Terror alert level raised for political reasons, says the man who raised it

Today, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge admitted that the reason why the terror alert was raised a level before the 2004 election had nothing to do with terrorism.

Instead, it was part of a strategy devised by the Bush campaign to help ensure his re-election that year. Apparently the campaign pressured Ridge to find an excuse to raise the terror alert level in the weeks before the 2004 election until he went along with it, despite having no intelligence suggesting that an attack was any more likely than it had been.

Remember that Mr. Ridge, a former Republican Governor or Pennsylvania who earlier this year was still being courted by national Republicans to run against Arlen Specter in the Senate race next year, was President Bush's hand-picked first Secretary of Homeland Security. Hardly the bomb-throwing liberal that some on the right would suggest must make this kind of accusation. But he was a Bush White House insider and as the person who actually did raise the alert level he certainly knew very well why he was raising it.

Let's also remember that when liberals dared to suggest that any kind of national security policy might be political, the Republicans would always wave the bloody flag of 9/11 and impugn their patriotism.

This wasn't all that long ago, after all, even an elephant can remember a few years back.

Senate Republicans try to make President keep Americans in the dark about torture memos. He should call their bluff.

According to Scott Horton at the Daily Beast, Senate Republicans have threatened to 'go nuclear' and block some of President Obama's judicial appointments in order to prevent him from releasing Bush administration memos involving torture.

Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the Bush era. A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to “go nuclear” over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public. The source says these threats are the principal reason for the Obama administration’s abrupt pullback last week from a commitment to release some of the documents. A Republican Senate source confirms the strategy. It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward.

It is disappointing to me that the administration appears to be knuckling under to this particular blackmail. It is important that we as Americans know what exactly happened (or for that matter didn't happen) over the past several years.

Go ahead and release the memos. If Republicans want to be identified as willing to block the President's judicial counsels in order to stick up for the Bush policy of torturing prisoners then let them so be identified.

I'm not arguing that the position of legal counsel isn't important, either in the Deparments of State or of Justice. But how much we find out about what happened is critical if we want to decide publically and in a national debate about whether we are ever going to allow this stuff to happen again.

Besides, I've heard righty after righty after righty claim that Americans will support them and that nothing that bad was done to people who (they claim) were all known terrorists. OK, let's accept that at face value. If that is true, then why are the Senate Republicans going to the wall to try and prevent these memos from being released into the public domain? If there is really nothing more there beyond what is already known and if the public supports them on it, then wouldn't they welcome the disclosure? But obviously there is more there, and they are willing to as an entire Senate conference lay it on the line just to make sure that we never find out what has been done 'in our name.'

I say, call their bluff. Let the public decide who is right about this.

Republicans shoot themselves in the shorts.

When things are going well, even when you appear to lose, they end up going the way you wanted. Hence the situation for Democrats on Capitol Hill and the auto industry bailout.

A couple of weeks ago, Democrats in Congress were adamant that the auto bailout should come from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the $700 billion bailout mainly targeted towards the financial industry that Congress passed earlier this year, or if not from that source then in the form of a loan from the Federal Reserve.

The Bush administration and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson balked at that and refused to spend money from the program, asking instead the Congress pass a separate bailout for the auto industry. And after making that clear, President Bush threatened to veto any bailout that took money from the TARP program (even future funds from it), and instead insisted that it should come from $25 billion already appropriated and earmarked to go to the Detroit automakers under a seperate bill to finance research and development of new cleaner and more fuel efficient vehicles.

After several days of negotiations with the White House, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid backed down and agreed to tap the research and development money. They agreed to a $14 billion package, which would keep the automakers solvent until January, when the next Congress and President can develop a longer term plan.

So then members of Congress started questioning union contracts. And the union made some concessions on payment to laid off workers and health care.

Once those were in, Harry Reid made another concession and agreed to not give Federal judges a pay raise in order to rope in wayward Democrat Clair McCaskill of Missouri.

So then Senate Republicans started demanding that the bill included a new wage structure in which union workers in Michigan would be paid on the same wage scale as non-union workers in Alabama. The union refused.

So then they launched a filibuster that garnered 43 votes, enough to block the measure. It died in the Senate.

So yesterday White House spokeswoman Dana Perrino said that the Bush administration will look at using TARP funds, or if not that then a loan from the Treasury Department. Heck, by the end of the day yesterday the White House announcement even had GM stock almost all the way back where it started the day.

Either way, whether TARP funds are used or it comes from the Treasury Department, this is where Democrats began on this whole thing. The $25 billion fund for cleaner vehicles will remain intact, there will be very few strings attached relating to union benefits, and the judges will get their pay raise.

Which is exactly what the Democratic leadership's position was in the first place.

It's great when your opponent is a party as leaderless, as directionless and as tied in knots as today's GOP. Even when they beat you, the result is that you actually get what you wanted to begin with.

Rosa Brooks is right on target on fixing blame for Georgian crisis.

I've never read anything before by Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks, but she sure hit the nail right on the head in her column today on how Georgia got into this situation.

As we know, about a week ago, the Republic of Georgia sent troops into South Ossetia, one of two regions populated mainly by ethnic Russians that have been effectively self-governing for over a decade. Russian strongman Vladimer Putin and his chief underling Dmitri Medvedev were waiting for it, and they launched a full scale assault on Georgia, a former Soviet Republic with a pro-western government.

Brooks asks and answers the question, "how did Georgia make such a foolish mistake?" And she points her finger at two men: John McCain and George Bush.

So where did the Georgians get the silly idea that the U.S. would bail them out?

Maybe from John McCain, Republican heir apparent, whose top foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann, just happens to be a highly paid lobbyist for the Georgian government. Whoops-- correction! Scheunemann usedto be a highly paid lobbyist for Georgia. The McCain campaign says Scheunemann hasn't taken a dime from the Georgians since May 15. (Which is lucky for the Georgians, who are going to need all the spare cash they can get to rebuild all the stuff the Russians just bombed.)

According to the Washington Post, the relationship between Scheunemann and Georgia used to be very cozy (not to mention lucrative for Scheunemann). Between Jan. 1, 2007 and May 15, 2008, while Scheunemann was also a paid McCain advisor, "Georgia paid his firm $290,000 in lobbying fees."

And what did Georgia get in return?... they got Scheunemann's expensive pledge ot garner U.S. support for Georgia's admission into NATO and for its claims to South Ossetia, and his commitment to use his ties to politicians such as McCain to advance Georgia's causes. McCain has sponsored legislation supporting Georgia's claim over South Ossetia, an issue on which he was lobbied by Scheunemann's firm. And as recently as mid-April, Scheunemann was simultaneously taking money from Georgia and actively preparing McCain for supportive calls with Georgian President Mikheil Shaakashvili.

I thought it was illegal for foreign governments to pay U.S. politicians. But I guess it's OK now to pay their chief advisors. Imagine how much of an outcry there would be if, for example, a top advisor to Obama were found, even months after he secured his party's nomination, to be on the payroll for a foreign country.

Brooks goes on....

Is it any wonder that Saakashvili concluded that he had the backing of the Republican power structure when it came to South Ossetia?

But Scheunemann and McCain aren't the only ones who encouraged the Georgians to think that baiting the Russians was going to work out for them.

President Bush shards the blame.... The Bush administration supported [Georgia and others] and denounced antidemocratic crackdowns in Russia-- while making excuses for 'friendly' authoritarian regimes elsewhere.The administration also virtually shut down extensive multi-issue dialogues with Russia that had been maintained by previous administrations, hammering in the message that we didn't care much about good relations with Moscow....

Meanwhile the administration singled out Georgia for "Our Best Buddy in the Caucuses" award..... In return, Georgia sent 2,000 troops to Iraq, and the administration pretended to be deaf when Georgian politicians crowed that their newly improved military would be perfect for teaching those pesky South Ossetian seperatists a lesson.

But it's all gone disastrously wrong for our best buddies, and we're sitting on the sidelines, offering empty reassurances to the Georgians and empty threats to the Russians.

And this is the danger of the continuous saber rattling and bluster that we've seen from the GOP administration the past few years (and continue to see from Sen. McCain).

Putin (just like other potential opponents like Iranian President Ahmadinejad) know darn well that Bush has gotten our military stuck in the quicksand of Iraq and are in no condition to fight a major war right now. So they can be as belligerent and violent as they want to be, secure in the knowlege that we can't do anything about it. Russian oil provides up to a third of what is imported into Western European countries and Putin is well aware of how to use this power of pursuasion.

The danger is not that Bush and McCain may continue to rhetorically project force that in reality they can't back up. The danger is that someone else may do what the Georgians did-- actually believe the rhetoric.

Righty bloggers will jump all over Ron Suskind. And probably end up with egg on their faces yet again.

Ron Suskind, a longtime critic and watchdog of the Bush administration has published a book in which he makes the case that the Bush administration went so far as to forge a document supposedly proving that a member of al-Qaeda was trained by Iraqi intelligence agents and which was cited by the Bush administration during the run-up to the Iraq war (but has curiously never been cited since then.)

Now, I know the right side of the blogosphere will jump all over this and claim that Suskind is the one who is telling a lie here.

OK, let's look at what's happened when they've swarmed to Bush's defense in the past.

They produced all kinds of criticism of anyone who suggested there might not be WMD in Iraq. By October 2003 the Bush administration was forced to admit that there weren't any. Yet right up until that time (and even on occasion since then) the righty blogosphere was swearing that there were.

They denied the existence of secret prisons outside of U.S. territory. Once again the Bush administration sawed off the limb the righty bloggers were out on in October 2006 when they reversed course and acknowledged that the secret prisons did exist.

They claimed that no one in the administration had anything to do with Robert Novak's unmasking of Valerie Plame's identity. OK, so then they have trouble explaining why Scooter Libby required a Presidential sentence commutation to stay out of prison for committing perjury in the case. Oh, except that they like to blame the Republican special prosecutor (who was appointed by a Republican Congress) and say it was a politically motivated prosecution (facts be damned.)

They claimed that no one in the U.S. Justice Department broke rules in hiring people for political reasons, nor that any U.S. Attorneys were fired because of ongoing investigations. We've since learned that was wrong on two counts, as Monica Goodling has admitted to the first and the second became public in March of last year.

They followed the Bush administration in denying anyone had been waterboarded. Except that the administration later admitted that at least three suspects had been waterboarded. Once again the branch they sawed off was full of righty bloggers who had followed their lying administration out onto a limb.

So go ahead, righty bloggers. Deny the Suskind allegation if you want. But do it on the record so that if this turns out like it usually turns out when you jump up and down and point fingers at those who dare expose the lies of the Bush administration, we can watch you eat crow later.

Bush administration reversing itself on all kinds of issues

If nothing else, you know we are winning the battle of ideas when even the Bush administration is reversing itself at a dizzying pace.

Not long ago the administration acknowleged the reality of global warming and announced that it would not block work towards a new global warming treaty (though both Senators Obama and McCain are firmly committed to one anyway so it really didn't matter what the Bush administration did.)

Then as I blogged about last week, they reversed what had been a policy set in stone against talking to Iran. This was done without preconditions (though in a meeting involving multiple nations) and represents a complete about face from a President who just a month ago made a speech in Israel in which he suggested that anyone who wanted to talk to Iran was guilty of pursuing a policy of "appeasement." It also shows that despite the rhetoric criticizing Senator Obama's proposal that we should actually negotiate with our enemies rather than just bark at them, the proposal is both sound and long overdue.

That however pales into insignificance compared to the next flip-flop. The entire debate between the White House and Congress over the past two years has been about troop withdrawals. The White House vetoed multiple Iraq funding bills (and had the vetoes upheld by their congressional allies) all over the singular issue of a withdrawal timetable. Even with the reduction of violence in Iraq since we began paying Sunni militiamen to fight al-Qaeda instead of us and simultaneously implemented "the surge"*, the President has refused to consider troop reductions on a set schedule. But he had little choice, after Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki for all intensive purposes endorsed Barack Obama's proposal (which reflects the collective view of the Democratic Congress) that the American troops can and should be withdrawn on a schedule. The timing of this proposal, on the eve of Senator Obama's trip to Iraq could not be more embarrassing for the Bush administration which was already stunned when the Iraqi government refused to accept their demands and ended negotiations on a 'status of forces' agreement which would have kept U.S. forces in Iraq permanently and beyond the reach of the Iraqi legal system. While Obama himself has allowed that the pace could be slightly adjusted to account for events on the ground, the new Iraqi position clearly represents a meeting of minds, and it is one in which Bush and John McCain are the odd men out. So no wonder the Bush administration has reversed their position on a timetable. It is now a foregone conclusion that we won't have a permanent occupation force in the up to sixty bases that were once envisioned, and all Bush is doing is putting the best face he can on what is clearly a defeat for his policy. And after five years of war, a trillion dollars and thousands of dead American soldiers it will be tough once we do leave for anyone to make the case that invading Iraq was anything other than a mistake.

So then today we see the President apparently reversing himself on Habeus Corpus. (Hat tip to lscottsman at Coldhearted Truth, linked to.) He now says he wants prisoners to be charged and given a trial or released if they are not charged.

Hmmmm.... Not that I'm complaining about the changes (it's nice to know that for at least the last half a year of the Bush administration we will have some sanity) but I'm trying to think--- what exactly is it that George W. Bush stands for, anyway?

*-- any discussion of the 'surge' does have to (in order for me to be academically honest) include the admission that yes, I once predicted it would fail. I'll save you the trouble and link to the post where I made that prediction right here. But yes, I'm actually happy to say that I was wrong in my prediction that the surge would not bring about a reduction in violence-- and one that has led to the present situation in which the Iraqi government refused to sign the agreement the Bush administration wanted and is instead telling us in effect to start packing.

Bush administration does something right-- reverses itself on Iran talks

Remember when Barack Obama said that he was willing to meet unconditionally with foreign leaders we don't get along with, including Iran? In fact, even his pledge to negotiate with them at any level was lambasted. He was called an appeaser and worse, and the right has been howling ever since then about it. Of course the policy of the Bush administration has been never to negotiate with governments it considers part of the 'axis of evil' or otherwise involved in 'sponsoring terrorism.' Even John McCain got into the act, refusing to meet with Palestinians during his last trip to the middle east (incidentally, Barack Obama has accepted an invitation to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as Israeli President Ohlmert when he goes to the middle east next month.)

Of course earlier this year we saw the Bush administration reverse themselves and negotiate directly with the North Koreans. But the biggest and most obvious foreign bogeyman-- Iran-- they have always publically refused to negotiate with.

So it was suprising today to see the Bush administration do a 180 degree reversal today and announce that Undersecretary of State William Burns will meet with Iranian diplomat Saeed Jalili this week during negotiations between Iran and diplomats from the European Union.

This is huge, and it is long overdue. It is not of course the kind of Presidential level talk that Obama has been criticized for saying he would pursue, and the scope of the discussion-- Iran's nuclear program-- is limited, but it nevertheless marks the first time in several years of saber rattling that the U.S. and Iran have had any kind of direct talks.

It is overdue because whether we like it or not, Iran represents a significant player in a part of the world that is both vital to the U.S. and where we have now gotten a significant portion of our military bogged down in (how much of our problems in Iraq the past five years have been due to Iran is debatable, but it is foolish to think that there is no connection.) Iran has much more influence over the Maliki government than we do (starting with the fact that much of the Iraqi military is composed of former members of the Iranian backed Badr brigade.) Iran also has a lot of influence over Hezbollah and other groups that whether we like it or not have significant power bases and ability to cause trouble around the middle east. And then there is that nuclear program and the obvious likelihood of a confrontation sooner or later between Iran and Israel. In other words, Iran is just too important to ignore. We may not like them, but then during the Cold War we didn't like the Soviet Union either. But like them or not, we had to deal with them.

The Bush administration is also clearly coming to the realization that in its waning days, with the costly mistake of Iraq only now settling down after five years of brutal war while the country we took our eye off of to go into Iraq, Afghanistan, is now heating up, any plans that they had to invade and occupy Iran (and we know that it was on their long term agenda) will have to be thrown away. Right now they have neither the military force needed nor the support of the American people for adding a long term military war and occupation of Iran to what is currently going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their about face and willingness to negotiate is ample proof that they realize this.

It also vindicates Obama's position on negotiations with foreign adversaries, and leaves conservatives (especially the variety of neocon who can think of no other way to engage a country like Iran than militarily) blustering and red in the face. I'm not saying that the deployment of military force is never required (I've always supported the Afghan war and believe that we must leave Iraq as soon as possible so that we can do what we should have done half a decade ago and finish the job there) but clearly diplomacy has its place. Even the Bush administration, which early on used terms like 'with us or against us' and 'coalition of the willing' to excuse its unwillingness to rely on diplomacy, has realized that the world is not always such a simple and easily managed place.

I know, I know. Someone will undoubtedly point out that 1) this isn't a Presidential level meeting, and 2) that Ahmadinejad is still a nut who makes all kinds of outrageous rhetoric. My answers are 1) this kind of reversal by the Bush administation is nonetheless hugely significant and could well pave the way for a Presidential level meeting eventually-- by whoever is President; and 2) Ahmadinejad is a not particularly popular politician who makes outrageous statements largely for domestic consumption. But he will be gone next Iranian election (which I believe is next year) and replaced as the 'face of Iran' by another politician. The guys who call the real shots in Iran-- a council of mullahs led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei-- are in effect being engaged at just as high a level by diplomatic talks as they would by Presidential talks.

Besides, how is Ahmadinejad's threat to destroy Israel any more outrageous than Bush's declaration of the 'axis of evil' followed by his actual attack on one member of that group-- Iraq? As a North Korean diplomat candidly said a year after that speech, "Your President called us a member of the axis of evil....of course we have a nuclear program" Rhetoric like that often spurs countries to take more, not less action (and the threat from America may be part of Iran's nuclear motivation). So maybe it is time for both sides to tone down the rhetoric and shake hands. This meeting is long, long overdue.

McClellan is telling the truth

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan is out with a book in which he claims that the Bush administration deliberately skewed facts in order to 'sell the Iraq war.'

So the die hard Bush loyalists are calling him a liar.

Only thing is, he isn't the first guy to say this. His account of how the country was mislead and stampeded into war reflects what was earlier said by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and by former Chief of Staff to Collin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson.

And they called them liars too.

OK. When the Bush administration ends and there are all those 'kiss and tell' books out there, they must all be written by liars too. Will the Bush-can-do-no-wrong chorus just stick their fingers deeper into their ears and yell louder?


At what point do we start to blame the Bush administration for incompetence, if for no other reason than for hiring so many 'liars'?

If we are going to spend this much on defense then we should invest in human resources first.

We've heard all the arguments about how we need a secure America in justifying bloated defense budgets, which are many times more than any other nation in the world spends on its military.

Yet, we read all the time about proposed cuts in veterans programs, the attempt a few years ago by the Bush administration to cut the extra pay troops get when they are in combat, and (this affected my brother in law) when they flew troops home from Iraq on a short furlough, they dumped national guard troops off in cities on the east coast and they had to buy their own tickets home if they wanted to see their families (his Colorado national guard unit was flown to if I remember right either Atlanta or Baltimore). We've seen that our army has been stretched to the limit in Iraq, with tours of duty increased and rotation time back home cut as the only way to create the 'surge.' Four years ago, John Kerry said he would if President ask Congress to provide the funding for the creation of two new combat divisions. He lost the election, and the result is that they have not yet been created. We've seen that the chronically low pay in the military has meant that some military families have had to go on food stamps or other means of public assistance, especially during the times when one parent is deployed overseas. We've heard gut wrenching stories of veterans who have been left seriously injured by war, but who have not been given the support they need or have been denied the benefits that disabled veterans have been given in previous conflicts.

So this begs the question: In a military budget that runs into the hundreds of billions of dollars, why can't we find more to pay and otherwise support our men and women in uniform, and why can't we find the relatively smaller amounts it would take to support the veterans administration which is now dealing with its own surge-- in Iraq and Afghan war veterans who need help when they get back home? Even things that they need right now-- like better body armor and up-armored humvees, have been slowed down by bureaucrats who apparently think that those items aren't important enough to put it in the 'urgent' box.

Yhe answer is the same as it always has been, but exaggerated by the twisted 'compassionate conservatism' of the Bush administration, in which individuals often have to deal with the effects of cuts in any kind of services, but there is no limit on the generosity of this government when it comes to corporate welfare.

For example, the biggest story right now involving military contracts is that a European company, Airbus, have been given a contract over Boeing to make air refueling tankers. It is true that one could argue that there are some security concerns regarding background checks, but I would think this would be a relatively minor concern, especially for a European company (we have more sensitive military components than that manufactured in China, for heaven's sake!) What this story has really exposed is that it is all about money. The Airbus model was superior to the Boeing proposal in five out of five criteria, so there is no question that it is a better product, but a lot of people are objecting because of the billions of dollars that will be spent on it (and which therefore won't go to Boeing.) Let me ask it this way: If you are an American pilot, wouldn't you want to have to depend on a more reliable fueling tanker? But somehow this never even has been brought up. We've heard about the money this will cost investors and the company, we've heard about the 44,000 jobs this will cost Americans, which is a legitimate concern, but let's face it-- these employees are being used as pawns for Boeing to hide behind; the real issues is the money. If you want proof, consider that this is actually a rebid contract-- the government official who shepherded through the initial, inflated contract which went to Boeing without a serious bidding process was subsequently hired by the company as a consultant and paid a lot more than any of those 44,000 workers would have earned.

We know the Pentagon is in love with high-tech gadgetry. And as far as developments like laser guided missiles and computer drones etc. have helped with efficiency and reduced casualties that is great. But it has also become an Achilles heel. As I mentioned earlier, many crucial components of our military weapons are manufactured abroad, including some in China. And today we saw a story about how Chinese hackers (who claim they are sometimes paid by the Government, a claim Beijing denies have penetrated the most secure of Pentagon websites In fact, it does not matter whether they are paid by the government or not. The point is that if there were ever a military conflict they could at a crucial time shut down most or all of our computers. If that happened it would depend on the American soldier, and not on all the high tech gadgetry.

I have faith that in such a situation the American soldier would still be able to prevail. But in that context, we have to ask why we are pouring so much money down an endless drain of fat military contracts to build ever and ever more expensive and ultimately more vulnerable weapons systems, while at the same time we spend less and less on the most important and fundamental weapons system we have-- the American serviceman.

Fumbling, Bumbling, Stumbling

In my last post I pointed out how the Bush administration took what had been a successful program of sex education that had reduced the incidence of teen pregnancies and STD's and replaced it with abstinence-only education which has in turn resulted in the first actual increase in teen pregnancies in years.

Now we find out in regard to the CIA interrogation tapes which were destroyed that this happened directly contrary to the direct orders of White House Deputy counsel Harriet Miers. So in other words the CIA is now (and in 2005 was) running its own show, ignoring direct orders from White House officials.

We've also seen such extreme incompetence and ineptitude as our stumbling into the Iraq war without any planning for what to do after the fall of Baghdad, the botched response (and continuing failure to fully respond) to Katrina, and turning a record surplus into an enormous deficit. Nothing has been done about heatlhcare for eight years except for the prescription drug giveaway to the pharmaceutical companies, with the effect that we now have the most expensive health care system in the world and it still isn't working. The housing crisis is likely to drag down the economy for at least the foreseeable future.

Our reputation internationally is as bad as its ever been, the myth of American military invincibility has been thrown to the wind, and with our army being stuck in the quicksand of Iraq, North Korea has been free to develop and build nuclear weapons and even if you believe the CIA report last week (which I am personally very skeptical of) there is no question that the real winners of the Iraq war have been the Iranians, who have gone from at best an annoying irritant in the middle east to a regional power that threatens to dominate the region.

We've seen how after crime went way down nationally during the 1990's that it is now going back up again, and how after a decade in which SAT scores and the performance of American students against international competition was improving, it is now declining again. The dollar has declined from $.66 to a euro to over $1.20 for one euro. Prices for gasoline have more than doubled, and by next summer may hit $4.00 per gallon, which will represent a tripling of the price in just seven years.

In short, pretty much everything that the Bush administration has touched, has turned to garbage.

Whatever else will be written about this adminstration, it is clear that it will be considered the most incompetent Presidency since at least Jimmy Carter's.

Another day in the Bush administration-- we learn about another whistleblower who got the ax.

Doug Parker is not an ideologue. He was, however a competent administrator who began working for the United States when Gerald Ford was the President. He worked for 29 years for the U.S. Forest Service. By 2005 he was the pesticide coordinator and assistant director of forestry health for the agency's Southwestern region.

Parker took his job seriously. So he didn't consider it acceptable when he found that pesticides were being misused, often illegally in the National Forests. So he raised the issue with his supervisors. And they fired him for bringing it up.

Parker is now suing in court to get his job back.

In June, an in-house appeals board upheld his firing. So Doug Parker has realized that he won't get anywhere appealing within the administration, and he is now in court contending that his firing was illegal and had no other basis than his pointing out that the law was not being followed.

According to the lawsuit, Parker became the subject of hostile treatment by his supervisors after complaining about what he called a "systemic problem" when it came to proper pesticide use across several forests in New Mexico and Arizona.

Parker had accused some managers of not preparing environmental risk assessments and failing to get approval from agency officials who had the authority to make decisions about pesticides.

He was concerned that not following agency policies or laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act — which serves as the basis for federal management of public lands — could have consequences for public safety and the environment.

"Responsible management officials knew and were aware that Mr. Parker considered the manner in which pesticide coordination was being carried out by others to be ethically, legally and environmentally unsound," the lawsuit reads.

This story is only the latest in a long series of retaliatory moves taken by the Bush administration against whistle blowers. But let's be clear here-- the reason they've had so many problems with whistleblowers is because there have been so many fouls to blow the whistle on. In keeping with the Bush administration's philosophy of governance however, they haven't addressed the problems that cause whistleblowers to pop up by doing a better job of complying with the law, but instead they have tried to make examples of those who do (and in Parker's case, the objections were never even raised publically until this week) in order to rule by fear, threats and intimidation. Or sometimes, as we saw in the U.S. Attorney scandal, it is a matter of removing a professional public servant who is doing a competent job in a sensitive area, and replacing him or her with some kid whose primary job qualification is being a Republican.

If there was justice in the world, next year we'd have a Democratic President, Parker would get his job back and have his recommendations acted on immediately, and maybe even get a promotion (the position of immediate supervisor of his old position would be a good one for him to be in.)

Bush administration's ideology was more important than your family's health

So says former Surgeon General Richard Carmona.

WASHINGTON — President Bush's first surgeon general testified Tuesday that his speeches were censored to match administration political positions and that he was prevented from giving the public accurate scientific information on issues such as stem cell research and teen pregnancy prevention.

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard H. Carmona, who was surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, told a congressional committee. "The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation — not the doctor of a political party."

Early in the administration, when the issue of federal funding for stem cell research arose, Carmona said, he felt he could play an educational role by discussing the latest scientific research. Instead, he said, he was told to "stand down" because the White House already had made a decision to limit stem cell studies. He said administration appointees who reviewed his speech texts deleted references to stem cells.

Carmona's remarks were the latest in a series of complaints from government scientists about what they say are administration efforts to control — and sometimes distort — scientific evidence in order to support policy decisions.

NASA scientists have complained, for example, of political pressure to tone down warnings about global warming. Environmental Protection Agency officials have complained that technical information on such subjects as power plant emissions and oil drilling have been ignored.

Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, recently dissented from the administration's position by saying its restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research were holding back progress and should be lifted.

Scientists outside the government also have complained about what some call the administration's "war on science."

In the case of the surgeon general, Carmona told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, "the reality is that the nation's doctor has been marginalized and relegated to a position with no independent budget, and with supervisors who are political appointees with partisan agendas."

It is true that in the past some surgeon generals have felt some political pressure, including at least two who also testified with Carmona, --former Surgeon Generals C. Everett Koop (Reagan) and David Satcher (Clinton), but as Carmona testified, other former surgeon generals told him that they had never seen the level of ideological interference that he has experienced from the Bush administration.

If, as the administration claims, embryonic stem cell research holds no hope for curing diseases, then why wouldn't they want the Surgeon General to tell us about all the research he's seen on it? And, if as they claim, abstinence only is the program best suited for preventing teen pregnancies, then again why wouldn't they want the Surgeon General to tell us about the research backing them up?

Obviously, the answer is because they have seen the resarch, and know it doesn't square with their ideological position. So, they will force the messenger to square with it anyway.

Cheney announcement is a probe, part of a plan to bury their tracks.

Vice President Cheney claimed yesterday that his office is not part of the Bush administration and therefore doesn't have to send to the National Archives any documents that he has.

Aside from the laughable proposition that the Vice President is not part of the administration, this has a serious-- and a dark side.

Presidential administrations by law must keep documentation on file, both for the benefit of future administrations and for the review of historians.

These documents are kept in the National Archives and housed in Presidential Libraries.

Of course some are classified, and remain so until some time in the future when either a specific declassification date is passed or they are deemed as no longer required to be classified by the administration then in charge.

Even where documents may prove to be embarrassing or possibly the grounds for criminal liability, procedures have been devised that will still make them the basis for future historical knowlege. For example, Lyndon Johnson had a time capsule sealed which will be opened in 2039-- a date by which anyone who might have been associated with his crimes in Vietnam will almost certainly be long since gone from this world.

But what we've seen from the Bush administration is a whole new direction. First, were the lost emails. Thousands, maybe even millions of government emails, required by law to be stored (and recently requested by Congress as part of the investigation of the U.S. attorney firings) have been deleted.

I think the investigation probably has only uncovered earlier than the White House expected one of the pieces of one of the greatest coverups of our time, which we will see much more of in the near future, especially if it looks like a President who may not be interested in protecting Bush administration secrets wins the White House.

Another piece fell into place yesterday with Cheney's blatant claim. Believe me, it's not just that he wants to keep the attendees at his energy summit secret. It goes much deeper than that, especially with the role that the Vice President's office has played in developing the policies of this administration. If he can blanket claim the right to deny documents to the National Archives then he has sigificantly reduced the number of documents the administration will have to make public right there, and provided a 'safe' spot within the administration where they can send the most damning of documents and get them out of harm's way.

This administration is aware that the sand is starting to run out of the hourglass, and when it does they could be caught holding documentation on torture, secret surveillance of American citizens, kidnapping and 'black rendition,' detention of prisoners for secret trials, and other illegal operations. Like a drug dealer who has been tipped off that their house has been staked out and the police are on their way, they have a limited time to dispose of the sticky evidence and a lot of it to get rid of.

I fear that Cheney's announcement may be a probe, intended to see how far they can push the needle in terms of covering up what they have done. But expect over the next couple of years more and more stories like this as the Bush administration does everything they can to bury their skeletons (and may we hope that is only a figurative description.)

Consider why a terrorst wanted Republicans in power in Washington.

We've by now seen the news reports that a terrorist donated large amounts of money to the Republican Congressional Committee. The man, Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari (who went by the alias 'Michael Mixon') has been indicted on, among other things, sending money to fund a terror training camp in Afghanistan.

But what is interesting is to look at the dates.

From April 2002 until August 2004, the man also known as "Michael Mixon" gave donations ranging from $500 to $5,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to Federal Election Commission reports and two campaign donor tracking Web sites, www.politicalmoneyline.com and www.opensecrets.org.

Why would a supporter of terrorism in Afghanistan suddenly start supporting Republicans in April of 2002?

Well, that is almost exactly when the Bush administration and other Republicans started talking about shifting their focus away from Afghanistan to Iraq.

I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority...."

"I am truly not that concerned about him [in response to a question about bin Laden]."

Both quotes by George W. Bush, March 13, 2002

In other words, during the period in question, the Bush administration was specifically de-emphasizing the war in Afghanistan in order to change their focus to Iraq. Democrats (especially Al Gore, who in 2002 was considered likely to run again in 2004) were sharply critical and suggested pushing harder in Afghanistan.

I'm not suggesting that there was any quid pro quo with Mr. Alishtari's donations (which in the overall scheme of things probably did not make much difference). What I am suggesting is simply that a terrorist supporting other terrorists in Afghanistan saw that what the President and the GOP was doing was going to help his friends (those who attacked us on 9/11) and therefore did what he could to push the Republican agenda forward. The Republican party has claimed they had no idea who he was and I believe them. But they should heed the call to give back the money now that it is known.

And he was right, Bush policy has helped them.