Speaking of idiots, ~Over the last four years, the Bush administration has tried to transform bureaucratic experts from independent arbiters into authors of administration talking points... with disastrous results...~:
Excerpts:
Treasury economists, for example, had no opportunity to double-check the president's numbers and therefore couldn't purge a disingenuous understatement of the amount of redeemable U.S. debt--a $700 billion understatement that conveniently made the president's large tax cut seem less fiscally onerous....
... The Bushies have evicted the Council of Economic Advisers, an office renowned for its nonpartisan calculations, from the White House complex--...
...This methodology led the Bush administration to look past the CIA's caveat-riddled assessment of Saddam's WMD programs, overrule the Agency's doubts about whether Iraqi agents had tried to buy Nigerien yellowcake, and uncritically swallow testimony from defectors provided by the Iraqi National Congress....
...Even the shortage of troops on the ground traces back to the Pentagon's dismissive attitude toward experts....General Tommy Franks kept providing Rumsfeld with war plans produced by top military planners, only to receive knee-jerk exhortations to revise the blueprints so they required fewer bodies. ..
...Treasury economists, for example, had no opportunity to double-check the president's numbers and therefore couldn't purge a disingenuous understatement of the amount of redeemable U.S. debt--a $700 billion understatement that conveniently made the president's large tax cut seem less fiscally onerous. ...
...Last year, Medicare chief Thomas Scully reportedly threatened to fire one of his agency's actuaries if he provided Congress with accurate estimates of the cost of the administration's prescription-drug benefit....
... When the administration planned to loosen the regulation of mercury emissions from power plants last year, it never consulted Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) experts. "E.P.A. staffers say they were told not to undertake the normal scientific and economic studies called for under a standing executive order," according to the Los Angeles Times.....
... And, in May, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) overruled the recommendation of a scientific advisory panel that had reviewed 40 studies and 15,000 pages of data, refusing to permit over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill.
...You can even tell the story of the postwar failures in Iraq by recounting the episodes of experts scorned....:
....when the CIA convened Iraq specialists to imagine worst-case scenarios that might follow Saddam Hussein's defeat, the Defense Department forbid its officials from joining the exercise...
...when General Jay Garner--the first head of postwar Iraq reconstruction--wanted to borrow ideas from these findings, his Pentagon bosses ordered him to ignore State's work.... A shame, one Garner aide has lamented, since they had desperately needed it. "We had few experts on Iraq on the staff," ....
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The above are just a few excerpts. This administration is scary. Zealotry doesn't produce good policy.
tnr.com |
