Krugman: Heckuva job, Bushie

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" Zepp " <zepp

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 15:51:08 -0800

[Zepps_News] Krugman: Heckuva job, Bushie

 

 

 

Heck of a Job, Bushie

 

--Or, A Year Ago...

 

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, December 30, 2005

 

 

http://www.topplebush.com/oped2434.shtml

 

A year ago, everyone expected President Bush to get his way on Social

Security. Pundits warned Democrats that they were making a big

political mistake by opposing plans to divert payroll taxes into

private accounts.

 

A year ago, everyone thought Congress would make Mr. Bush's tax cuts

permanent, in spite of projections showing that doing so would lead to

budget deficits as far as the eye can see. But Congress hasn't acted,

and most of the cuts are still scheduled to expire by the end of 2010.

 

A year ago, Mr. Bush made many Americans feel safe, because they

believed that he would be decisive and effective in an emergency. But

Mr. Bush was apparently oblivious to the first major domestic

emergency since 9/11. According to Newsweek, aides to Mr. Bush finally

decided, days after Hurricane Katrina struck, that they had to show

him a DVD of TV newscasts to get him to appreciate the seriousness of

the situation.

 

A year ago, before " Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job " became a

national punch line, the rising tide of cronyism in government

agencies and the rapid replacement of competent professionals with

unqualified political appointees attracted hardly any national attention.

 

A year ago, hardly anyone outside Washington had heard of Jack

Abramoff, and Tom DeLay's position as House majority leader seemed

unassailable.

 

A year ago, Dick Cheney, who repeatedly cited discredited evidence

linking Saddam to 9/11, and promised that invading Americans would be

welcomed as liberators - although he hadn't yet declared that the Iraq

insurgency was in its " last throes " - was widely admired for his

" gravitas. "

 

A year ago, Howard Dean - who was among the very few prominent figures

to question Colin Powell's prewar presentation to the United Nations,

and who warned, while hawks were still celebrating the fall of

Baghdad, that the occupation of Iraq would be much more difficult than

the initial invasion - was considered flaky and unsound.

 

A year ago, it was clear that before the Iraq war, the administration

suppressed information suggesting that Iraq was not, in fact, trying

to build nuclear weapons. Yet few people in Washington or in the news

media were willing to say that the nation was deliberately misled into

war until polls showed that most Americans already believed it.

 

A year ago, the Washington establishment treated Ayad Allawi as if he

were Nelson Mandela. Mr. Allawi's triumphant tour of Washington, back

in September 2004, provided a crucial boost to the Bush-Cheney

campaign. So did his claim that the insurgents were " desperate. " But

Mr. Allawi turned out to be another Ahmad Chalabi, a hero of

Washington conference rooms and cocktail parties who had few

supporters where it mattered, in Iraq.

 

A year ago, when everyone respectable agreed that we must " stay the

course, " only a handful of war critics suggested that the U.S.

presence in Iraq might be making the violence worse, not better. It

would have been hard to imagine the top U.S. commander in Iraq saying,

as Gen. George Casey recently did, that a smaller foreign force is

better " because it doesn't feed the notion of occupation. "

 

A year ago, Mr. Bush hadn't yet openly reneged on Scott McClellan's

2003 pledge that " if anyone in this administration was involved " in

the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity, that person " would no longer

be in this administration. " Of course, some suspect that Mr. Bush has

always known who was involved.

 

A year ago, we didn't know that Mr. Bush was lying, or at least being

deceptive, when he said at an April 2004 event promoting the Patriot

Act that " a wiretap requires a court order. ...When we're talking

about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court

order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to

understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are

in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our

homeland, because we value the Constitution. "

 

A year ago, most Americans thought Mr. Bush was honest.

 

A year ago, we didn't know for sure that almost all the politicians

and pundits who thundered, during the Lewinsky affair, that even the

president isn't above the law have changed their minds. But now we

know when it comes to presidents who break the law, it's O.K. if

you're a Republican.

 

--

" Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government

talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court

order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about

chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order

before we do so "

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004

 

Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

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