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In the recent book Dead Certain, author Robert Draper asks President Bush about disbanding Saddam Hussein's army early in the occupation -- putting 500,000 Iraqi men out of work and on the street, left to their own devices. Like IEDs.
"The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Bush tells Draper, who then asked Bush how he reacted to the decision, and Bush replies, "Yeah, I can't remember, I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?'... Hadley's got notes on all of this stuff," referring to Stephen Hadley, then-Assistant National Security Adviser.
Wiggle, wiggle.
Of course, it was not the policy to keep the army intact, as Paul "Jerry" Bremer conclusively shows in his Sept. 6 guest op-ed in the New York Times.
Bremer is the guy who became "Director of Reconstruction" in Baghdad after Hussein was ousted. He had the gig 14 months, and was ultimately blamed for the "insurgency" that has devastated U.S. troops in the four long years since his May '03 disbanding order.
Whether or not he's Iraq's version of "Heck of a job, Brownie," it turns out there's a paper trail. The decision to disband originated inside the Defense Department and went all the way to the White House. It was OK'd by Don Rumsfeld, along with neocon devotees Wolfowitz and Feith. General Franks at Central Command signed off on the plan. In other words, Bremer's job was to do it, but everyone was in on it.
Almost everyone, that is.
In the op-ed, Bremer writes that he gave the president a heads-up before the announcement, for which he received a personal note of thanks in return. Why, then, would Bush now be deceptive in his interview with Draper concerning an obviously provable fact?
Let's see.....it could be that he's genetically incapable of admitting mistakes. Or perhaps he's embarrassed for keeping a key player largely in the dark, a player we'd previously learned hadn't even been seriously consulted when the final call on invasion came down.
There's new and reputable information on this disbanding business, and it sheds some light.
Bremer claims Rummy told him that the decision was relayed to both National Security Adviser Condi Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell. The former surely knew well in advance because she was very much in the loop. As for the latter, Bremer apparently received some of that bad intel this administration is famous for peddling.
We finally have Powell's own Deputy Secretary of State making his first-ever comments on the subject in a new documentary, No End In Sight, from Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's Magnolia Pictures. It's revealing, and Powell has not denied it.
Here's what Richard Armitage himself says in the film about the Iraqi army disbanding:
Armitage: "I think most of us were caught relatively unawares, or completely unawares, by this disbanding of the army. Secretary Powell found out about it, as I did."Q: "Which was how?"
Armitage: "Just as we found out one day Jerry announced that he's disbanded the army."
Q: "How about Condoleezza Rice?"
Armitage (sharply, derisively): "She ought to speak for herself."
So add it up: Disbanding was dumb, it emanated from the Pentagon, the White House approved, thousands of our citizen soldiers have been killed and maimed as a result, and Powell's State Department (America's chief diplomatic arm, constitutionally) was left out of the process.
Yet today Bush says -- with a straight face -- that the policy was to keep the army intact, and he "can't remember" why it wasn't done.
Conclusion? He's spinning as fast as he can to avoid history's wrath. He will not succeed.
If Bush were your small child, and you were trying to get to the bottom of how the expensive vase in the den got shattered, wouldn't you smell a rat?
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Fascinating details to consider in this article. I also think one should consider the possibility that Bush was actually kept in the dark about the policy "change." Don't misunderstand; I am not trying to excuse him or claim he is not a liar. He is both inexcusable and a proven liar. But he also has never truly been in charge at the White House, and perhaps pundits, the media, and the public ought to stop talking about his as if he were.
Cheney runs things. And Rove helped. And Condi. So I think it a real possibility that those pulling the puppet president's strings might not have told him of the change in plans to disband the Iraq army. But simple W cannot admit that, exactly. So he quivers and says he doesn't recall, etc.
By the way, are those who own this Presidency looking for another simpleton they can prop up in the window to say what they tell him? If so, Thompson seems an ideal choice!
As long as you are a christian then lying, diapering with a prostitute, picking up men in a bathroom, starting wars, stealing from the treasury, rigging elections, divorcing many times, drug addiction, drunk driving, draft dodging, bashing Gays, corruption, discrimination against women and minorities, having sex with minors, using religion to bash others is all acceptable behavior. But if you are not a christian and do none of the above you are still deemed evil! Sounds about as GOP as it can be!
Sourced from JeanPaulSatire. I thought it deserved a replay here.
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A man died and went to Heaven. As he stood in front of the pearly gates he saw a huge wall of clocks. He asked, "What are all those clocks?"
An angel answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie the hands on your clock move."
"Oh", said the man. "Whose clock is that?" "That's Mahatma Ghandi's", replied the angel. "The hands have never moved, indicating that he never told a lie."
"Incredible," said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"
The angel responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abraham told only two lies in his entire life."
"Where's George Bush's clock?" asked the man.
"Bush's clock is in God's office. He's using it as a ceiling fan."
Of course I would smell a rat and that rat is George Bush. He will never admit mistakes even though the blood of over 3,700 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis is on his hands.
Unfortunately, Congress seems to be willing to let thousands more die so that they won't be blamed for "losing" the war. My question is, what is the real goal of "winning" the war? Is it just so we can have a big military base in Iraq? Why do the neocons seem to think that maintaining a U.S. military stronghold in Iraq will keep us safe? Don't they realize that the real enemy - the part of al Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11 - is holed up in a safe haven in northern Pakistan?
I have known a number of people like Bush in that they would lie even when the truth would do them no harm or in any way diminish their own interest. They just lie.
I've concluded that if they can't get something for the truth, they just aren't willing to give it away for free. Plus they just lie to keep in practice.
Of course, if you have something to hide, like Bush, then the reason is easier to get at.
BUSH, DECEIVER-IN-CHIEF!
George Bush, the Deceiver-in-Chief, openly promulgates lies and spins the truth. WHY does he do it? So Fox News can continue to create an alternative reality here in America!
“Good and evil” is a concept common in religion, morality, ethics and philosophy. Obviously the whole world needs more good and less evil. But is there a practical definition that everyone can agree on and that lends itself to objective measurement. How about: GOOD is something that makes the many human lives better and no or few lives worse, while EVIL is something that makes many lives worse, and no or few lives better.
Measuring George Bush’s actions by this definition with objective facts, our compassionate conservative, Christian President does mostly EVIL: from the Iraq disaster to Katrina mismanagem
THE PROBLEM: our President is not a rational thinker – his mind accepts information from only two sources: faith and experience. Because Bush is not rational (strictly empirical and subjective), objective facts and evidence such as recent NIEs that found this Iraq war has created more jihadists and terrorists worldwide and made America less safe are meaningless to this anachronistic man of several millennia ago. The reality of Iraq is what he thinks it is from the beautiful White House, and so our country and our precious soldiers are in for much more of this strategic catastrophe. Eventually the truth will win out everywhere over the DECEIVER-IN-CHIEF.
I don't know where he got the concept, but my dad proposed the criterion of "the sum total of human happiness" in judging whether an action was right or wrong. It's not always easy to calculate, but it is a plausible basis. I have heard good and evil attacked as being at least subjective or meaningless, depending on the context. STHH may be somewhat more effective, although the short-term and long-term balances may vary. Does this action add to or subtract from the sum total of human happiness?
We all know George W is a liar, and not a particularly good one. My question, if he's such a bad liar, do his lies convince even him?
When a cokehead says yes he took your money but he'll give it back tomorrow, does he believe it, does he think you'll believe it? The answer of course is, it doesn't matter! He'll think up some new shit tomorrow.
he got elected twice lying works in America with a populace that wants simple answers in a complex world.
like lets give Iraqis democracy. tribal mentality and democracy go together like oil and water. throw some religious fundamentalism in the mix and wow we have Iraqis killing us and one another. Great for American corp profits.
anyone visited a public school lately?
we have created a dumb down society.
we have an educational system that is broken.
Bush is living proof of this dumbing down of America. Lets see a degree in an elitist university in history: i.e. he is a living example of the dumbing down of America.
Now really who are the dumb ones: bush or the American voters that elected this sociopath twice. You decide.
You'd wonder what an MBA from Yale is worth? I'm reckoning it's cronies.
Why do people use terms like "fib," "disingenuous," "misconstrued?" Why not say Bush is LYING??? He's a LIAR. He LIES.
Bush says he doesn't remember (about the order to disband Sadaam's army) because Cheney was the one calling all the shots, something just about EVERYONE ignores or dismisses.
If you work from the premise that Cheney is the real prez and George is the figurehead
It also answers the questions about Cheney's obsessive secrecy and Bush's IQ. Cheney calls the shots, then tells Bush's handlers what he wants him to do, they decide what George will do/say, he rehearses appropriate sound bites/speeches, the press passes off the regime spin as fact, and the cycle repeats.
Diabolically simple.
Will the World Court accept "I don't remember" as a defense? Use your own extrapolations.
"... the premise that Cheney is the real prez..." certainly goes further to explain the nightmare of these last six years than anything else I can conjecture.
Bush, with his "class idiot" persona, seems incapable of developing cogent strategies. Cheney, on the other hand...
Bush also serves to distract attention from the behind the scenes machinations of his Vice President.
"Diabolically simple" - yes indeed. Simply diabolical as well.
I happen to believe he is telling the truth- and even I believe Gonzales tells the truth.
Hard to believe, but when these guys claim they don't remember, or they have no idea, they are telling the truth. They really have no clue.
Maybe the DoD, in its research into interrogation techniques, has invented a workable memory-zapper -- a taser to the brain -- and Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales have been using this periodically on themselves to protect themselves from perjury.
Dumbya lies even when the truth would be better for him.
I bet all the blogs and commentaries will be boring once Bush end his presidential term. I think Bush bashing will still carry on for a little while more though until the troops are all back.
History will not remember him as being cruel. The world will remember him as the "President who spoke with forked tongue".
Here's yet another stack of evidence on the already towering pile for impeachment.
But if GWB was caught by the D.C. Chief of Police on the White House lawn at high noon eating babies, he still would not be impeached by the current Congress. You can bet the farm on that.
Question: why are we all sitting around taking this guff, instead of marching on Washington and giving them all what Mussolini got?
Right on the money. And a very good question. For me (a marcher on Washington from the 60s) everything seems so out of control, or should I say in the control of "big money". Marching, protesting, and maybe even voting, seems ridiculously futile.
Exactly my point. The time for the Ghandi/MLK approach has long passed. More of that will just get us more, 1. roped off into a "security zone" or, 2. arrested without cause.
If I'm going to get arrested at a peaceful march anyway, then I might as well up the ante.
Maybe if they caught him in a Minneapolis bathroom stall?
Bush & Co and the Congress has done 10,000 times worse than that, and they're still collectively in power. Ousting some flake like Craig for a sex issue isn't going to do squat for the big picture.
Seriously, does anyone here still think that anything short of a grass-roots, in-the-streets, in-your-face revolution will change it?
Count me in. Absolutely! If it was good enough for Mussolini and his mistress and good enough for the Romanov family, it's good enough for the Bush family.
You Folks are all under the misunderap
Don't forget about the lie Bush told saying that Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors back in. They were in until the U.S. asked them to leave shortly before "Shock and Awe."
George W. Bush is a flagrant and habitual liar.
- Tom
Just like his father! Remember "READ MY LIPS".
...or "I was out of the loop" on Iran-Contra. Or....
These scoundrels support policies that clearly hurt the people of the country. The only way they can get We The People to vote against our own best interests is to use emotion to sway us or to LIE to us. They do both so much that the word "truth" is semantically meaningless to them.
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