What the hell is wrong with these people?

Let us pause for a moment to consider … well, what should we consider? Indeed, amid the high-volume histrionics of Republicans lamenting the end of the world now that Senator Barack Obama has been elected president, complaining such as they do about things Obama has not even had an opportunity to do—pre-emptively defending themselves against any further loss of credibility, or something like that—one could easily forget that there is, in fact, another man currently serving as President of the United States. For his part, though, it is enough to say that even he seems, at times, to have forgotten that he is still president.

Nonetheless, some, including McClatchy’s Warren Strobel seem surprised at attempts by the Bush administration to revise history in order that the outgoing president will be treated more kindly in our memories. Wait a minute, that can’t be it. Who the hell is surprised at that? After all, the administration has been trying to revise history for most of its tenure.

Perhaps, then, it is the shameless severity of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s remarks in an interview with C-SPAN’s Steve Scully on Monday that caught Strobel and his colleagues’ attention:

QUESTION: But as you know, even overseas, some of that sharpness, some of that derision has been aimed at George W. Bush. So despite all of the accomplishments that you just outlined, why is he, in some parts of the world, detested?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, the President had to do some very difficult things. Look, we came out of September 11th having to make a choice about how we were going to defend this country. Were we going to stay with a strategy that essentially considered terrorism a law enforcement problem, or were we going to go to war against them? And in some quarters, it wasn’t popular to talk in the terms and act in the manner in which we – at recognizing that we were at war with these people. And yes, we had to do some very tough things.

But you know, I think I’ve found over the years, particularly in these most recent years, that much of that rancor is gone. We have outstanding relations with our European allies now. When I go to a NATO meeting, it is about the incredible fact that NATO is fighting together in Afghanistan. Yes, we’d like to see more contribution here. Yes, there are national caveats there that are constraining. But imagine NATO fighting in Afghanistan as its core mission.

When I go to Europe, I no longer see any difference in the view that a stable and secure Iraq is in everybody’s interest, and that an Iraq that is democratic and in which Saddam Hussein, that brutal monster that caused three wars in the region, including dragging us in twice, that used – who used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, that an Iraq that is democratic and friendly to the West is better for the Middle East. I don’t see much disagreement about that.

I see no disagreement that Iran has to be prevented from getting a nuclear weapon. And on the Middle East, I’ve never seen greater harmony behind the Annapolis process as the basis on which a two-state solution will eventually come into being.

And so whatever we went through in the difficult days of 2003, 2004 it would be a mistake to think that we have problematic relations with our allies. We simply don’t. We may not agree on everything, but the transatlantic relationship is in very, very good shape. And you can even say that more so for our core relations in places like Japan and South Korea and India and, indeed, China.

Tell me, please: Do these people ever stop lying?

Bush on the road

For most people who telecommute, or work from home … oh, never mind. On to the numbers. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, responding to reader questions at the New York Times

… Mark Knoller, the CBS News radio correspondent, who has covered the White House since 1976, keeps meticulous records and is a veritable encyclopedia of presidential facts and figures, which he freely shares with colleagues. The Bush administration takes issue with his statistics, because he counts partial days as days away, but here are his latest figures, as of Tuesday, Nov. 11:

Crawford ranch: 76 visits totaling all or part of 483 days
Camp David: 132 visits totaling all or part of 461 days
Kennebunkport: 11 visits totaling all or part of 43 days.

By Mark’s calculations, the president has been at one of these three locations for all or part of 987 days, and has been in office for 2920 days. That’s 33.8 percent.

Um, what?

In the wake of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the (in)accuracy of the Bush administration’s pitch for war in Iraq, the media has seized the opportunity to rail against an administration that has bobbed and ducked and weaved its way through a disastrous war that, as many suspected, didn’t have to be. On that note, while the end of Saddam Hussein’s reign is a difficult outcome to argue against—indeed, it may be the only bright spot about the war—it still seems hard to use that fact to justify the war. There are plenty of cruel dictators around the world to knock off pedestals, but we do not pursue them. The Bush administration had to be dragged into the Liberian conflict. Robert Mugabe, as of this date, still holds power in Zimbabwe. And certainly the Burmese junta is a gross detriment to the people of that beleaguered nation. Just to name a few.

But I digress. Sort of. The editorial board of The New York Times sounded off yesterday:

It took just a few months after the United States’ invasion of Iraq for the world to find out that Saddam Hussein had long abandoned his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. He was not training terrorists or colluding with Al Qaeda. The only real threat he posed was to his own countrymen ….

Nobody disputes that the late dictator was a nefarious figure, but among our reasons for not going all the way to Baghdad in 1991—aside from Vice-President Cheney’s 1994 eerily-prophetic explanation that it would have been a disaster—was that this was not the United States’ role. Liberating Kuwait was within the traditional purview of our military endeavors, but deposing Saddam Hussein was beyond the pale. The Iraqi Bush Adventure represents a potential paradigm shift, one that many hope is quashed by the next administration.

What is unsettling, though, about the Times editorial is its conclusion, which strains to give the president even the thinnest veneer of innocence and redemption:

We cannot say with certainty whether Mr. Bush lied about Iraq. But when the president withholds vital information from the public — or leads them to believe things that he knows are not true — to justify the invasion of another country, that is bad enough.

Now, perhaps I am simply being naîve and falling back to the lessons of childhood, but the act of withholding information in order to affect a decision, or the act of leading people to believe what one knows is not true … how is this not lying?

Online campaign thanks Helen Thomas for effort last month

Okay, this is too cool to pass up. And it’s important, too. I suppose we should start with the important, which is a fantastic, even spectacular—by Beltway standards—exchange between venerable Hearst columnist Helen Thomas and White House Press Secretary Dana Perino regarding the ongoing saga of waterboarding and the torture question.

After a period of near disinterest by the White House press corps in the wake of an April 9 report by ABC news that put decisions regarding “enhanced interrogation techniques” much closer to the White House than officials had previously acknowledged, Thomas raised the issue during Perino’s regular press briefing on April 23:

Q The President has said publicly several times, in two consecutive news conferences a few months ago, and you have said over and over again, we do not torture. Now he has admitted that he did sign off on torture, he did know about it. So how do you reconcile this credibility gap?

MS. PERINO: Helen, you’re taking liberties with the what the President said. The United States has not, is not torturing any detainees in the global war on terror. And General Hayden, amongst others, have spoken on Capitol Hill fully in this regard, and it is — I’ll leave it where it is. The President is accurate in saying what he said.

Q That’s not my question. My question is, why did he state publicly, we do not torture —

MS. PERINO: Because we do not.

Q — when he really did know that we do?

MS. PERINO: No, that’s what I mean, Helen. We’ve talked about the legal authorities —

Q Are you saying that we did not?

MS. PERINO: I am saying we did not, yes.

Q How can you when you have photographs and everything else? I mean, how can you say that when he admits that he knew about it?

MS. PERINO: Helen, I think that you’re — again, I think you’re conflating some issues and you’re misconstruing what the President said.

Q I’m asking for the credibility of this country, not just this administration.

MS. PERINO: And what I’m telling you is we have — torture has not occurred. And you can go back through all the public record. Just make sure — I would just respectfully ask you not to misconstrue what the President said.

Q You’re denying, in this room, that we torture and we have tortured?

MS. PERINO: Yes, I am denying that.

Thomas, disgusted by the answer and the press corps’ complicity, rebuked her fellows: “Where is everybody? For God’s sake.”

Okay, yeah. Important and cool. But it gets even better. As word of the exchange—and the accompaniment C-SPAN footage—made its way around the web, an outpouring of gratitude made its way to Thomas. Musician and graphic designer Micah Fitch organized an online campaign to send flowers to thank her for her efforts. According to Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts of the Washington Post, at least fifty bouquets had arrived at Thomas’ office so far, and more than five hundred people contributed $4,300 to the tribute. Thomas intends to share the flowers with friends and hospitals.