Wednesday, April 7, 2004

For ‘war president,’
biggest battles
not in Iraq

Commentary by Pat Murphy

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Gone is "compassionate conservative." President Bush now prefers the more macho moniker of "war president."

Probably inevitable. His image for compassion has plunged—from 64 percent in a 2003 poll to 49 percent in a new Washington Post poll.

His staged show of military muscle is everywhere: The Top Gun aircraft carrier landing. Speaking regularly at military bases with a backdrop of uniformed service personnel and wearing a military windbreaker with unit insignia. Speeches devoted to war, including the memorable bravado challenge to Iraqi guerillas, "bring ’em on."

Anyone remember presidential photos at a soup kitchen for the homeless, a nursing home, or with any constituencies needing compassion?

Compassion, instead, goes to polluting industries that stuff Bush campaign coffers in exchange for relaxed or non-existent enforcement. Ditto for compassionate tax breaks for upper income brackets.

As "war president," Bush shows none of the manly, the-buck-stops-here qualities historians associate with Washington, Lincoln, Wilson, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower.

Bush threw up obstacle after obstacle to duck testifying to the 9/11 Commission and thus providing Americans a report directly from their "war president."

Now, after bowing to bipartisan demands and agreeing to testify, the president demanded the right of Vice President Cheney to be alongside him, presumably to prevent the president from contradictory statements about what he knew and when he knew it, and to answer complex questions.

(Former President Clinton and Vice President Gore will appear separately.)

Unlike other "war presidents," President Bush bucks public accountability to Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, State Secretary Powell and generals in the field, along with the embattled National Security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, whom Bush tried unsuccessfully to shield from going under oath in public before the 9/11 commission.

Bush instead flits around the country on Air Force One reciting an unchanging speech about millions of new jobs just over the horizon and a rosy outcome to the blood spilling in Iraq (while more GI bodies return home in flag draped caskets that Bush won’t allow to be photographed being unloaded from military aircraft.)

As to whether he used fraudulent information about Saddam Hussein’s doomsday weapons to mislead the nation and Congress, the president is dismissive, saying the world is better without Saddam. He ignores the central issue of whether he lied.

It’s not working.

Conservative Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, lashed out at "embarrassing" flawed intelligence of Bush & Co.

The 9/11 Commission’s chair and vice chair, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, said on Sunday 9/11 was preventable.

And out this week is a new book about the Bush White House, "Worse Than Watergate," whose author, John Dean, knows about presidential lying: Dean was the ousted President Nixon’s special counsel and blew the whistle on Nixon’s Watergate cover-up.

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