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states "President Bush stood alone in front of Marine One at an airstrip near his Texas ranch Monday, squinting into a glaring sun, to praise his close friend Alberto Gonzales and lament the political "mud" that led to his resignation as attorney general. Gonzales was not the first to go. By design or not, the administration has been shedding the aides who have been prime targets of criticism, including strategist Karl Rove this month and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last year. Rove and Gonzales are just the latest departures among the Texas loyalists who surrounded Bush at the start of his tenure."
The article "The Bush Administration" at
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/Hx/BushAdministration.html
listed all of the changes and particularly noted Director, C.I.A. George Tenet. He was one of the ones to get a chance to quit, get a medal, then publish a book ripping into W. Paul O'Neill Secretary of the Treasury on 6 December 2002 announced his resignation. He wrote a book telling all about 43's announcing his intentions of invading Iraq prior to W's lies about Hussein being involved in 9/11. He was forced out because he was against W's repeated rounds of tax cuts for the top 1%. He left the first round of redistribution of money to those who needed it not at all go through, but he developed a conscience about pillaging the poor and W could not allow someone to show compassion-even though W is supposedly a "compassionate conservative"-whatever that is.
The list is impressive, but those two are enough to dwell on. Tenet could allow 9/11 to occur and could allow W to say his "16 words" and had his famous "slam dunk" remark be used as a sham point to induce "Operation Iraqi Freedom", but he lasted longer than O'Neill. Why? 43 wanted red state votes so he attacked Iraq. He probably thought it was his Poppy's Iraq and he could defeat it like 41 did. He didn't care about loss of life and treasure though. O'Neill wanted to stop the flow of undeserved money to the top 1% and was arrogant enough to let his opinions be known. He confronted Cheney about it also as detailed in the article ""Stick to principle"--The top 1% all of the time!" at
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_winston__070813__22stick_to_principle_22.htm
and W doesn't countenance disloyalty.
Tenet understood Rove's points that the red staters were tremendously gullible and that their shared lack of "intellectual curiosity" with W would enable them to believe that Hussein, who last used WMD in 1991 could be an "imminent threat" to the US. O'Neill might have known just how dumb the red staters were but, he didn't want to take advantage of them for the top 1%! He wasn't loyal to W's demented demands!
That isn't hyperbole-that is fact! Historians and Psychologists will examine W's presidency and will arrive at the conclusion that W's regime was corrupt and incompetent thus matching W's personality. People with advanced degrees in the behavioral sciences can't make observations that aren't valid.
The 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for August 27 at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20477314/
wonders what shady stumble-bums W can attract for the remaining portion of his vile administration. Olbermann first had on Dana Milbank who had a guess as to why Gonzo left so abruptly. "The hunch going around is that the Justice Department's inspector general, who has been investigating Gonzales as part of a wide-ranging probe over there, may have come to him and said, well, we have some problems here. So, Gonzales would want to get out in front of that.
Then he had on John Dean--he of Watergate fame and author of the soon to be released "Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches" to set the stage--a sort of generalized cursing of all that is 43 in case some items might be forgotten.
Then Olbermann opines "Gonzales gone. Rove gone aroving. What happens to the president after they have broken that old Texas gang of his? Would you believe it would be the dawn of his old Yale gang?.. You thought Gonzales' resignation today and the departure Friday of Karl Rove spelled the end of the Austin gang, then you need to meet Clay Johnson, originally of Fort Worth, who now actually keeps a Bush doll on his desk in D.C.
There are reports today, you heard Dana Milbank reference them, that if Mr. Bush were to move Michael Chertoff to Justice, Clay Johnson would take over as the man leading America's entire Homeland Security counterterrorism apparatus.
Johnson's resume includes serving as deputy director of Mr. Bush's budget office, leading his hiring efforts during the 2000 transition, serving as chief of staff for him in Texas and as an executive at Frito-Lay, maker of both Spicy Nacho and Cool Ranch Doritos. No counter terrorism, no intelligence experience, no law enforcement experience, no legal experience, no military experience, unless you count his discussions about Vietnam with Mr. Bush while at Yale."
Olbermann then had a long-time chronicler of that Austin gang, James Moore, co-author of "Bush's Brain." and asked "With Rove going, Gonzales going, is Mr. Bush getting antsy to have at least one long-time loyal friend in a position of big power nearby?"
Moore replied "That's always his natural compulsion is
to have people around to approve of the things he does, and to have people whispering in his ear that you are great and we can make you even greater. He doesn't suffer criticism very well at all. Frankly, the idea that Clay Johnson is going to come in and be effective in any role of that nature as someone who criticizes him and brings him a sense of context and perspective to his administration, I think, it's a business nonsensical. It just isn't going to happen. He has been nothing but fawning over the president since he met him at Andover and they pledged the Deek fraternity together at Yale. .... Clay is probably a realistic option for him because he is kind of running out of these kinds of people that will tos
s over their lives and come help him. I mean, let's face it he is presiding over what is essentially catastrophe in both politics and governance and who in the heck wants to come in, other than someone who is, you know, your blood brother, who you cut your thumbs with and exchange blood back when you are teenagers. You know, somebody like that might come along and say, ok, I will do it for you, Mr. President. What sane or rational person at this point wants to go to Washington and be a part of what is
transpiring in the Bush administration?"
Then Olbermann amplified the incompetent W opinion with "But, on the other half of that, after the debacles with Michael Brown-might have been less his fault than it seemed at the time but still some of it was his fault. Harriet Miers, now Gonzales, several versions-several different Gonzales episodes, why does Mr. Bush seem incapable of learning a simple lesson, never mind hurting the country when he values loyalty and familiarity over expertise, over experience, but just looking just inside that office, doing that hurts him, hurts his presidency?"
Moore's response of "Well, I mean everybody knows, it's clearly been documented that this is his Achilles heel. The more he does it, the more he harms his administration, as you have suggested, and the more that he harms the country.
The problem for the Bush administration is what they are doing right now, Keith, is something they should have done in 2004, which is to ditch Karl, and to ditch Fredo and Rumsfeld and everybody else. They should have gone after '04 which is a tradition with a reelection and bring in fresh faces and new ideas and try to establish a new perspective and let the American public see some new things happening. It's far too late for that. What Bush is doing right now is trying to grab at any kind of legacy and that's why he got rid of-and anybody who suggests it's otherwise-he got rid of Alberto Gonzales simply because he was dragging down any chance the president had remaining in the next 16 months to do somethingmeaningful, to deal with the budget and the war, which seems impossible now at best anyway."
Today, the anniversary of Katrina-the hugest example of W's hatred for the common man, leads you to wonder if "Left Below" refers to the 99% of the US who W is obviously shafting. In the Calvinist faith there are beliefs that a person's economic standing in this life predicts the person's standing in the next life. Maybe W wants us all poor so only his chums will reach heaven-sort of an entry fee only the top 1% can afford.
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