In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Terror aides strangely keep turning on Bush
It’s hard to remember another president who has suffered more abuse and betrayal from the government’s career civil service than George W. Bush. Again and again, it seems, the president hires some seemingly seasoned career counterterrorism hand, only to find out later that he’s actually a Democratic plant, a partisan stooge or just a plain fool.
We already know the story of that notorious turncoat, retired Ambassador Joe Wilson, and his wife, CIA clandestine operative Valerie Plame (whom Rep. Jack Kingston [R-Ga.] pegged as a “glorified secretary”). The CIA foolishly entrusted Wilson with a fact-finding mission to the African nation of Niger to find out whether Saddam Hussein was buying “yellowcake” uranium there for his allegedly reconstituted nuclear weapons program. After getting this plum assignment, Wilson turned on the president with all manner of unfounded accusations.
Now we have Richard Clarke, whom we’re now told was either a liar (Paul Wolfowitz), a fraud out to sell a bunch of books (Scott McClellan), an out-of-the-loop rube (Dick Cheney), or just a moron who couldn’t get the job done (National Security Council [NSC] spokesman Jim Wilkinson and just about everyone else on the White House payroll).
Clarke, of course, worked for the last four presidents (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II) in a series of national-security and counterterrorism roles. Condi Rice kept him on as counterterrorism czar at the NSC when the Bush administration took over from Clinton. And then later, after Sept. 11, the White House appointed him to a less central, but still critical, post as top NSC aide on cyberterrorism and critical infrastructure.
Clearly the White House thought he was top-flight, but now it seems he was just another mix of backstabber and boob of the Joe Wilson variety — a hapless egomaniac or, as columnist John Podhoretz called him yesterday in the New York Post, a “a self-regarding buffoon.”
...
The first possibility is that the Bush White House is so freewheeling, inattentive and just plain unlucky that it keeps appointing senior counterterrorism aides who actually turn out to be both policy incompetents and closet Democratic partisans.
The second that these malefactors leave the White House, they show their true colors and start leveling all manner of baseless charges against the president.
The second possibility is that every counterterrorism expert the White House hires who isn’t (a) a hidebound ideologue or (b) a dyed-in-the-wool Bush loyalist eventually becomes so disgusted with the mix of incompetence and mendacity that is the White House’s counterterrorism policy that he eventually quits and then immediately sets about trying to drive the president from office.
Which seems more likely to you? Choice one or choice two?
- rob 12:48 PM - [PermaLink] -
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