Cheney's AEI speech today: "it's Torquemada or 1984 but only after getting rescripted by Mel Brooks. "

Josh Marshall comments on Dick Cheney's upcoming well-announced speech at the American Enterprise Institute today.

"This is someone who not only organized and seemingly directed a policy of state-sponsored torture. He did it in large part to get people to admit to crankish conspiracy theories he got taken in by by a crew of think-tank jockeys in DC whose theories most even half way sensible people treated as punch lines of jokes. So it's Torquemada or 1984 but only after getting rescripted by Mel Brooks.

This is an extremely gullible man who has just come off being the driving ideological force in an administration that most people can already see produced more fiascos and titanic, self-inflicted goofs than possibly any in our entire history. By any standard the guy is a monumental failure -- and not one whose mistakes stem in some Lyndon Johnson fashion from tragic overreach, but just a fool who damaged his country through his own gullibility, paranoia and bad judgment. Whatever else you can say about the Cheney story it ain't Shakespearean."

If you disagree with this analysis, then you haven't read Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman>

The great Republican defender of torture as American government policy is, in fact, scared to death that he will be blamed for using torture to get fake confessions to support is ridiculous belief that Sadam Hussein and al Qaeda were working together, when in fact they were deadly enemies. But in particular is is now quite clear that Ahmed Chalabi, probably working as an agent of Iranian Intelligence, ran an operation to get Cheney and other top Republicans to commit to attacking Iran's deadly enemy, Iraq. It worked.

Sinceso much of the media was extremely complicit in supporting Cheney's idiocy, it is no surprise that the media is now hyping the sick, cranky old man's idiotic statements with great publicity.

Blundered Katrina reaction ended the Bush administration

It was the government's poor reaction to the Katrina disaster that ended their ability to get anything done. The Associated Press reports on an upcoming Vanity Fair article that reports part of an oral history on the bush administration due to be distributed nationally January 6.

Staff AP News Dec 29, 2008 21:41 EST

Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government's poor handling of the natural disaster.

"Katrina to me was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. "The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter."

Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: "Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin." [Snip]

Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that as a new president, Bush was like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee whom critics said lacked knowledge about foreign affairs. When Bush first came into office, he was surrounded by experienced advisers like Vice President Dick Cheney and Powell, who Wilkerson said ended up playing damage control for the president.

"It allowed everybody to believe that this Sarah Palin-like president — because, let's face it, that's what he was — was going to be protected by this national-security elite, tested in the cauldrons of fire," Wilkerson said, adding that he considered Cheney probably the "most astute, bureaucratic entrepreneur" he'd ever met.

"He became vice president well before George Bush picked him," Wilkerson said of Cheney. "And he began to manipulate things from that point on, knowing that he was going to be able to convince this guy to pick him, knowing that he was then going to be able to wade into the vacuums that existed around George Bush — personality vacuum, character vacuum, details vacuum, experience vacuum."

Wilkerson's comment on Cheney confirms what was written about Cheney in Barton Gellman's excellent book Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency.

But it was the Bush administration's blundered reaction to the Katrina disaster that exposed its incompetence and passiveness in the similarly passive media. Once it became clear in the media that the government handling of Katrina was incompetent, it reflected back on their failure to prevent 9/11 as well as their failed occupation of Iraq and the unacknowledged rise of the Iraqi insurgency. The Bush administration's current passiveness and failed reactions to the economic crisis simply demonstrate that the problem is inherent in the Bush administration and not a one time screw up.

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Addendum 10:57 am CST
Kevin Drum thinks that Matthew Dowd and Dan Bartlett missed part of the story about the public reaction the Bush's handling of Katrina.

I think this is only half right. I've long believed that what really killed Bush was the contrast between his handling of Katrina and his handling of the Terri Schiavo case, which had come only a few months earlier. It was just too stark. What the American public saw was that when the religious right was up in arms, the president and the Republican Party acted. Bill Frist performed his famous long-distance diagnosis; Tom DeLay fulminated on the floor of the House; Republicans tried to subpoena both Terri and Michael Schiavo; and President Bush interrupted his vacation and made his famous midnight flight to Washington DC to sign a bill transferring the case to federal court. It was both a whirlwind and a political circus.

And it showed that Bush could be moved to action if the right constituency was at risk. It wasn't just that Bush was mostly MIA during the early stages of Katrina, but that he was plainly capable of being engaged in an emergency if it was the right kind of emergency. But apparently New Orleans wasn't it. And that was the final nail in the coffin of his presidency.

So it wasn't just Bush's clearly bad handling of Katrina. It was also the fact that Katrina made it very clear the Bush was ready to support the religious right, but not the American people. So the American people turned on him.

That makes sense. Bush was able to conceal his failure to prevent 9/11 by good public relations and by acting like he was doing stuff about it afterwards. Maybe he really couldn't have prevented 9/11. But he really could have done a lot more about Katrina, and he could have at least acted like he cared. He did neither.

But I think there is yet another element to be considered. The media has operated on a stampede effect since about 1990, possibly starting with the Persian Gulf War. When 9/11 occurred, America was attacked in the biggest surprise attack since Pearl Harbor, and the media was ready to rally around the President no matter what. Bush was good at keeping the media on the subjects he wanted covered and was an expert at painting anyone who objected to his actions as being supporters of the 9/11 attackers. The problem with Katrina is that it was a well-anticipated problem with no enemy attacker behind it, and the 9/11 - terrorist - War on Terror media narrative did not work. Then the Bush administration so very clearly did nothing right during Katrina (after being handed the best FEMA ever by Bill Clinton) and also simply did nothing at all afterwards. Katrina created its own media narrative, and that narrative was far from kind to the Bush administration. For once the members of the media got out and actually reported, and a large part of the news was Bush's lackadaisical lethargic actions and frequent missteps.

Even Bush's loss of control of the media narrative showed clearly that Bush, as President, had no interest in the welfare of the American people in general. This is where Kevin's contrast to the earlier Terry Schiavo events comes in. Bush and the Republican clearly did not lose control of the media narrative during the Terry Schiavo mess. Why? Because they cared about what the religious right wanted. so the contrast between Schiavo and Katrina very heavily influenced American public opinion.

Why Obama won't push the Bush/conservative catastrophe of Katrina in this election

Digby explains it.

I'm seeing Katrina become the Abu Ghraib of 2008, and there's undeniably a racial component to that. We have a disaster that completely discredits conservative theories of governance, but because it disproportionately affected poor black people in New Orleans, our African-American nominee, who has to play by the Jackie Robinson Rules, would be presumed by a clueless media to be stirring up racial warfare, or "playing the race card," or whatever.
[Highligting added - Editor]

And so what? Go read Digby.

Bush/Rove played politics while New Orleans drowned

Remember the story of how Nero fiddled while Rome burned? Bush played out the same story as New Orleans drowned. It has been clear for nearly three years that the disaster when Katrina hit New Orleans was made immeasurably worse by the incompetence and delay of the Bush White House. But just how bad it really was simply wasn't told by the media.

Now Paul Alexander has written a book about Rove in the White House and Salon excerpted one chapter that tells about New Orleans. The entire Salon article is well worth reading, but here is just one searing story.

Remember when Bush went on TV from 17th street in New Orleans and promised to rebuild the city? Remember seeing signs of construction in the picture behind him? It was all a lie made up for the camera. Here is the real story from Mary Landrieu.

Of all of the stories and subplots, there would be one that, in many ways, symbolized the whole of Katrina, what it revealed about the Bush administration, and how it would affect the lives of so many people. On Friday, Mary Landrieu had been with Bush and Blanco as they toured the 17th Street Canal, where, at last, major work had commenced to repair the damage that had been caused when the levee broke. "Then, on Saturday," Landrieu says, "George Stephanopoulos called and asked to do an interview with me, and I said, 'George, I'm tired of doing interviews. I have to work. And nothing you are airing is accurately showing what's going on down here.' He wanted to go to the Superdome, and I said, 'We still have people stranded on their roofs. If you want to tell the right story, I will help you tell the right story. You get a helicopter and I'll go up and I will show you what is actually happening. It's awful what's happening at the Superdome, but the reason the people can't understand the story is because the entire region is under 20 feet of water. People can't get into the Superdome to help. They can't get out. People are drowning in their homes.'

"So George and I went up in the helicopter and for three hours his jaw was dropping. Then I said, 'George, before we finish I have to show you one positive thing because I can't send you back to Washington to produce a story that shows nothing but devastation and disaster.' So I told the pilot to tack right so I can show George the 17th Street Canal and the work that was going on there. I swear as my name is Mary Landrieu I thought that what I saw with the president was still there -- people working, trucks, sandbags, everything. Then I looked down and saw one little crane. It was like someone took a knife and stabbed me through my heart. I lost it." There, in the cabin of the helicopter, as they flew above the breached canal below them, Landrieu sat devastated.

"I could not believe that the president of the United States, staged by Karl Rove himself, had come down to the city of New Orleans and basically put up a stage prop. It was like you had gone to a studio in California and filmed a movie. They put the props up and the minute we were gone they took them down. All the dump trucks were gone. All the Coast Guard people were gone. It was an empty spot with one little crane. It was the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life. At that moment I knew what was going on and I've been a changed woman ever since. It truly changed my life."

The real story is that instead of helping the people of New Orleans, Bush and Rove planed to make the disaster worse and then blame the Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco and the Black Democratic Mayor, Ray Nagin. While the White House sat on its hands doing nothing and sending nothing except empty promises, they were on the phones to the media spreading lies about the failures of Governor Blanco and the Louisiana government.

This is pure Rove, and his gutterslime accomplice George Bush. To them, politics is always more important than mere human lives.

New example of Bush incompetence

From Rick Perlstein we get another of the many, many tales on FEMA incompetence under the Bush admininstration.

During the Katrina/Rita disastors, FEMA ordered the evacuation of two cities in Southwestern Louisiana. Those were Lake Charles and Sulpher. The evacuation lasted nearly two weeks, during which time FEMA went on TV and advertised a 1 800 number that evacuees could call to get an emergency $2,000 directly deposited to their bank account. No questions, no restrictions, just call and collect the money.

Now someone seems to have decided that the way it was handled at the time was a little too "loosey goosey", so officials are asking some (but not all) recipients of the money to provide documentation proving they were residents of those evacuated areas and other things. That's really not an entirely bad idea, but shouldn't those questions have been asked before the money was handed out?

Whoever decided to implement the plan in the first place had no clue what they were doing. Now they are pestering some people to try to find out howm badly they screwed up, and then they will try to collect the money back.

Now that the horses are out, they want to shut the barn door. The lesson here is that people who don't believe in government and have no experience in it should not be placed in decision-making jobs within government. As far as I can tell this applies to all conservative Republicans.