Fornits
General Interest => Tacitus' Realm => Topic started by: Hamiltonf on November 24, 2004, 01:33:00 AM
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The New York Times
>
> Op-Ed Columnist: A Plague of Toadies
>
> November 18, 2004
> By MAUREEN DOWD
>
>
>
>
>
> WASHINGTON
>
> I went to see the magical "Pericles'' at the Shakespeare Theater the
> other night.
>
> In ancient Greece, the prince of Tyre tires of all the yes men around
> him. He chooses to trust the one courtier who intrepidly tells him:
> "They do abuse the king that flatter him. ... Whereas reproof,
> obedient and in order, fits kings, as they are men, for they may
> err.''
>
> Not flatter the king? Listen to dissenting viewpoints?
> Rulers who admit they've erred?
>
> It's all so B.C. (Before Cheney).
>
> Now, in the
> 21st-century reign of King George II, flattery is mandatory, dissent
> is forbidden, and erring without admitting error is the best way to
> get ahead. President Bush is purging the naysayers who tried to temper
> crusted-nut-bar Dick Cheney and the neocon crazies on Iraq.
>
>
> First, faith trumped facts. Now, loyalty trumps competence.
> W., who was the loyalty enforcer for his father's administration, is
> now the loyalty enforcer for his own.
>
> Those promoted to be in charge of our security, diplomacy and civil
> liberties were rewarded for being more loyal to Mr. Bush and Mr.
> Cheney than to the truth.
>
> The president and vice president are dispatching their toadies to the
> agencies to quell dissent. The crackdown seems bizarre, since hardly
> anyone dared to disagree with them anyway and there were plenty
> willing to twist the truth for them.
>
> Consider George Tenet, who assured Mr. Bush that the weak case on
> Iraqi W.M.D. was "a slam-dunk.'' And Colin Powell, who caved and made
> the bogus U.N. case for war. Then, when he wanted to stay a bit longer
> to explore Mideast opportunities arising from Arafat's death, he got
> shoved out by a president irked by the diplomat's ambivalence and
> popularity.
>
> Mr. Bush prefers more panting enablers, like Alberto Gonzales. You
> wanna fry criminals or torture prisoners?
> Sure thing, boss.
>
> W. and Vice want to extend their personal control over bureaucracies
> they thought had impeded their foreign policy. It's alarming to learn
> that they regard their first-term foreign policy - a trumped-up war
> and bungled occupation, an estrangement from our old allies and
> proliferating nuclear ambitions in North Korea, Iran and Russia - as
> impeded. What will an untrammeled one look like?
>
> The post-election hubris has infected Capitol Hill.
> Law-and-order House Republicans changed the rules so Tom DeLay can
> stay as majority leader even if he's indicted; Senate Republicans are
> threatening to rule Democratic filibusters out of order.
>
> In 2002, Cheney & Co. set up their own C.I.A. in the Pentagon to
> bypass the C.I.A. and conjure up evidence on Iraqi W.M.D. Now Mr.
> Cheney has sent his lackey, Porter Goss, who helped him try to
> suffocate the 9/11 commission, to bully the C.I.A. into falling into
> line.
>
> In an ominous echo of the old loyalty oaths, Mr. Goss has warned
> employees at the agency that their job is to "support the
> administration and its policies in our work.''
>
>
> Mr. Bush doesn't want any more leaks, like the one showing that he was
> told two months before invading Iraq that such a move could lead to
> violent internal conflict and more support for radical Islamists.
>
> Mr. Goss has managed to make the dysfunctional C.I.A. even more
> dysfunctional. Instead of going after Al Qaeda, he's busy purging
> top-level officials who had been going after Al Qaeda - replacing them
> with his coterie of hacks from Capitol Hill.
>
> Mr. Cheney is letting his old mentor, Rummy, stay on. What does it
> matter if the Rummy doctrine - dangerously thin allotments of forces,
> no exit strategy, snatching State Department occupation duties and
> then screwing them up - has botched the Iraq mission and left the
> military so strapped it's calling back old, out-of-shape reservists to
> active service?
>
> Condi Rice and Stephen Hadley did not do their jobs before
> 9/11 in coordinating the fight against Al Qaeda, and they did not do
> their jobs after 9/11 in preventing the debacle in Iraq. They not only
> suppressed evidence Americans needed to know that would have debunked
> the neocons' hyped-up case for invading Iraq; they helped shovel hooey
> into the president's speeches.
>
> Dr. Rice pitched in to help Dr. No whip up that imaginary mushroom
> cloud. Condi's life story may be inspirational.
> But the way she got the State Department job is not.
>
> Not only are the Bush officials who failed to protect the country and
> misled us into war not losing their jobs.
> They're getting promoted.
>
> E-mail: [email protected]
> Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
>