http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35747-2003Jul9.html?nav=hptoc_eoWhy the CEO in Chief Needs an Audit
By Richard Cohen
Thursday, July 10, 2003; Page A23
The Bush White House is run on a business model. The president is the CEO. He delegates to others, including the vice president, who was once a CEO himself. It therefore should come as no surprise that George W. Bush, a Harvard MBA after all, is doing what other CEOs do when they get into trouble. In his case, he's "restated" his reasons for going to war.
Corporations do this all the time. If a profit of, say, $2.8 billion turns out to be a loss of a similar amount on account of unanticipated developments (corruption, greed, the demands of mistresses), the figure merely gets "restated." Usually no one is held responsible for this, because a billion here or a billion there can, as we know, fall through the cracks. In fact, the CEO -- having been given a bonus for such a banner year -- is then given another one for managing his company through difficult times.
In the same way, the president recently restated some of the reasons for invading Iraq. Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, which Bush told the world was being "reconstituted," may in fact not exist. The White House the other day restated its earlier insistence that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the West African nation of Niger. It turned out that the supporting documents had been forged. The White House admitted that in a press release left behind after Bush had departed for Africa.
....snip