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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: blue red who wrote (6877)	3/20/2004 4:52:15 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

Oh, I'd say it was about of the same order as Nixon ordering the IRS to audit his "enemies". Ultimately, that's what doomed him. So you have PROOF the CIA said "Mr. President, there are no WMD in Iraq"? I'd like to see it. Because I can come with statements from Democrats, INCLUDING BILL CLINTON, that really give you pause to wonder. You DO remember Billie saying in the late '90s that there were WMD in Iraq, right? BTW, you avoided the main thrust of that post, which had to do with the presumptive Dem nominee attending a meeting at which the assasination of the President and some Senators was discussed and doing nothing.

To: blue red who wrote (6877)	3/20/2004 8:00:15 PM
From: PartyTime	Respond to of 173976

>>>DiIulio's comments bear repeating in light of Richard Foster's recent revelations (you can read the article from which these quotes are drawn on Ron Suskind's web site: "I heard many, many staff discussions but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions," [DiIulio] writes. "There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues. There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis, and they were even more overworked than the stereotypical nonstop, twenty-hour-a-day White House staff. Every modern presidency moves on the fly, but on social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking: discussions by fairly senior people who meant Medicaid but were talking Medicare; near-instant shifts from discussing any actual policy pros and cons to discussing political communications, media strategy, et cetera. Even quite junior staff would sometimes hear quite senior staff pooh-pooh any need to dig deeper for pertinent information on a given issue." The day after Suskind's article was released, administration spokesman Ari Fleischer said DiIulio's charges were "baseless and groundless." A few hours later, DiIulio himself obediently apologized to the White House and recanted, saying his previous comments were "groundless and baseless." We may presume that at that point his children were set free. Later, Suskind got a similar story from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill: the political people were in charge, and the policy people were barely relevant. On one occasion early on, the political people wanted the President to claim that $1.2 trillion of the surplus could not be paid down even if the government wanted to, because it was in the form of bonds that would not mature for over ten years (meaning the money would be free to use for a tax cut). O'Neill and others in the Treasury Department realized the number was wrong - the true number was only $500 billion, not $1.2 trillion. But the White House included the false number anyway, as Suskind reported in The Price of Loyalty: O'Neill was incensed. How could the White House political staff "decide to do things like this and not even consult with people in the government who know what's true or not? Who the hell is in charge here?" he ranted. "This is complete bullshit!" That night, Bush stood before the nation, described the state of the Union in the most important speech a president gives, in any given year, and said something that knowledgeable people in the U.S. government knew to be false.<<< gadflyer.com