Honestly. I try to see the world from "the other" point of view. But sometimes my curiosity, and ability to read, think, and remember get in the way of the experience I'm supposed to be having.
Today's exhibit is "100 Facts and 1 Opinion: The Non-Arguable Case against the Bush Administration" appearing in The Nation magazine.
Yet the problem is that in most cases the "facts" simply aren't, or they don't reflect badly on Bush, and they're anything but "non-arguable."
I don't have time to do the whole list, but a huge number of the points can be debunked simply by reading the handy links they've supplied, something, it would seem, they think their liberal audience either disinclined and/or incapable of doing.
Which speaks poorly both of the author and the magazine's readership.
Iraq
1. The Bush Administration has spent more than $140 billion on a war of choice in Iraq.
5. During the Bush Administration's war in Iraq, more than 1,000 US troops have lost their lives and more than 7,000 have been injured.
The unspoken point is that the war has costs, but the author is too cowardly to come out and say it: "Freeing Iraqis and deposing Saddam wasn't worth $140 billion and 1,000 American lives." That would make their real point perhaps a bit too clear to the reader.
If you think the war was wrong, this will appeal to you. But it's simply a redundant argument: If the war was wrong, then the cost, whatever it was, was wrong too.
Yet the question before the public is whether the war was worth the cost. Unless you already have a bias, simply showing it had a cost doesn't answer that question in the negative. By historical standards, changing two hostile governments with only 1,000 deaths (not all being casualties) is, quite frankly, an unheard-of feat.
2. The Bush Administration sent troops into battle without adequate body armor or armored Humvees.
Yet read the source, and you'll discover it would have taken one and a half years to completely refit the fleet of Humvees! Apparently The Nation wants you to believe it would have been a better strategic move to give Saddam an additional 1.5 years to prepare his defenses?
This makes me question the judgement of these people, and further confirms my impression that liberals have trouble understanding that there are always trade-offs -- to get one thing, you have to give up something else. To get body and Humvee armor, you give up a year and a half.
Futher, what they avoid telling you is that Kerry, Bush's opponent, went even further and actually voted against giving the soldiers these things!
3. The Bush Administration ignored estimates from Gen. Eric Shinseki that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq.
I'm inclined to grant this one -- out of the many estimates available, Shinseki's was indeed closer than others.
But this analysis ignores an important consideration: At the very last minute, in an unforseen move, Turkey denied us the base at their border they had promised. This prevented many of the troops we'd deployed from getting into Iraq in the time planned.
Finally, we again fail to consider another trade-off: Even if we grant that the administration was wrong about Shinseki's prediction, is that supposed to lead me to favor a man who showed even worse strategic judgement when he voted against the neccessary body armor and provisions? And who makes blunders like undermining our existing allies?
4. Vice President Cheney said Americans "will, in fact, be greeted as liberators" in Iraq.
And Cheney was right: In some areas, like northern Iraq, our troops absolutely were greeted as liberators. In others, people appeared to simply be glad to be rid of Saddam, which wasn't exactly a hostile reception either.
Again, you have to already be drinking the liberal kool-aid for this to make sense to you. The unspoken "truth" implied here is that most Iraqis are angry we got rid of Saddam if it meant invading their country. That's patently false.
6. In May 2003, President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit, stood under a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," and triumphantly announced that major combat operations were over in Iraq. Asked if he had any regrets about the stunt, Bush said he would do it all over again.
These people are deeply deceptive:
1. The sign was put there by the Navy not by Bush, and referred to the sailors' service, not the war. It was not Bush's statement.
2. Bush was asked if he would do the landing in the flight suit over again, not give the same content of the speech.
7. Vice President Cheney said that Iraq was "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."...
Once again, we're deep into deception here: This is meant to lead you into the liberal revisionist lie that Bush allegedly argued that Saddam caused 9/11 in order to build a case against Iraq.
Yet:
1. This quote was made six months after the war started, and thus had nothing to do with the pre-war case against Iraq. Note how deceptively it is employed here.
2. If you read the linked article, you'll discover the President went public afterwards to correct the impression Cheney created, stating clearly there was currently no evidence suggesting Iraqi involvement in 9/11.
3. It appears there was an al Qaeda base in northern Iraq, as well as Salman Pak which was used to train terrorists, including those from Afghanistan. We knew about both of those at the point when Cheney made that speech, so he wasn't completely off-base in suggesting, 9/11 aside, there were links between Saddam and al Qaeda.
8. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that high-strength aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," warning "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." The government's top nuclear scientists had told the Administration the tubes were "too narrow, too heavy, too long" to be of use in developing nuclear weapons and could be used for other purposes.
Dr. Rice was wrong about the tubes. And so?
It shows a certain kind of desparation to have to descend into arguments about whether a cabinet member was wrong about an aluminum tube as one of your strongest pieces against a sitting president.
By comparison, I would have pointed out that Clinton was wrong about whether to take OBL out or not. That's somewhat more relevant than an aluminum tube.
9. The Bush Administration has spent just $1.1 billion of the $18.4 billion Congress approved for Iraqi reconstruction.
And if reconstruction had so far cost $18.4 billion, we'd be told how bad that was too.
11. According to Duelfer, the UN inspections regime put an "economic strangle hold" on Hussein that prevented him from developing a WMD program for more than twelve years.
Terrorism
12. After receiving a memo from the CIA in August 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack America," President Bush continued his monthlong vacation.
1. Bush's vacations were working vacations; his time in Crawford was anything but an extended time of leisure, meeting constantly with staff and foreign visitors.
2. The suspicion that al Qaeda wanted to attack America was nothing new; this was known back into the Clinton administration. Clinton took vacations too, last I checked.
3. The information was no more specific than that. Right now we still know that there are people determined to attack America. This doesn't necessarily tell us exactly what we need to do.
Even if we agree, hypothetically, that more could have been done, how does this lead me to vote for a man who has stated he still, after 9/11, thinks of terrorism as a matter for "law enforcement" -- to be addressed after an attack has happened?
Yet another example of how I fail to parse the liberal mindset.
13. The Bush Administration failed to commit enough troops to capture Osama bin Laden when US forces had him cornered in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in November 2001. Instead, they relied on local warlords.
This assumes the reader is ignorant of a basic fact: Troop levels and strategy -- particularly the use of local warlords, who were intimately familliar with the terrain -- were determined by the generals in Afghanistan, not by Bush in Washington.
If we are to take this complaint seriously, we must conclude (a) that the generals were incompetant, and (b) that Bush should have micromanaged them from the US, overriding their decisions made in the field.
But, once again, the author isn't brave enough to come out make those charges. Probably because the reader would recognize it would not have been a good idea for Bush to micromange our military forces in Afghanistan, as Lyndon Johnson and his staff did, foolishly, in Vietnam.
14. The Bush Administration secured less nuclear material from sites around the world vulnerable to terrorists in the two years after 9/11 than were secured in the two years before 9/11.
My, these people are deceptive!
The linked report actually calls this a "modest slow down" and says it happened, not from some fault of Bush, but because "the program was slowly but surely completing the work that could be done until the problem of access to the most sensitive sites, with the largest amounts of materials, was resolved."
The report also notes that Bush increased funding by $150 million after 9/11!
Again, how deceptive!
15. The Bush Administration underfunded Nunn-Lugar--the program intended to keep the former Soviet Union's nuclear legacy out of the hands of terrorists and rogue states--by $45.5 million.
Once again, just reading the linked document shows they're telling less than half the truth: Lugar, a Democrat, requested $451 million. Bush authorized $409 million.
The difference was the funding for a specific program, which the Pentagon warned was vague and in danger of being mismanaged and having funds wasted, based on past experience with it.
Lugar disagreed with the Pentagon and felt the program should have been funded anyway, despite past failures and waste.
And this makes Bush incompetant how?
Oh, that's right. I wasn't supposed to actually read story behind the link.
16. The Bush Administration has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money.
These agencies have existed since 1990. Is there any evidence that there aren't five times as many companies violating Cuba's embargoes as there were bank accounts for Saddam Hussein? And notice there's no charge of ineffectiveness. We're just supposed to deduce something is wrong with these levels...
Futhermore, since we have Saddam in custody, and have his records (unlike Castro!) it's not clear to me why we'd need a large number of investigators sitting back here in offices in the US.
Ah, but if you're a liberal, I'm sure this sounds damning indeed.
17. According to Congressional Research Service data, the Bush Administration has underfunded security at the nation's ports by more than $1 billion for fiscal year 2005.
Indeed, this area may be $1 billion short. But taken in perspective:
After initially opposing it, the president created the Department of Homeland Security, the most complex federal bureaucracy set up since World War II. He then tripled its funding to more than $30 billion and fortified the nation's borders, ports and skies.
So perhaps another billion is needed -- that sounds huge, it's actually only a 3.3% increase. Both Bush and Kerry have promised to deliver the needed improvement.
19. Vice President Cheney told voters that unless they elect George Bush in November, "we'll get hit again" by terrorists.
The statement in quotes is true. But the rest of the sentence is false and has been repeatedly debunked. Cheney said if we made the wrong decision -- referring to his previous statements just seconds before about our former policy of treating terrorism as a law-enforcement matter -- that there was "a danger" we could get hit again.
That's so obvious it's not even controversial. But the phrasing used above, and dishonestly placed in Cheney's mouth, is a fantasy.
20. Even though an Al Qaeda training manual suggests terrorists come to the United States and buy assault weapons, the Bush Administration did nothing to prevent the expiration of the ban.
21. Despite repeated calls for reinforcements, there are fewer experienced CIA agents assigned to the unit dealing with Osama bin Laden now than there were before 9/11.
Once again, they deliberately only tell you half the story. From the same article, here's the rest of the story:
A senior intelligence official who asked not to be identified strenuously disputed Mr. Scheuer's criticism about the resources assigned to the war against Al Qaeda. "The assertions are off the mark," the official said. "There are far more D.O. officers working against the Al Qaeda target both at C.I.A. headquarters and overseas than there were before Sept. 11," the official said, using the abbreviation for the Directorate of Operations, the C.I.A.'s clandestine arm. "Our knowledge of and substantive expertise on Al Qaeda has increased enormously since 9/11. The overall size of the counterterrorism center has more than doubled, and its analytic capabilities have increased dramatically."
What's the truth? I don't know. But if the case is so "non-arguable" then why must it be made by hiding half the truth from you? Afraid you'd be realize their were holes in their arguments? Afraid you might want to dig deeper, or make up your mind the wrong way? Looks like it.
22. Before 9/11, John Ashcroft proposed slashing counterterrorism funding by 23 percent.
23. Between January 20, 2001, and September 10, 2001, the Bush Administration publicly mentioned Al Qaeda one time.
Finally, a true point: Before 9/11, a lot of mistakes were made -- by Clinton and Bush (and Kerry) -- in determining counterterrorism policy and funding.
Yet what's more important than what happened before 9/11 is the question as to who will do the right thing in the post-9/11 world. Yet why do they avoid asking that obvious and even more important question?
Hint: It doesn't favor their candidate.
25. More than three years after 9/11, just 5 percent of all cargo--including cargo transported on passenger planes--is screened.
News reports reveal cargo inspections are actually at an all-time high.
BUT, the issue is more about available technology and economic trade-offs than anything specific to this President. For one, the state of technology in use is low, and no amount of political hand-waving can instantly improve it. The other issue is economic: Opening more than a fraction of shipped cargo -- even if just on airliners -- could destroy the shipping industry as we know it today. Read this article, or this News Hour conversation to get an idea of the trade-offs.
... But experts at Sandia National Laboratories said this week that closing the loopholes in air cargo security is not that easy. "This is a really complex problem," said Rebecca Horton, manager of Sandia's explosive detection group. "It's not an easy step to go from screening and checking baggage to screening large containers of cargo."
The Nation is supposed to be a respected, serious liberal magazine, so we're not talking about the uneducated fringe. But even among the educated, it seems liberalism is based around a very simplistic worldview, which lacks the ability to consider trade-offs, and thinks the executive branch should have nearly infinite, god-like powers.
The reader isn't supposed to think: "Gee, should we be putting FedEx out of business?" They just supposed to assume we can get something for nothing, and blame Bush (though never a liberal president) for not having delivered on those utopian assumptions.
Cronyism and Corruption
30. The Bush Administration awarded a multibillion-dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton--a company that still pays Vice President Cheney hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred compensation each year (Cheney also has Halliburton stock options). The company then repeatedly overcharged the military for services, accepted kickbacks from subcontractors and served troops dirty food.
These charges have been debunked numerous times:
1. According to non-partisan FactCheck.org, Cheney has no financial interest in Halliburton, and thus there are no ethical issues nor even appearance of conflict of interest:
Kerry ad implies Cheney has a financial interest in Halliburton and is profiting from the company's contracts in Iraq. The fact is, Cheney doesn't gain a penny from Halliburton's contracts, and almost certainly won't lose even if Halliburton goes bankrupt.
"Deferred compensation" doesn't vary with company performance. Further, he's assigned all profits from Halliburton to charity. But don't expect The Nation to give its readers those salient facts.
2. The charge the Halliburton contract was "no-bid" is patently false. It was bid, properly, under the LOGCAP program. The false allegation it wasn't was a myth spread knowingly by Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman.
3. The contract was with the Pentagon, and Cheney was not involved. There are relatively few companies in the world which can perform these services (for example, putting out oil-well fires) so it's not unusual they chose Halliburton.
4. I think the allegation of overcharging is unresolved, but the bit about dirty food seems to have been true, though fixed. Shame on them. Still, it had nothing to do with Cheney, who had quit long before.
Halliburton has lost about 25% of it's value since the beginning of the Bush administration. So much for "war for Halliburton" idea.
31. The Bush Administration told Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan about plans to go to war with Iraq before telling Secretary of State Colin Powell.
32. The Bush Administration relentlessly pushed an energy bill containing $23.5 billion in corporate tax breaks, much of which would have benefited major campaign contributors.
News flash: Politicians act to benefit those who contribute to their campaign. As the article linked notes, there's nothing new about this. Kerry will do no differently for his major contributors.
But it's also worth noting that the tax breaks are "aimed at increasing domestic oil and gas production", which seems like the right incentive given that people are constantly harping on the importance of decreasing reliance on foreign oil. How else was he supposed to give companies incentives to shift supply?
35. The Bush Administration let disgraced Enron CEO Ken Lay--a close friend of President Bush--help write its energy policy.
Again, just reading the linked article reveals this to be a lie: The article only notes that Cheney once met with Ken Lay -- there was no evidence that Ken Lay actually wrote any policy.
36. Top Bush Administration officials accepted $127,600 in jewelry and other presents from the Saudi royal family in 2003, including diamond-and-sapphire jewelry valued at $95,500 for First Lady Laura Bush.
Once again, the missing paragraphs from the linked article change the tune completely...
All of Abdullah's gifts, and most others, sit in the National Archives. By law, federal employees must report all gifts received from foreign governments. The president and vice president and their families can't keep gifts worth more than $285, which become federal property....
President Clinton caused some controversy in 2001 on leaving the White House when it was revealed that he was keeping $190,000 in gifts received while in office. He eventually paid for $86,000 worth of the gifts.
Oh, you mean those gifts to the Bush administration are now property of the taxpayer, that they were managed properly, and are now on display in a museum? Ooooh! How corrupt.
What a dishonest cheap shot against the first lady.
Meanwhile, they fail to report far more egresious behavior by one of their favorite presidents, who walked off with over $104,000 worth of gifts which belonged to the taxpayer.
This is supposed to lead us to favor the candidate who that very same President Clinton is now endorsing?
38. President Bush used images of firefighters carrying flag-draped coffins through the rubble of the World Trade Center to score political points in a campaign advertisement.
Yes, it's true. Bush ran an ad which mentioned that 9/11 occurred and showed such things in a brief, background shot.
Again, this reeks of desparation. This is a charge of "cronyism and corruption"?
After the Clinton years, it's refreshing to see such lackluster allegations of corruption. But, hey, these people are campaigning for Clinton's recommended successor.
The Economy
39. President Bush's top economic adviser, Greg Mankiw, said the outsourcing of American jobs abroad was "a plus for the economy in the long run."
Based on what I know about economics, Bush's top advisor is dead-on. And the author is, or at least expects his audience to be, ignorant about economics.
Sadly, he's probably right.
40. The Bush Administration turned a $236 billion surplus into a $422 billion deficit.
43. President Bush is the first President since Herbert Hoover to have a net loss of jobs--around 800,000--over a four-year term.
46. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to pay down the national debt to a historically low level. As of September 30, the national debt stood at $7,379,052,696,330.32, a record high.
49. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to protect the Social Security surplus. As President, he spent all of it.
All of these complaints boil down to one thing: The economy went downhill during Bush's administration. But they carefully avoid asking why the economy went downhill. When you understand the answer to that question, you'll also understand why they carefully avoid it.
The dot-com boom of the 90s was unsustainable. People were investing in all kinds of stupid business ideas, like selling large furniture from a web site. All this nuttiness was sustained, ultimately, by Alan Greenspan's economic policies which kept interest rates strangely low.
It appeared Greenspan was dangerously extending the bubble in order to keep the economy humming up until the election, an action similar to those taken by previous presidents.
When it was clear Gore had lost, Greenspan, still under the Clinton administration, suddenly jacked up the prime interest rate, causing banks everywhere to need to call in these outlandish loans, and triggering the collapse of the "bubble", the "bust" after the "boom". This collapse continued almost until 9/11.
After Greenspan pulled the plug, it was clear we were in a recession. I remember watching him and Al Gore answer questions from reporters. Gore quipped that he didn't know much about the coming recession, but "knew it was going to be W-shaped." Then he and Greenspan joyfully and enthusiastically high-fived each other, gleeful that the economy, and about 1/3rd of your stock portfolio -- had been destroyed as a means of hurting his political rival!
I understood what was happening at the time, and found this behavior utterly dispicable.
It's also worth noting that lax Democratic terrorism policies also played a significant role in causing 9/11, which then put us into an even worse state economically, almost destroying the travel and transportation industries.
So needless to say, I think Bush was dealt a very bad hand, much of it due to actions taken by his predecessor; I am not eager to trust the same people -- who openly rejoiced at the destruction of your savings as a political trick -- with the economy again.
Now, back to their economic dishonesty...
41. The Bush Administration implemented regulations that made millions of workers ineligible for overtime pay.
... and would also have made millions of others, who were even poorer, elligible for the first time. It would have helped a lot of the poorest workers:
Among workers guaranteed overtime: All hourly employees and those paid less than $23,660 or $455 a week... Under the previous 50-year-old regulations only workers earning less than $8,060 annually were guaranteed overtime.
But the high-powered unions who worked to defeat this improvement, and their friends in the media, didn't want you to learn that. (The link The Nation gives to support their claim, for example, is to a front organization which is actually funded by the ALF-CIO. Guess how 'disinterested' their analysis is?)
It's too bad this legislation got struck down: I would have liked to have seen the poorest workers get a hand up. But alas, some of those whose overtime were threatened were people like me, who were already highly paid, had more political clout, and might have been recategorized as "executive" or "professional" instead of blue collar.
In this case, it was Bush who sided with the poorest workers, and his enemies who sided with wealthier, better-paid white-collar hourly workers who have jobs similar to mine.
See here for a more complete explanation.
45. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush said "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum." He passed the tax cuts, but the top 20 percent of earners received 68 percent of the benefits.
Bush's statement was accurate, and they're relying on the reader's economic ignorance. The effect of the cuts was disproportional towards the bottom: People at the bottom who paid taxes got proportionally a much larger break than the top earners.
The top 20 percent pay over 74 percent of the total tax burden. If life were fair, a man who paid 74% of a bill would also get 74% of any subsequent refund. The fact that they only got 68% shows that the additional 6% was shifted "downward", towards poorer people, exactly as Bush stated.
To the bottom 80%, that extra 6% represented a whopping 22% increase in their tax refund, generated at the expense of "the rich".
This is simply more evidence of the appalling level liberal economic illiteracy, or perhaps even dishonesty.
Enough
That's enough. I could have done more, but there just isn't time. I'm just one guy and I don't get paid to click on their stupid links, and then expose the rest of the truth buried in the article that they just "forgot" to tell their readers.
You can see from some of the examples above the appalling level of dishonesty these people employ:
Implying, for example, that Laura Bush was on the take when in fact they politely accepted gifts, as protocol demands, and then promptly gave the gifts to the National Archive where they became our collective property. (While neglecting evidence of far worse behavior from their mostly recent favorite President!)
Or implying Dick Cheney who had already made enough money, was somehow still on the take from Halliburton, when the truth is that he gave up something like $8 million dollars in profit, and donated it to charity, to become a public servant and make sure there was not even an appearance of conflict of interest.
(In contrast, billionaire John Kerry gave something like $44,000 to charity.)
Simply reprehensible.
Sure, there is an uneducated, or wild-eyed fringe in any political movement. But this isn't "the fringe", this is The Nation, an esteemed, supposedly respectable representative of modern liberal thought. And look at the level of dishonesty it stoops to!
Modern liberalism is in deep, deep trouble. And so are we all, if their favorite candidate, who appears to operate at a similar level of integrity, wins.
thank you.
Posted by: on October 29, 2004 11:40 PM