White House Mafia Blog

Excellent Article: Pursue Them to The Grave

From Stephen Pizzo at NewsForReal.com:

October 29, 2007

Pursue Them
Pursue Them to The Grave

Those us of a certain age have been here and done this before. And many of us wonder how we could possibly allowed ourselves to be sucked into it again. And then it dawned on me this weekend -- the one critical thing we did not learn from our disastrous Vietnam experience. It's not what we did, but what we failed to do. And that one thing is the reason for nearly everything that's gone so terribly wrong in Iraq and our so-called "war on terror."

Got your pen? Because we can't afford to ever for this again. Okay, here it is:
http://www.newsforreal.com/

Article: Madness as Method (Crazy Dick Goes to Iran)

From the October 24, 2007, New York Times:

Madness as Method
By MAUREEN DOWD

Dick Cheney’s craziness used to influence foreign policy.

Now it is foreign policy.

Article: Alan (Not Atlas) Shrugged

(image from www.alansbubble.com)

From the September 19, 2007, New York Times:

Alan (Not Atlas) Shrugged
By MAUREEN DOWD

It’s a lost art, slinking away.

Now the fashion is slinking back.

Nobody wants to simply admit they made a mistake and disappear for awhile. Nobody even wants to use the weasel words: “Mistakes were made.” No, far better to pop right back up and get in the face of those who were savoring your absence.

Book Review: The Terror Presidency

From the September 11, 2007, New York Times:

Books of The Times
Former Law Adviser Speaks Out On Bush
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
THE TERROR PRESIDENCY
Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration
By Jack Goldsmith
256 pages. W. W. Norton. $25.95.
Buy for 40% off at Amazon.com

In October 2003 Jack Goldsmith, a legal scholar with sterling conservative credentials, was hired to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the president and the attorney general about the legality of presidential actions. As he was briefed on counterterrorism measures the Bush administration had adopted in the wake of 9/11, Mr. Goldsmith says he was alarmed to discover that many of those policies “rested on severely damaged legal foundations,” that the legal opinions that supported these counterterrorism operations were, in his view, “sloppily reasoned, overbroad, and incautious in asserting extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the president.”

Article: How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War

From the front page of the April 3, 2007, Washington Post:

How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War
Intelligence Failures Surrounded Inquiry on Iraq-Niger Uranium Claim

By Peter Eisner
Washington Post Staff Writer

It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous -- later retracted -- 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush's remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?

Book Review: Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell

Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell
A few quotes from the review: The portrait of the Bush White House that emerges from this volume ratifies those drawn in many other recent books: it is an administration in which traditional policy-making channels are subverted, expert advice is frequently ignored, and substantive debate and discussion are avoided. “The president tended to pay most attention to the last person to whisper in his ear, Powell thought, and that person was usually Cheney.” Click through to read the entire review.