George W. Bush has no plans to retire any time soon. A post at Think Progress reminds us that Bush plans to make "ridiculous" amounts of money on the speaking circuit. While he'd probably be more valuable as a frank and honest witness to his own incompetence, criminality, and hubris, this is George W. Bush we're talking about here. Bush doesn't plan any truth-telling tours, putting all his mistakes on display so we can all learn from them. Former president Bush plans to be exactly like then-president Bush -- three gallons of smart in a fifty gallon drum, with BS making up the difference.What people will spend the big money to hear will be Baron George Von Munchausen spinning tall tales of his own greatness. That is, if his bio at his agency -- Washington Speakers Bureau -- is any indication:
President George W. Bush served in the Oval Office for eight of the most consequential years in American history. Faced with challenges from a terrorist attack to a global financial crisis, he made difficult decisions that will shape the nation’s course and world affairs for decades to come. His leadership after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, was an inspiration to millions of Americans. His policies, while controversial at times, kept the country safe for more than seven years and liberated more than 50 million people from tyranny.
Say what you like about President George, but he kept us safe -- that is, if you start counting right after the most deadly terrorist attack in American history. If you throw 9/11 into the mix, Bush averages more than one terrorist murder on American soil for every day of his presidency. In the "keeping us safe" category, Bush sucked just as badly as he did at everything else.
But, of course, we aren't supposed to point that out. We're supposed to pretend that 9/11 happened, they turned on the batsignal on top of the White House, and George W. Bush answered the call. We're supposed to pretend that a president eight months into his first term had just moved in and was unpacking. We're suppose to believe that George W. Bush was virtually born on 9/11 and everything that happened before then didn't actually occur.
And Bush would have us dismiss the problems after 9/11 as mere "controversy." For the Bush administration, spin has always been the answer. All problems were problems of public relations and could be fixed with photo-ops, propaganda campaigns, and nifty catch-phrases. And this approach to problem-solving (i.e., problem-not-solving) is still coming back to us.
Government Executive:
A number of institutions with licenses to hold nuclear material reported to the Energy Department in 2004 that the amount of material they held was less than agency records indicated. But rather than investigating the discrepancies, Energy officials wrote off significant quantities of nuclear material from the department's inventory records.
That's just one of the findings of a report released on Monday by Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman that concluded "the department cannot properly account for and effectively manage its nuclear materials maintained by domestic licensees and may be unable to detect lost or stolen material."
Auditors found that Energy could not accurately account for the quantities and locations of nuclear material at 15 out of 40, or 37 percent, of facilities reviewed. The materials written off included 20,580 grams of enriched uranium, 45 grams of plutonium, 5,001 kilograms of normal uranium and 189,139 kilograms of depleted uranium.
"Considering the potential health risks associated with these materials and the potential for misuse should they fall into the wrong hands, the quantities written off were significant," the report tells us. "Even in small quantities normally held by individual domestic licensees, special nuclear materials such as enriched uranium and plutonium, if not properly handled, potentially pose serious health hazards."
Suddenly, I feel a lot less safe -- even in retrospect. "Significant quantities" of nuclear materials are missing and the administration's solution was to fix the numbers so they match. Problem solved. Meanwhile, there are still materials out there somewhere, doing who knows what who knows where for who knows what purpose. Nearly two metric tons of depleted uranium alone are missing; a possible ingredient in a "dirty bomb" -- i.e., a polluting device meant to spread radioactivity and cause panic. That's "keeping us safe," as defined by Bush's Department of Energy.
So Bush can start his new job as historical turd polisher -- he may even manage to get a nice shine on the turd that was his presidency. But it's still a turd and stories like this one will still come out. That's the problem with history; it comes with consequences.
But that's just "controversy." The man born on 9/11 is a big freakin' hero and an example of presidential perfection.
What, you don't believe me?
Ask him yourself.
-Wisco
3 comments:
Depleted uranium is not really what you'd want for a dirty bomb. It does have some nasty health effects, but no more so than many common chemicals that you could probably buy from any decent hardware store or steal from a high-school lab. It's used in weapons not for its chemical value, but for its density.
Enriched uranium and plutonium, though, that's another matter...
Just a thought: for decades during the Cold War, it was very widely rumoured that the US supplied these materials, under the counter, to Israel, and they would've "accounted" for this by simply writing off the discrepancies in exactly this way. So maybe that's still going on, or maybe that's just how the Energy Dept got into the habit.
Actually, DU is the most commonly mentioned possible material for a dirty bomb. Remember, the purpose of the device is to pollute, not to destroy. In fact, the real purpose is to spread panic.
What you need is radioactive material -- the type makes very little difference.
I'd be on the lookout for these materials in the hands of GOP jihadists and their private army Blackwater.
Like Pete Sessions, chairman of the Republican congressional committee,
explaining that the Republican strategy was going to be modelled on jihadist insurgency.
“I’m not joking, insurgency we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban.”
Jeb Bush on new Republican strategy: “....organize ourselves in the form of a shadow government....”
Rush Limbaugh: "I Hope Obama Fails!"
The New York Post: "they'll have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill"
Not to mention you've got Hannity, O'Reilly, Scarborough, Glenn Beck, and every other right wing nut job on radio and print publicly calling Obama a marxist socialist on a daily basis to accompany idiotards like Alabama Senator Richard Shelby publicly questioning the president's legitimacy pertaining to his birth certificate and citizenship.
This is just the tone and the mood being stated pubicly.
Republicans in congress possess dangerous hive minds and it wasn't too long ago that chief strategist for the McCain campaign, Charlie Black, insisted that a terrorist attack on America would be a benefit to the campaign and Republican party.
Under Bush, there was an incident where at least TWO nuclear weapons were lost during unauthorized transit in August of 2007 and The Department of Energy recently confirmed that The Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico is missing 67 computers, including 13 that were lost or stolen in the past year.
Needless to say, if and when another attack happens, we would be negligent in our investigative pursuits to ignore the complicity of right wing radicals within the Republican party.
George Bush left America in a dangerous position of weakness.
We've been stripped and tied naked to a pole in the forest.
m~
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