Bush: how to build a facade
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| Tue, 08-03-2004 - 4:19pm |
Mr. Bush's Wrong Solution
t a time when Americans need strong leadership and bold action, President Bush offered tired nostrums and bureaucratic half-measures yesterday. He wanted to appear to be embracing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, but he actually rejected the panel's most significant ideas, and thus missed a chance to confront the twin burdens he faces at this late point in his term: the need to get intelligence reform moving whether he's re-elected or not, and the equally urgent need to repair the government's credibility on national security.
Mr. Bush spoke on a day when Americans were still digesting the terrifying warning of possible terrorist attacks against financial institutions in New York, Newark and Washington. The authorities in those cities did the right thing by stepping up security. But it's unfortunate that it is necessary to fight suspicions of political timing, suspicions the administration has sown by misleading the public on security. The Times reports today that much of the information that led to the heightened alert is actually three or four years old and that authorities had found no concrete evidence that a terror plot was actually under way. This news does nothing to bolster the confidence Americans need that the administration is not using intelligence for political gain.
The 9/11 panel's most important recommendation was to create the post of national intelligence director. Such a director would be confirmed by the Senate and have real power to supervise the 15 disparate intelligence agencies. The director of central intelligence has that charge now, without the power to do it. The commission said the new official should be part of the White House Executive Office, not a cabinet member, to ensure access to the president.
There are a variety of credible ways to construct the job, whether in the cabinet or not, but what Mr. Bush proposed is not one of them. His intelligence director would be in the worst of all worlds: cut out of the president's inner circle and lacking any real power. Andrew Card Jr., Mr. Bush's chief of staff, said the post would not carry real authority over the intelligence agencies' budgets or intelligence jobs in the Pentagon, the Justice Department and other agencies. The decision bore the unmistakable stamp of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was never going to willingly give up control of appointments or his share of the intelligence budget: $32 billion of the overall $40 billion.
Mr. Bush did embrace the 9/11 commission's suggestion - one that did not challenge his turf - that Congress stop supervising intelligence and homeland security through scores of committees and instead have one committee in each house to oversee intelligence and one for homeland security. And he went beyond the 9/11 panel in one way by proposing a post to coordinate intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. That sounds like a bad idea, especially with the administration's record of fanciful interpretations of that intelligence on Iraq.
Mr. Bush's bureaucratic dodge on the intelligence director's job is the same one he used on the job of director of homeland security. Then he was forced to reverse field, endorse a new cabinet department and claim it as his own idea. We don't care who gets credit. What's important is that Congress reject what Mr. Bush came up with yesterday and do the job right when it returns in September.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/03/opinion/03tue1.html?pagewanted=print&position=
The issue here is the president's supposed embrace of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, particularly on the creation of a new National Intelligence Director under whom the heads of the various intelligence agencies would operate
I was working on another project pretty much constantly through most of the day and heard discussion of this on the cable networks, particularly CNN. What I heard there was that the president had embraced the commission's recommendation on this point while only disagreeing on whether this new head of national intelligence would be housed within the White House or have cabinet rank status outside the White House structure.
Yet it turns out that this is but one, and not at all the most significant way in which the policy the president has embraced differs from that of the commission. In fact, when you look closely at it, it's nothing like what the commission recommended at all. The president went out into the Rose Garden, said he was adopting the commission's proposals. But in fact he was doing close to the opposite, doing more or less what they said shouldn't be done.

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Why do you always assume the poor are weak and desperate. You place too much value on money. Poor doesn't equate to weak and desperation. Why don't you give the poor the benefit of the doubt and assume they just might know what they are doing.
This type of elitist mindset is the real problem. You assume they can't think or care for themselves.
<> "Do you think sending money to evangelicals is sending money to God?"
Nope but can't you just assume they know what they are doing? We aren't talking about children afterall.
If I have an elitist mindset--I worked hard to get it. I assume no such thing, how dare you make such a statement. Just like your flag barer, you deride education and intelligence. I also have compassion for those who are less fortunate so tie me to a pole and beat me until I adopt your mindset.
I don't know how to respond. I too favor Kerry, and I don't trust George W. Bush. However, I am not so sure we are a majority.
You do know what elitist means right? You worked hard to get it, uh...ok.
"I assume no such thing, how dare you make such a statement. Just like your flag barer, you deride education and intelligence. I also have compassion for those who are less fortunate so tie me to a pole and beat me until I adopt your mindset."
When have I ever derided education? You know so little about me and my views on education and intelligence. I don't feel a need to flaunt my education or intelligence or to impose it on others. You talk about the poor as if they are incompetent, as if they need help and protection. That reaks of being an elitist. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you place too high a value on formal education.
Then why say this? Yet you know so much about mine that you can make assumptions. Strange.
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This is the way you interpret my statements. The powerful often exploit the less powerful. In this country money is power. Money elects presidents. So yes the poor do need help and support to equalize the power. I don't like to see people exploited, and that includes those who believe Bush.
Debating each other about each other is just useless.
If you like...label me as an anti-intellectual that likes to see the poor exploited. Frankly I couldn't care less, I know what I am.
I'm moving on to more interesting debates...this one is stale.
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