The final year of Bush's rogue Presidency

The Bush administration has surpassed itself, both in ridiculousness and in flat being scary and out of control. Everything they have attempted outside of getting poison legislation passed has failed. Will they attempt one last Hurrah on the way out and try to take all of America and the Middle East down to failure with them? That is a realistic expectation for a group of administrators who are living in a bunker mentality inside what Scott McClellan described as the White House bubble.

How total is the administration's failure so far? Just look at this (very incomplete) list:

• Let's start with Iraq. First look at the lies told to take us to war. Then look at the real reasons as indicated by the recent actions of the Bush administration and its puppet Maliki government.
  • There is no longer any doubt that the Bush White House essentially lied to the U.S. and Congress to authorize the unnecessary invasion of Iraq. (MSNBC's analysis of the report here and from the Financial Times here) The statements the administration presented to the public (repeatedly) were "either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting provided to the Committee."
  • One real reason for invading Iraq has been denied all along by the Bush administration: Permanent military bases in Iraq. Here is what the Iraqis say is being demanded in the new Status of Forces Agreement that the Bush administration is hurriedly trying to negotiate before leaving office.
  • The other reason, which again the Bush administration has denied for six years, is bringing the American oil companies back to Iraq. That's another thing that the administration and the puppet Maliki government are now doing.
• But that's just the why for invading and occupying Iraq. Look at the utter incompetence with which they have handled it.
  • First was Rumsfeld's effort to conduct the invasion with too few troops and no effective plan to control the country, as demonstrated by the looting that occurred immediately.
  • The abrupt change of plans that removed Jay Garner and replaced him with Jerry Bremer showed they were operating with no plan.
  • When Bremer took over, he immediately disbanded the Iraqi army although there were clearly not enough American troops to control the country, and absent a draft, never could be. The resulting utter anarchy permitted, even encouraged the rise of an insurgency. It's almost as though the Bush administration actually WANTED continued combat in Iraq.
  • Bremer's well-known effort to use a "Kiddy Corps" of young conservative ideologues vetted by the American Enterprise Institute to turn the Iraqi economy into a libertarian free market "paradise" clearly failed completely.
  • One of the efforts to bring Iraq under control has been to create a $500 million Arabic language television and radio station to pump out American propaganda, to counter the reporting by al Jazeera. This has been an utter failure. Not only is the al-Hurra network completely unable to operate effectively in the highly competitive Arabic Language TV industry, it has actually been producing and airing anti-American broadcasting.
• None of this incompetence would have been possible had the Bush administration not made its decisions in total secrecy, avoiding all Constitutional oversight. The lies an and misrepresentations have been matched by an almost total refusal to answer questions. Consider the efforts they have gone to to avoid testifying before Henry Waxman's Congressional committee.
  • Former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten refuse to answer questions about the politically motivated firing of US Attorneys who refused to use their office to attack effective Democratic politicians.
  • State Department officials refuse to testify about corruption in contracts in Iraq.
  • The head of the EPA refuses to answer questions asked by Congress.
  • The Department of Justice will not act to enforce Waxman's subpoenas.
• This is just a small sample of the refusal to the Bush administration to respond to Constitutional oversight.

I've previously discussed elsewhere why the really severe economic crisis that America is currently enduring is primarily a result of the implementation of the small government free market refusal to plan or regulate the economy and the banks properly. The conservative movement and the Reagan Revolution have come home to roost. The conservative fantasy they represent has failed America terribly. That ideology simply cannot deal with reality.

The clear pattern is that the Bush administration is able to politically control the federal government, but fails completely when faced with reality. They appear to treat reality as just another political situation that can be lied away in the press. The result is an administration which has been a total and complete failure.

So what does a completely failed administration do as the end of its term approaches? Well, all they can do successfully is pass legislation. Reality escapes them. So, as M.J. Rosenberg reports, the administration that treats reality as though it were political legislation is very close to Declaring War On Iran!

Both the House and Senate are considering legislation that would put us in a state of war with Iran. Right now.

H. Con. Res 362 and S.Res.580 are identical bills (designed for expeditious passage) which have as their goal "preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, through all appropriate economic, political, and diplomatic means, is vital to the national security interests of the United States and must be dealt with urgently...." The bills introduction coincided with the AIPAC conference.

The bill's "action clause" would put us at war with Iran by immediately imposing a blockade.

The resolution cleverly states that "nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an authorization of the use of force against Iran" assuming, apparently correctly, that potential co-sponsors won't know that a blockade is an act of war.

169 Congress persons is 39% of the House of Representatives.

The Bush administration plans to pass legislation to declare a blockade of Iraq (that is, declare war while jacking world oil prices into the stratosphere) as their last action on the way out of office and leave it to the next administration to deal with the reality of the crap they are unleashing. Besides the legislation itself, there are also the right-wing pronouncements such as this one by substitute but never confirmed ex- U.N. Ambassador John Bolten talking up an attack on Iran, and Bill Krystol's encouragement for an attack on Iran. This certainly has the looks of a drumbeat for war.

Hitler would have been proud. He, too, living his last days in the Bunker in Berlin knew that he had failed, so he decided to take Germany down with him. This is no different.