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Bush’s Bullying, Erratic Behavior, Spurs More GOP Defections

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 16 September 2006
4 comments

Governments USA

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont...

Bush’s Bullying, Erratic Behavior, Spurs More GOP Defections
By Doug Thompson
September 15, 2006 6:51 AM

As Republicans continue to distance themselves from the political suicide of George W. Bush’s policies and his failed war in Iraq, some are also privately expressing doubts about his mental stability, saying the President’s erratic actions show a man increasingly out of control.

Even Bush’s former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, tells confidants he feels the President has "buckled under the pressure" of the administration’s increasingly unpopular and often contradictory actions.

That concern prompted Powell this week to publicly oppose Bush’s proposed plan to ignore the guidelines of the Geneva Convention and give the military and Central Intelligence Agency the right to torture suspects in the so-called "war on terror."

"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," Powell said in a letter to Sen. John McCain, one of the Republican Senators opposing Bush’s push for the right to torture. "To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk."

Powell, a career military soldier and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, knows a hell of a lot more about war than George W. Bush, who evaded service in Vietnam by using his then-Congressman father’s connections to land a safe spot in the Texas Air Guard only to fail to even complete that nominal service.

So does McCain, a prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict. McCain is another Republican who tells aides that he is "increasingly disturbed" by the President’s actions.

McCain, Congressional sources say, was upset to learn the Bush White House pressured military lawyers who testified against the bill to sign a new letter expressing support. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who joined McCain in opposing the President’s plan, confirmed the military lawyers were forced to sign the letter.

Graham is also a former military lawyer and a colonel in the Air Force Reserve.

"It’s a bridge too far, and it’s not necessary," Graham says of Bush’s proposals. "It will result in putting us in legal jeopardy and erode our standing in the world community."

Other Republicans object to Bush’s strong push to pass his plan quickly with little time for consideration or debate. It reminds them of the headlong rush to pass the USA Patriot Act, a bill that stripped away most of the protections of the Constitution and was rushed into a law by a post-9/11 shell-shocked Congress. Many who voted for the bill admitted later they hadn’t even read the legislation.

Graham did take time to read the bill.

"I fell over when I read it," he said.

A growing number of Republicans admit shock at the President’s actions.

"The White House has lost its way on a number of important issues," says Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel. Bush’s Iraq war, Hagel adds, "is a replay of Vietnam."

Republican Tom Kean Jr., running for Senate in New Jersey, says Bush has been dishonest with the American people about the war in Iraq.

"There have been horrendous mistakes made in the war in Iraq," Kean told the Newark Star-Ledger. "The president should acknowledge that. He needs to level with the American people."

Asked if such a step might bring down the wrath of the President, Kean shrugged his shoulders and added:

"If it means that I’m angering the White House, so be it."

Forum posts

  • Nothing will come of and from the opposition and the "opposing" Rebuplican Congresmen. The President will get whatever he wants — as do these same congressmen and Colin Powell.

    The problem everyone is feeling at this time of up-comig elections is that things are a little too visible. The torture rules, the torture, the latitude for the CIA, and so on are all "okay" but they do not need to be so visible. The politicians are needlessly afraid of the opinion of the American Street, as the Americans Street fully backs up these methods wholeheartedly — with the exception of a few.

    This play fright of the polition is so much show for the American Street. While some pols who have some forethought may be a little concerned of what history will record for them and amy be looking to temper the future’s lookback on them.

    But trust me, this will all blow over and the various levels of war against the Arabs, Muslims, the world’s have-nots will continue with even greater intensity.

    Look around and see what the reality is... Almost everyone on the American Street backs up what Bush says and does. Verbal "rejection" under dubious "opinion research" (poll taking) not withstanding.

    Watch and remember what I say; re-read in six months time and see if I am not speakig the truth.

    • You would have been right in what you say had you said it about almost everything Bush has done in the past six years, but things are not the same now.

      The pendulum has begun its swing away from this aberrant president. It has taken the nation that long to come to terms with being attacked. Americans are basically innocents in the world, and truly believe their own propaganda that they are a genuine force for good in the world, even though they are responsible for many wars that have taken place after WWII.

      Fortunately, this state of naivety cannot last forever. After staring international disapproval in the face for six years, Americans are finally beginning to take stock and ask questions about what has gone wrong. All the evidence points at the grotesqely poor judgement of their present regime.

      The political elite of the nation has decided it is time to come to terms with this growing realization. Those that now oppose the administration have been aware of the illegality of its actions all along, but faced with the media in the pocket of the corporations, which were in turn being bribed by this administration, combined with the general fear in the population, they waited. Now the waiting is over. The White House is sunk.

    • I have been saying it.

      — -

      And I do not see the things you see on the American Street. The public is as dumb, if not dumber, then they were in the past. Americans do not have the ability to remember nor to put current context in a historical prespective. They imagine phantoms. They live in fear. They project their own limited reality onto other peoples and nations.

      Nothing has changed since the "Cold War" days (or more appropriately "daze").

      Recall the elections of 2004. Which of the opposing canadates were not for war against Iraq? Recall H.R. Clinton’s trip to Afganistan with sen. McCain and her speaches for more funding for U.S. bases in that country. What did Kerry actually have to offer that was different from the offending agenda?

      Even, if as you say, the American Street is realizing that something is adrift, they lack the will and knowledge to bring about change. (The only thing they keep repeating is vote for change, but they do not realize the one policy situation that exists in America across both main political parties.)

      The envelope of the office of the president has been extended and it will be fully exploited by future incoming office holders.

      You will see. A new, different and peaceful direction is not in the making.

    • The President is not only defying the Geneva Convention but the 1996 War Crimes Act as well, a Congressional Act that literally made the Geneva Convention US LAW. If our country were a true democracy, Bush would have been impeached by now for this one transgression alone.
      A President who publicly supports the ’rule of international law’ yet openly defies one of the foundations of international law, the Geneva Convention, is not only a hypocrite, but a criminal as well.