Tag Archives: bush

Jeb Bush Says His Brother Was Misled Into War by Faulty Intelligence. That’s Not What Happened.

by Jolie4596sak Posted on May 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last week, Jeb Bush stepped in it. It took the all-but-announced Republican presidential candidate several attempts to answer the most obvious question: Knowing what we know now, would you have launched the Iraq War? Yes, I would have, he initially declared, noting he would not dump on his brother for initiating the unpopular war. “So would almost everyone that was confronted with the intelligence they got,” Bush said. In a subsequent and quickly offered back-pedaling remark—on his way to saying he would have made “different decisions”—Bush emphasized that a main problem with the Bush-Cheney invasion was “mistakes as it related to faulty intelligence in the lead-up to the war.” And as his Republican rivals jumped on Bush, they, too, blamed bad intelligence for causing the war. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), insisting that he would not have favored the war (if he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction), commented, “President Bush has said that he regrets that the intelligence was faulty.” And former CEO Carly Fiorina noted, “The intelligence was clearly wrong. And so had we known that the intelligence was wrong, no, I would not have gone in.”

But here’s the truth Jeb Bush and the others are hiding or eliding: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, & Co. were not misled by lousy intelligence; they used lousy intelligence to mislead the public.

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Jeb Bush Says His Brother Was Misled Into War by Faulty Intelligence. That’s Not What Happened.

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Are the Clintons More Transparent Than the Bushes?

by TaniaRizzo Posted on April 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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When the recent controversy about the Clinton family foundation first emerged—thanks to Clinton Cash, the book by conservative author Peter Schweizer—all-but-announced Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush declared that Hillary Clinton is “going to be held accountable like all of us…That’s part of the process.” But Bush declined to slam Clinton or comment on Schweizer’s admittedly unproven allegations that she took official action as secretary of state to benefit foreign donors to the foundation. He said, “I don’t ‘go off’ on Hillary Clinton.” And he explained that there would be time later to get into partisan sniping. But there was perhaps another reason for his reticence: The Bush family foundations are less transparent about their donors than the Clinton Foundation.

Nonprofits are not compelled to reveal their funders, and most treat their financial sources as top-secret information. But the Clinton Foundation does release the names of all its donors and the general amount of each donation (though it has acknowledged screwing up on occasion). It first made public its contributors in late 2008 after then president-elect Barack Obama tapped Hillary Clinton to be his secretary of state. The need for openness was obvious: A foreign government, a corporation, or wealthy individuals donating to the foundation could have an interest in a decision or action made by a secretary of state. And the public had a right to know if any potential conflicts of interest were at hand. (The overlap between the foundation’s funding, the Clintons’ personal finances, Bill’s global hobnobbing with foreign leaders and CEOs, and Hillary’s official actions as secretary of state certainly deserved scrutiny.) But the foundation’s nearly 3,000-page list of contributors was not searchable, and the foundation only supplied the names of the donors, not addresses or any other identifying information. The specific amounts of contributions were not provided, only the range (say, $5 to $10 million, or more than $25 million). Still, this was much more transparency than what is practiced by most foundations. As Tom Watson recently wrote at Forbes.com, “In truth, the Clinton Foundation is among the most forthcoming of major charities and nonprofit foundations—especially those headed by public figures.”

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Are the Clintons More Transparent Than the Bushes?

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This Declassified CIA Report Shows the Shaky Case for the Iraq War

by Ludie69E Posted on March 20, 2015

Mother Jones

The United States began its invasion of Iraq 12 years ago. Yesterday, a previously classified Central Intelligence Agency report containing supposed proof of the country’s weapons of mass destruction was published by Jason Leopold of Vice News. Put together nine months before the start of the war, the National Intelligence Estimate spells out what the CIA knew about Iraq’s ability to produce biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. It would become the backbone of the Bush administration’s mistaken assertions that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs and posed a direct threat to the post-9/11 world.

The report is rife with what now are obvious red flags that the Bush White House oversold the case for war. It asserts that Iraq had an active chemical weapons program at one point, though it admits that the CIA had found no evidence of the program’s continuation. It repeatedly includes caveats like “credible evidence is limited.” It gives little space to the doubts of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which found the CIA’s findings on Iraq’s nuclear program unconvincing and “at best ambiguous.”

This isn’t the first time the report’s been released in full: A version was made public in 2004, but nearly all the text was redacted. Last year, transparency advocate John Greenwald successfully petitioned the CIA for a more complete version. Greenwald shared the document with Leopold.

Here’s the full report:

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CIA 2002 Iraq Report (PDF)

CIA 2002 Iraq Report (Text)

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This Declassified CIA Report Shows the Shaky Case for the Iraq War

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These Charts Show How Ronald Reagan Actually Expanded the Federal Government

by JaunitaA64 Posted on December 30, 2014

Mother Jones

One of the many, many problems Jeb Bush faces in his quest for the Oval Office is his break from Republican orthodoxy on president Ronald Reagan’s legacy. In 2012, Bush told a group of reporters that, in today’s GOP, Reagan “would be criticized for doing the things that he did”— namely, working with Democrats to pass legislation. He added that Reagan would struggle to secure the GOP nomination today.

Bush was lambasted by fellow conservatives for his comments, but he had a point: If you judge him by the uncompromising small government standards of today’s GOP, Reagan was a disaster. Here are a few charts that show why.

Under Reagan, the national debt almost tripled, from $907 billion in 1980 to $2.6 trillion in 1988:

Reagan ended his 1988 farewell speech with the memorable line, “man is not free unless government is limited.” The line is still a rallying cry for the right wing, but the speech came at the end of a long period of government expansion. Under Reagan, the federal workforce increased by about 324,000 to almost 5.3 million people. (The new hires weren’t just soldiers to fight the communists, either: uniformed military personnel only accounted for 26 percent of the increase.) In 2012, the federal government employed almost a million fewer people than it did in the last year of Reagan’s presidency.

Instead of praising Reagan’s small government philosophy, maybe Republicans should look to Bill Clinton’s action for guidance. By the end of Clinton’s second terms, the federal workforce was at its smallest size in decades.

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These Charts Show How Ronald Reagan Actually Expanded the Federal Government

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Jeb Bush Has an Obamacare Problem

by William V. Wainscott Posted on December 26, 2014

Mother Jones

From Politico:

Jeb Bush is stepping down from the board of a health care company that has reportedly profited from Obamacare, a move that comes as the Republican explores a run for the presidency.

According to various media reports, Tenet backed President Barack Obama’s health reform act and has seen its revenues rise from it. Bush’s involvement with Tenet could give ammunition to conservatives in the GOP who view him as too moderate — particularly those who despise the Affordable Care Act.

I can’t help but get a chuckle out of this. In normal times, Bush would have left Tenet because it’s a big, soulless corporation that’s paid fines for Medicare fraud and been criticized for dodgy tax practices at the same time it was beefing up executive pay. A man of the people who aspires to the Oval Office can’t afford to be associated with this kind of dirty money.

But no. At least if Politico is to be believed, this isn’t really an issue in the GOP primary. What is an issue is that Tenet might have profited from Obamacare, which in turn means that Jeb may have profited from Obamacare. Even if it’s a double bank shot, that’s dirty money in tea party land.

Of course, Jeb also has some of the more conventional plutocratic image problems:

Soon after his tenure as governor ended, Bush became an adviser to Lehman Brothers and, later, Barclays….In May 2013, Bush set up Britton Hill Holdings and dove into the private equity business….Bush’s first fund invested in Inflection Energy….His next one, BH Logistics, raised $26 million this spring from investors including China’s HNA Group….Bush’s newest fund, U.K.-based BH Global ­Aviation, is his largest and most complicated. It deepens his financial ties to China and Hainan….“In many deals, the U.K. ­effectively serves the same function as the Cayman Islands or Bermuda,” Needham says. “It’s like a tax haven, except it’s the U.K.”

Plus there’s the fact that Jeb stayed on as an advisor to Barclay’s for years after it was fined for illegally trading with various blacklisted countries, notably including Cuba and Iran. If being on the board of a company that profited from Obamacare is a problem, surely this is at least equally bad. The attack ads write themselves, don’t they?

Anyway, apparently Jeb is now in cleanup mode:

“These are all growth investments that the governor has worked on,” said Bush’s spokeswoman, Kristy Campbell….Campbell said the 61-year-old former governor is “reviewing all his engagements and his business commitments” now that he’s begun to focus on a potential race. “That’s a natural next step,” she said.

Indeed it is. On the other hand, Mitt Romney severed most of his ties with Bain Capital a full decade before he ran for president, and just look at how much good that did him. Jeb probably isn’t out of the woods yet.

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Jeb Bush Has an Obamacare Problem

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2008 Obama Would Have Slammed 2014 Obama for This Government Secrecy Case

by IrwinEklund Posted on July 14, 2014

Mother Jones

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama hammered George W. Bush for expanding government secrecy. Obama promised that his would be the most transparent and open administration ever. In particular, Obama criticized the Bush administration’s use of a legal loophole known as the state secrets privilege. Citing this privilege, government lawyers can keep evidence and testimony from being introduced in court that would reveal government secrets. That means that if someone sues the government for wrongdoing—say, a plaintiff claims that he or she was illegally spied on or tortured at the behest of the US government—the Justice Department can claim key pieces of evidence will expose national security secrets and prevent this material from being used in court. Doing so would hinder or outright squash the person’s case.

In 2008, Obama griped that the Bush administration invoked the state secrets privilege “more than any other previous administration” and used it to get entire lawsuits thrown out of court. Critics noted that deploying the state secrets privilege allowed the Bush administration to shut down cases that might have revealed government misconduct or caused embarrassment, including those regarding constitutionally dubious warrantless wiretapping and the CIA’s kidnapping and torture of Khaled el-Masri, a German car salesman the government had mistaken for an alleged Al Qaeda leader with the same name. After Obama took office, his attorney general, Eric Holder, promised to significantly limit the use of this controversial legal doctrine. Holder vowed never to use it to “conceal violations of the law, inefficiency, or administrative error” or “prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency of the United States Government.”

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2008 Obama Would Have Slammed 2014 Obama for This Government Secrecy Case

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In America, Spending Cuts Are Driven by the Rich

by AntoniettaRyrie Posted on April 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Over at the Monkey Cage, Larry Bartels presents the remarkable chart on the right. Its message is simple: In most affluent countries, there’s net support for government spending cuts, but it doesn’t depend much on income. Not only is the level of support modest, but it’s the same among rich and poor.

But not in America. Here, demand for spending cuts is driven almost entirely by the well-off:

What accounts for the remarkable enthusiasm for government budget-cutting among affluent Americans? Presumably not the sheer magnitude of redistribution in the United States, which is modest by world standards. And presumably not a traditional aversion to government in American political culture, since less affluent Americans are exposed to the same political culture as those who are more prosperous. A more likely suspect is the entanglement of class and race in America, which magnifies aversion to redistribution among many affluent white Americans.

….The U.S. tax system is also quite different from most affluent countries’ in its heavy reliance on progressive income taxes. The political implications of this difference are magnified by the remarkable salience of income taxes in Americans’ thinking about taxes and government….Income taxes seem to dominate public discussion of taxes and tax policy. For example, years of dramatic political confrontation culminated in a grudging agreement to shave a few percentage points off the Bush tax cuts for incomes over $400,000 per year; meanwhile, a major reduction in the payroll taxes paid by millions of ordinary working Americans expired with barely a whimper.

It’s no surprise that spending cuts are popular in other countries: most of them spend a lot of money, and they fund it with high tax rates on just about everyone. But that’s decidedly not the case in the United States. Our government spending is relatively low and so are our tax rates. But none of that matters. Rich Americans don’t like paying taxes, and as we know from multiple lines of research—in addition to plain old common sense—the opinions of the rich are what drive public policy in America. Add in longstanding grievances against providing benefits to people with darker skins, and you’ve got a big chunk of the middle class on your side too. This works great for the rich. For the rest of us, not so much.

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In America, Spending Cuts Are Driven by the Rich

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George W. Bush Is a Far Better Painter Than He Was a President. Here’s His Portrait of Vladimir Putin.

by SuzannaMoloney Posted on April 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Friday, NBC aired an interview with former president and aspiring painter George W. Bush. The president—talking to his daughter Jenna Bush Hager on Today—unveiled 24 portraits of world leaders.

It was only a little over a year ago that we learned of Bush’s second act painting passion. Some people hate the paintings. Some people love them. Some people don’t spend that much time thinking about them. Still others can’t consider them without remembering that, you know, he was an awful president. I, for one, consider George W. Bush’s public painting career to be endearing. He’s not the best painter in the whole wide world, but he’s not the worst. There’s some skill on display, which is more than could be said for much of his presidency. Do I want to hang them in my house and look at them everyday? Of course not. But I’ve seen worse paintings. More than that, I’ve seen worse paintings painted by actual professional painters. I’m no expert, but Bush’s Putin looks pretty not-the-worst-thing-in-the-world to me.

NBC

The Tony Blair painting on the other hand is a little splotchy, but nobody can be perfect all the time.

NBC

4,486 American servicemen and women, and more than 100,00 Iraqis lost their lives as a consequence of the war in Iraq. Here is a clip of the president who led us into that war talking about his painting career with his daughter on NBC.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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George W. Bush Is a Far Better Painter Than He Was a President. Here’s His Portrait of Vladimir Putin.

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Condi Rice In Running For 2014 Chutzpah Award

by EmanuelLashbroo Posted on March 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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Condi Rice has joined the tut tutting brigade against Americans who aren’t crazy about fighting yet another war:

“I fully understand the sense of weariness,” she told a GOP fundraiser Wednesday, according to reports. “I fully understand that we must think: ‘Us, again?’ I know that we’ve been through two wars. I know that we’ve been vigilant against terrorism. I know that it’s hard. But leaders can’t afford to get tired. Leaders can’t afford to be weary.”

….Rice said the United States has taken a step back in conflicts including Syria, Ukraine and others. “When America steps back and there is a vacuum, trouble will fill that vacuum,” Rice said.

That’s precious, isn’t it? Maybe Rice should give some thought to the possibility that Americans aren’t weary of war, but weary of dumb, poorly fought wars. Maybe if the administration she served for eight years hadn’t launched two of the dumbest, most mismanaged wars in American history, we wouldn’t all be so weary.

As an aside, I’d point out that her administration took no military action against Iran and mounted no serious international sanctions against the regime. Her administration also did nothing when Russia invaded South Ossetia. Obama, by contrast, has doubled down in Afghanistan to try and clean up the mess left over from the Bush administration; he’s forced Iran to the negotiating table by crippling its economy; he’s participated in an invasion and regime change in Libya; he’s crippled al-Qaeda via massive drone attacks; and he’s spearheaded a growing backlash against Russia’s invasion of Crimea. And when he tried to mount an attack against Syria in retalition for its use of chemical weapons, he was shot down not just by members of his own party, but by members of Rice’s Republican Party too.

Whatever else you can say about Obama, he’s hardly a peacemonger. His foreign policy might not be quite as blindly bellicose and unfocused as George Bush’s, but he sure isn’t shy about using or threatening military force when he thinks it’s in America’s interest. Rice should pay more attention. She might learn something.

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Condi Rice In Running For 2014 Chutzpah Award

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Obama Should Have Personally Announced the Latest Obamacare Deadline Extension

by JosephineCandel Posted on March 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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Chris Hayes used his program tonight to highlight a deadline extension for a health care program—one that happened back in 2006. Here’s how Knight Ridder reported it at the time:

With pressure mounting to extend next Monday’s enrollment deadline for the Medicare prescription-drug benefit, the Bush administration took another small step in that direction Tuesday, waiving penalty fees for very low-income seniors and people with disabilities who sign up late….The move follows a recent administration decision to allow the same impoverished beneficiaries to sign up for Medicare drug coverage until Dec. 31.

“In other words, you can apply after May 15th without penalty. And that’s important for low-income seniors to understand,” President Bush told a group of older Americans in Sun City Center, Fla., on Tuesday.

This is mostly being used to show Republican hypocrisy. They’re all yelling and screaming about President Obama’s “lawlessness” in extending the deadline for Obamacare signups, but none of them uttered a peep of protest when President Bush did the same thing. What a bunch of partisan hacks.

And fair enough. But I have a different lesson to take from this: You’ll notice that Bush treated his extension like something worth taking credit for. He personally announced it. In a speech. That showed up on television. And people heard about it because the press pays more attention to things when the president says them.

Obama’s deadline extension, by contrast, was passively conveyed to the media via anonymous “administration officials.” Granted, Obama is in Europe at the moment, and maybe he’ll say something personally when he gets back. But even if he does, it’ll be old news by then and nobody will bother with it.

That’s a missed opportunity. And it’s especially unfortunate given today’s news that 61 percent of the currently uninsured are unaware of the March 31 deadline. It sure seems like the deadline extension would have been a handy excuse to put the president in front of the cameras to tell everyone that they had only a few days left to start the signup process.

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Obama Should Have Personally Announced the Latest Obamacare Deadline Extension

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