Arianna: "Bush's Mis-State-Ment Of The Union Fiasco"

[otohara]

originally posted by 9215 in LBN -

Yellowcake-gate
What price will President Bush have to pay for his 16-word scam?

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By Arianna Huffington



July 16, 2003 | Poor Karl Rove. He spends close to two years meticulously staging photo ops and carefully crafting sound bites to create the image of President Bush as a take-charge, man-the-controls, land the jet on the deck of the aircraft carrier, "Bring 'em on" kind of leader. But now the latest revelations about the Misstatement of the Union fiasco are threatening to bring back the old notion of W. as a bumbling, detached figurehead in chief.

And it's the president's own people who are painting this unflattering portrait.


Take George Tenet: While robotically impaling himself on his sword, the CIA director took great pains to point out that he thought so little of the Niger/Saddam uranium connection that he and his deputies refused to bring it up in congressional briefings as far back as fall 2002. It just didn't meet his standards.

Same with Colin Powell. The secretary went on at great length about the intense vetting process -- "four days and three nights" locked up with the leaders of the CIA, working "until midnight, 1 o'clock every morning," going over "every single thing we knew about all of the various issues with respect to weapons of mass destruction" -- that went into deciding what information would be used in his United Nations presentation. A presentation that ultimately did not include the Niger allegation because it was not, in Powell's words, "standing the test of time."

more

http://salon.com/opinion/huffington/2003/07/16/state_of_the_union/index.html

[Cha]

1. And here's the link!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=18043&mesg_id=18043&page=

[regnaD kciN]

2. Wonderful! Here's more...

Joining the still-don't-get-it unit were Don "Haldeman" Rumsfeld, who termed the president's speech "technically correct," and Ari "Ehrlichman" Fleischer who offered up this classic bit of spinsanity: "What we have said is it should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech. People cannot conclude that the information was necessarily false."

(...)

In the spirit of Tricky Dick, let me make myself perfectly clear: I'm not saying that Yellowcake-gate is the equivalent of Watergate. I'm saying it's potentially much, much worse.

(...)

No one died as a result of Watergate, but more than 200 American soldiers have been killed and a thousand more wounded to rid the world of an imminent threat that wasn't. To say nothing of the countless Iraqis who have lost their lives. And those numbers will only rise as we find ourselves stuck in a situation Gen. Tommy Franks predicts will continue for at least another four years.

With the events of the last week, George Bush has come across as very presidential indeed. Like his dad, he's been out of the loop; like Clinton he's become a world-class word weasel; and like Nixon he's shown a massive propensity for secrecy and dissembling. Not exactly the role models Karl Rove had in mind.