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The Dubya Report - the real George W. Bush   Counter Right-Wing SpinSupportThe Dubya ReportArticles Help victims of floods and hurricanes.The Republican Oil CrisisAs the summer driving season begins many Americans will come face-to-face with one of the Bush administration's crowning achievements — the $4 gallon of gas. Like the subprime mortgage crisis, high gas prices and the related high prices of crude oil have made their way from the business pages to front pages of major newspapers. Yet, earlier this year CBS's Peter Maer asked Bush if he had any advice for the average American facing the prospect of $4/gallon gasoline. Bush, the former unsuccessful oil man, had not heard the prediction. "Oh yeah? That's interesting. I hadn't heard that," Bush said. The Bush administration has presided over at least a 4-fold increase in the price of oil, from approximately $30/barrel on the day of Bush's inauguration to $134/barrel as of this writing. The man who headed Vice President Cheney's task force, Andrew Lundquist, is now a lobbyist representing several of the firms that that task force interviewed, including BP, Duke Energy, and the American Petroleum Institute. Citing "executive privilege" the administration has refused to release the task force's 170-page report to the press or the public. The Bush family has had an unusually close relationship with the Saudi royal family dating back at least to 1986 when "Poppy" Bush convinced the Saudis to limit oil production. In the current administration former Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar had such privileged access to "Junior" that he was given the nickname "Bandar Bush." Earlier this month, Secretary of Treasury Paulson opined that "If you look at the facts, they show that the price of oil is about supply and demand." Ironically Paulson was on his way to Saudi Arabia, a key player in the OPEC cartel, which regularly increases or decreases the production of crude oil in attempting to protect its members' interests. At the G-8 summit meeting a week later, Secretary of Energy Sam Bodman, a former chemical industry executive with little energy-policy experience, proclaimed bravely that "there are relatively few things we can do short term," about the state of the oil market. The steep increase in oil prices appears to have a variety of causes....[June 18, 2008] Full Story Related Articles"People Give Money to Buy Access" - McCain and the LobbyistsOn February 21, 2008 the NY Times published an article on its front page that included allegations of an improper relationship between John McCain, Republican senator from Arizona and likely presidential nominee, and Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist 30 years his junior with clients on whose behalf McCain had written letters to government regulators. As reported by the Times, and independently by the Washington Post, John Weaver, a top strategist in McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, acknowledged meeting with Iseman at Washington's Union Station to tell her to stay away from McCain. Iseman disputed Weaver's account but confirmed the meeting. The Times also quoted two unidentified former campaign associates who reported having "intervened" with McCain, warning him that his association with Iseman was putting the campaign and his career at risk. According to the Times report, McCain "acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman." Weaver subsequently clarified that his concerns had to do with claims that Iseman was making about "strong ties to [McCain's] committee staff, personal staff and to him." At a news conference on February 22 McCain denied having had a romantic relationship with Ms. Iseman, asserted that aides had not confronted him about her, and claimed no knowledge that John Weaver had asked the lobbyist to keep her distance. Conservative commentators who only a few days earlier had questioned McCain's conservative credentials, calling him a "liberal" and a "Democrat" now rallied to his defense. Both the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee used the incident as an occasion to try to raise additional funds, and reported a "substantial return" on new email initiatives. McCain campaign advisors, including Steve Schmidt (a former counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney), Charles R. Black (who is also head of Washington lobbying firm BKSH & Associates), and attorney Bob Bennett, criticized the Times reports as "gossip" and "gutter politics," and coordinated a largely successful effort to reframe the story as an example of the Times making irresponsible, unsubstantiated allegations against a Republican. (Never mind that the Times had previously endorsed McCain for the Republican presidential nomination.)[March 2, 2008] Full Story Related ArticlesBenazir Bhutto Not What the Media and Bush Administration ClaimedSaleem Khan, Ph.D. The violent death of Benazir Bhutto on December 27, is the latest event in a culture of violence that has been steadily spreading in the body politic in Pakistan. Ms. Bhutto's assassination took place in Liaqat Park 28 years after the execution in April 1979 of her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a democratically elected prime minister of Pakistan, at the hands of a military dictator. The prison where his execution was carried out is hardly a mile away from the Liaqat Park, a site where the first prime minister of Pakistan, Liaqat Ali Khan, fell to an assassin's bullet 28 years earlier in October 1951. A power struggle among the ruling elite was said to be the cause of the Liaqat tragedy, but that killing was never professionally investigated and I doubt very much that her tragic demise will ever be. These and numerous other tragic events in the 60 year history of Pakistan are of far reaching national and international consequences because Pakistan occupies a strategic position in a very volatile region. These events imperil national, regional and international peace. The magnified exposure of these tragic events in the world media is closely linked to protecting western interests fails to adequately express concern for the safety and welfare of Pakistan and its people. I have known both Bhuttos personally for over a quarter century. I met Ms. Bhutto for the first time in 1984 in New York when she was invited to meet with a politically active group of young Pakistanis. My meeting with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was arranged on August 1974, in the Prime Minister's house in Rawalpindi. Subsequently I maintained contacts with both of them. I served as an economic advisor in his administration from 1975 to 1977. Memories of a long relationship and my observation of their tenure as public servants are still fresh in my mind. Both leaders were idols of the people and had developed close bonds with the poor and dispossessed.[December 29, 2007] Full Story Related ArticlesThe Bush Rules of Evidence ConsortiumNews.comIn the history of the American Republic, perhaps no political family has been more protected from scandal than the Bushes. When the Bushes are involved in dirty deals or even criminal activity, standards of evidence change. Instead of proof "beyond a reasonable doubt"that would lock up an average citizen, the evidence must be perfect. If there's any doubt at all, the Bushes must be presumed innocent. Even when their guilt is obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense, it's their accusers and those who dare investigate who get the worst of it. Their motives are challenged and their own shortcomings are cast in the harshest possible light. For decades – arguably going back generations – the Bushes have been protected by their unique position straddling two centers of national power, the family's blueblood Eastern Establishment ties and the Texas oil crowd with strong links to the Republican Right. [For details on this family phenomenon, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.] This reality was underscored again by how major news outlets and the right-wing press reacted to a new piece of evidence implicating George W. Bush in a criminal cover-up in the "Plame-gate"scandal. Though the evidence is now overwhelming that President Bush was part of a White House cabal that leaked Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as a covert CIA officer and then covered up the facts, major newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, continue to pooh-pooh this extraordinary scandal. The latest piece of evidence was the statement from former White House press secretary Scott McClellan that Bush was one of five senior officials who had him clear Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby in the leak when, in fact, they were two of the leakers.[November 24, 2007] Full Story Related ArticlesThe Ballad of 'Fredo' GonzalesAlberto Gonzales was born on August 4, 1955 in San Antonio, TX, to Pablo and Maria Gonzales, who had met when they were migrant workers in Texas. Alberto was the second of eight children. Growing up he lived in a two-bedroom house in north Houston, near the airport where his father worked construction. Gonzales told the Houston Chronicle that the house did not have a telephone until he was in high school, and had no running hot water. "I remember getting water, putting it in a pot, putting it on the stove, heating it so we could take baths," Gonzales told the Chronicle. Gonzales's mother was still living in the house in 2003. "We have hot water now," he added. Gonzales graduated from Houston's MacArthur High School in 1973, joined the Air Force, and was later admitted to the Air Force Academy. He transferred and completed his undergraduate degree at Rice University where earlier he had worked selling soft-drinks in the school stadium. After graduating from law school in 1982 Gonzales returned to Houston, joined the politically connected law firm of Vinson & Elkins, and eventually became the first first Hispanic to be named partner. In the Republican culture at Vinson & Elkins, Gonzales decided to become one, as well. "I liked what I heard about some of the Republican principles about being self-reliant, hard work, and so I just gravitated to it," Gonzales told the Chronicle.[May 1, 2007] Full Story Related Articles9/11 + 5It was inevitable -- in an election year, with Bush' popularity near its nadir, with an administration and titular leader whose hallmark has been to do exactly what they exhort their opponents not to do -- that promises of a nonpolitical address on the evening of September 11 would be a lame attempt to limit the political fallout Bush created when he took what should have been an opportunity for grief, mourning, perhaps thoughts of peace, and turned it into another in a now familiar series of delusional and self-congratulatory paeans to failed policies and actions. Recycling phrases from his Iraq phrase book, Bush continued his practice of lumping terrorists worldwide into an undifferentiated mass. Calling his efforts to combat terrorism "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century," Bush implied that terrorists are united by "a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance, and despises all dissent." A 2004 report by the Defense Science Board rejected the notion that radical Islamists "hate freedom."In the war of ideas or the struggle for hearts and minds, American efforts have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended....[Updated September 27, 2006] Full Story Related Articles'You are either with us or against us' On December 16, 2005 in a now well-known article, NY Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau exposed a three-year old program authorized by George W. Bush, in which the National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropped on "hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants." "Nearly a dozen current and former officials" were concerned enough about the program's legality and lack of oversight to discuss it with the Times.As reported by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, Bush had "summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story." Bush's concern, Alter suggested, was not that public discussion of the program "is helping the enemy," as he claimed. (Many American Muslims suspected that the government might be monitoring their communications long before the Times story was published.) Rather, Alter wrote, Bush was "desperate to keep the Times from running this important story ... because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker." (The Times acknowledged that it delayed publication of the story for a year to "conduct additional reporting," and also omitted some "information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists.")The domestic eavesdropping, which the NSA calls a "special collection program" began soon after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and expanded as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began to capture Qaeda operatives overseas. The NSA targeted phone numbers and contact information from captured cell phones and computers, and then expanded surveillance as monitored individuals contacted others. Hundreds of monitored contacts were reportedly inside the United States.[Updated July 11, 2006] Full Story Related ArticlesIn-Depth· Environment · Appointments · Economic Policy · So-called Foreign Policy · Health and Human Services · Education · Competence, Character and Credibility · Political Parties, Campaigns and Elections · Civil Rights and Liberty · Editorials Related Sites |
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