Bush's Spin

Bush has been spending his final days in office spinning like a top, trying to secure his "legacy". There are a lot of people who find what he is saying disingenious at best. Here's an article by Richard Clarke, who was the head of counterterrorism for Clinton and part of the Bush administration, including 9/11, disagreeing with Bush's claim to have kept America safe.

Book Review: What Happened, by Scott McClellan

Title	What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception
Author	Scott McClellan
Rating
Tags	bush administraton, press secretary, iraq war, valerie plame wilson
	The Bush administration will be studied heavily by future historians. Whatever is written by those who were part of it will be valuable. Even if they lie or obfuscate, it will tell much about them. McClellan comes across as being quite honest, and more, quite likable. According to him, and he seems believable, he was unaware of some of the lies, and did his best to represent a President he started out believing in, only to have his belief undermined by, well, what happened. McClellan grew up in a political family. His mother was a mayor of Austin and held several other elected positions. McClellan ran at least one of her campaigns, and came to the attention of George W. Bush during his tenure as governor of Texas. As governor, Bush worked in a bipartisan way with Democrats, and did things McClellan strongly believed in. So when he became part of the Presidential campaign and then of the Bush administration, he was part of something he was proud of. But then mistakes were made. McClellan was like many Americans. When the push for the Iraq war started, he was a bit doubtful of the reasons, but was persuaded that the President and his advisers knew through intelligence that Hussein was a genuine threat. So he became part of the selling of the war. McClellan now believes that Bush's main motivation for the war was his sincere belief in the benefits of democracy, and that a free Iraq would start a domino effect of democracy in the Middle East. When the story about the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson broke, McClellan was press secretary. Both Karl Rove and Scooter Libby told him that they had not been involved in the leak of her name, and he did not find out otherwise for almost two years. By then a number of things had begun to disillusion him. McClellan does some interesting analysis. He blames part of government dysfunction on the permanent campaign, where governing and campaigning become so intertwined they can't be sparated from eacdh other. He recommends the book The Permanent Campaign and Its Future edited by Ornstein and Mann to anyone looking to understand the current Washington atmosphere. At the end of the book, McClellan makes recommendations for how to end the permanent campaing and get back to governing. Very useful book, which adds to the picture of the Bush White House built up by other books such as Barton Gellman's Angler (on the Dick Cheney vice presidency). Recommended.
Publication	PublicAffairs (2008), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 368 pages
Publication date	2008
ISBN	1586485563 / 9781586485566

Book Review: The Dark Side by Jane Mayer

Title	The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
Author	Jane Mayer
Rating
Tags	terrorsim, torture, bush administration
	I resisted reading this book for a while, but felt it was one of those books I HAD to read, as an American citizen, to know the worst about my government in order help to elect better ones. The book was hard to read, both for the occasional and in this case NOT gratuitous depictions of torture, and to see what fear did to this nation that has not ever before, as a policy, used coercive interrogations. Mayer makes that clear by giving a brief history. George Washington insisted on humane treatment of British prisoners of war, and that tradition continued with the U.S. in the forefront in creating treaties such as the Geneva Conventions. All that was turned on its head after 9/11. After that, captured terrorists were subject to extraordinary rendition, in which some were taken to foreign countries to be tortured for information, while others were tortured in prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The story of how it happened is complex, and sickening... a combination of fear and incompetence. Policy on this, as on so many things, was mostly set by VP Dick Cheney and his legal adviser, David Addington. Both are authoritarian personality figures who do what they believe is right and don't listen to anyone advocating something different. Addington's response is usually to shout down the opposing opinion. One interesting thing that Mayer points out is that it was a quite small circle of people setting torture policy and that only Addington was a lawyer. Of course John Yoo, who wrote the infamous torture memo while on staff in the Office of Legal Council (OLC), was a lawyer as well, but other lawyers have said that his work was badly done. Jack Goldsmith, who was head of OLC later, thought it was so deeply flawed that he withdrew it, and that was something that had not been done before (I also recommend Goldsmith's book, The Terror Presidency, on this subject). What OLC says is so important because they are the standard bearer for any administration on legal matters, and what they say goes. The Dark Side is also frightening it its depiction of sheer incompetence. At the time of 9/11, the CIA had not done interrogations for years, and had few experts in it. At first, they used some of the FBI's interragaters, who were experienced and did not use torture because they knew that information from torture was unreliable -it might be accurate, it might be lies, and you don't know which is which. They had interragaters who were experts in Muslim culture and who were used at the beginning, but the powers that be thought that information wasn't coming fast enough and handed the interrogations over to the CIA who was told to use any means necessary to get information and get it quickly. The CIA retro-engineered the SERE program, which was used to teach soldiers and agents to withstand torture and began using those techniques to torture. All of this was done with doubtful legal and moral justifications. Mayer uses that marvelous quote from Nietzsche "He who does battle with monsters needs to watch out lest he in the process becomes a monster himself. And if you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss will stare right back at you." There seems to be some indicatons that many of those who tortured developed psychological problems themselfes. There were also heroes in this battle, as Mayers is quick to acknowledge. See her summary in the afterward: "In looking back, one of the most remarkable features of this struggle is that almost from the start, and at almost every turn along the way, the Bush administration was warned that the short-term benefits of its extralegal approach to fighting terrorism would have tragically destructive long-term consequences both for the rule of law and America's interests in the world. Those warnings came not from just political opponents, but also from experienced allies, including the British Intelligence Service, the experts in the traditionally conservative military and the FBI, and, perhaps most surprisingly, from a series of loyal Republican lawyers inside the administration itself. The number of patriotic critics inside the administration and out who threw themselves into trying to head off what they saw as a terrible departure from America's ideals, often at an enormous price to their own careers, is both humbling and reassuring." (p. 327). This book, along with others such as Barton Gellman's Angler, will be very important to historians trying to understand an administration that went so wrong in so many ways, and to those who, as citizens, want to understand so as to elect better governments. Besides, it is a story to stand up with any epic, a story of heroes and villains, as well as people simply trying to do their best for their country in a dangerous and uncertain world. Excellent and highly recommended read.
Publication	Doubleday (2008), Hardcover, 400 pages
Publication date	2008
ISBN	0385526393 / 9780385526395

Frank Rich's Timelines

In my review of Frank Rich's Greatest Story Ever Sold, I mentioned the timelines he includes. There are two parallel timelines. Here's his description of them: "

Entries in italics in the right-hand column chronicle the story that was sold by the Bush administration and other relevant events, news reports, or official statements that were known publicly at the time.

Entries in roman type in the shaded left-hand column chronicle what the administration was learning behind the scenes about intelligence and other war-related matters—and not telling the public. The events in this hidden time line were revealed publicly only later; citations note the dates and sources of each revelation."

I highly encourage anyone to use these to answer questions about when the Bush administration knew what about Iraq and what it was spinning at the same time.