The Political Chase

Rice Admits German’s Abduction Was an Error?

Someone’s lying and thereby calling the German Chancellor Merkel a liar. The Washington Post reporting on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s statements Tuesday after meeting with Secretary Condoleza Rice:

The Bush administration has admitted it mistakenly abducted a German citizen it suspected of terrorist links, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday after meeting with Secretary of State Condoleza Rice.

Why would the German Chancellor lie?

Condoleza Rice after the Chancellor’s statements:

Rice, addressing reporters in Berlin with Merkel, declined to comment on the specific case of Khaled Masri, but she said she pledged to the German leader that “when and if mistakes are made, we work very hard and as quickly as possible to rectify them.” Her aides scrambled to say Rice did not admit an error.

And, then there are the following statements made by President Bush yesterday at 11:11 a.m.:

I can tell you two things: one, that we abide by the law of the United States; we do not torture. And two, we will try to do everything we can to protect us within the law. We’re facing an enemy that would like to hit America again, and the American people expect us to, within our laws, do everything we can to protect them. And that’s exactly what the United States is doing. We do not render to countries that torture. That has been our policy, and that policy will remain the same.

Regardless of the specifics related to Khaled Masri, it has been proven repeatedly the president has blatantly and knowingly not told the truth on this matter specifically, as well as others. Staying the course continues to be the administration’s policy and method of operation – tell the same lies over and over, without providing proof to counter allegations. It worked in the presidential campaign of 2000 (ask John McCain) and the presidential campaign of 2004 (ask anybody), but has clearly not been successful in Iraq (or with domestic affairs). How long will this strategy hold up?

Technorati Tags : Geroge+Bush, Condoleza+Rice+, Politics, Abuse

Rating the President

Richard Reeves on President Bush’s performance rating:

President John F. Kennedy was considered a historian because of his book "Profiles in Courage," so he received periodic requests to rate the presidents, those lists that usually begin "1. Lincoln, 2. Washington …"

But after he actually became president himself, he stopped filling them out.

"No one knows what it’s like in this office," he said after being in the job. "Even with poor James Buchanan, you can’t understand what he did and why without sitting in his place, looking at the papers that passed on his desk, knowing the people he talked with."

Poor James Buchanan, the 15th president, is generally considered the worst president in history. Ironically, the Pennsylvania Democrat, elected in 1856, was one of the most qualified of the 43 men who have served in the highest office. A lawyer, a self-made man, Buchanan served with some distinction in the House, served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and secretary of state under President James K. Polk. He had a great deal to do with the United States becoming a continental nation — "Manifest Destiny," war with Mexico, and all that. He was also ambassador to Great Britain and was offered a seat on the Supreme Court three separate times.

But he was a confused, indecisive president, who may have made the Civil War inevitable by trying to appease or negotiate with the South. His most recent biographer, Jean Clark, writing for the prestigious American Presidents Series, concluded this year that his actions probably constituted treason. It also did not help that his administration was as corrupt as any in history, and he was widely believed to be homosexual.

Whatever his sexual preferences, his real failures were in refusing to move after South Carolina announced secession from the Union and attacked Fort Sumter, and in supporting both the legality of the pro-slavery constitution of Kansas and the Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott class declaring that escaped slaves were not people but property.

He was the guy who in 1861 passed on the mess to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan set the standard, a tough record to beat. But there are serious people who believe that George W. Bush will prove to do that, be worse than Buchanan. I have talked with three significant historians in the past few months who would not say it in public, but who are saying privately that Bush will be remembered as the worst of the presidents.

There are some numbers. The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered — maybe they were all crazed liberals — making the project as unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338 said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding. Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan.

This is what those historians said — and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives — about the Bush record:

• He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;
• He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;
• He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
• He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;
• He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);
• He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;
• He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
• He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic’s oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.

Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president. That, historically, takes decades, and views change over times as results and impact become more obvious. Besides, many of the historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed since worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan. Many say Vice President Dick Cheney.

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Technorati Tags : George+Bush, Dick+Cheney, Presidents, History

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