*Ø* Blogmanac | Ruthless and Truthless
"Evidence is piling up and riling up."
Passing It Along
By Paul Krugman
07/18/03 (New York Times) Here's another sentence in George Bush's State of the Union address that wasn't true: "We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other generations."
Mr. Bush's officials profess to see nothing wrong with the explosion of the national debt on their watch, even though they now project an astonishing $455 billion budget deficit this year and $475 billion next year. But even the usual apologists (well, some of them) are starting to acknowledge the administration's irresponsibility. Will they also face up to its dishonesty? It has been obvious all along, if you were willing to see it, that the administration's claims to fiscal responsibility have rested on thoroughly cooked books.
The numbers tell the tale. In its first budget, released in April 2001, the administration projected a budget surplus of
$334 billion for this year. More tellingly, in its second budget, released in February 2002 — that is, after the administration knew about the recession and Sept. 11 — it projected a deficit of only $80 billion this year, and an almost balanced budget next year. Just six months ago, it was projecting deficits of about $300 billion this year and next.
There's no mystery about why the administration's budget projections have borne so little resemblance to reality:
realistic budget numbers would have undermined the case for tax cuts. So budget analysts were pressured to high-ball estimates of future revenues and low-ball estimates of future expenditures. Any resemblance to the way the threat from Iraq was exaggerated is no coincidence at all.
And just as some people argue that the war was justified even though it was sold on false pretenses, some say that the biggest budget deficit in history is justified even though the administration got us here with cooked numbers.
Please read on.
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Democrat sugests possible grounds for Bush impeachment
July 18, 2003, 07:30
Bob Graham, the US democratic presidential candidate, said yesterday there were grounds to impeach President
George W. Bush if he was found to have led America to war under false pretences.
While Graham did not call for Bush's impeachment, he said if the president lied about the reasons for going to war with Iraq it would be more serious than former President Bill Clinton's lie under oath about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
"If in fact we went to war under false pretences that is a very serious charge," Graham, the senior US senator from Florida, told reporters in New Hampshire. "If the standard of impeachment is the one the House republicans used against Bill Clinton, then this clearly comes within that standard," he said.
Democrats as well as some republicans have raised questions about the unsubstantiated claim Bush made in his January state of the union speech that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa in its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
Deception by Bush
Graham's comments came as reporters followed up on his remarks earlier this week that any deception by Bush over Iraq might rise to the standard of an impeachable offence as defined by the republican-controlled House of Representatives when it voted to impeach Clinton. Clinton was ultimately cleared by the US Senate after being impeached by the House.
After his appearance in New Hampshire, Graham issued a statement saying he was not calling for Bush's impeachment and saw the issue as a largely academic one, adding that if Bush had misled the American public he would pay the price for it in the 2004 presidential election.
In Washington yesterday, Bush told a news conference that the speech reference was based on sound intelligence and that he was certain that Saddam Hussein, the ousted Iraqi president, was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. "We will not be proven wrong," he said with Tony Blair, the British prime minister, at his side. - Reuters
Source
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Excerpt from a "must read."
A firm basis for impeachment
Irresponsibly uninformed, or purposely deceitful?
By Robert Scheer, Creators Syndicate, Working for Change
-- We now know that before Bush's January speech, Robert G. Joseph, the National Security Council individual who reports to Rice on nuclear proliferation, was fully briefed by CIA analyst Alan Foley that the Niger connection was no stronger than it had been in October. It is inconceivable that in reviewing draft after draft of the State of the Union speech, NSC staffers Hadley and Joseph failed to tell Rice that the president was about to spread a big lie to justify
going to war.
On national security, the buck doesn't stop with Tenet, the current fall guy. The buck stops with Bush and his national security advisor, who is charged with funneling intelligence data to the president. That included cluing in the president that the CIA's concerns were backed by the State Department's conclusion that "the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are highly dubious."
For her part, Rice has tried to fend off controversy by claiming ignorance. On "Meet the Press" in June, Rice claimed,
"We did not know at the time -- no one knew at the time, in our circles -- maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery."
On Friday, Rice admitted that she had known the State Department intelligence unit "was the one that within the overall intelligence estimate had objected to that sentence" and that Secretary of State Colin Powell had refused to use the Niger document in his presentation to the U.N. because of what she described as long-standing concerns about its credibility. But Rice also knew the case for bypassing U.N. inspections and invading Iraq required demonstrating an imminent threat. The terrifying charge that Iraq was hellbent on developing nuclear weapons would do the trick nicely. --
Full text here.
"Evidence is piling up and riling up."
Passing It Along
By Paul Krugman
07/18/03 (New York Times) Here's another sentence in George Bush's State of the Union address that wasn't true: "We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other generations."
Mr. Bush's officials profess to see nothing wrong with the explosion of the national debt on their watch, even though they now project an astonishing $455 billion budget deficit this year and $475 billion next year. But even the usual apologists (well, some of them) are starting to acknowledge the administration's irresponsibility. Will they also face up to its dishonesty? It has been obvious all along, if you were willing to see it, that the administration's claims to fiscal responsibility have rested on thoroughly cooked books.
The numbers tell the tale. In its first budget, released in April 2001, the administration projected a budget surplus of
$334 billion for this year. More tellingly, in its second budget, released in February 2002 — that is, after the administration knew about the recession and Sept. 11 — it projected a deficit of only $80 billion this year, and an almost balanced budget next year. Just six months ago, it was projecting deficits of about $300 billion this year and next.
There's no mystery about why the administration's budget projections have borne so little resemblance to reality:
realistic budget numbers would have undermined the case for tax cuts. So budget analysts were pressured to high-ball estimates of future revenues and low-ball estimates of future expenditures. Any resemblance to the way the threat from Iraq was exaggerated is no coincidence at all.
And just as some people argue that the war was justified even though it was sold on false pretenses, some say that the biggest budget deficit in history is justified even though the administration got us here with cooked numbers.
Please read on.
Democrat sugests possible grounds for Bush impeachment
July 18, 2003, 07:30
Bob Graham, the US democratic presidential candidate, said yesterday there were grounds to impeach President
George W. Bush if he was found to have led America to war under false pretences.
While Graham did not call for Bush's impeachment, he said if the president lied about the reasons for going to war with Iraq it would be more serious than former President Bill Clinton's lie under oath about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
"If in fact we went to war under false pretences that is a very serious charge," Graham, the senior US senator from Florida, told reporters in New Hampshire. "If the standard of impeachment is the one the House republicans used against Bill Clinton, then this clearly comes within that standard," he said.
Democrats as well as some republicans have raised questions about the unsubstantiated claim Bush made in his January state of the union speech that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa in its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
Deception by Bush
Graham's comments came as reporters followed up on his remarks earlier this week that any deception by Bush over Iraq might rise to the standard of an impeachable offence as defined by the republican-controlled House of Representatives when it voted to impeach Clinton. Clinton was ultimately cleared by the US Senate after being impeached by the House.
After his appearance in New Hampshire, Graham issued a statement saying he was not calling for Bush's impeachment and saw the issue as a largely academic one, adding that if Bush had misled the American public he would pay the price for it in the 2004 presidential election.
In Washington yesterday, Bush told a news conference that the speech reference was based on sound intelligence and that he was certain that Saddam Hussein, the ousted Iraqi president, was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. "We will not be proven wrong," he said with Tony Blair, the British prime minister, at his side. - Reuters
Source
Excerpt from a "must read."
A firm basis for impeachment
Irresponsibly uninformed, or purposely deceitful?
By Robert Scheer, Creators Syndicate, Working for Change
-- We now know that before Bush's January speech, Robert G. Joseph, the National Security Council individual who reports to Rice on nuclear proliferation, was fully briefed by CIA analyst Alan Foley that the Niger connection was no stronger than it had been in October. It is inconceivable that in reviewing draft after draft of the State of the Union speech, NSC staffers Hadley and Joseph failed to tell Rice that the president was about to spread a big lie to justify
going to war.
On national security, the buck doesn't stop with Tenet, the current fall guy. The buck stops with Bush and his national security advisor, who is charged with funneling intelligence data to the president. That included cluing in the president that the CIA's concerns were backed by the State Department's conclusion that "the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are highly dubious."
For her part, Rice has tried to fend off controversy by claiming ignorance. On "Meet the Press" in June, Rice claimed,
"We did not know at the time -- no one knew at the time, in our circles -- maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery."
On Friday, Rice admitted that she had known the State Department intelligence unit "was the one that within the overall intelligence estimate had objected to that sentence" and that Secretary of State Colin Powell had refused to use the Niger document in his presentation to the U.N. because of what she described as long-standing concerns about its credibility. But Rice also knew the case for bypassing U.N. inspections and invading Iraq required demonstrating an imminent threat. The terrifying charge that Iraq was hellbent on developing nuclear weapons would do the trick nicely. --
Full text here.
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