It's About A Failed Presidency, Stupid

The recently scrapped Senate bill requiring a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq was ridiculed by conservatives as an attempt by Congress to micro-manage the “war” in Iraq. But their scorn misses a much larger and more ominous point, eclipsing mere policy disputes.

How should America deal with a President who is incompetent, corrupt and holds the actions of his administration above the law?

Even Republicans are increasingly conceding that President Bush mismanaged the invasion of Iraq, often using the phrase “mistakes were made” to substitute for a more realistic, catastrophic and lamentable description.

But beyond Iraq, Bush has done deliberate and entirely avoidable harm to a broad range of important institutions and policies at home.

He turned governmental agencies and departments – Justice, Interior, Energy, Environmental Protection, etc. – into extensions of the Republican party, in some cases clearly violating the law.

He staffed those same institutions with unqualified cronies or with partisan members of the industries those institutions were supposed to regulate, resulting in tragedy ("Heck of a job, Brownie!").

He supported and sustained immoral policies such as torture and rendition that shattered our credibility in the world community and put our troops at risk.

He held no high official responsible for the outrageous abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, which further damaged our international standing.

He held none of his cabinet responsible for the illegal and disgraceful outing of a covert CIA officer despite clear supporting evidence.

He failed to respond adequately to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, and continues to fail to provide adequate, much less competent, support for the victims of that disaster.

He failed to respond effectively and continues to ignore the genocide in Darfur.

And so on.

When a President botches a war we shouldn’t trust that same person to clean up the mess. Yet we’ve been forced to wait almost five years for President Bush to come up with a plan to sort out what many now call the worst foreign policy disaster in our nation’s history.

Republicans acknowledge that “mistakes have been made” but they still can’t embrace what so many Americans have already concluded – that the real issue has little to do with military strategy and everything to do with our national response to a failed and catastrophic Presidency.

Do we have to wait until a President gets caught on tape covering up a robbery or lying about adultery before we can act to limit his power or remove him from office? The Constitution allows for impeachment when the President commits “high crimes and misdemeanors”. A misdemeanor, in modern usage, could mean a traffic violation or drunk and disorderly.

Certainly the failures and scandals of the Bush White House are more egregious than drunk and disorderly.

If the actions of President Bush and his cabinet aren't excellent and proper candidates for impeachment, much less outrage, it’s hard to imagine what would be.

- JT Compton

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Michael Moore, Patriot

Nothing makes me happier than seeing Michael Moore banging his fists and dressing down CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Somebody’s got to do it. Not that I have anything against Blitzer specifically, but as an iconic member of the news media it took Blitzer and his counterparts years to finally ask the hapless, incompetent Bush Administration the hard questions that might have prevented the Iraq war in the first place.

As Moore pointed out to Blitzer in yesterday’s interview, they never asked “why”. Why were we going to Iraq? Why was there no plan to secure the country? Why was there no international support? And on and on.

At this point, the Bush Administration couldn’t find it’s way out of a cardboard box. And all but the most frightened, reticent, inflexible conservatives have concluded that Bush and his team are the most lame, corrupt and disastrous leaders of a lifetime.

But Moore and others knew this long ago, and their criticisms were either ignored or trivialized by Blitzer and his peers for the sake of political access while at the same time sacrificing truth and journalistic integrity.

Those who criticize Moore usually miss his point. Moore isn’t trying to be “fair and balanced” in his documentaries. He’s not a newsman - he’s a truth teller. Truth doesn’t always have or need two sides, despite the typical talk-show debate format we’ve all become accustomed to. There are issues that are so screamingly obvious and so tragically critical that it becomes imperative to place them squarely in front of the public and put them into sharp focus. Sure, he’s also an entertainer, but that’s what makes him such an effective communicator.

It’s almost comical to listen to the shrill, whiny voices of the status quo criticizing Moore. They almost always attack his appearance or label him with vague generalizations like “liberal nut job,” but seldom do they actually address his issues. Even CNN consultant Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who recently produced a critical piece on Moore, eventually had to admit that Moore got the overwhelming majority of his facts right in his recent movie “Sicko.”

For those who are too wealthy to use insurance, too poor to afford it, or too healthy to have yet needed it, “Sicko” exposes what the rest of us already know. That our health care system is a disastrous, disgraceful scam. It is hopelessly bloated and ineffective, except when it comes to making its top industry executives grotesquely rich. It delivers one of the worst care products among developed nations at the highest price. In other words, the system is horribly broken.

As a progressive visionary, Moore has put this truth into sharp focus. We don’t need to hear from executives from Big Pharma or the HMO industry to understand why the system is a mess, just as we don’t need to hear from the hijackers to know that 9-11 was an abominable slaughter.

If more Americans questioned the status quo, if more Americans held their politicians accountable, if more Americans denounced lobbyists and influence peddling, if more Americans were critical of the authorities and institutions that have such a direct impact on our lives, we would have a higher quality of life, greater liberties and a safer world.

Michael Moore has always known this, and has always put his money where his mouth is. I challenge his detractors to make their own films. They might be able to find a few people who like our health care system. They might be able to find a few citizens who think that Bush has done a good job. They might even be able to find a unicorn. But the fact that nothing has been done along these lines – that no compelling counterpoint exists to Michael Moore – tells us all we need to know. Michael Moore is telling us something extremely important. If that’s not patriotism, I don’t know what is.

- JT Compton

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Justice Bush

God forbid a wealthy white man be forced to go to prison. At least, that’s what President Bush seemed to be saying with his commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence today. It’s okay to throw Blacks and Hispanics in jail for life in Texas on the flimsiest of charges, even when it can be shown that the state's legal system is fatally flawed. They’ve been charged with crimes and they're not white, so they're probably guilty.

But in the twisted mess of today’s conservative mind, Libby’s misdeeds are trivial—covering up potential crimes of the Vice President, crimes like outing a CIA officer in order to bolster lies that led us into the most costly and bungled war in our nation’s history. Why should anyone go to jail for that?

Bush left Libby’s felony conviction and $250,000 fine in place but commuted his 30 month sentence after the court announced that Libby would be required to serve time in jail while waiting for his appeal. In a lengthy statement, Bush declared that, in his judgment, Libby’s jail sentence was too harsh, and it was punishment enough that he will lose his license to practice law. After all, Libby has a family, he's been a loyal Republican soldier and he’s white. Cut the poor guy a break!

But this “punishment” is of minor consequence to Libby, who will now be handed a seven-figure job with a Republican think-tank, defense contractor, HMO or any number of other businesses controlled by conservatives whose profits depend on the greed and loyalty of conservative politicians.

Equally disturbing, the commutation was based on Bush’s judgment—as though that fact should impress anyone with a measurable IQ. This is the same Bush judgment that took us to war prematurely, failed to plan for the occupation, failed to hold anyone accountable for the abominations of Guantanamo, Abu Ghirab, rendition and torture, failed to find consensus on our Social Security mess, failed to rebuild New Orleans, failed to staff government agencies with qualified professionals and failed to uphold constitutional protections when it came to wiretapping and surveillance.

For a President and party who accused everyone else of lacking values, who laced speech after speech with words like evil and immoral, who scolded their adversaries for being soft on crime, the Libby commutation stinks. It has little to do with justice and everything to do with partisan politics. It is perfectly legal, but like so many actions of the Bush Administration, it is utterly unethical.

Sadly, the world would be a much better place without the judgments of President Bush and his corrupt, misguided, incompetent team.

- JT Compton

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