More War, More Rich,
More Poor—
More Hell on Earth:
Reasons to
Re-elect
George W. Bush.
(Part 2)
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A group of 27 retired diplomats and military commanders, called Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, released a statement earlier this year demanding that Bush be replaced in November. The statement condemns the Bush administration's foreign policy for severely damaging national security and international relations.
Their statement cited "manipulation of uncertain intelligence about weapons of mass destruction [and] a cynical campaign to persuade the public that Saddam Hussein was linked to al Qaeda and the attacks of Sept. 11" as reasons for the group's implicit endorsement of John Kerry.
In a news conference at the National Press Club on June 16, former director of the State Department's intelligence office Phyllis Oakley, a signer of the statement, said, "Never in the two and a quarter centuries of our history has the United States been so isolated among the nations, so broadly feared and distrusted." The statement attacks the Bush administration for having "adopted an overbearing approach to America's role in the world, relying on military might and righteousness, insensitive to the concerns of traditional friends and allies, and disdainful of the United Nations ... Motivated more by ideology than by reasoned analysis, it struck out on its own."
In the statement and at the news conference, the group emphasized that the cumulative effect of the Bush administration policy has been to reduce the standing of America and the safety of Americans, and that the administration is not equipped to handle its responsibilities. Former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman denounced the "post 9/11 atmosphere of hysteria" and said that "I think we will in time come to be very ashamed of this period in history ... and of the role some people in the administration played in setting the tone and setting the rules."
Many of the signers of the statement are former ambassadors appointed by presidents from both parties, and retired military commanders and state department officials whose careers span three decades. Others include Adm. William J. Crowe (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Ronald Reagan), Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar (appointed by George H.W. Bush to lead U.S. forces in the Middle East), Gen. Merrill A. McPeak (former Air Force chief of Staff), and Adm. Stansfield Turner (former head of the Central Intelligence Agency).
(Source: Slevin, Peter, "Retired Diplomats, Military Commanders Fault Bush's Leadership," Washington Post, June 16, 2004. Dunphy, Harry, "Former Diplomats Say Bush Should Be Voted Out of Office for Iraq, Other Foreign Failures," The Associated Press, June 16, 2004.)
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In February 2004, a group of more than 60 top U.S. scientists accused the Bush administration of manipulating and censoring science for political purposes. Its authors included 20 Nobel laureates, several science advisers to past Republican presidents, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
In their report, scientists said the administration was "suppressing, distorting or manipulating the work done by scientists at federal agencies" in several cases.
On the subject of global warming, the administration ordered significant changes to the section on global warming in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2003 Report on the Environment. The entire section was later dropped.
In this "comprehensive" report, the administration opposed mention of research demonstrating sharp increases in global temperature over the past decade. They also objected to reference of a National Academy of Sciences report on the human contribution to global warming.
The administration sought to replace the statement that "[c]limate change has global consequences for human health and the environment" with a statement about the "complexity of the Earth's system and the interconnections among its components."
Cases of distortions in other subjects include:
- Replacing a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fact sheet on proper condom use with a warning emphasizing condom failure rates.
- Removing scientists from advisory boards when their political views didn't match those of the administration.
- Suppressing a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist's finding that potentially harmful bacteria float in the air surrounding large hog farms.
Russell Train, former EPA Administrator to Presidents Nixon and Ford, wrote in a letter to the New York Times:
"I can state categorically that there never was such White House intrusion into the business of the E.P.A. during my tenure. The E.P.A. was established as an independent agency in the executive branch, and so it should remain. There appears today to be a steady erosion in its independent status. I can appreciate the president's interest in not having discordant voices within his Administration. But the interest of the American people lies in having full disclosure of the facts, particularly when the issue is one with such potentially enormous damage to the long-term health and economic well-being of all of us."
(Sources: Seth, Borenstein, "Bush Admnistration Accused of Suppressing, Distorting Science," Knight-Ridder,
Feb. 19, 2004. Report by E.P.A. Leaves out Data on Climate Change, New York Times (June 19, 2003).
When Politics Trumps Science (Letter to the Editor), New York Times (June 21, 2003).
Jeremy Symons, "How Bush and Co. Obscure the Science," Washington Post, July 13, 2003.)
To Suggest Your Own Reason, click here.
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Despite the long-recognized neurotoxicity of lead to children, the Bush administration's proposed FY2005 budget cuts $35 million from lead-hazard-control
grants—a funding reduction of 20 percent. The administration is also seeking to reduce or eliminate funding for Health and Urban Development (HUD) programs
that help low-income families find safe and affordable housing, including $50 million in HUD lead-hazard-control grants.
The Children's Environmental Health Network (www.cehn.org) assigns an F for the Bush administration's consistent lack of commitment to children's-environmental-health research and programs.
A few examples:
A) Under President Bush, the Office of Children's Health Protection has been leaderless for over two years.
B) In October 2001, the administration announced funding for four new research centers into children's environmental health, only to have the EPA cut the budgets for the original eight. Congressional pressure restored some of this funding, but the total number of centers will ultimately be 11, not 12.
C) EPA also cut funding for the National Children's Study, which would follow approximately 100,000 children from before birth to at least age 18, assessing the impact of environmental factors on health.
(Source: Children's Environmental Health Bush Administration Report Card, 2001-2004, Children's Environmental Health Network. Also see: cehn.org. Also note: the Board of Visitors and Advisory Council for CEHN (available on their webpage); this report is informed by a broad base of support, meaning it is not a liberal thinktank, but a collective of medical and public health professors (like from Johns Hopkins), EPA officials, and respected and influential research hospitals.)
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In 2000, Mr. Bush said, "Our men and women in service put their lives on the line to defend our freedom. We have a special obligation to rebuild the schools that educate their children. As president, I will ensure that this obligation is met."
The Bush administration's 2004 budget cut $200 million from Impact Aid, the program that helps pay for the education costs of children whose parents are in the military. In the administration's latest tax cuts, military housing programs were cut from $10.7 to $9.2 billion, veterans benefits were cut $14.6 billion over 10 years, and a scheduled child tax credit was not extended to 200,000 low-income military families.
(Source: House Appropriations Committee, Minority Staff, June 17 2003, June 16 2003, Washington Post, June 17 2003.)
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The Bush administration's FY2004 budget eliminated programs for school counseling, improving teacher quality, reducing class size, dropout prevention, school reform, and rural education. In 2005 the administration plans to cut funding for Title I schools and teacher support services. Each of these programs were part of the administration's own No Child Left Behind Act.
The Bush administration's 2005 budget contains $9.4 billion less than the $34 billion needed to fund No Child Left Behind. The House Appropriations Committee predicts that the 2006 budget will come $1.9 billion short of the funding needed for the program, and $4.6 billion short by FY2009.
In the last two years that NCLB has been in effect, none of the president's budgets have met with the act's authorized financial needs. In 2003 the bipartisan National Governors Association and 90 percent of almost 2,000 surveyed superintendents and principals labeled Bush's No Child Left Behind Act an "unfunded mandate."
(Source: ed.gov, Office of Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, June 9, 2003. The Wallace Foundation, wallacefoundation.org, Education Week, 1/7/04. The Associated Press, 2/24/03. Center for American Progress. See article on, americanprogress.org.)
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Since George W. Bush has taken office, his administration has significantly weakened the country's central toxic-waste-cleanup program, Superfund. For 20 years, Superfund identified the country's largest polluters and required them to pay for cleaning the sites they contaminated. When President Bush took office, he did not renew this "polluter pays" program; as a result, taxpayers have been forced to pay for this cleanup. With its limited funding, estimates show that Superfund will run out of money by the end of the year. Without adequate funding, the rate of Superfund cleanups has fallen by half in comparison with the 1990s.
An EPA report published in July found that 111 Superfund sites do not have human exposure to hazardous toxic waste and ground-water pollution under control. A Sierra Club report found that these sites threaten to expose 1 in 4 Americans to such dangers.
Congress passed Superfund in the late 1970s, in response to an incident in Love Canal, New York, where residents discovered that their homes had been polluted by 20,000 tons of toxic chemical waste discarded by the Hooker Chemical Company in the 1940s and 1950s. This discovery coincided with a slew of miscarriages, birth defects, respiratory ailments, and cancer diagnoses in the region.
(Sources: Frohman, Jessica, Ananda Hirsch, and Ed Hopkins, "Communities at Risk: How the Bush Administration Is Failing to Protect People's Health at Superfund Sites," The Sierra Club. See article at: www.sierraclub.org. www.epa.gov. David Hopkins, "Superfund Waste Sites Endanger Human Health, Says Report," Environmental Data Interactive Exchange, July 30, 2004. See article at: www.edie.net. www.news-journalonline.com.)
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The Bush administration had little in the way of a postwar plan when it invaded Iraq, according to reports released by several news organizations. In March 2003, during a meeting of war planners and intelligence officials at Shaw Air Force Base, an Army official's presentation on the Pentagon's strategy included a slide on "Phase 4-C," the period of rebuilding after fighting had ended. That slide said only "To Be Provided." In April 2003, after American troops had taken Baghdad, General Tommy Franks met with his commanders and said that combat forces should begin to pull out within 60 days, and that only 30,000 troops would still be in Iraq by September. Today, 138,000 soldiers remain in Iraq.
These plans were made in the face of intelligence estimates suggesting that the postwar phase would be far more difficult than the war itself. In February 2003, the Army War College prepared a report saying that "the possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace in Iraq is real and serious ... The United States may find itself in a radically different world over the next few years, a world in which the threat of Saddam Hussein seems like a pale shadow of new problems of America's own making." The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency circulated similar forecasts in January and April 2003; the Pentagon's Joint Staff, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and the CIA's National Intelligence Council also made comparable predictions before and during the war.
The Army Central Command originally envisioned a force of 380,000 to wage the war; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's original estimate was 40,000. Although the White House ultimately approved the use of about 250,000 troops, additional forces that were meant to be sent to secure Iraq after the war were sent late, or not at all. Two Army divisions that Centcom had been promised for the postwar period were not in Iraq when Baghdad fell. A third, the 1st Cavalry Division, was so delayed by Rumsfeld's questioning of the need for more troops that on April 21 its deployment, set to include 17,500 troops, was canceled. Jay Garner, the initial civilian administrator of Iraq, said that "we did not seal the borders because we did not have enough troops to do that, and that brought in terrorists." James A. Marks, a retired Army major general and the chief intelligence officer for the land war command, said that "the insurgency was not inevitable ... We had momentum going in and had Saddam's forces on the run. But we did not have enough troops ... They took advantage of our limited numbers."
Preparations that could have been made before the war were neglected by the administration. The head of the U.S. Agency for International Development requested permission from the Pentagon to position relief supplies in Kuwait, but was ignored. Garner was not appointed until January 2003 and did not organize an interagency conference on postwar Iraq until less than a month before the invasion. The Pentagon never released its Phase 4 plan for Iraq. A plan called Operation Desert Crossing, which addressed the restoration of order after a war in Iraq, was last updated in 2000 and was never utilized. On March 17, 2003, two days before the start of the war, commanders contacted the Army War College to request copies of the handbook the U.S. had used in its occupation of Germany almost 60 years ago. Garner said that "the Bush administration did not [have its head in the postwar game]. Condi Rice did not. Doug Feith didn't. You could go brief them, but you never saw any initiative come of them. You just kind of got a north and south nod. And so it ends with so many tragic things."
(Sources: Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott, "Post-war Planning Non-existent," Knight Ridder Newspapers, October 17, 2004. See article at: realcities.com. Michael R. Gordon, "The Strategy to Secure Iraq Did Not Foresee a 2nd War," New York Times, October 19, 2004. See article at: nytimes.com.)
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In 2000, President Bush received fewer votes than his opponent, Al Gore. In Florida, however, Bush led by a little more than five hundred votes, and as a result he received a majority in the Electoral College. That outcome was in dispute for five weeks, because of the razor-thin margin of victory and the voting irregularities that may have determined it. Tens of thousands of votes, disproportionately Democratic, were rejected in Florida due to defective voting machines or errors on the part of poll workers and voters. The Miami Herald found that in predominantly black precincts, ballots were discarded at three times the rate of anywhere else in the state. Thousands of other African-Americans were improperly prevented from voting after being incorrectly classified as felons. On December 12, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, reversed the Florida Supreme Court's order for a statewide recount, effectively ending the efforts to contest the election. Last week, when asked by a USA Today reporter to compare this year's campaign to the race in 2000, President Bush responded, "Refresh my memory—how was I feeling four years ago?" The reporter wrote that, "reminded of what happened, he said a little testily, 'What did happen is I won.'"
(Sources: Judy Keen, "Leadership Proven During 'Tough Times,'" USA Today, October 28, 2004. See article at: usatoday.com.
"The Choice," The New Yorker, November 1, 2004. See article at: newyorker.com. "The 2000 Florida Fiasco," Agence France Press, October 31, 2004. See article at: turkishpress.com.)
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OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
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More War, More Rich, More Poor—More Hell on Earth: Reasons to Re-elect George W. Bush (Part 2)
More War, More Rich, More Poor—More Hell on Earth: Reasons to Re-elect George W. Bush (Part 1)
Situation Report From Oz By James Warner
I Lost My Greeting-Card Gig Because of My Drinking By Dan Kennedy
Grimace Speaks to a Geneticist By David Ng
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