Truth and Respect After Bush
TRUST AND RESPECT AFTER BUSH Jerry 7/16/04
George W. Bush never admits making a mistake, but admits that he may have at one time or another, but he can not recall making one. Further, he denies ever using evasive language to conceal lies or wrongdoings. The television viewers of the world saw and heard the President making these claims at his news conference.
On another occasion he said no one at the White House or at the Pentagon “had a clue that the mistreatment of prisoners was taking place at Abu Ghraib. The few reported incidents were the work of a half-dozen low-level grunts who should have known better, he said. See, over there we are prosecuting those ‘grunts’ to the hilt. Our system of treating prisoners is working, and that’s the end of the story. So, let’s move on”.
The freedom of the press enables us to know that the President was lying. In the Pentagon Secretary Rumsfeld knew all about it and told Mr. Bush about it January. He had full, detailed reports from the Army itself and from the Red Cross. Yet, they kept it a secret until the awful truth of the torture became public knowledge around the world. His simple lie’s impact is revealed in secret memos from Bush’s Justice Department and from his top White House lawyer claiming that the U. S. did not have to comply with the Geneva Convention s and other international bans on prisoner abuse.
The President’s denial of knowledge was simply a bare faced lie. Apparently his hope was that the blame could be placed on underlings who would have to face courts that would happily choose to believe the President’s word over that of one he called a “grunt”. The President won’t have to defend himself in court, he hopes.
President Bush denied telling the American people lies to justify attacking Iraq. The intelligence data furnished him was inaccurate. He is attempting to place the blame for the fiasco on to the C. I. A. as if that agency has the responsibility for deciding to declare the war. He wants the ‘grunts’ in that organization to bear the blame for failing to determine the accuracy of the data they assembled for consideration by the President. It is true that they failed to do their job, and should be reprimanded or fired. However, it is quite possible that the defective data was what Mr. Bush wanted, to support his declaration to Congress and the American people that Iraq possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and that we were in danger of being attacked at any moment. The factual data would have denied Mr. Bush the sense of urgency he sought and would have left Mr. Hussein appearing as a cruel dictator, mean to his own people, but of no immediate threat to us.
The war in Iraq has turned the spotlight on the shallowness of Mr. Bush’s understanding of the duties of a President as well as his lack of integrity in fulfilling them. As President, Chief Executive Officer and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces it is his duty to determine that data given him by employees are accurate before he acts on them. He is the top link in the chain of command. He is the executive who chose the Cabinet Secretaries and it is his responsibility to do whatever is necessary to make sure the information he acts upon is accurate. His failure to verify the accuracy of the data used as a basis for a war declaration is inexcusable. The President can’t justify his failure by blaming “some grunt” lower down the chain of command.
At some important date in the future the facts and figures will be assembled to assess the results of the war on Iraq. At that time the people will learn what the President knew and when he knew it. We will be able to see the cost of the war in terms of lives lost, people disabled for life, the resources in materials lost or destroyed and the monetary loss and debt incurred in the process. We will be able to read the verified facts explaining the true reasons for the war and the process employed in bringing the various forces into agreement on the necessity of declaring war on Iraq. The story of the ‘process’ will explain to us why the plans failed to include a process of managing Iraq after we had removed its leader until a stable, Democratic government could be established.
In a supplement to the War Report we will learn what failures and leadership breakdowns caused the local population to hate their liberators and why they welcomed world terrorists to come and help them get rid of the occupation forces and their contractors and employees. There will be a section mentioning the treatment of prisoners and explaining the extent to which it encouraged ordinary citizens to join in the harassment and killing of the occupiers.
In a second supplement the report will explore the extent to which the United States has lost the respect and admiration of nations that had been our friends for generations. It will measure the extent to which our ability to negotiate international agreements has been diminished by the war. Speculation will be included regarding possible abuse of our service personnel who may be captured in future conflicts.
George W. Bush never admits making a mistake, but admits that he may have at one time or another, but he can not recall making one. Further, he denies ever using evasive language to conceal lies or wrongdoings. The television viewers of the world saw and heard the President making these claims at his news conference.
On another occasion he said no one at the White House or at the Pentagon “had a clue that the mistreatment of prisoners was taking place at Abu Ghraib. The few reported incidents were the work of a half-dozen low-level grunts who should have known better, he said. See, over there we are prosecuting those ‘grunts’ to the hilt. Our system of treating prisoners is working, and that’s the end of the story. So, let’s move on”.
The freedom of the press enables us to know that the President was lying. In the Pentagon Secretary Rumsfeld knew all about it and told Mr. Bush about it January. He had full, detailed reports from the Army itself and from the Red Cross. Yet, they kept it a secret until the awful truth of the torture became public knowledge around the world. His simple lie’s impact is revealed in secret memos from Bush’s Justice Department and from his top White House lawyer claiming that the U. S. did not have to comply with the Geneva Convention s and other international bans on prisoner abuse.
The President’s denial of knowledge was simply a bare faced lie. Apparently his hope was that the blame could be placed on underlings who would have to face courts that would happily choose to believe the President’s word over that of one he called a “grunt”. The President won’t have to defend himself in court, he hopes.
President Bush denied telling the American people lies to justify attacking Iraq. The intelligence data furnished him was inaccurate. He is attempting to place the blame for the fiasco on to the C. I. A. as if that agency has the responsibility for deciding to declare the war. He wants the ‘grunts’ in that organization to bear the blame for failing to determine the accuracy of the data they assembled for consideration by the President. It is true that they failed to do their job, and should be reprimanded or fired. However, it is quite possible that the defective data was what Mr. Bush wanted, to support his declaration to Congress and the American people that Iraq possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and that we were in danger of being attacked at any moment. The factual data would have denied Mr. Bush the sense of urgency he sought and would have left Mr. Hussein appearing as a cruel dictator, mean to his own people, but of no immediate threat to us.
The war in Iraq has turned the spotlight on the shallowness of Mr. Bush’s understanding of the duties of a President as well as his lack of integrity in fulfilling them. As President, Chief Executive Officer and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces it is his duty to determine that data given him by employees are accurate before he acts on them. He is the top link in the chain of command. He is the executive who chose the Cabinet Secretaries and it is his responsibility to do whatever is necessary to make sure the information he acts upon is accurate. His failure to verify the accuracy of the data used as a basis for a war declaration is inexcusable. The President can’t justify his failure by blaming “some grunt” lower down the chain of command.
At some important date in the future the facts and figures will be assembled to assess the results of the war on Iraq. At that time the people will learn what the President knew and when he knew it. We will be able to see the cost of the war in terms of lives lost, people disabled for life, the resources in materials lost or destroyed and the monetary loss and debt incurred in the process. We will be able to read the verified facts explaining the true reasons for the war and the process employed in bringing the various forces into agreement on the necessity of declaring war on Iraq. The story of the ‘process’ will explain to us why the plans failed to include a process of managing Iraq after we had removed its leader until a stable, Democratic government could be established.
In a supplement to the War Report we will learn what failures and leadership breakdowns caused the local population to hate their liberators and why they welcomed world terrorists to come and help them get rid of the occupation forces and their contractors and employees. There will be a section mentioning the treatment of prisoners and explaining the extent to which it encouraged ordinary citizens to join in the harassment and killing of the occupiers.
In a second supplement the report will explore the extent to which the United States has lost the respect and admiration of nations that had been our friends for generations. It will measure the extent to which our ability to negotiate international agreements has been diminished by the war. Speculation will be included regarding possible abuse of our service personnel who may be captured in future conflicts.
posted by Jeremiah | 9:59 PM
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