Text 17564, 63 rader
Skriven 2006-01-26 07:45:42 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
Ärende: incompetence and lies
=============================
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/01/26/opinion/26herbert.html?hp

That was early on the morning of last Aug. 29. On Sept. 1, with the city
all but completely underwater, the president went on television and
blithely declared, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the
levees."

This guy is something. Remember his "Top Gun" moment aboard the aircraft
carrier Abraham Lincoln? And his famous taunt — "Bring 'em on" — to the
insurgents in Iraq? His breathtaking arrogance is exceeded only by his
incompetence. And that's the real problem. That's where you'll find the
mind-boggling destructiveness of this regime, in its incompetence.

Fantasy may be in fashion. Reality may have been shoved into the shadows on
Mr. Bush's watch. But the plain truth is that he is the worst president in
memory, and one of the worst of all time. Many thousands of people — men,
women and children — have died unnecessarily (and thousands more are
suffering) because of his misguided and mishandled policies.

Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser for George H. W. Bush,
counseled against the occupation of Iraq at the end of the first gulf war.
As recounted in a New Yorker article last fall, he said, "At the minimum,
we'd be an occupier in a hostile land. Our forces would be sniped at by
guerrillas, and, once we were there, how would we get out?"

George W. Bush had no such concerns. In fact, he joked about his failure to
find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Like a frat boy making cracks
about a bad bet on a football game, Mr. Bush displayed what he felt was a
hilarious set of photos during a spoof that he performed at the annual
dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association in March
2004.

The photos showed the president peering behind curtains and looking under
furniture in the Oval Office for the missing weapons. Mr. Bush offered mock
captions for the photos, saying, "Those weapons of mass destruction have
got to be somewhere." And, "Nope, no weapons over there, maybe under here."

This week, as the killing of American G.I.'s and innocent Iraqis continued,
we learned from a draft report from the office of the Special Inspector
General for Iraq Reconstruction that, like the war itself, the Bush plan
for rebuilding Iraq has been crippled by incompetence and extreme shortages
of personnel. I doubt that this will bother the president any more than any
of his other failures. He seems to truly believe that he can do no wrong.

The fiasco in Iraq and the president's response to the Hurricane Katrina
catastrophe were Mr. Bush's two most spectacular foul-ups. There have been
many others. The president's new Medicare prescription drug program has
been a monumental embarrassment, leaving some of the most vulnerable
members of our society without essential medication. Prominent members of
the president's own party are balking at the heavy hand of his No Child
Left Behind law, which was supposed to radically upgrade the quality of public
education.

The Constitution? Civil liberties? Don't ask.

Just keep in mind, whatever your political beliefs, that incompetence in
high places can have devastating consequences. 

[snip]

The Republican Party, the Rule of Lies party.
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