| |
The ABCs of W: A - N
The ABCs of W:
New Democracy Project, Mark Green
(All page numbers refer to pages within The Book on Bush: How George W.
(Mis)leads America [February 2004], by Eric Alterman and Mark Green. For more information on the book, visit www.thebookonbush.com.)
A
AIDS Funding
Assertion: President Bush promised $3 billion per year over five years for the AIDS initiative.
Truth: The White House’s 2004 budget request asked Congress for only $1.9 billion annually. But even that sum was something of a mirage, as it was partly based on a reshuffling of related accounts. For example, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria—much of which is designated for Africa—received a $150 million cut from the previous year. Moreover, Congress mandated that even this money will not be spent unless the Europeans match the U.S. contribution. (Page 319)
Affirmative Action
Assertion: President Bush referred to the University of Michigan Law School affirmative action policy as a “quota” four times.
Truth: But the law school did not have any of the “special admissions” set-asides that were ruled unconstitutional in the 1978 Bakke decision that eliminated quota systems. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor approvingly wrote for a 6 to 3 majority that the law school had engaged in a “highly individualized, holistic review of each applicant’s file” in which race counts as a factor but not the factor. The Constitution, she concluded for the majority, “does not prohibit the Law School’s narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.” (Pages 127-129)
Blackout on the East Coast
Assertion: In the days after the devastating East Coast blackout of August 2003, President Bush and his advisors blamed it on Democratic opposition to his Energy Plan.
Truth: In fact, when Congressional Democrats proposed spending $350 million to modernize the grid in 2001, the proposal was summarily rejected by the White House and Republican leaders, who would only agree to improve the electrical grid if it was combined with tax giveaways and new drilling. (Page 20)
Clean Air in Texas
Assertion: During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush often referred to the Texas 1997 clean air proposal as his “biggest environmental achievement” and a model for the market-based solutions he would bring to the White House.
Truth: Fewer than six months after Bush had left Texas for the White House, the Texas legislature declared Bush’s voluntary program a failure and replaced it with a mandatory pollution control scheme. (Page 28)
Chemical Weapons
Assertion: In June 2003, Bush referred to two trucks in Iraq that might have been mobile bioweapons labs. “For those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong. We found them.”
Truth: But the two mobile labs and a dozen 55 gallon drums of chemicals to which the president was referring “showed no positive hits at all” for chemical weapons. (Page 256)
Carbon Dioxide Emissions
Failure: During his presidential campaign, Bush pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. But fewer than sixty days into his presidency, Bush abandoned that pledge citing “important information” that he did not specify. In its place, the President announced a plan to seek an 18 percent decrease by 2012 in the “emissions intensity” of carbon dioxide pollution. “Emissions intensity” is a measure of emissions as a percentage of economic output, which means Bush is actually seeking a 14 percent increase in carbon dioxide emissions over the next ten years. (Pages 13-14)
Cost of War in Iraq
Failure: Had the administration been more honest about the cost of the Iraqi war—OMB director Mitch Daniels estimated in early 2003 that it would cost $60 billion—Americans would not have experienced such “sticker shock” when it totaled $166 billion by late 2003, which omits the estimated $55 billion for reconstruction. (Page 290)
Congressional Resolution on Iraq War
Assertion: When he ultimately asked Congress for the authority to go to war with Iraq, President Bush sent a letter in which he offered two justifications for doing so. The first was that he had decided that further diplomacy would be a waste of time. The second was that the United States was “continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” The language of Bush’s letter echoed that of legislation passed by Congress in October 2002 that gave the president the power to go to war with Iraq should a link with the September 11 attacks be found.
Truth: In fact, the connection was never established, as Bush admitted much later. (Page 276, 282)
Drones in Iraq
Assertion: Bush said Iraq’s drone (unmanned) aircraft could be used “for missions targeting the United States.”
Truth: In reality, the CIA said the fleet was an “experiment” and said nothing about it having range to attack the U.S., perhaps since the drones could travel only 300 miles, or 5700 miles short of the U.S. The Air Force believed the claim was nonsense as well, especially since all the drones were directed at Iran. (Page 255)
Environmental Policy
Assertion: President Bush argued that if the Europeans doubted his administration’s commitment to preserving the environment, “all they need to do is look at home and see that we’re making good progress on the environment at home…We will reduce the amount of arsenic in our waters…[W]e’ve got money for our national parks.”
Truth: His administration was then in the process of trying to increase the amount of arsenic in Americans’ drinking water, and decrease the preservation of U.S. national parks. (Page 200)
Economic Policy
Failure: Bush’s economic policies have left several economic time bombs for his successor to defuse. Budget deficits and trade deficits will be exploding at the very time that a) monetary policy may be unavailable after the Federal Reserve already cut interest rates thirteen times in 2002-2003, b) fiscal policy can hardly tolerate more red ink, and c) foreign investors won’t forever pay for our excess consumption. Economy.com, a leading independent research group, studied how different tax approaches would boost the economy compared to its cost: a dollar spent extending unemployment benefits would increase GDP by $1.73; a dollar tax cut for low-income individuals would produce $1.34, Bush’s tax cuts for high-income individuals, only 59 cents. (Pages 42, 58)
Energy Plan
Assertion: Vice President Cheney claimed that his energy proposal was consistent with eleven of the twelve planks in the Sierra Club’s energy proposal.
Truth: “If [Bush-Cheney] really believes these plans are similar,” said Sierra Club President Carl Pope, “then Arthur Andersen must be checking his math.” The Sierra Club’s energy proposal, for example, included forty-mile-per-gallon fuel efficiency standards, the goal of 20 percent of America’s energy coming from renewables in 2020, and a steep reduction in carbon dioxide emissions—all missing from the Bush plan. (Pages 19-20)
Enforcement of Environmental Regulations
Failure: In 1999 and 2000, the EPA filed lawsuits against nine major power companies and dozens of individual power plants, whose combined emissions represent a third of all factory pollution in the United States and are responsible for more than 5,000 premature deaths each year. Reversing that enforcement trend, Bush’s 2003 EPA budget would have continued a three-year effort to slash the number of enforcement jobs. With fewer people to enforce the laws, the result is not surprising. Since Bush took office, civil environmental penalties are down almost 50 percent, the number of pounds of pollution to be cleaned up is down 20 percent, and EPA is conducting three thousand fewer inspections each year. Not only has Bush’s EPA not brought any new Clean Air Act cases since it’s been in office, but the agency in November 2003 dropped dozens of previously filed lawsuits against companies for pollution because of the circular reasoning that the companies might no longer be in violation of Bush’s more relaxes interpretation of the Clean Air Act—an idea that came from Vice President Cheney’s Energy Task Force. (Pages 25-26)
Family Planning Gag Rule
Failure: On his third day in office, the Bush administration ended U.S. participation in the UN’s population and women’s reproductive health programs over their refusal to enact a “gag rule” about the availability of abortion for non-governmental organizations. This move will increase the number of abortions by as many as eight hundred thousand annually as family planning and educational services around the globe are depressed because of badly needed funds. (Page 190)
Global Warming
Assertion: According to President Bush, there is an “incomplete state of scientific knowledge of the causes of, and solutions to, global climate change.”
Truth: In 2001, reports from the National Academy of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change unequivocally state that global warming is occurring and that man-made pollution is responsible. Even Philip Watts, the chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, conceded the existence of the problem: “Amid all this uncertainty, we have seen and heard enough in Shell to say we stand with those who believe there is a problem and that it is related to the burning of fossil fuels.” (Pages 16, 148)
Gay Republicans
Assertion: Bush told Larry King he refused to meet with the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay and lesbian grassroots group, because “they made a commitment to John McCain.”
Truth: The Arizona senator immediately corrected the record, as did Kevin Ivers, spokesperson for the group, since the group hadn’t made any endorsement. (Page 126)
Halliburton Compensation Package
Assertion: Cheney said in September 2003 that he has “no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven’t had now for over three years.”
Truth: To this day Cheney still receives more than $160,000 a year from Halliburton as part of a deferred compensation package. The New York Times said Cheney’s statement “is true only if you don’t count the stock options Mr. Cheney continues to hold and $367,690 in deferred compensation he has reported receiving so far while vice president—on top of the $20 million severance package awarded in 2000.” (Page 65)
Heating for the Poor
Assertion: During the second presidential debate, George W. Bush pledged to fund the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP): “First and foremost, we got to make sure we fully fund LIHEAP, which is a way to help low-income folks…pay for their high fuel bills.” After being elected, Bush again expressed support for this program: “I am concerned that if we don’t act in a commonsense way that our people will not be able to heat and cool their homes.”
Truth: Yet, in his 2003 budget proposal, Bush sought to cut federal energy subsidies for home heating from $1.7 billion to $1.4 billion, a decrease of approximately 18 percent that translates into 438,000 fewer families receiving emergency assistance from the government. (Pages 168-169)
Hussein and al Qaeda
Assertion: In his October 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati, Bush claimed that high-level contacts between Hussein and al Qaeda “go back a decade.” And he said that “you can’t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.”
Truth: In fact, the contacts in question took place in the early 1990’s when the al Qaeda organization was in its infancy and the two men were largely allied against the Saudi monarchy. When the high-level al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah was finally captured in March 2002 in Pakistan, he informed his captors that bin Laden had personally rejected the idea of any kind of alliance with Hussein. Zubaydah’s explanation was later corroborated by testimony from top high-level al Qaeda agents captured later in the spring, including one of the key planners of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Farouk Hijazi, a former Iraqi intelligence operative who U.S. officials allege met with al Qaeda operatives and perhaps bin Laden himself in the 1990s, has also denied any Iraq-al Qaeda ties, according to U.S. officials. When bin Laden was interviewed for CNN in 1997, he was asked about Hussein. “He’s a bad Muslim,” bin Laden replied. “He took Kuwait for his own self-aggrandizement.” (Pages 277, 279-280)
Hussein and Attacks on the U.S.
Assertion: Bush claimed that “Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists,” adding that Hussein’s “alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.” Incredibly, even after President Bush himself had denied any provable Saddam-9/11 link in late 2004, Vice President Cheney was still trying to sow confusion on NBC’s Meet the Press, by describing Iraq as “the geographic base of the terrorist who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11.”
Truth: In reality, Bush was ignoring reports by the CIA and other intelligence sources that Hussein had no plans to attack the United States and might conceivably do so only if he was about to be overthrown. Similarly, intelligence reports from the CIA and other agencies indicated that Iraq was only like to give away chemical or biological agents to terrorists as Hussein’s “last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.” So our invasion risked creating the very attacks that weren’t occurring. (Pages 277-278, 337)
Insider Trading Investigation
Assertion: Bush told SEC investigators during their 1991 hearing into his stock sales that after asking his attorneys for advice on whether selling his shares would constitute insider trading, his attorneys “saw no reason why Bush could not sell his shares.”
Truth: In reality, the Harken attorneys circulated an internal memo advising against selling stock because of insider trading concerns. A 1993 memo from the SEC stated that halting the investigation “must in no way be construed as indicating that the party [Bush] has been exonerated.” (Pages 71-72)
Iran and the “Axis of Evil”
Failure: In his 2002 State of the Union, Bush declared that Iran, North Korea and Iraq constituted an “axis of evil.” This rhetorical, ahistorical reference proved counterproductive on all counts, especially regarding Iran. The September 11 attacks had been denounced by Iran’s hard-line clergy as well as its democratic leadership, and many Iranian cities saw mass demonstrations of sympathy for the nation once denounced as “the Great Satan.” Yale historian Abbas Amanat warned shortly after the axis announcement that such rhetorical saber-rattling would likely accomplish an unwanted end: strengthening the mullahs vis-à-vis the progressive, democratic forces that are seeking to open that nation up to U.S.-Western influence. (Page 314)
Iraq War and Anti-Western Militancy
Failure: Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak predicted that the war in Iraq would drive more Muslims to anti-Western militancy, saying that “instead of having one [Osama] bin Laden, we will have 100 bin Ladens.” (Newsweek, December 29, 2003)
Iraqi Civilians
Failure: On May 15 Paul Bremer disbanded the 400,000 person Iraqi Army and blacklisted 50,000 members of the Baath Party. As noted by the New York Times Magazine, “In a country like Iraq, where the average family size is 6, firing 450,000 people amounts to leaving 2,700,000 people without incomes; in other words, more than 10 percent of Iraq’s 23 million people.” This “de-Baathification” of Iraq—a process many CIA and military officials advised against—was, according to Bremer, carried out under instruction from the President. (Michael Hirsh, Rod Nordland and Mark Hosenball, “About-Face in Iraq,” Newsweek, November 24, 2003 and David Rieff, “Blueprint for a Mess,” New York Times Magazine, November 2, 2003)
Judicial Confirmations
Assertion: President Bush declared the judicial confirmation process “in crisis” because vacancies “are causing delays for citizens seeking justice.”
Truth: In reality, the vacancy rate was at its lowest in a decade and Democrats had confirmed 132 judges and filibustered only three, a rate of confirmation better than Republicans under Clinton. (Page 164)
Job Losses
Failure: Since early 2001, the country has lost 2.2 million jobs. While the White House and other Republicans might contend that the 2.2 million number is misleading, it is the number agreed upon by Federal Reserve Board Chair Alan Greenspan, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists are most concerned, however, at the high numbers of people dropping out of the job search. About 392,000 workers gave up and stopped looking for a job in February—exactly the opposite of what should be happening during an economic recovery. The unemployment rate is now at 5.6 percent, though that number might be as high as 7.3 percent were workers like those who have given up on finding work included in the count. (Edmund L. Andrews, “In the Latest Numbers, Economists See the Cold, Hard Truth About Jobs,” New York Times, March 6, 2004.)
Korean Relations
Failure: When South Korean president (and Nobel laureate) Kim Dae Jung visited Washington six weeks after Bush took office, Bush humiliated both his guest and his own secretary of state by publicly repudiating the negotiations between North and South Korea after both men had just publicly endorsed them. In doing so, he also displayed a disturbing lack of familiarity with the details of the negotiations he purposely sabotaged. “We’re not certain as to whether or not they’re [North Korea] keeping all terms of all agreements,” he said at the time. But at the time, these “agreements” numbered just one: the 1994 “Agreed Framework,” which froze North Korea’s enormous plutonium-processing program—one that was bigger, at the time, than those of Israel, India, and Pakistan combined—in exchange for economic aid. Bush aides were later forced to admit they could find no evidence at that time to support the president’s accusation. (Page 315)
Ken Lay
Assertion: Bush denied that he and former Enron CEO Ken Lay were close friends and even said that Lay “was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in1994.”
Truth: In an interview with PBS’s Frontline on March 27, 2001, Lay admitted, “I’d worked very closely with Ann Richards also, the four years she was governor. But I was very close to George W. and had a lot of respect for him, had watched him over the years, particularly with reference to dealing with his father when his father was in the White House and some of the things he did to work for his father, and so did support him.” In the 1994 campaign, Lay contributed $37,500 to the Bush campaign, three times what he gave to Ann Richards. And Enron as a whole—including Enron’s PAC and other corporate executives—contributed almost eight times more to Bush than to Richards. (Pages 69-70)
Land Preservation
Assertion: During the October 11, 2000 presidential debate, Bush claimed that the government “took 40 million acres of land out of circulation without consulting local officials…[and] without any input.”
Truth: The Forest Service conducted 600 public hearings on the proposal and received more than 1 million letters from Americans urging the service to strengthen it. (Page 31)
Litigation of Environmental Issues
Assertion: President Bush wanted to waive requirements like environmental impact statements because he claimed “there’s just too many lawsuits, just endless litigation.”
Truth: Of the 762 fire-prevention projects proposed by the Forest Service in the past two years, fewer than 25 were litigated, and 95 percent of them proceeded in fewer than 90 days. Environmental impact statements—while perhaps time consuming to the companies that must file them—have been successfully utilized for thirty years, and they plan a vital role in ensuring that a company or industry doesn’t run roughshod over environmental values. (Page 33)
Missile Defense
Failure: Bush signaled plans to begin construction of a missile defense system. Yet almost all disinterested analysts judge the effort to be dangerous and ultimately fatally flawed. Beginning in 1983 when President Reagan initiated work on the project, the United States has spent more than $70 billion attempting to solve the most rudimentary technical problems associated with creating a missile defense system and come up completely empty-handed. In August 2003, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency suspended the program because the technology involved was “not mature enough” to fund. But when the Senate and House Armed Services Committees passed an amendment that would have allowed the president to take more than $800 million from his missile defense program and transfer it to the Department of Homeland Security, Bush rejected the deal. (Pages 207-210)
Mission Accomplished
Assertion: When President Bush made his fighter jet appearance aboard the deck of the USS Lincoln, a “Mission Accomplished” banner was draped behind him. President Bush disavowed any White House involvement with the production of the banner, saying the Navy produced it.
Truth: Navy officials said “the White House actually made it” and the President’s Press Secretary Scott McClellan admitted, “We took care of the production of it. We have people to do those things.” (“White House Pressed on ‘Mission Accomplished’ Sign,” CNN, October 29, 2003.)
Miners’ Safety
Failure: Shortly after the nine miners were rescued from a flooded underground mine in Pennsylvania, President Bush made a trip to the state and said, “It was their determination to stick together and to comfort each other that really defines the kind of a new spirit that’s prevalent in our country, that when one of us suffer, all of us suffers.” Shortly before making that speech, Bush proposed cutting funding for the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) by $7 million (6 percent). Meanwhile, coal-mining deaths increased by 41 percent from 1998 to 2001. (Page 182)
Nuclear Weapons in Iraq
Assertion: In September 2002 Bush said, “I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied—finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic—the IAEA, that they were six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.” And on Meet the Press in March 2002, Cheney clearly claimed that Iraq was already in possession of “reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
Truth: In fact, the estimate to which Bush was referring was more than a decade old and was made before Iraq’s military capabilities were decimated in the Gulf War. Cheney later admitted that his claim, which contributed to the push for war, was false. (Pages 254, 263)
Continue to The ABCs of W: O-Z
|
|
