Bush Has learned Nothing From His Failures. Bush Remains The Typical Arrogant Conservative

Bush Has learned Nothing From His Failures. Bush Remains The Typical Arrogant Conservative

President Bush sat down with USA Today to discuss the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and his role in shaping U.S. policy in their aftermath. During the interview, Bush thought he’d take the opportunity to pat himself on the back for Osama bin Laden’s death:

    Bush said the events that led to the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May began during his administration.

    “The work that was done by intelligence communities during my presidency was part of putting together the puzzle that enabled us to see the full picture of how bin Laden was communicating and eventually where he was hiding,” he said. “It began the day after 9/11.”

The reality, of course, is that Bush’s attempts to capture or kill bin Laden were huge failures. While it’s been well documented that the Bush administration missed an opportunity to get bin Laden in Tora Bora in 2001, Bush himself subsequently stated publicly that he wasn’t spending much time thinking about getting him. “I truly am not that concerned about him. I am deeply concerned about Iraq,” Bush said in 2002, “I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.” Bush told reporters in 2006 that hunting the al Qaeda leader was “not a top priority use of American resources.”

And in 2005, Bush shut down the CIA’s unit dedicated to finding bin Laden in order to shift resources to Iraq. “The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants,” the New York Times reported in 2006, adding that resources “had been redirected from the hunt for Mr. bin Laden to the search for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed last month in Iraq.” When the right wing rushed to give Bush credit after bin Laden’s death in May, ThinkProgress produced this short video highlighting Bush’s failures:

Soon after he took office, President Obama steered the U.S. on a course to end the war in Iraq and put resources back into finding bin Laden. “Shortly after I got into office,” Obama said in an interview after bin Laden’s death, “I brought [then-CIA director] Leon Panetta privately into the Oval Office and I said to him, ‘We need to redouble our efforts in hunting bin Laden down. And I want us to start putting more resources, more focus, and more urgency into that mission.’”

Republican Cult Worship - Rupert Murdoch Set To Air 9/11 Documentary Glorifying Bush; Producer Says He’s Not Interested In ‘Facts’

Republican Cult Worship - Rupert Murdoch Set To Air 9/11 Documentary Glorifying Bush; Producer Says He’s Not Interested In ‘Facts’

After spending over a decade promoting President Bush, the PATRIOT Act, and the Iraq War, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation appears to be up to the same tricks, this time with an hour-long promotional video about Bush’s leadership during the 9/11 attacks. Although News Corp. is perhaps best known for its Bush cheerleading through its Fox News subsidiary, the Bush documentary is airing on another News Corp. company with a better brand image, National Geographic.

The documentary has not aired yet, but is scheduled to come out a few days before the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Early reviews of the program, however, paint Bush as a hero who discarded politics and his right-wing agenda once the planes hit the towers. The film also depicts Bush as a leader bent on capturing Osama bin Laden, no matter what:

“It’s not one of those moments where you weigh the consequences or think about the politics,” [Bush] adds. ”You decide. And I made the decisions as best I could in the fog of war. I was determined. Determined to protect the country. And I was determined to find out who did it and go get them.”

In reality, within hours of the 9/11 plane hijackings, Bush’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld began drawing up plans to launch a war in Iraq “even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.” Indeed, Bush aides quickly went to work undercutting the proposed commission to study the events leading up the 9/11, and despite the growing evidence linking the terrorist act with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda group, Bush never made bin Laden a priority. By January 2002, Dick Cheney told the press that bin Laden “isn’t that big a threat.” The next month, Bush said bin Laden was “not the issue.”

Will producer Peter Schnall critically, and accurately, explain to the public Bush’s actions during and after the horrific 9/11 terrorist attacks? In a recent interview about the program, Schnall said he tried not to push “it too far” with the former president, and that he was “less interested in facts than how” Bush “was feeling”:

“He would only take it to so far,” Schnall tells Zap2it. “If I had pushed it too far, he might have shut down a bit more, and my goal was to get him to talk about those four or five days. I was less interested in facts than how he was feeling.”

News Corp. has a long and complicated relationship with the Bush administration. In addition to promoting the Bush political agenda for two terms on Fox News, former Bush aides have flocked to the corporation as employees (Bush’s top strategist and spokeswoman, Karl Rove and Dana Perino, are among the many Bush admin alumni seen every day on Fox News). Bush’s assistant attorney general Viet Dinh, the “chief architect” of the PATRIOT Act, is an influential board member of News Corp. now overseeing the investigation of the hacking scandal now embroiling the company.

But if there’s any doubt that News Corp. isn’t serious about its latest attempt at Bush hagiography, take a look at the publicity effort around the documentary. On Tuesday, Matt Dornic promoted a special viewing of the documentary on the FishbowlDC website. Dornic is a staffer for Quinn Gillespie, News Corp.’s lobbying firm and public relations agency in Washington, DC

Also a fact that Bin Laden, the man responsible for 9-11 was in Afghanistan, where Bush Squandered Victory to make Saddam a priority. Bush also had a chance to get Bin laden at Tora Bora but had already shifted many military sources away from capturing him. President Obama reconsitutted the CIA's Bin laden unit which eventually lead to Bin laden's death.

Does America Have a Spending Problem - Obama Versus Conservatives

Obama, Conservatives and The Deficit

With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here — from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.

Despite what antigovernment conservatives say, non-defense discretionary spending on areas like foreign aid, education and food safety was not a driving factor in creating the deficits. In fact, such spending, accounting for only 15 percent of the budget, has been basically flat as a share of the economy for decades. Cutting it simply will not fill the deficit hole.

The first graph shows the difference between budget projections and budget reality. In 2001, President George W. Bush inherited a surplus, with projections by the Congressional Budget Office for ever-increasing surpluses, assuming continuation of the good economy and President Bill Clinton’s policies. But every year starting in 2002, the budget fell into deficit. In January 2009, just before President Obama took office, the budget office projected a $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009 and deficits in subsequent years, based on continuing Mr. Bush’s policies and the effects of recession. Mr. Obama’s policies in 2009 and 2010, including the stimulus package, added to the deficits in those years but are largely temporary.

The second graph shows that under Mr. Bush, tax cuts and war spending were the biggest policy drivers of the swing from projected surpluses to deficits from 2002 to 2009. Budget estimates that didn’t foresee the recessions in 2001 and in 2008 and 2009 also contributed to deficits. Mr. Obama’s policies, taken out to 2017, add to deficits, but not by nearly as much.

A few lessons can be drawn from the numbers. First, the Bush tax cuts have had a huge damaging effect. If all of them expired as scheduled at the end of 2012, future deficits would be cut by about half, to sustainable levels. Second, a healthy budget requires a healthy economy; recessions wreak havoc by reducing tax revenue. Government has to spur demand and create jobs in a deep downturn, even though doing so worsens the deficit in the short run. Third, spending cuts alone will not close the gap. The chronic revenue shortfalls from serial tax cuts are simply too deep to fill with spending cuts alone. Taxes have to go up.

In future decades, when rising health costs with an aging population hit the budget in full force, deficits are projected to be far deeper than they are now. Effective health care reform, and a willingness to pay more taxes, will be the biggest factors in controlling those deficits.

Republicans are running around like Chicken-little on steroids. The sky is falling and its all Obama's fault. As usual nothing could be further from the truth. Reverting the average federal tax rate back to what it was under Bill Clinton will hardly be the end of the world. The tax rate on capital gains, the money made on stock trading could easily be 30% and no one would suffer. American's are paying the lowest taxes since 1950 and yet low taxes obviously are not the secret to creating jobs. Taxes are how the wealthy pay back America for all the infrastructure that makes their welth possible. Not paying taxes is just a way for the wealthy to free load.

UnAmerican Fox News Misleads Nation About Economy and Deficit

Can't Add It Up: Fox Still Misleading On Economy, Debt, Stimulus

Fox & Friends repeatedly attacked comments made by Democratic officials and legislators to suggest that the 2009 stimulus failed and that the Obama administration is primarily to blame for the nation's debt. In fact, economists have agreed that the stimulus promoted job growth and had positive economic effects, and several analyses have shown that most of the U.S. debt in the past decade can be attributed to former President Bush's tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pelosi: "If [Obama] Hadn't Taken The Actions That He Did ... The [Economic] Situation Would Be Worse." In an interview that aired on the June 5 edition of CBS's Face the Nation, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said:

What the president has done has improved the situation from where it may have been," Pelosi said. "If he hadn't taken the actions he did, the situation would be worse. He pulled us from the brink of the financial crisis, from an economic crisis, and now we have to dig out of a deep debt. And we have to also make it clear that we're not getting into this situation again. [CBS, Face The Nation, 6/5/11 via CBSNews.com]

Fox & Friends Mock Pelosi And Goolsbee, Pin Debt On Obama, Attack Stimulus

Carlson: "How Long Can You Continue To Say" The Recession "Is Something That They Inherited?" On the June 6 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, the co-hosts discussed Goolsbee and Pelosi's comments about the economy. Co-host Gretchen Carlson said:

CARLSON: The argument to me is, you know, how long can you continue to say that the hard hit recession of 2007, moving into 2008 is something that they inherited? I mean at one point, at what point does it become this administration's situation that they have to take full control for, and I think we're kind of teetering right now on the fact that it is their responsibility now and the policies that they've put into place to try and fix it. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 6/6/11]

Carlson is a typical Fox Stalinist. She spouts propaganda like a fountain:

But Economists Agree That The Stimulus Raised Employment, Had "Very Substantial" Effects

Independent And Private Analysts: Stimulus Significantly Raised Employment. As Media Matters has previously documented, many analysts confirmed that the stimulus significantly raised employment. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the stimulus increased the number of people employed, as of the second quarter of FY2010, by "between 1.4 million and 3.3 million." Moody's Economy.com estimated it would have created 1.9 million jobs by 2010. [Media Matters, 9/26/10]

Economists: "The Effects Of The Fiscal Stimulus" On Economy "Appear Very Substantial." Economists also agreed that the stimulus was effective. A March 2010 study in The Wall Street Journal found that 70 percent of economists surveyed said the stimulus "boosted growth and mitigated job losses." ABC News reported on February 18, 2010, that most of the economists on its panel thought the economy "would be worse today without the big aid package." And a February 2010 survey of 203 members of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) found that "[e]ighty-three percent believe that GDP is currently higher than it would have been without the 2009 stimulus package (ARRA)." [Media Matters, 9/26/10]
Eight Percent Unemployment Projection Made Before Data Was Released Showing "Far Worse" Economic Conditions

Initial Eight Percent Unemployment Projection Made Before Fourth-Quarter FY2008 Results. As Media Matters has previously noted, while Obama advisers initially predicted that after stimulus spending the unemployment rate would not exceed 8 percent -- a prediction made "10 days before Mr. Obama was inaugurated," according to The New York Times -- advisers later explained that this estimate was made before fourth-quarter results for the GDP were available. Jared Bernstein, then-economic advisor to the vice president, explained, "[W]hen we made our initial estimates, that was before we had fourth-quarter results on GDP, which we later found out was contracting on an annual rate of 6 percent, far worse than we expected at that time." [Media Matters, 6/9/09; The New York Times, 6/8/09]
Analyses Show Most U.S. Debt Can Be Attributed To Bush-Era Policies, Economic Downturn

Wash. Post Graphic Shows Bush Tax Cuts And Iraq Wars Contributed Most To Current Deficit. From a June 4 post on The Washington Post blog PostPolitics:

In the debate over the nation's rising debt, rhetoric trumps reality. In January 2001, the U.S. budget was balanced for the first time in decades and the Congressional Budget Office was forecasting surpluses totaling $5.6 trillion by 2011. A decade later, the national debt is larger, as a percentage of the economy, than at any time in U.S. history except for the period shortly after World War II.

[ ]...CBPP: "[V]irtually The Entire Deficit Over The Next Ten Years" Due To Bush Policies, Economic Downturn." The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) published an analysis of federal deficits in December 2009, which was updated on June 28, 2010, titled, "Critics Still Wrong on What's Driving Deficits in Coming Years: Economic Downturn, Financial Rescues, and Bush-Era Policies Drive the Numbers." The report noted:

Some critics continue to assert that President George W. Bush's policies bear little responsibility for the deficits the nation faces over the coming decade -- that, instead, the new policies of President Barack Obama and the 111th Congress are to blame. Most recently, a Heritage Foundation paper downplayed the role of Bush-era policies (for more on that paper, see p. 4). Nevertheless, the fact remains: Together with the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years.

The report also graphed the effects of Bush's policies and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the deficit. From the report: ( charts and citations at link).

Sarah Palin is develping quite the reputation for mangling facts and history. She usually follows up by not having the maturity or humility to admit she is wrong.

Palin said: "He who warned, uh, the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed."

So while riding his horse, a reference to Revere's famous ride, he " ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells". Palin and her toadie apologists say this is correct because AFTER the famous ride Revere was captured by the British and told them in so many words they would get theirs someday. So having time to get some coaching from her handlers she says that captured incident was what she was talking about, when Revere "warned" the British. That only makes a little sense if in her original ignorant account of events she had not the referred to Revere riding his horse. One also has to ask why Revere's taunting of the British would be counted as a sincere warning by Palin. Did she honestly believe Revere was concerned for British troops. Revere's account of the night and his capture when he told off the British.

Colbert Reenacts Revere's Famous Ride To Prove Palin Right (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin was dead on when she said that Paul Revere did...whatever it is she thought he did. And to prove it, Stephen Colbert reenacted Revere's midnight ride with a bell, a musket and a mechanical horse.

"It's just like we all learned in grade school," Colbert said. "'One if by land, bells if by two, hey, British, you're warned, sailed the ocean blue.'"

"I could not have said a random string of words better," he added, referencing Palin's subsequent garbled defense that she hadn't flubbed her facts.

So, donning a tricorn hat, Colbert hopped aboard a coin-operated horse ride and showed what Palin's version of history would have looked like.

Watch the video at the link: