Bush said: “We need to encourage children to take more math and science, and make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations. We have made a good start in the early grades with the No Child Left Behind Act, which is raising standards and lifting test scores across our country. … If we ensure that America’s children succeed in life, they will ensure that America succeeds in the world.”

FACT — BUSH PROPOSED FIRST CUT IN EDUCATION SPENDING IN A DECADE: Bush’s budget for FY 2006 proposed the “first cut in overall federal education spending in a decade.” The administration requested a reduction of a half billion dollars, or 0.9 percent, from the current spending plan. [Washington Post, 2/7/05]

FACT — SCIENCE EDUCATION HAS SUFFERED UNDER BUSH’S TERM: No Child Left Behind has actually hurt science education, by testing exclusively on math and reading. Some “teachers are being told to stop teaching science and get back to reading and math,” complains Gerald Wheeler, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. [Business Week, 3/16/04]

Bush said: “Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. Here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.”

FACT — BUSH HAS INCREASED DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL: Sixty-six percent of oil consumed in the United States comes from foreign sources, up from 58 percent in 2000. Americans now spend $200,000 a minute on foreign oil and more than $25 billion annually goes to Persian Gulf states for oil imports. [Energy Information Administration, 1/06; American Progress, 2004]

FACT– BUSH ENERGY BILL WILL NOT REDUCE RELIANCE ON FOREIGN OIL: The energy bill signed and supported by President Bush “rejected a Senate provision that required reduction of oil consumption by one million barrels per day by 2015.” Under the bill, “our need for imported oil will continue to grow for as long as models are able to project.” [U.S. House Committee on Government Reform, 7/05]

Bush said: “Previous presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have.”

FACT – BUSH IGNORE THE LAW, OTHER ADMINISTRATIONS FOLLOWED IT: The White House has made this claim before and the AP debunked it:

McClellan said the Clinton-Gore administration had engaged in warrantless physical searches, and he cited an FBI search of the home of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton’s deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants.

“I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds,” McClellan said of Gore.

But at the time of the Ames search in 1993 and when Gorelick testified a year later, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required warrants for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes, but did not cover physical searches. The law was changed to cover physical searches in 1995 under legislation that Clinton supported and signed.

Bush said: “These men and women are dedicating their lives to protecting us all, and they deserve our support and our thanks. They also deserve the same tools they already use to fight drug trafficking and organized crime – so I ask you to reauthorize the Patriot Act.”

FACT — HOUSE CONSERVATIVES HOLDING UP PATRIOT ACT RENEWAL: Sixteen provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire at the end of 2005. Last summer, the Senate unanimously passed a bipartisan compromise bill to reauthorize the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act and include amendments to guard against government overreach. The bill was rejected by House conservatives and altered significantly in conference. [American Progress, 11/17/05]

Bush said: “Our country must also remain on the offensive against terrorism here at home.”

FACT — FLUNKING OUT ON HOMELAND SECURITY: The 9/11 Public Discourse Project (formerly the 9/11 Commission) has given the administration failing grades on its efforts to improve homeland security. Former Gov. Thomas Kean (R-NJ), former chair of the 9/11 Commission, said that homeland security is “not a priority for the government right now. You don’t see the Congress or the president talking about the public safety as number one, as we think it should be, and a lot of the things we need to do really to prevent another 9/11 just simply aren’t being done by the president or by the Congress.” [NBC Meet the Press, 12/4/05]

FACT — FIRST RESPONDERS A LOW PRIORITY FOR BUSH: Just 6 percent of national security spending is devoted to homeland security and the administration still has “no system in place that allows emergency personnel to communicate reliably and effectively in a crisis.” The government has also cut funding for state and local law enforcement and first responders by more than $2 billion from FY 2005 to FY 2006. “While the terrorists have been learning and adapting, we have been moving at a bureaucratic crawl,” said James Thompson of the 9/11 Project.[Chicago Tribune, 12/16/05; American Progress, 10/27/05; American Progress, 9/9/05; American Progress]

Bush said: “The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions – and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons. America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats.”

FACT — BUSH MIDDLE EAST POLICY HAS WEAKENED OUR HAND: By invading Iraq without enough troops and without a plan for stabilizing the country, the administration allowed an historic expansion of Iranian influence westward into Iraq, even as the country’s new leadership has drifted further towards radicalism and rabid anti-Semitism. The Bush administration substituted a policy of dual containment (of Iran and Iraq) for something more dangerous: a single-minded focus on Iraq that has hampered our efforts to fight global terrorism and strengthened Iran’s influence.

FACT — BUSH OPPOSITION TO NEGOTIATIONS WEAKENED OUR HAND: The Bush administration dismissed three separate invitations to open back-channel communications with Iran’s government under the more moderate President Khatami. It refused to participate directly in the talks involving Britain, France, and Germany, despite warnings from diplomats and the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) that the talks were likely to fail without U.S. involvement. Instead of being an active player, the Bush administration sat on the sidelines and ceded leadership to others. As Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) stated last November, “The United States is capable of engaging Iran in direct dialogue without sacrificing any of its interests or objectives.”

Bush said: “First, we are helping Iraqis build an inclusive government, so that old resentments will be eased, and the insurgency marginalized. Second, we are continuing reconstruction efforts, and helping the Iraqi government to fight corruption and build a modern economy, so all Iraqis can experience the benefits of freedom. Third, we are striking terrorist targets while we train Iraqi forces that are increasingly capable of defeating the enemy. Iraqis are showing their courage every day, and we are proud to be their allies in the cause of freedom.”

FACT — VERY LITTLE PROGRESS ON SECURITY FRONT: Since the March 2003 invasion, 2,242 U.S. troops have died and more than 16,000 have been injured. More than 500 Iraqis have died since the December 15 elections. While the administration claims that Iraqi security forces are taking the lead, more than 130,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq. (Question: If the Iraqi security forces are so competent why can’t any U.S. troops go home?) [icasualties.org, 1/30/05; AP, 1/13/06]

FACT — VERY LITTLE PROGRESS ON ECONOMIC FRONT: A new study shows that one-fifth of the Iraqi population lives in poverty, up since the 2003 invasion. Reconstruction efforts are floundering. According to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, “American-financed reconstruction programs in Iraq will not complete scores of projects that were promised to help rebuild the country.” [AFP, 1/25/06; NYT, 1/27/06]

FACT — LITTLE PROGRESS ON POLITICAL FRONT: Despite recent elections, the political situation is highly unstable. Shiites are threatening to unite with Kurds and exclude Sunnis from political power. The New York Times reports “[a]nything short of a unity government, Iraqi and American officials here say, would be tantamount to disaster, with the Sunnis the most likely losers. Leaving them out of the government could very well prompt them to turn away from democratic politics again, and give the insurgency a fresh shot of energy.” [NYT, 1/22/06]

Bush said: “We remain on the offensive in Afghanistan.”

FACT — AL QAEDA RESURGING IN AFGHANISTAN: “Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network has increased its activities in Afghanistan , smuggling in explosives, high-tech weapons and millions of dollars in cash for a resurgent terror campaign, the [Afghanistan] defense minister said.” [AP, 11/16/05]

FACT — SUICIDE BOMBINGS EMERGE IN AFGHANISTAN: “The new Taliban are deploying tactics that have torn Iraq to shreds and Afghanistan is seeing a surge in the previously unknown practice of suicide bombings – 25 in four months. This is seen as the re-introduction of al-Qa’ida into Afghanistan – a devastating example of how over-extending the ‘War on Terror’ into Iraq is rebounding on the West with vengeance.” [Independent, 1/17/06]

Bush said: “We remain on the offensive against terror networks. We have killed or captured many of their leaders – and for the others, their day will come.”

FACT — GLOBAL TERRORIST THREAT HAS INTENSIFIED: More than four years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden is still alive, al Qaeda has spawned new terrorist networks, and global terrorism is on the rise. According to the Bush administration’s own statistics, the problem of international terrorism is worse now than it was in 2001. The sum of global terrorist attacks in 2005 was 3991, up 51% from the previous year’s figure of 2639. According to State Department data, the number of international terrorist attacks tripled to 650 in 2004. In May 2004, the London-based Institute for Strategic Studies reported that “al-Qaeda’s recruitment and fundraising efforts had been given a major boost by the U.S. invasion of Iraq,” and the Afghan Defense Minister recently claimed that al Qaeda had “increased its activities in Afghanistan.” [Time, 5/26/04; Reuters, 4/26/05; AP, 11/16/05; tkb.org]

Bush said: “In less than three years, that nation has gone from dictatorship, to liberation, to sovereignty, to a constitution, to national elections.”

FACT — WHITE HOUSE WAS AGAINST IRAQI ELECTIONS BEFORE IT WAS FOR THEM: Before deciding to support Iraq elections, the Bush administration wanted to turn control over to the now-discredited Ahmad Chalabi. The Washington Post remembers, the White House “resisted the idea of holding elections”¦and only succumbed under pressure from Iraq’s most powerful cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.” Iraq expert Juan Cole noted, “It was Sistani who demanded one-person, one-vote elections. So to the extent it’s a victory, it’s a victory for Iraqis. The Americans were maneuvered into having to go along with it.” [Washington Post, 1/30/05]

[Our guest blogger, Mara Rudman, is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Mara was a member of the National Democratic Institute international election observer delegation to the Palestinian legislative elections.]

Watch Mara on Fox News:

On Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that she was surprised by the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections:

I’ve asked [my staff] why nobody saw it coming. … It does say something about us not having a good enough pulse.

To those of us observing the lead-up to the election as well as election day, the results were predictable. The Palestinian people were registering their protest with Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority. Palestinians also were registering their despair with leaders who had brought few tangible results from years of efforts to build a Palestinian state. Those in the Bush administration engaged with average Palestinians would have picked this up long before election day.

The Bush administration now needs to fix its blind spot if it hopes to help the Palestinian people move ahead. Read more

Yesterday, we learned ABC News anchorman Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were seriously injured by an improvised explosive device while traveling in Iraq. Woodruff, at the time of the attack, was riding with an Iraqi army unit:

The Iraqi mechanized vehicle they were riding in is considered more dangerous than U.S. vehicles. ABC said the two were traveling that way to get the perspective of the Iraqi military.

The attack underscores the fact that Iraqi security forces have not been properly-equipped to take on the insurgency, a continuing problem that remains a major stumbling block in the Bush exit strategy. President Bush has stated, “Victory will come when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens.” And he has assured the American public that we are “building up the Iraqi security forces so they can increasingly lead the fight to secure their country.” But the facts belie his rhetoric.

The Washington Times reported recently:

The emerging Iraqi army is in dire need of more armored vehicles, an issue largely lost in the two-year debate over U.S. soldiers and Marines who at one time lacked protective gear. “¦ “One of the main things is they don’t have much armor at all,” said retired Coast Guard officer Michael Kearney, a defense contractor who is working to bolster the force. “Their people are running around in pickup trucks, and they are getting nailed.”

CBS correspondent Lara Logan traveled to Iraq in late November and interviewed members of the Iraqi security forces to find that the terrorists were better-equipped than the security forces:

LOGAN: Is it fair to say that the terrorists are better armed than you?
BRIG. GEN. AMIR AL-DULAIMI: Yes, of course. [CBS Evening News, 11/30/05]

Thanks to courageous journalists like Woodruff, the American public is able to learn the reality of the situation on the ground, a perspective they do not hear frequently from the administration. Our thoughts and prayers are with Woodruff, Vogt, and their respective families.

UPDATE: Read more

President Bush claimed earlier this month that “the American people can be rest assured this administration understands the task, and understands the challenges, and understands our obligation to protect you, to protect the American people.”

The administration’s failed response to Katrina proved this to be false. In the face of one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, the White House did not appreciate the gravity of the situation, did not show leadership in a crisis, and demonstrated how incompetent they would handle future emergencies unless dramatic changes are made.

Congressional investigations into Katrina are bringing to light how incapable the White House is. From today’s New York Times:

The White House was beset by the “fog of war” in the crucial days immediately after Hurricane Katrina, leaving it unable to respond properly to the unfolding catastrophe, House investigators said Friday after getting the most detailed briefing yet on how President Bush’s staff had handled the events. ["¦]

“We are left with a picture of a White House that was plagued by the fog of war,” said David Marin, the Republican staff director to the House committee investigating the government’s response to the hurricane. “The committee is likely to find a disturbing inability by the White House to de-conflict and analyze information “” and that had consequences.”

But even now, the White House is stonewalling the investigation with claims of executive privilege. The stonewalling means “it will be hard” for investigators “to pinpoint where failures occurred within the White House.”

We may never know where things went wrong before the next crisis hits.

Hats off to the Washington Post for its editorial yesterday on the White House’s politicization of the NSA warrantless wiretapping story. The silence of editorial boards since Karl Rove decided to make a sensitive national security program the subject of a national campaign has been deafening.

But there’s an important question that hasn’t been asked: Has Karl Rove been briefed about this sensitive program?

If Rove has been briefed about it then the White House has more questions to answer. Why does someone who is currently under investigation for leaking sensitive information have access to a program so sensitive that the President is refusing to consider a change in the law because doing so would “tell the enemy what we’re doing“? Why was Rove breifed and not elected members of Congress that serve on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees?

If Rove has not been briefed on the program – and there is no reason why he should have been briefed – then you have to wonder: why is he urging people to spend the next 11 months campaigning about a program about which he knows nothing other than what has been in the press? (Right-wing unity is legendary, of course, but I wonder if they will sign up for a campaign about a program that the President won’t even tell them about.)

These are questions that the White House will be very reluctant to address. But that doesn’t mean someone shouldn’t ask.

– Denis McDonough

[Our guest blogger, Morton Halperin, was Director of Policy Planning Staff at the State Department and served on the National Security Council under President Clinton. He also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Johnson.]

The Bush administration has pulled out all the stops in attempting to defend the NSA’s warrantless domestic spying program. After speeches by President Bush and Attorney General Gonzales, Deputy Director of National Intelligence and former NSA Director General Michael Hayden took another crack at the defense in a speech on Monday. He’s not exactly the ideal choice to restore the administration’s credibility.

As Think Progress documented back in December, Hayden misled Congress. In his 10/17/02 testimony, he told a committee investigating the 9/11 attacks that any surveillance of persons in the United States was done consistent with FISA.

At the time of his statements, Hayden was fully aware of the presidential order to conduct warrantless domestic spying issued the previous year. But Hayden didn’t feel as though he needed to share that with Congress. Apparently, Hayden believed that he had been legally authorized to conduct the surveillance, but told Congress that he had no authority to do exactly what he was doing. The Fraud and False Statements statute (18 U.S.C. 1001) make Hayden’s misleading statements to Congress illegal.

Hayden’s fate lies with the tale of another spymaster, Nixon-era CIA Director Richard Helms.

Testifying under oath before a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1973, Richard Helms claimed that CIA was not involved in attempts to overthrow Salvador Allende of Chile:

SEN. SYMINGTON: Did you try in the Central Intelligence agency to overthrow the government of Chile?

MR. HELMS: No, sir.

SEN. SYMINGTON: Did you have any money passed to the opponents of Allende?

MR. HELMS: No, sir.

By the time Helms was called to testify again, CIA activities in Chile had become public knowledge. In 1977, Richard Helms pleaded no contest to charges of lying to Congress and served a suspended sentence.

Four years passed between Richard Helms’ false testimony before Congress and his guilty plea. Hayden’s congressional lying occurred in 2002. It’s now four years later. Time to fess up, General.

– Morton H. Halperin and Michael Fuchs

Today on Fox News Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said Bush’s warrantless domestic wiretapping program is illegal:

WALLACE: But you do not believe that currently he has the legal authority to engage in these warrant-less wiretaps.

MCCAIN: You know, I don’t think so, but why not come to Congress? We can sort this all out. I don’t think — I know of no member of Congress, frankly, who, if the administration came and said here’s why we need this capability, that they wouldn’t get it. And so let’s have the hearings.

McCain is the latest addition to a growing list of prominent conservatives — including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) — who have expressed serious concerns about the legality of the program.

Karl Rove doesn’t want to spin it this way but concern about the warrantless domestic spying program is bipartisan.

UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the video.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has announced a controversial restructuring of U.S. foreign aid efforts “to serve its foreign policy goals better“: merging the the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) into the State Department. But this move may mean USAID “will lose some of its independence, and development will become purely politicised.”

To head the administration’s politicization of foreign aid, Rice has appointed Randall Tobias as USAID administrator. Tobias, currently Coordinator of the Office of Global AID, is also a former pharmaceutical executive and Bush campaign donor.

Tobias has consitently put the Bush administration agenda before science and facts in the global fight against AIDS, acting as the “front man for Bush’s ideology-driven policies on prevention and on treatment (of AIDS).”

His HIV-prevention policies have focused on “abstinence-only-until-marriage” leaving “large segments of the population at immediate risk of HIV infection.” He has also made inaccurate public statements on the effectiveness of condoms in AIDS prevention and has funded questionable organizations supported by President Bush, but lacking in technical competency in HIV prevention.

Tobias has also continually gone to the mat for Bush, criticizing people who want Bush to do more to fight HIV and AIDS:

[Bush] is doing so much, [yet] a lot of the critics are saying, ‘You should do more.’

The nerve of those critics.

At today’s press conference Scott McClellan claimed he has never heard reports that the United States sent detainees to Syria, where they were tortured:

QUESTION: There are allegations that we sent people to Syria to be tortured…

MCCLELLAN: To Syria?

QUESTION: Yes. You’ve never heard of any allegations like that?

MCCLELLAN: No, I’ve never heard that one. That’s a new one.

QUESTION: Syria? You haven’t heard that?

MCCLELLAN: That’s a new one.

QUESTION: Well, I can assure you it’s been well publicized. My question is…

MCCLELLAN: By what, bloggers?

Actually it was reported on page A1 of the Washington Post more than two years ago:

A Canadian citizen who was detained last year at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as a suspected terrorist said Tuesday he was secretly deported to Syria and endured 10 months of torture in a Syrian prison.

It’s also been reported by the New York Times, the Associated Press, New Yorker Magazine and just about every other major news source in the country.

McClellan himself was asked about in on 2/28/05:

Q Has the President ever issued an order against torture of prisoners? And do we still send prisoners to Syria to be tortured?

MR. McCLELLAN: The President has stated publicly that we do not condone torture and that he would never authorize the use of torture. He has made that –

Q But has he issued an order?

MR. McCLELLAN: — statement very publicly, and he’s made it clear to everybody in the government that we do not torture.

Q Well, why do we still hear these stories then?

MR. McCLELLAN: If there are allegations of wrongdoing, then the President expects those allegations to be fully investigated and if there is actual wrongdoing that occurs, then people need to be held to account. The President has made that very clear.

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

Since President Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program was made public, White House officials have justified their violation of federal FISA law by arguing that the program had made our country safer. A report in this morning’s New York Times may help put this to rest. Below, we lay out the spin and provide the facts:

SPIN – NSA SPYING STOPPED POSSIBLE TERRORIST ATTACKS IN THE UNITED STATES: “The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time. And the activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad.” [President Bush, 12/17/05]

FACT – PROGRAM HAS UNCOVERED “NO IMMINENT PLOTS…INSIDE THE UNITED STATES”: “The law enforcement and counterterrorism officials said the program had uncovered no active Qaeda networks inside the United States planning attacks. ‘There were no imminent plots – not inside the United States,’ the former F.B.I. official said.” [New York Times, 1/17/06] Read more

Two days ago, the LA Times reported that Saudi Arabia has still failed to crack down seriously on terrorism:

[T]he kingdom has not met its promises to help prevent the spread of terrorism or curb the flow of money from Saudis to terrorist cells around the world, U.S. intelligence, diplomatic and other officials say.

And millions of dollars continue to flow from wealthy Saudis through Saudi-based Islamic charitable and relief organizations to Al Qaeda and other suspected terrorist groups abroad, aided by what the U.S. officials call Riyadh’s failure to set up a government commission to police such groups as promised, senior U.S. officials from several counter-terrorism agencies said in interviews.

Even as “countless young terrorism suspects” from Saudi Arabia flee across the “porous border into Iraq,” Saudi King Abdullah broke bread last week with radical Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr (Abdullah is on the left, al-Sadr on the far right):

For these same faults, countries like Syria are harshly criticized by the Bush administration, threatened with sanctions and cut off from diplomatic relations.

Saudi Arabia’s punishment? A visit today from Vice President Dick Cheney.