.) is all over the media charging Bush with covering up evidence that might have linked Saudi Arabia to the Sept. 11 hijackers.



And while the mainstream press is not putting stock in unauthorized biographer Kitty Kelley's hazily sourced allegations of past drug use by Bush, everybody -- at least everybody on the Internet -- seems to be talking about it.

It certainly isn't like the carefully scripted weeks of yore.

 

[shereads]

The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill
by Ron Suskind

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com

The George W. Bush White House, as described by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, is a world out of kilter. Policy decisions are determined not by careful weighing of an issue's complexities; rather, they're dictated by a cabal of ideologues and political advisors operating outside the view of top cabinet officials. The President is not a fully engaged administrator but an enigma who is, at best, guarded and poker-faced but at worst, uncurious, unintelligent, and a puppet of larger forces.

O'Neill provided extensive documentation to journalist and author Suskind, including schedules with 7,630 entries and a set of 19,000 documents that featured memoranda to the President, thank-you notes, meeting minutes, and voluminous reports.

The result, The Price of Loyalty, is a gripping look inside the meeting rooms, the in-boxes, and the minds of a famously guarded administration. Much of the book, as one might expect from the story of a Treasury Secretary, revolves around economics, but even those not normally enthused by tax code intricacies will be fascinated by the rapid-fire intellects of O'Neill and Fed chairman Alan Greenspan as they gather for regular power breakfasts.

A good deal of the book is about the things that O'Neill never figures out. He knows there's something creepy going on with the administration's power structure, but he's never inside enough to know quite what it is. But while those sections are intriguing, other passages are simply revelatory: O'Neill asserts that Saddam Hussein was targeted for removal not in the 9/11 aftermath but soon after Bush took office.

Paul O'Neill makes for an interesting protagonist. A vaunted economist from the days of Nixon and Ford, he returns to a Washington that's immeasurably more cutthroat. And while he appears almost na•vely academic initially, he emerges as someone determined to speak his mind even when it becomes apparent that such an approach spells his political doom.

Book Description
A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter's explosive account of the inner workings of the George W. Bush administration, the most secretive White House of modern times.

This vivid, unfolding narrative is like no other book that has been written about the Bush presidency-or any that is likely to be written soon. At its core are the candid assessments of former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, for two years the administration's top economic official, a principal of the National Security Council, and a tutor to the new President.

O'Neill's account is supported by Suskind's interviews with many participants in the administration, by transcripts of meetings, and by voluminous documents that cover most areas of domestic and foreign policy. The result is a disclosure of breadth and depth unparalleled for an ongoing presidency. As readers are taken to the very epicenter of government, this news-making volume offers a definitive view of the characters and conduct of Bush and his closest advisers as they manage crucial domestic policies and global strategies at a time of life-and-death crises.

Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Christine Todd Whitman, and many of their aides are seen in an intimate, "unmanaged" way-as is Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, O'Neill's close friend and ally. Along the way, the central conflicts of this administration's governance-between politics and policy, ideology and analysis-are starkly visible through the lens of recent events and the revelation of the often unseen intentions that underlie actions.

In this book Suskind draws on unique access to present an astonishing account of a President so carefully managed in his public posture that he is unknown to most Americans. Now, he will be known.


Apparently not. ~ SR

 

[shereads]

He cheated to get in, then lied to get out.

Records Say Bush Balked at Order
National Guard Commander Suspended Him From Flying, Papers Show

By Michael Dobbs and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A01


President Bush failed to carry out a direct order from his superior in the Texas Air National Guard in May 1972 to undertake a medical examination that was necessary for him to remain a qualified pilot, according to documents made public yesterday.

Documents obtained by the CBS News program "60 Minutes" shed new light on one of the most controversial episodes in Bush's military service, when he abruptly stopped flying and moved from Texas to Alabama to work on a political campaign. The documents include a memo from Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, ordering Bush "to be suspended from flight status for failure to perform" to U.S. Air Force and National Guard standards and failure to take his annual physical "as ordered."

The new documents surfaced as the Bush administration released for the first time the president's personal flight logs, which have been the focus of repeated archival searches and Freedom of Information Act requests dating to the 2000 presidential campaign. The logs show that Bush stopped flying in April 1972 after accumulating more than 570 hours of flight time between 1969 and 1972, much of it on an F-102 interceptor jet.

White House officials have said there was no reason for Bush to take the annual physical required of fighter pilots because there were no suitable planes for him to fly in Alabama, where he applied for "substitute training" to replace his required service with the Texas National Guard. But the new documents suggest that Bush's transfer to non-flight duties in Alabama was the subject of arguments between his National Guard superiors.

Release of the documents came as Democrats and some veterans stepped up their criticism of Bush for allegedly failing to meet his sworn obligations to the Texas Air National Guard. A new advocacy group called Texans for Truth, which has links to anti-Bush groups such as MoveOn.org, yesterday unveiled a TV ad to be screened in swing states claiming that Bush failed to show up for Guard duty in Alabama.

White House officials dismissed the latest criticism of Bush's service as partisan attacks in the midst of a heated campaign. In an interview with "60 Minutes," White House communications director Dan Bartlett said "partisan Democrats" were "recycling the very same charges we hear every time President Bush runs for reelection. It is dirty politics." But he did not contest the authenticity of the documents, which could not be verified independently by The Washington Post.

A spokeswoman for "60 Minutes," Kelli Edwards, declined to say exactly how the new documents were obtained other than that CBS News understood they had been taken from Killian's "personal office file." In addition to the order to Bush to report for a physical, the documents include various memos from Killian describing his conversations with Bush and other National Guard officers about Bush's attempts to secure a transfer to Alabama. Killian died in 1984.

"Phone call from Bush," Killian recorded in a "memo to file" dated May 19, 1972. "Discussed options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November."

According to "60 Minutes," Killian's personal files show that he ordered Bush "suspended from flight status" on Aug. 1, 1972. National Guard documents already released by the White House and the Pentagon show that Bush was suspended from flight status on that day for "failure to accomplish annual medical examination" but do not mention his alleged failure to comply with National Guard and Air Force standards.

In another "memo to file," dated Aug. 18, 1973, Killian complained that he was under pressure from his superior, Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, to "sugar coat" Bush's officer evaluations. "I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job," he wrote in a memo titled "CYA." "I will not rate."

Staudt has insisted that he was not influenced by Bush's status as the son of George H.W. Bush (R), a Texas congressman in 1968 and later head of the CIA. He has also rejected claims by former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes (D) that he intervened with the head of the Texas Air National Guard to secure a position for Bush there at the request of a Bush family friend. Barnes, who has raised money for Democrat John F. Kerry's presidential campaign, repeated the claim last night on "60 Minutes."

In releasing Bush's flight records, White House spokesmen yesterday expressed frustration over what they depicted as the Pentagon's failure to produce a full and complete record of the president's military service.

"It's clear that DOD [the Department of Defense] did not undertake as comprehensive a search as had been directed by the president," said White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, just days after assuring The Post that Bush's full personnel file had already been released. "We have again asked that they ensure that any and all documents [relating to Bush's military service] are identified and released."

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, said Bush's flight logs were found at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, which is the central repository for veterans' records. She said the logs were found among a batch of records sent to St. Louis from Norton Air Force Base in 1993, which were originally thought to contain records of active-duty officers rather than of National Guardsmen such as Bush.

The Bush administration has issued government-wide instructions centralizing the release of information relating to the president's service with the Texas Air National Guard between 1968 and 1973. Officers responsible for implementing the Freedom of Information Act for the National Guard and the Pentagon declined to respond to queries from The Post last week on the completeness of the president's records, referring a reporter instead to Krenke and the White House press office.

The new TV commercial by Texans for Truth, to be aired on $110,000 worth of television time in battleground cities such as Harrisburg, Pa., and Columbus, Ohio, shows Bob Mintz, who served as a lieutenant in the Alabama Air National Guard at the same time Bush was supposed to be serving, speaking to the camera:

"I heard George W. Bush get up there and say, 'I served in the 187th Air National Guard in Montgomery, Alabama.' I said, 'Really, that was my unit? And I don't remember seeing you there.' "

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, charged that Texans for Truth "is a front group for MoveOn.org that has spent tens of millions of dollars attacking the president. . . . This is a smear group launching baseless attacks on behalf of John Kerry's campaign that will be rejected by the American people."

Glenn Smith, the head of Texans for Truth, is a former political reporter for the Houston Chronicle and Houston Post and has been a Democratic consultant, working on a variety of campaigns in Texas and other states. He ran Tony Sanchez's unsuccessful bid for Texas governor in 2002.

Smith said he was angry over ads created by another advocacy group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, attacking Kerry's service in the Vietnam War.

In a conference call with reporters, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence McAuliffe said "the relentless negative attacks" on Kerry "had made the president's service, or lack thereof, completely fair game."

Republican National Committee communications director Jim Dyke countered that "McAuliffe has a long history of false and reckless statements."

Staff writers James Grimaldi and Howard Kurtz and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.