The Watch

The Watch is concerned about the increasing pressure towards feudalism in the United States from corporations, social regressives, warmongers, and the media. We also are concerned with future history concerning our current times, as non-truths which are “widely reported” become the basis for completely false narratives.

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Bush's Wormtongue

Our Incompetent Lord High Chancellor Watch

We all know by now that little W isn't really in charge in this administration. When the GOP chose Dick Cheney to find a suitable Vice Presidential running mate for The Littlest Dictator, he interviewed some people, and then came back with the conclusion that HE would make a swell VP. What humility. He has taken Dim Son under his avuncular wing and guided him through his Presidency with a sure hand, assuring the country and the world that "the grownups" were back in charge, and that things were going to be A-OK. So now in addition to Bush's shortcomings, we also have Cheney's Nixonian stonewalling and secrecy on domestic issues and his truly unhinged foreign policy to deal with.

Josh Marshall has recently written another of his analyses of Cheney and his influence within the administration, titled "At the start of each of Bushs bad ideas is Dick Cheney". He proceeds to make the case that not only is Dick Cheney "in charge", but he is hopelessly anti-American and incompetent to boot. An excerpt:

In Sundays New York Times, Iraqs new interim president, Iyad Alawi, thanked Americans for liberating his country and then made a simple request: please bring back the Iraqi army.

Given what we just put into defeating the Iraqi army, that might sound like an odd proposal. But its difficult to find anyone today who thinks disbanding the Iraqi army was a good idea in the first place. And few thought it was a good idea at the time. Doing so not only worsened the security vacuum that now plagues the country, it took hundreds of thousands of armed men and in a pen stroke made them both unemployed and harder to control.

Who was the senior administration official most responsible for this ill-conceived idea?

Vice President Dick Cheney.

Garlic Country Watch

Here is a great editorial from the Gilroy Dispatch, on war and the Bush Doctrine. I really like this guy's style. Check this out:

I was gratified to hear Secretary of Soothing Doublespeak Colin Powell the other day; his words assured me that the Administration policy on Iraq is on a consistent track, albeit a track which begins at Kings Cross Station, Platform 9-3/4 and ends at Hogwarts. In fact, Administration spokespeople are being forced to dispense more and more fresh hogwarts every day to cover the hogwarts they dispensed the day before. The people were not told lie after lie after lie, he said, lying. The people were told that Iraq was a dangerous situation. Now, my memory may not be what it used to be, but I recall language considerably stronger than a dangerous situation being tossed around when we and Congress and the world were being sold Operation Fix Daddys Mistake. Now, South-Central L.A. is a dangerous situation. The sorry state of Americas highways and bridges is a dangerous situation. The contents of most peoples garage is a dangerous situation. But Iraq? No, I do believe that back last fall and winter the message the Bushies were pumping out was not really dangerous situation; it was more along the lines of WERE ALL GONNA DIE!! OH GOD, THEY HAVE NUKES!! AND ANTHRAX!! AND MISSILES!! AND, AND, AND OTHER STUFF THATS REALLY BAD THAT WE HAVENT EVEN FIGURED OUT WHAT IT IS YET!! AND THEYVE GOT BOATLOADS OF ALL OF IT, ITS JUST LYING AROUND ALL OVER THE COUNTRY PILED SO HIGH THAT PEOPLE CANT GET TO THE GROCERY STORE WITHOUT RUNNING INTO IT!! AND HES GONNA USE IT ON US ANY MINUTE, GOSH, I JUST HOPE WE GET THERE IN TIME!! It was more like that.

Spooks Watch

Another ex-CIA guy has come forward to accuse the administration of lying about the Iraqi intelligence before the war. This will probably be a common theme as long as the CIA is trying to bring down this administration. The question is, will the public care? The media won't lift a finger to make them care, and in fact will be actively trying to lull the populace back into a stupor. We'll see. An excerpt:

President Bush also gave many speeches linking Iraq to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, McGovern said.

Never have I seen such a cynically orchestrated campaign over a year and a half, he said. Only a few weeks ago did Bush admit that Iraq was not involved in any way with 9/11.

Journalists with Integrity Watch

There are very few of them these days, but Bill Moyers is definitely among them. He gave an interview with Buzzflash recently on the sorry state of American journalism, and how the media have capitulated to pressure to not play their watchdog roles for democracy. Here is a quote from the interview:

I think these forces have unbalanced the relationship between this White House and the press. Frankly, even if we had tried it in LBJ's time, we wouldn't have gotten away with the kind of press conference President Bush conducted on the eve of the invasion of Iraq -- the one that even the President admitted was wholly scripted, with reporters raising their hands and posing so as to appear spontaneous. Matt Taibbi wrote in The New York Press at the time that it was like a mini-Alamo for American journalism. I'd say it was more a collective Jonestown-like suicide. At least the defenders of the Alamo put up a fight.

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