| |
The ABCs of W: O - Z
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.)
O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Owners of Small Businesses
Assertion: President Bush claimed that “23 million small business owners across America will receive an average income tax cut of $2,042” from his tax proposal.
Truth: Bush got that factoid by including five hundred thousand well-off people who are “chapter S corporations” or have passive investments in partnerships in the same group as those who ran a corner deli. In reality, 80 percent of small businesses would get less than $2,042 and half would get tax cuts of $500 or less. (Page 45)
Pickering’s Nomination
Assertion: President Bush asserted that “[Judge] Pickering is a respected and well-qualified nominee…[with] a very strong record on civil rights.”
Truth: In reality, five experts on judicial ethics wrote the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain why Pickering’s conduct in a cross-burning case violated the Code of Conduct for federal judges. (Page 161)
Post-War Iraq
Assertion: National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared the situation in post-war Iraq to that in post-war Germany in separate speeches to the Veterans of Foreign Wars last year. “There is an understandable tendency to look back on America's experience in postwar Germany and see only the successes,” Rice told the Veterans of Foreign Wars on August 25, 2003. “But as some of you here today surely remember, the road we traveled was very difficult. 1945 through 1947 was an especially challenging period. Germany was not immediately stable or prosperous. SS officers…engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them—much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants.” Rumsfeld made the same point to the same group: “...Nazi regime remnants targeted Allied soldiers, and they targeted Germans who cooperated with the Allied forces. Mayors were assassinated including the American-appointed mayor of Aachen, the first major German city to be liberated. Children as young as 10 were used as snipers, radio broadcasts, and leaflets warned Germans not to collaborate with the Allies. They plotted sabotage of factories, power plants, rail lines. They blew up police stations and government buildings, and they destroyed stocks of art and antiques that were stored by the Berlin Museum. Does this sound familiar?”
Truth: According to a recent study by the RAND Corporation, the total number of post-conflict American combat casualties in Germany, Japan, Haiti, and the two Balkan cases, was zero. As explained by Daniel Benjamin, the former director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, “Although Gen. Eisenhower had been worrying about guerrilla warfare as early as August 1944, little materialized. There was no major campaign of sabotage. There was no destruction of water mains or energy plants worth noting. In fact, the far greater problem for the occupying forces was the misbehavior of desperate displaced persons, who accounted for much of the crime in the American zone.” (Daniel Benjamin, “Condi’s Phony History,” Slate, August 29, 2003 and Matt Bivens, “Crying Werewolf,” The Nation [online], September 3, 2003.)
Quality of Air around Ground Zero
Assertion: On September 16 and 18, 2001, the EPA released statements declaring the air in Lower Manhattan clear and safe for people to return.
Truth: A 2003 report by the EPA’s own inspector general revealed not only that EPA lacked the knowledge to make such “blanket statements,” but that the White House intervened to delete more cautionary language. Screaming phone calls were apparently exchanged by EPA professionals and the White House communications staff. (Page 30, 251)
Reconstruction of Iraq
Assertion: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz claimed that Iraq is “a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”
Truth: When other reconstruction costs are factored in, $55 billion to $100 billion is a plausible estimate, and even this figure does not include the $4 billion to $5 billion per month the United States is spending on maintaining order and basic services. Meanwhile, profits from Iraqi oil sales cannot realistically be estimate to amount to more than $20 billion a year and are likely to be a great deal less. Paul Bremer admitted this shortly after the war, noting, “We are going to have to spend a lot more money than we are going to get revenue, even once we get oil production back to prewar levels.” As the conservative Economist points out, “Wolfowitz is either innumerate (unlikely), or is being economical with the truth.” (Page 289)
Stem Cell Research
Assertion: In his August 2001 speech announcing his decision on stem cell research, President Bush claimed there were 60 stem cell lines available for research.
Truth: In reality, the number was closer to eleven, as admitted later by National Institutes of Health director Dr. Elias Zerhouni. Influenced by the lack of research opportunities in America, Roger Pedersen, an international expert in the world of stem cell research working out of the University of California at San Francisco, recently moved himself (and his research) to England, where government support makes this field a more promising pursuit. (Pages 150-151)
Social Security
Assertion: Bush pledged in 1999 that “tax cuts will be financed exclusively out of the non-Social Security surplus.”
Truth: In reality, his administration took $159 billion from Social Security, which means that the real deficit was not $455 billion, but $614 billion. (Page 46)
Surplus
Failure: Bush entered office with a projected $5.6 trillion surplus (2002-2011) and replaced it with a likely deficit of over $4 trillion instead, for a $9 trillion shift in net accounts over only three years. (Page 46)
September 11
Failure: In January 2001, a commission headed by Gary Hart and Warren Rudman released report predicting that: “Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers”; that the US was vulnerable to “a WMD in a high-rise building”; and called for creation of a Department of Homeland Security, as proposed by Senator Joe Lieberman. Bush ignored the plan. Similarly, on September 10, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft refused an FBI request to add 149 field agents, 200 analysts, and 54 translators to its counterterrorism effort. He did so despite the fact the FBI International Terrorism Section had more than a hundred fewer special agents working on international terrorism on September 11 than it did in August 1998. (Pages 213, 218)
Science and Scientists
Failure: The administration has removed respected scientists from scientific advisory committees and often replaced them with industry representatives, including chemical company favorite Lois Swirksy Gold, who denies many of the links between pollutants and cancer, and Dennis Paustenbach, who actually testified for Pacific Gas & Electric in the real-life Erin Brockovich court case. In fact, the Bush administration sees nothing wrong with conducting an ideological litmus test for each of its potential appointees. For example, William Miller, a nominee to the Nation Advisory Council on Drug Abuse, was contact by someone in Secretary Thompson’s office after he’d been asked to consider the appointment. The caller asked a range of questions, including “Are you sympathetic to faith-based initiatives?” He was also asked whether he was supportive of abortion rights and whether he’d voted for President Bush. When he confessed that he had not voted for President Bush, he was asked to explain himself and did not receive a callback. Sixty influential scientists, including 20 Nobel Laureates, issued a statement February 18, 2004, decrying the president’s manipulation of science for political gain. "Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front," the statement from the scientists said, adding that they believed the administration had "misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies." (Statement of scientists, “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking,” February 18, 2004, Union of Concerned Scientists. See also James Glanz, “Scientists Accuse White House of Distorting Facts,” New York Times, February 18, 2004)
Subsidies for the Oil and Gas Industry
Assertion: On CBS’s Face the Nation, Vice President Cheney asserted, “Virtually all of the recommendations for financial incentives and assistance tax credits and so forth are for conservation and increased efficiency and renewables. There are no new financial subsidies of any kind for the oil and gas industry.”
Truth: Bush’s energy bill would lavish $28 billion in subsidies and tax breaks on the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear industries….The $28 billion provided for by the Bush Energy Plan, when added to the $33 billion in subsidies those industries were already scheduled to receive, amounted to a grand total of $61 billion—or a cost of $220 for every American. (Page 19)
Taxes on Huge Estates
Failure: In 1999, a mere 467 estates worth over $20 million each paid a quarter of all of the estate taxes that Bush wanted to badly to eliminate. Sparing hyper-wealthy estates like these would cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue in the decade after elimination (2011-2020). (Page 54)
Turkey Diplomacy
Failure: In 1990, President George H.W. Bush telephoned the president of Turkey fifty-five to sixty times to successfully persuade Turkey to shut down an oil pipeline to Iraq before the Persian Gulf War began. During the most recent Iraq war, when the United States sought to insert sixty-two thousand troops in Turkey, a much more sensitive undertaking, President Bush made a total of three phone calls toward the unsuccessful effort. (Page 286)
Terrorism Prevention
Failure: Richard A. Clarke, former counterterrorism coordinator for Presidents Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43, has accused the Bush administration of failing to take seriously the threat from al Qaeda before September 11 in spite of "repeated warnings" of such attacks. In his new book Against All Enemies, Clarke also blames the administration for starting "an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strenthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide." Saad al Faqih, head of a Saudi dissident group in London, told one interviewer that some three thousand young Saudis had entered Iraq to fight the Americans. He termed the war “a gift to Osama bin Laden.” (Judith Miller, "Former Terrorism Official Criticizes White House on 9/11," New York Times, March 22, 2004 and pages 249, 280-281)
Tariffs on Steel
Failure: In March 2002, President Bush imposed steep tariffs on the import of steel from foreign countries and promised to keep the tariffs in place for three years. The move was designed to help the President win votes in key swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania in the 2004 elections. President Bush was forced to fully rescind the tariffs in December 2003 after receiving a harsh ruling from the World Trade Organization and threats of retaliation from the European Union. (Richard W. Stevenson and Elizabeth Becker, “After 21 Months, Bush Lifts Tariff on Steel Imports,” New York Times, December 5, 2003)
Tort Reform
Assertion: President Bush has repeatedly claimed that medical malpractice is out of control and has argued that “there are too many lawsuits in America, and there are too many lawsuits filed against doctors and hospitals without merit.”
Truth: During the period from 1991 to 2001, malpractice lawsuit payouts grew an average of 6.2 percent annually, which Business Week noted is “almost exactly the rate of medical inflation” during this period. The magazine also notes that “claims against the industry have actually been flat since 1996.” (Pages 114-115)
UN Support for War in Iraq
Failure: Despite billions in “inducements,” the United States almost always came up empty-handed when seeking international support to launch its March 2003 war. Not merely “Old Europe” refused to go along with a second resolution, but even such traditional American supporters as Mexico and Chile would not be swayed. Turkey turned down a sixteen-billion-dollar payoff. In the end, only England and Australia were willing to commit any significant troops, material, or medical teams—compared with thirty-four legitimate nations in George H.W. Bush’s 1991 campaign. Not a single nation’s population, save that of Israel, supported the war, either before or after the invasion. (Page 285)
USS Lincoln
Assertion: Ari Fleischer claimed President Bush had to use a fighter jet to land on the deck of the USS Lincoln because the ship would be hundreds of miles offshore.
Truth: The ship was thirty miles offshore and well within helicopter range. Fleischer told the press May 6, 2003 that President Bush insisted on flying the jet anyway so that he could “see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing. He wanted to see it as realistically as possible. And that's why, once the initial decision was made to fly out on the Viking, even when a helicopter option became doable, the President decided instead he wanted to still take the Viking.” (Dana Milbank, "Explanation for Bush's Carrier Landing Altered," Washington Post, May 7, 2003)
Vehicle Fuel Efficiency
Failure: The report on automotive fuel efficiency from the National Research Council disclosed that automakers already have the technology to increase the fuel efficiency of SUVs to 25 to 30 miles per gallon and of standard cars to 40 miles per gallon. The Bush administration, in response, committed to raising SUV fuel efficiency standards by a mere 7 percent to 22.2 miles per gallon over the next few years—while adamantly opposing a bipartisan 2002 bill proposed by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and John Kerry (D-MA) that would have raised the overall fuel efficiency standards to 36 miles per gallon by 2015. They capped off their preference for fuel inefficiency by giving a huge tax break to owners of SUV’s. This “Hummerdinger of a tax loophole” would allow a doctor or an account to deduct $87,000 of the value of the purchase of a $102,000 Hummer H1. (Pages 22-23)
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Assertion: Even after the Kay report was released in October 2003, Bush continued to claim that “Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and was elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom…That is what the report said.”
Truth: In reality, the Bush administration’s chief inspector David Kay told Congress that after looking for nearly six months and spending more than $300 million, U.S. forces and CIA experts discovered no chemical or biological weapons and determined that the nation’s nuclear program was in only “the very most rudimentary” state. (Page 257)
World Trade Center Attacks
Assertion: Bush said twice (December 4, 2001 and January 5, 2002) that the way he found out about the attack on the World Trade Center was that he saw the first airplane hit the tower.
Truth: In fact, Bush described something that could not possibly have happened. Nobody watching television saw the first plane crash into the tower until the following day when a videotape of it turned up. (Page 226)
War as a “Last Resort”
Assertion: Administration figures occasionally claimed to prefer a peaceful settlement to war. Condoleezza Rice would frequently claim that war remained a “last resort.” In October 2002 she announced, “We’re going to seek a peaceful solution to this. We think that one is possible.” Then in November 2002 she said, “We all want very much to see this resolved in a peaceful way.” In March 2003 she claimed, “We are still in a diplomatic phase here.” President Bush made similar claims, telling reporters in October and December of 2003 that he was “reluctant to use military power” and hoped “this will not require military action.”
Truth: When asked when he learned that war was a certainty, Richard Haas, who had then been Bush’s director of policy planning at the State Department, explained, “The moment was the first week of July [2002], when I had a meeting with Condi. I raised the issue about were we really sure that we wanted to stop Iraq front and center at this point, given the war on terrorism and other issues. And she said, essentially, that that decision’s been made, don’t waste your breath.” President Bush was similarly predisposed to attacking Iraq, telling a group of Senators in March 2002—more than a year before his peace-seeking comments above, “[expletive] Saddam. We’re taking him out.” In fact, Iraq made an official offer of peace in March 2003. Iraq claimed not to have any unconventional weapons and offered to let American troops and experts conduct a search. It also offered to hold elections and turn over a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. (Page 287 and Editorial, “Rush to War, Revisited,” New York Times, November 7, 2003)
World Opinion about the United States under Bush
Failure: A June 2003 global survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found an astonishing level of hostility directed against America by traditionally friendly nations. In Germany, for example, the percent of respondents with a favorable opinion of the United States, fell from 61 percent to 25 over a year; in France, the number fell from 63 percent to 31 percent, and in Italy, from 70 percent to just 34 percent. (Page 311)
Rx Drug Coverage
Assertion: Administration officials and supporters of the Medicare bill signed into law December 8, 2003, claimed the part of the bill dealing with prescription drug coverage would cost $400 billion.
Truth: Chief Actuary of the Medicare program, Richard S. Foster, claimed he was told to withhold his estimates of the costs of the bill, which ranged from $500 billion to $600 billion over ten years. Foster said Thomas A. Scully, the former administrator of the Medicare program, threatened to fire him if he released his estimates. The Medicare bill was narrowly passed with the help of an unusually long vote period and a number of last-minute vote changes in Congress. Many members of Congress believe the bill might not have passed had members been aware of its full cost. (Robert Pear and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Inquiry Ordered on Medicare Official’s Charge,” New York Times, March 17, 2004)
Yaghi and Ashcroft Detainees
Failure: In his 192-page report on the detention of terrorists suspects published in June 2003, Department of Justice inspector general Glenn A. Fine found a massive program of preventive detention where those incarcerated were presumed guilty until the FBI found them innocent, a bureaucratic process often taking months. Among them were immigrants like Ali Yaghi, an immigrant from Jordan with an American citizen wife and child who had lived in the US for 15 years. The FBI claimed its evidence was secret and allowed Yaghi to languish in solitary confinement for 10 months—before deporting him to Jordan without telling his family and without ever releasing its evidence. In response to this report of his own Inspector General, Ashcroft’s office said only, “We make no apologies.” (Pages 99-100)
Zogby Poll and Cheney
Assertion: Vice President Cheney cited a Zogby poll as evidence of Iraqi support for the U.S. occupation of Iraq: “One of the questions it asked is: ‘If you could have any model for the kind of government you’d like to have’—and they were given five choices—‘which would it be?’ The U.S. wins hands down. If you want to ask them, do they want an Islamic government established, by two-to-one margins they say no…If you ask how long they want Americans to stay, over sixty percent of the people polled said they want the U.S. to stay for at least another year.”
Truth: An article in The New Republic summarized the reality of the situation: “Practically nothing Cheney said in his description of the poll—and the situation in Iraq—withstands scrutiny. When Iraqis were asked what model government they wanted, a breakaway plurality of 49 percent desired a democracy guided by Islamic law. The next closest contender, with 24 percent, was a clerical-dominated Islamic state. A secular, democratic Iraq—the closest choice to the U.S. model—garnered only 21 percent support. Over 60 percent of Iraqis wanted the United States and Britain to leave Iraq in a year; among Sunnis, the figure rose to 70 percent. Worse, fully half of Iraqis said they expected the United States to hurt their country over the next five years. Only 36 percent voiced faith that it would help.” (Spencer Ackerman and Franklin Foer, “The Radical,” The New Republic, December 1/8, 2003)
Return to The ABCs of W: A-N
|
|
