Bush administration is waging a "phony war" on terrorism, the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001. A more effective approach would begin with a national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil. "None of you should believe we are winning this war. There is no evidence that we are winning this war," the ex-Georgian told a group of about 300 students attending a conference for collegiate conservatives. "We were in charge for six years," he said, referring to the period between 2001 and early 2007, when the GOP controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. "I don't think you can look and say that was a great success. I believe we need to find leaders who are prepared to tell the truth ... about the failures of the performance of Republicans ... failed bureaucracies ... about how dangerous the world is," he said when asked what kind of Republican he would back for president. "We have got to get past this partisan baloney, where I'm not allowed to say anything good about Hillary Clinton because 'I'm not a loyal Republican,' and she's not allowed to say anything good about me, or she's not a 'loyal' Democrat. What a stupid way to run a country. We've been engaged in a phony war. The only people who have been taking this seriously are the combat military."
His remarks seemed to reflect, in part, the findings of a National Intelligence Estimate made public last month. In the estimate, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that six years of U.S. efforts to degrade the al-Qaida terrorist group had left the organization constrained but still potent, having "protected or regenerated" the capability to attack the United States in ways that have left the country "in a heightened threat environment."
"When we got attacked at Pearl Harbor, we took on Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany," he said, referring to World War II. "Soviet Union beat all three in less than four years. We're about to enter the seventh year of this phony war against terrorist groups, and we're losing."
"First of all, we have to have a national energy strategy, which basically says to the Saudis, 'We're not going to rely on you,' " he said. The United States imports about 14 million barrels of oil a day, making up two-thirds of its total consumption.
www.ajc.com/news/content/...t0803.html
Robert Dallek (a historian): "Polls showing President Bush's approval ratings in the 20s and 30s and a New York Times survey last month reporting that people across the country are eager for an end to the current administration suggest that this nation has a problem it's going to have to live with for the next 17 months -- a failed presidency that won't reestablish its credibility with a national majority.
The political argument against Bush's continuing tenure is not frivolous. There are good reasons to see him as a failed president whose remaining time in office will be unproductive at best and destructive to the country's well-being at worst. But given the constitutional rules by which the presidency operates, there is no serious prospect of removing him from office.
A fine solution would be a Nixon-style resignation, but anyone who thinks that Bush and Vice President Cheney would give in to such a demand is dreaming. With no serious threat of impeachment looming, Bush and Cheney can afford to dismiss calls for their departure as the outcries of political extremists. Instead, the president, determined to stay the course, declares that his strategy in Iraq needs more time to work, that the many charges of abuse of power are unsubstantiated, and that, as with Harry Truman, who also lost his hold on the public in the last two years of his presidency, history will vindicate him.
It's enough to make people think about a constitutional amendment for removing a president other than by impeachment or because of incapacity, as is now provided for under the 25th Amendment.
Such an amendment would need to set a high bar for removal and include a process that would be the greatest possible expression of the popular will. This could best be achieved through a recall procedure beginning in the House and the Senate, where a 60 percent vote would be required in both chambers to initiate a national referendum that would be open to all citizens eligible to vote in state elections. The ballot would simply ask voters to say yes or no to removing the president and vice president from office immediately. Should a majority vote to recall both incumbents, the speaker of the House would succeed to the presidency and, under the provisions of the 25th Amendment, would choose a vice president, who would need to be confirmed by majorities in the House and the Senate.
The new amendment would undoubtedly encourage some interest groups unhappy with administration policies to make abortive attempts to oust a president. But the public should remember that presidential setbacks such as those Franklin Roosevelt suffered in 1937-38 or Harry Truman experienced in 1946, when his approval ratings fell to 32 percent, were not the full measure of what they were later able to accomplish.
Such an amendment would compel presidents to think about public support or government by consensus throughout their time in office, rather than as they approached reelection, particularly during a second term, when they would otherwise have no reason to fear voter repudiation.
Bush's presidency is a troubling lesson in the malaise that can settle over the country during the lame-duck period of a stubborn chief executive. The nation should be able to remove by an orderly constitutional process any president with an unyielding commitment to failed policies and an inability to renew the country's hope."
www.washingtonpost.com/wp...01952.html
Michael Tomasky (a Jew, editor of Guardian America): "Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.), speaking to Esquire magazine about Bush's hostility toward democratic accountability, said that "before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment." Bruce Fein, a Reagan administration veteran and conservative legal scholar, has aimed his gunsight at Cheney, producing a scathing denunciation in Slate of the vice president's high crimes and misdemeanors -- even describing one, the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens, as "indistinguishable from Louis XVI's execrated lettres de cachet that occasioned the storming of the Bastille." Mon Dieu!
There's little disagreement among liberals about the substance. If any administration since President Richard M. Nixon's has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, surely it's this one; if lying about consensual sexual activity fit the bill, then surely lying about the reason for a war does, too. As Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky argue in their indignant book "The Case for Impeachment," the bill of indictment goes far beyond Bush's grave lies about Iraq. There's also the arrest and detention without trial of U.S. citizens, the violation of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions at the prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the "blatant violation" of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment "by secretly authorizing secret warrantless spying on thousands of American citizens by the National Security Agency."
Bush and Cheney -- and conservatism in general -- have wrecked our civic institutions and darkened our civic impulses. Nothing is beyond politicization: not the Justice Department; not the worst terrorist attacks on our soil; not the scientists and nonpartisan experts who've been silenced or demoted because they didn't toe the right line; for goodness sake, not the National Park Service, which, in a sop to biblical literalists, was forced to offer pamphlets for sale at the Grand Canyon gift shop putting forth the "different view" that the great chasm was cut 4,500 years ago by Noah's flood, not 6 million years ago, as is the case here on Earth."
mtomasky@gmail.com
www.washingtonpost.com/wp...v=hcmodule
His remarks seemed to reflect, in part, the findings of a National Intelligence Estimate made public last month. In the estimate, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that six years of U.S. efforts to degrade the al-Qaida terrorist group had left the organization constrained but still potent, having "protected or regenerated" the capability to attack the United States in ways that have left the country "in a heightened threat environment."
"When we got attacked at Pearl Harbor, we took on Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany," he said, referring to World War II. "Soviet Union beat all three in less than four years. We're about to enter the seventh year of this phony war against terrorist groups, and we're losing."
"First of all, we have to have a national energy strategy, which basically says to the Saudis, 'We're not going to rely on you,' " he said. The United States imports about 14 million barrels of oil a day, making up two-thirds of its total consumption.
www.ajc.com/news/content/...t0803.html
Robert Dallek (a historian): "Polls showing President Bush's approval ratings in the 20s and 30s and a New York Times survey last month reporting that people across the country are eager for an end to the current administration suggest that this nation has a problem it's going to have to live with for the next 17 months -- a failed presidency that won't reestablish its credibility with a national majority.
The political argument against Bush's continuing tenure is not frivolous. There are good reasons to see him as a failed president whose remaining time in office will be unproductive at best and destructive to the country's well-being at worst. But given the constitutional rules by which the presidency operates, there is no serious prospect of removing him from office.
A fine solution would be a Nixon-style resignation, but anyone who thinks that Bush and Vice President Cheney would give in to such a demand is dreaming. With no serious threat of impeachment looming, Bush and Cheney can afford to dismiss calls for their departure as the outcries of political extremists. Instead, the president, determined to stay the course, declares that his strategy in Iraq needs more time to work, that the many charges of abuse of power are unsubstantiated, and that, as with Harry Truman, who also lost his hold on the public in the last two years of his presidency, history will vindicate him.
It's enough to make people think about a constitutional amendment for removing a president other than by impeachment or because of incapacity, as is now provided for under the 25th Amendment.
Such an amendment would need to set a high bar for removal and include a process that would be the greatest possible expression of the popular will. This could best be achieved through a recall procedure beginning in the House and the Senate, where a 60 percent vote would be required in both chambers to initiate a national referendum that would be open to all citizens eligible to vote in state elections. The ballot would simply ask voters to say yes or no to removing the president and vice president from office immediately. Should a majority vote to recall both incumbents, the speaker of the House would succeed to the presidency and, under the provisions of the 25th Amendment, would choose a vice president, who would need to be confirmed by majorities in the House and the Senate.
The new amendment would undoubtedly encourage some interest groups unhappy with administration policies to make abortive attempts to oust a president. But the public should remember that presidential setbacks such as those Franklin Roosevelt suffered in 1937-38 or Harry Truman experienced in 1946, when his approval ratings fell to 32 percent, were not the full measure of what they were later able to accomplish.
Such an amendment would compel presidents to think about public support or government by consensus throughout their time in office, rather than as they approached reelection, particularly during a second term, when they would otherwise have no reason to fear voter repudiation.
Bush's presidency is a troubling lesson in the malaise that can settle over the country during the lame-duck period of a stubborn chief executive. The nation should be able to remove by an orderly constitutional process any president with an unyielding commitment to failed policies and an inability to renew the country's hope."
www.washingtonpost.com/wp...01952.html
Michael Tomasky (a Jew, editor of Guardian America): "Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.), speaking to Esquire magazine about Bush's hostility toward democratic accountability, said that "before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment." Bruce Fein, a Reagan administration veteran and conservative legal scholar, has aimed his gunsight at Cheney, producing a scathing denunciation in Slate of the vice president's high crimes and misdemeanors -- even describing one, the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens, as "indistinguishable from Louis XVI's execrated lettres de cachet that occasioned the storming of the Bastille." Mon Dieu!
There's little disagreement among liberals about the substance. If any administration since President Richard M. Nixon's has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, surely it's this one; if lying about consensual sexual activity fit the bill, then surely lying about the reason for a war does, too. As Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky argue in their indignant book "The Case for Impeachment," the bill of indictment goes far beyond Bush's grave lies about Iraq. There's also the arrest and detention without trial of U.S. citizens, the violation of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions at the prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the "blatant violation" of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment "by secretly authorizing secret warrantless spying on thousands of American citizens by the National Security Agency."
Bush and Cheney -- and conservatism in general -- have wrecked our civic institutions and darkened our civic impulses. Nothing is beyond politicization: not the Justice Department; not the worst terrorist attacks on our soil; not the scientists and nonpartisan experts who've been silenced or demoted because they didn't toe the right line; for goodness sake, not the National Park Service, which, in a sop to biblical literalists, was forced to offer pamphlets for sale at the Grand Canyon gift shop putting forth the "different view" that the great chasm was cut 4,500 years ago by Noah's flood, not 6 million years ago, as is the case here on Earth."
mtomasky@gmail.com
www.washingtonpost.com/wp...v=hcmodule
