Peter Principle

It’s nice when two old friends share the same ideology and world view.  You can talk in a kind of short-hand, and easily agree on how you would settle things if you were in power. But it’s not so good when the two are heads of state George Bush and Tony Blair. And your shared world view blinds you to the reality that is so obvious to everyone else.

A recent report in the NYT, “Bush Was Set on Path to War” reveals the contents of a British memo written after the two leaders met in London in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. And it makes it clear that once President Bush decided to invade Iraq, nothing was going to change his mind.

The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was “unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.” Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.

Garrison Keillor reflected on President Bush’s State of the Union address in his blog: Join the government and see the world

Washington is the perfect place for the slacker child who flubbed his way through college and flopped in business and whom friends and family kept having to prop up – find him a government job. Government service is a broadening experience. It certainly has been for Mr. Bush. [...]

And he has met the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and visited with young people horribly wounded in the war, which would be a soul-searing experience for any commander. To see a beautiful young woman who must now live without an arm as a direct result of decisions you made – who could see this and not scour the depths of your conscience? And to suffer pangs of conscience even as you exhort the public to have confidence in you – this has to be an interesting experience. Your mistakes are responsible for terrible suffering, but you stand among your victims and urge public support for your policies as a sign of support for the people those policies have injured. This is a plot worthy of Shakespeare.

So why does he still seem so small, our president? In his presidential library, he’ll be portrayed as Abraham Lincoln after Chancellorsville and FDR after Corregidor, but to most of us, the crisis in Washington today stems from a man intellectually and temperamentally unequipped to rise to the challenge. Most of us sense that when, decades from now, the story of this administration comes out, it will be one of ordinary incompetence, of rigid and incurious people overwhelmed by events in a world they don’t dare look around and see.

It’s a good thing I saw The Lion King when I did. Because just one day later, President Bush, in his State of the Union address, called for the elimination of the Lion King. More than that, he called for the elimination of “human-animal hybrids”. And no, I have no idea what he’s talking about either. But if anyone is producing Dr. Moreau style crimes against nature, it’s those crazed imagineers at Disney. They must be stopped at all costs!

During the brief passage on bioethics, when George Bush called for legislation banning the creation of “human-animal hybrids.” In Washington, there is a lobby for everything except apparently mermaids and centaurs.

President Bush’s statement during his State of the Union address that “America is addicted to foreign oil” has generated some predictable skepticism around the country.

As Mark Sandalow of the SF Chronicle puts it:

President Bush’s call for Republicans and Democrats to work together, for America to engage the world and for the nation to quit its addiction to oil will sound to many skeptics like Barry Bonds calling for an end to steroid use in baseball.

Bush’s call to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil follows five years of promoting U.S. oil production and rejecting calls for conservation. In the first year of Bush’s presidency, Cheney dismissively observed, “you cannot conserve your way to energy independence.”

Well, not to worry. Turns out – that bit about cutting back on oil imports? He was just kidding.

Administration backs off Bush’s vow to reduce Mideast oil imports

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn’t mean it literally.

In his State of the Union address, President Bush talked about U.S. dependency on foreign oil, and urged research in alternative energy. He also talked about the importance of scientific education, and the need to train more teachers and scientists.

This from an administration that has always emphasized drilling over alternative energy, and has taken a consistently hostile attitude towards science policy. But it will take more than one speech to convince skeptical scientists that the administration is sincere.

In February 2004, a panel of scientists released a report entitled Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making. The report charged the Bush administration with widespread and unprecedented “manipulation of the process through which science enters into its decisions.”

In July 2004 by the Union of Concerned Scientists elaborated on the concerns in the report Scientific Integrity in Policy Making. The report concludes:

• There is a well established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees across numerous federal agencies. These actions have consequences for human health, public safety, and community well-being.
• There is strong documentation of a wide-ranging effort to manipulate the government’s scientific advisory system to prevent the appearance of advice that might run counter to the administration’s political agenda.
• There is evidence that the administration often imposes restrictions on what government scientists can say or write about “sensitive” topics.
• There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the abuse of science by the Bush administration are unprecedented.

Then again, we should not take the President’s speeches too seriously. Remember back in January 2004, Mr. Bush talked about establishing moon bases and a manned mission to Mars.

Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a “vital tool” against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved “thousands of lives.”

But … law enforcement and counterterrorism officials … said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.
“We’d chase a number, find it’s a schoolteacher with no indication they’ve ever been involved in international terrorism – case closed,” said one former F.B.I. official.