Where does this quotation come from:
Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his face continually. 1 Chron 16:11.
A. Pope Benedict's blessing on the inauguration of Barack Obama.
B. Jerry Falwell's graduation address at Liberty “University”.
C. A daily defense briefing from Donald Rumsfeld to George W. Bush.
If you guessed C, you are correct.
This is part of a slide show of defense briefing cover sheets delivered by Rumsfeld to Bush to keep manipulating him in his conduct of the war in Iraq. GQ magazine has uncovered these cover sheets as part of its coverage of how Donald Rumesfeld's organizational behavior contributed to the Bush Administration's crimes and failures.
This is only the latest of exposes involving Rumsfeld, which include such things as Rumsfeld's cheating at squash against his subordinates (Hey, if you're the Second Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, are you going to call the boss on his cheating?), but this is obviously much more substantive, since it involves the failures and crimes the permeated the Bush administration.
The article is exhaustive in cataloguing Rumsfeld's bureaucratic tactics, and the entire thing is worth reading. The logical question, of course, is whether Rumsfeld's mastery of the situation absolves Bush of responsibility.
I submit the answer is clearly no. First, the fundamental decisions were made, and the fundamental lies were told, by or at the behest of Bush. Second, in Bush we had an aggressively ignorant and incurious president, who by his actions mocked the very idea of competence as a governing principle. Despite the fact that he seized power in a judicial coup, once he took office Bush had the same obligation to the American people as any president, a responsibility that, once again, we are shown that he utterly failed to discharge.
And as Frank Rich points out in today's Times, it is for this reason that we cannot afford to simply turn the page, move on, and act as though the past eight years never happened.
Thank you for illuminating this dark corner. As more and more information of this type comes forward, it shows the need for a Truth Commission like that proposed by Senator Leahy.
The elephant is literally in the middle of the room. Even the Republicans seem hell-bent on opening the can of worms as to who knew what and when. So let’s do it. Let’s call their bluff. Until it’s all out in the open; all the deliberate deceptions, the constitutional violations, the crazed administrative tactics, and even the potential war crimes; we will never be able to put the Bush era behind us. Let’s get it all out in the open; and I am sure there is plenty of blame to go around. I don’t mind saying that the Democrats were a lousy party of opposition in the early Bush years, and it drove me crazy the way they allowed him to paint them into the patriotic corner. If some of our own guys get burned in the telling of the tale, so be it. I would hope they would take their medicine and be the better for it. Certainly, if the whole truth is allowed to come out, the Democrats have infinitely less to fear than the Republicans. You can’t escape that “Judgement at Nurnberg” feeling of inevitability. The whole world is watching and waiting for us to grow-up and do the right thing instead of always pointing the finger elsewhere. The only alternative is to withdraw from international relevance permanently and just mind our own business.
Of course, Obama is going to officially be reluctant to do this. His job is to look like he’s building a coalition so that he can keep all the balls in the air. It’s the Democratic Congress’ job, now that they have control, to do the right thing, no matter how painful, and begin the process of finding out what went so badly wrong. If they don’t do it now, a very dangerous precedent will be set to enable future xenophobes to go even further.
I think most of us knew George Bush was a puppet of Rummy, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle… but he knew it, too.