Republican War-Architects Better Start Lawyering-UP!!

[Mr. Shaman]

KARMA'S COMIN' TO TOWN!!!!!!!!!!! ​

"The United States, like many countries, has a bad habit of committing wartime excesses and an even worse record of accounting for them afterward. But a remarkable string of recent events suggests that may finally be changing—and that top Bush administration officials could soon face legal jeopardy for prisoner abuse committed under their watch in the war on terror."​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

The first view of Legacy appears to be all-over-The-Idiot-Son's-FACE!!!​

"Former administration underlings depict President Bush as a "Sarah Palin-like" leader with a short attention span who deferred on big decisions.

Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism adviser, said then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Steve Hadley, told him, "Don't give the President a lot of long memos. He's not a big reader."

Said an astounded Clarke: "Well, s---, I mean, the President of the United States is not a big reader?"[/CENTER]

"The ever-impartial folks over at Vanity Fair have rounded up some talking heads for an "oral history'' of the Bush administration.

And they have some fairly rough words for the retiring president.

Larry Wilkerson, the former assistant to Secretary of State Colin Powell who has been outspoken in his criticism of the Bush White House - particularly the hand that Vice President Dick Cheney has played - says former Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage called Cheney's office "the Gestapo,'' and says Powell's task was "cleaning the dog---- off the carpet in the Oval Office.''​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

It just keeps gettin' better-and-better............​

"We had a couple of meetings with the president, and there were detailed discussions and briefings on cyber-security and often terrorism, and on a classified program. With the cyber-security meeting, he seemed—I was disturbed because he seemed to be trying to impress us, the people who were briefing him. It was as though he wanted these experts, these White House staff guys who had been around for a long time before he got there—didn’t want them buying the rumor that he wasn’t too bright. He was trying—sort of overly trying—to show that he could ask good questions, and kind of yukking it up with Cheney." - Richard Clarke​

"The story was “My Pet Goat” from our reading series. And we started our lesson. And all I remember is someone walking over to him, and I knew that was totally out of character, because this was a live broadcast and nobody was supposed to move. I mean, everybody was in their position. And when I saw this man, who I now know is Andy Card, walk over to him and whisper in his ear, I could see and I felt his whole demeanor change. It’s like he left the room mentally. He wasn’t there anymore mentally." - Sandra Kay Daniels, second-grade teacher at Emma E. Booker Elementary School​

"That night, on 9/11, Rumsfeld came over and the others, and the president finally got back, and we had a meeting. And Rumsfeld said, You know, we’ve got to do Iraq, and everyone looked at him—at least I looked at him and Powell looked at him—like, What the hell are you talking about? And he said—I’ll never forget this—There just aren’t enough targets in Afghanistan. We need to bomb something else to prove that we’re, you know, big and strong and not going to be pushed around by these kind of attacks.

And I made the point certainly that night, and I think Powell acknowledged it, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. That didn’t seem to faze Rumsfeld in the least.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It really didn’t, because from the first weeks of the administration they were talking about Iraq. I just found it a little disgusting that they were talking about it while the bodies were still burning in the Pentagon and at the World Trade Center." - Richard Clarke​

Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell: As my boss [Colin Powell] once said, Bush had a lot of .45-caliber instincts, cowboy instincts. Cheney knew exactly how to polish him and rub him. He knew exactly when to give him a memo or when to do this or when to do that and exactly the word choice to use to get him really excited".​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

God's Own Party?​

"On other topics, David Kuo, who served as deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, disputed the idea that the Bush White House was dominated by religious conservatives and catered to the needs of a religious right voting bloc.

"The reality in the White House is — if you look at the most senior staff — you're seeing people who aren't personally religious and have no particular affection for people who are religious-right leaders," Kuo said.

"In the political affairs shop in particular, you saw a lot of people who just rolled their eyes at ... basically every religious-right leader that was out there, because they just found them annoying and insufferable. These guys were pains in the butt who had to be accommodated."​