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Stories tagged with “George W. Bush”

Climate Progress

‘Bush Will Go Down In History As Possibly A Person Who Has Doomed The Planet’–Or Has Obama’s Inaction Saved W?

By Joe Romm on Apr 25, 2013 at 7:46 pm

So, Very Serious People are re-evaluating George W. Bush on the occasion of the opening of his Presidential Library.

For instance, did you know that “George W. Bush is smarter than you.” Well, that only proves you aren’t as smart as you think!

Still, Bush merits re-examination on the climate issue, at least if we are grading on a curve. In the light of Obama’s failure to pass a domestic climate bill or negotiate an international climate treaty, maybe people have been too harsh on Bush.

In December 2008, for instance, I wrote a post with the headline quote, “Bush will go down in history as possibly a person who has doomed the planet.” That judgment came from “Saleem Huq, a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report on adaptation,” in a 2008 Greenwire (subs. req’d) article on Bush’s legacy.

My piece opened:

Some people just don’t think President Bush has done a terribly good job on climate change.

But just because he single-handedly stopped any international action on climate and reneged on his 2000 campaign pledge to regulate CO2 and stopped California from regulating tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions and muzzled climate scientists and forced Congress to drop almost all non-oil-related provisions to cut GHGs from the 2007 energy bill — that’s no reason to think the FHA (Future Historians of America), having previously named Bush the Worst President in American History will award him one of their rare Worst Leaders of All Time Awards, alongside such notables as Neville Chamberlain and Nero.

Okay, that was harsh. But then, most people who rate Bush almost as harshly — say, “A historically bad president, honestly, in terms of damage done to the country and the world and even in terms of even achieving his own goals and the goals of his party and ideological movement” — don’t even bring up climate change, what with torture, failure to stop 9/11, Katrina, Iraq reconstruction, and that whole economic collapse thing.

So it’s safe to say Bush doesn’t have a shot at Mount Rushmore. That said, back in December 2008, the assessment of his record on global warming was of this sort:

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Politics

13 Reasons To Be Glad Bush Is No Longer President

By ThinkProgress on Apr 25, 2013 at 9:09 am

The five living presidents will meet in Texas on Thursday to dedicate the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. And while Bush and his aides are using the occasion to soften the 43 president’s image and solidify his legacy, a recounting of Bush-era policies — from his deregulation of Wall Street to the invasion of Iraq — greatly undermine the new rosy narrative of the Bush years:

Authorized the use of torture


Though the US Code bans torture, Bush personally issued a memorandum six days after the September 11th attacks instructing the CIA that it could use “enhanced interrogation techniques” against suspected terrorists. The methods included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and “stress positions.” A recently-released bipartisan committee concluded it was “indisputable” that these techniques constituted torture, and that the highest authorities in the country bore responsibility for the creation of a torture programs at Guantanamo Bay and CIA “black sites” around the world.

Politicized climate science

Bush’s “do-nothing” approach to climate change prevented the U.S. from pursuing meaningful action. Though he claimed that global warming was a serious problem that was either a natural phenomenon or caused by humans, the administration routinely edited scientific reports to downplay the threat of climate change, censored CDC testimony that climate change was a public health threat, and promoted climate denying studies financed by ExxonMobil. At the end of the Bush presidency, a top intelligence adviser warned the incoming president that climate change was a massive destabilizing national security threat that would lead to “Dust Bowl” conditions in the Southwest.

Ignored Afghanistan to launch a war in Iraq

Rather than consolidating gains after the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Bush and his neoconservative allies pushed for removing Saddam Hussein from power, kicking off a war that led to one mistake after another. Ten years later, the war is estimated to have cost cost up to $6 trillion and resulted in the death of more than 100,000 Iraqis, 4,000 Americans and another 31,000 wounded. Meanwhile, Afghanistan saw a resurgence of the Taliban after Bush shifted resources to Iraq.

Botched the response to Hurricane Katrina

Bush appointed Michael Brown — a man whose only real qualifications were political connections and a sting at the International Arabian Horse Association — to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2003 and he preceded to undo everything the Clinton Administration had done to make FEMA functional, botching the response to 2004′s Hurricane Frances so badly as to prompt calls for his firing. But Bush kept Brown on board and, as a detailed timeline of the response to Hurricane Katrina demonstrates, neither man took the storm seriously until it was too late. Bush, who famously said “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” midway through the crisis, thus presided over the most deaths due to a single natural disaster in the United States since 1900.
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Justice

What We Miss About George W. Bush And The Neoconservatives

By Ian Millhiser on Apr 25, 2013 at 9:00 am


Today marks the official dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, an event that is already sparking reexaminations of the Bush legacy. In reality, Bush left office unpopular and he earned that unpopularity. President Bush presided over the near collapse of the American economy. He neglected a war that was thrust upon us to fight a war that he never should have begun. His judicial appointments consistently place conservative ideology before the law. And his administration flouted the laws banning torture. On the eve of President Obama’s first election, only 23 percent of Americans approved of Bush’s job performance.

More than four years later, Bush’s record of unnecessary wars and economic catastrophe speaks for itself. And yet, Republicans have largely decided that the lesson of his failed presidency is to tack even further to the right. In comparison to today’s GOP, George W. Bush appears downright moderate:

None of these nods to moderation can outweigh the battered economy Bush left behind, or the misguided war he prosecuted, or the legacy of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. But there is no need to lionize President Bush in order to recognize that he was a different kind of conservative than the purist ideologues that have come to dominate the GOP since he left the White House.

During the Bush years, the term “neoconservative” became little more than a pejorative thrown around to describe the kind of misguided thinkers that brought America in to the Iraq War. On domestic policy, however, neoconservatives were often the most sensible wing of the Republican Party. As neoconservative icon Norman Podhoretz once explained, “the neo-conservatives dissociated themselves from the wholesale opposition to the welfare state which had marked American conservatism since the days of the New Deal,” and while they certainly wished to place limits on the scope of government, their limits did not rest on “issues of principle, such as the legitimate size and role of the central government in the American constitutional order.” In this sense, the neoconservative philosophy that dominated the Bush Administration was a sharp break from the conservatism of the early Twentieth Century that saw protecting workers and basic programs such as Social Security and Medicare as fundamentally anti-American and unconstitutional.

One unfortunate consequence of Bush’s failed presidency is that it appears to have also discredited the relatively sensible faction within the Republican Party that dominated the Bush Administration and created a power vacuum that even more virulent forms of conservatism could rush into. Both the Tea Party, with its calls to declare the progress of the Twentieth Century unconstitutional, and the rise of Paul Ryan, with his assault on the American safety net, are demonstrations of the much more radical forms of conservatism eager to fill the void left after Bush’s fall from grace.

Security

5 Reasons The U.S. Is Worse Off Because Of The Iraq War

By Hayes Brown on Mar 18, 2013 at 11:01 am

Ten years after the first American bombs fell on Baghdad, the United States is still paying the costs for the invasion of Iraq — monetarily, strategically, psychologically and morally. The decision to launch the war is sure to be re-debated ad nauseum over the coming days. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday that it’s “too soon to tell” whether the Iraq war was a success. Here’s just five reasons why he’s wrong:

1. The debt

At the start of the war, the Bush administration predicted that it would cost around $50-60 billion in total. They were wrong by more than a factor of ten, sending the U.S.’ debt soaring, a condition that has yet to be rectified. According to a recent study, the war is set to have cost the U.S $2.2 trillion, though that number may reach up to $4 trillion thanks to interest payments on the loans taken out to finance the conflict. Of that staggering amount, at least $10 billion of it was completely wasted in rebuilding efforts.

2. The physical and psychological strain on U.S. troops.

The soldiers charged with fighting the war were stretched to their limits, put through multiple tours, with increasing length of time overseas as the war stretched on and shrinking downtime in between each. All-told, over 4,000 U.S. troops died during the country’s time in Iraq, with another 31,000 wounded in action. In the aftermath, the cost of providing medical care to veterans has doubled, adding to the difficulties faced by those who served. Up to 35 percent of Iraq War veterans will suffer from PTSD according to a 2009 study, while the suicide rate among veterans has jumped to 22 per day.

3. The forgotten war in Afghanistan.

Even worse, the war in Iraq caused the U.S. to take its eye off the ball in Afghanistan. Rather than following through, the Bush administration allowed the country to stagnate, prompting a Taliban resurgence beginning in 2004. As the West focused almost exclusively on Iraq, Taliban fighters imported tactics seen in Iraq to great effect, keeping the Afghan government weak and U.S.-led NATO forces on their heels. The result: the United States is still attempting to tamp down on Taliban momentum today.

4. The opportunity costs.

Aside from missed opportunities in Afghanistan, the Iraq War-effort was all-consuming, pulling resources from all other areas of U.S. defense policy. Relationships with key allies were allowed to grow stale and U.S. prestige around the world plummeted. Fighting in Iraq was realized to be a diversion from combating al Qaeda, drawing funding that could have gone towards a litany of other efforts to effectively counter terrorism.

5. The strengthening of Iran and al Qaeda.

The power vacuum left after the fall of Saddam and the lack of adequate U.S. forces left room for U.S. adversaries to fill the void. Counter to what some still believe, Al Qaeda had no presence in Iraq prior to 2003. Instead, it was only in the post-Saddam climate that they gained a foothold in the form of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The group continues to carry out attacks against civilians to this day, keeping the Iraqi government on edge.

In the end, it was not the United States that gained the most strategically from invading Iraq, but the Shiite-dominated Islamic Republic of Iran. In removing Saddam Hussein’s predominantly Sunni regime from power, the U.S. opened the door to a greater Iranian influence in the region. That influence has been seen playing out counter to U.S. interests in situations such as allowing Iranian planes bearing weapons for Syria to cross Iraqi airspace.

“The end of former Iraq President Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime represents a consider- able global good, and a nascent democratic Iraqi republic partnered with the United States could potentially yield benefits in the future,” CAP’s Matt Duss writes in the Iraq War Ledger, A Look at the War’s Human, Financial, and Strategic Costs, “But when weighing those possible benefits against the costs of the Iraq intervention, there is simply no conceivable calculus by which Operation Iraqi Freedom can be judged to have been a successful or worthwhile policy. The war was intended to show the extent of America’s power. It succeeded only in showing its limits.”

Politics

Anti-Spending GOP Rep Wants Federal Funds To Make George W. Bush’s Childhood Home A National Park

By Josh Israel on Feb 21, 2013 at 11:59 am

Rep. K. Michael “Mike” Conaway (R-TX) has been among the most vocal critics of federal spending, claiming that massive cuts would actually create more jobs. But as he publicly pushed to stop “wasteful government spending,” he privately lobbied the National Park Service to turn the childhood home of former President George W. Bush into a National Park.

A ThinkProgress review of legislative correspondence with the U.S. Department of the Interior revealed that on August 27, 2012, Conaway wrote Secretary Ken Salazar to request a “reconnaissance Survey” of a potential new national park location. Conaway’s letter asked that the National Park Service look at the possibility of adding the George W. Bush childhood home to the Park Service system.

Conaway’s official biography claims he has “the credibility to be a vocal proponent in reducing the national debt,” and thinks Congress must make “tough choices” to balance the budget. Last week, Conway criticized the cost-neutral investments proposed in President Obama’s State of the Union, saying: “Halting the rise in borrowing isn’t enough; we must learn to live within our means and break our dependence on deficit spending.”

But Conaway, who was chief financial officer in the 1980′s for Bush Exploration, George W. Bush’s failed oil business, apparently makes an exception to his opposition to unnecessary government spending in the case of his longtime friend and former boss.
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Security

Brennan ‘Unaware’ Of Any Evidence That Torture Led To Bin Laden

By Zack Beauchamp on Feb 7, 2013 at 6:15 pm

There is no evidence that torture was an effective source of gathering intelligence against al-Qaeda, according to John Brennan, President Obama’s nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Brennan, who was the Deputy Executive Director of the CIA when the torture program began, was asked repeatedly by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) as to whether he was aware of any evidence that statements by Bush era-officials Jose Rodriguez, Michael Hayden, and Michael Mukasey that information gleaned from torture led to Osama bin Laden were correct. Brennan said there was not, admitting that there was no evidence to contradict the findings of a 6,000 page Senate report concluding that torture did not get bin Laden:

LEVIN: [A]re you aware of any intelligence information that supports Mr. Rodriguez’s claim that the lead information on the courier came from [torturing] KSM and al Libi?

BRENNAN: I am unaware of any. [...]

LEVIN: Michael Hayden, former CIA director said that, quote, what we got, the original lead information, began with information from CIA detainees at black sites. Chairman — the Chairman and I issued in the same statement the following, that the statement of the former Attorney General, Michael [Hayden], was wrong. Do you have any information to disagree with our statement?

BRENNAN: I do not [...]

LEVIN: Michael Mukasey, former attorney general [in] The Wall Street Journal: “Consider how the intelligence that led to bin Laden came to hand. It began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information —including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.” Our statement, that of the Chairman and myself, is that that statement is wrong. Do you have any information to the contrary?

BRENNAN: Senator, my impression earlier was that there was information that was provided, that was useful and valuable. But as I have said, I have read the first volume of your report which raises questions about whether any of that information is accurate.

LEVIN: I am no referring not to the report, but the statement Chairman Feinstein and I issued on April 27th, 2012. We flat out say that those statements are wrong. Do you have any basis to disagree with us?

BRENNAN: I do not.

Watch the whole exchange:

Brennan also dismissed a common talking point from the pro-torture side — that waterboarding was no worse than what U.S. Special Forces had to go through during training — on the grounds that being trained simply wasn’t comparable to being tortured. The nominee’s conclusions about the efficacy of torture matched the consensus among former intelligence officials, all of whom conclude that torture doesn’t reliably provide good information and is hence inferior to traditional interrogation from an intelligence gathering standpoint.

Security

FLASHBACK: Bill Kristol Wanted Chuck Hagel To Be Vice President

By Hayes Brown on Jan 7, 2013 at 12:44 pm

The lead-up to today’s nomination of former GOP senator from Nebraska Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of Defense has been marked by an aggressive smear campaign by neoconservatives determined to scuttle the bid. Among the ringleaders of this campaign has been the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, who has deemed Hagel unfit for service at the Pentagon.

It turns out though that Kristol was less worried about Hagel’s positions when he was being considered for a much higher position than Cabinet Secretary: Vice President of the United States. Hagel was among those on the short-list to be named as Vice Presidential candidate under then-Gov. George W. Bush on the Republican ticket in 2000. At the time, Kristol was a supporter of the possibility that Hagel would be a heart-beat away from the presidency, making the rounds on several cable shows to make the case.

When reading the transcript of Kristol’s appearance on Chris Matthews’ Hardball on Jun. 7, 2000, the irony is palpable. During the lead-in to the show, Matthews said, “Then we’re going to talk about what’s alleged to be a smear campaign against George W. Bush’s likely candidate for VP, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. That smear campaign, according to Bill Kristol, who’s going to join us, is being led by Senate Republican leader Trent Lott.” Kristol went on to accuse Lott of attempting to kill the chance of Hagel getting the nod, while forgoing the chance to bring up any negatives on Hagel when directly asked by Matthews. But Kristol made his feelings about then-Senator Hagel quite clear:

KRISTOL: Trent Lott does not like people [like Hagel] exercising independence.

MATTHEWS: Because they’re the very kind of people that you, Bill Kristol, like, right? You’re always championing the mavericks.

KRISTOL: Well, somewhat, yes.

The next week on Fox News, Kristol was more effusive in his praising of Hagel’s qualifications when talking with host Paula Zahn:

ZAHN: I want to have a broader conversation about that later, but I’m going to quickly continue to go down this list. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska?

KRISTOL: Impressive and attractive first-term senator, some foreign policy experience, a McCain supporter. So he reaches out to the McCain voters. I think he’s a pretty — has a pretty decent shot.

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Justice

Justiceline: November 20, 2012

By Nicole Flatow on Nov 20, 2012 at 8:15 am

Welcome to Justiceline, ThinkProgress Justice’s morning round-up of the latest legal news and developments. Remember to follow us on Twitter at @TPJustice

  • Two public interest groups have filed a complaint with the U.N. Committee Against Torture alleging that Canada violated the Torture Convention by failing to investigate and prosecute George W. Bush when he entered the country for U.S. treatment of Guantanamo detainees.
  • The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has named University of Maryland law professor Sherrilyn Ifill as its new president. Ifill, who was a lawyer at LDF earlier in her career, is a frequent commentator, and regular contributor to the Root and other publications.
  • A federal court is expected to rule this week on a legal challenge to the isolation of HIV-positive prisoners in Alabama and South Carolina.
  • A judge won’t halt the construction of California’s high-speed rail project, rejecting a lawsuit by farmers’ unions that alleges the decades-long construction project poses an “imminent threat” to some of the country’s most productive agricultural land.
  • In New York, it costs $54,000 to house one inmate for one year, but a college education program for prisoners requires a one-time investment of $35,000 on average and drastically reduces recidivism, Melissa Harris-Perry explains during an in-depth segment on prisons Sunday.

Security

Fox News Re-Ups Swift Boat Attacks On John Kerry

By Hamed Aleaziz on Nov 13, 2012 at 5:27 pm

(Photo: AP)

The Washington Post reported this week that President Obama is considering Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) as the next Pentagon chief and in response, Fox News wasted no time in running what looked like campaign opposition research on the Massachusetts Democrat. In a segment on the Post story today, Fox recalled baseless charges that the group “Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth” used to attack Kerry during his campaign against President George W. Bush in 2004. Back then, the group, funded by Republican donors, was widely criticized and its ads were debunked.

Yet, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly called the matter merely a “controversy” during the 2004 campaign, saying they had “challenged” Kerry’s record. The segment also rehashed Kerry’s “botched joke” in which he said in 2006 “you get stuck in Iraq” if you don’t get a good education (Kerry apologized for the comments). Watch the clip:

The Swift Boat claims are no more true now than they were in 2004, when Republicans like like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) immediately came to Kerry’s defense and slammed Swift Boat’s ad:

McCAIN: Individuals served on the boat (Kerry) commanded. Many of his crewmates have testified to his courage under fire. I think John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam.

Not surprisingly the group’s funders turned out to be conservative heavyweights. The New York Times reported at the time that the group running the ads “received the bulk of its initial financing from two men with ties to the president [Bush] and his family.”

Economy

Small Businesses Grew Twice As Fast Under Clinton Tax Rates

By Travis Waldron on Nov 9, 2012 at 5:15 pm

Republicans have long opposed the expiration of the high-income Bush tax cuts, those that hit incomes over $250,000, because they claim it will be a tax hike on America’s small businesses. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said as much today in highlighting his opposition to the expiration. “Raising taxes on small businesses will kill jobs in America,” Boehner said. “It is as simple as that.”

Economic evidence, however, contradicts that view. Under President Clinton, the top marginal tax rate was 39.6 percent, where it would return if the high-income Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. But small businesses grew twice as fast during Clinton’s time in office than they did when President Bush occupied the White House, as this chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows:

Boehner has repeatedly highlighted a flawed study stating that the expiration of those tax cuts would kill 700,000 jobs and hit a substantial number of small businesses, even as non-partisan reports from the Congressional Budget Office and Congressional Research Service show that the expiration would have little effect on economic growth, and the Joint Committee on Taxation found that only 3 percent of small businesses would be hit by the increase.

And, as CBPP notes, there are numerous problems with Boehner’s argument. A “small business” would have to earn substantially more than $250,000 a year to actually feel an impact of the higher tax rates, meaning it likely isn’t that small anyway. Many of them, meanwhile, are “pass through entities,” businesses that operate as investment vehicles or for other reasons and are “not engaged in business activity as it is traditionally understood.” According to a Treasury Dept. study cited by CBPP, just 7.6 percent of the income taxed at the top two income tax rates comes from actual small business income.

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