It's well-known that Saturday newspapers (and Friday night TV news) reach the fewest people, so the best time to release bad news is not-first-thing on a Friday. (Extra credit for after 4pm, which may be too late for many papers.)
What an incredible coincidence: every time — and there are lots of times — that the Pentagon has released Bush military service documents since the date he said they were already all released…it's been on a Friday!
Who knew they could sink lower?
Forgive me, Prof. Heller, for quoting your entire post on the wonderful Yin blog, but this is just perfectly true:
The Yin Blog: How not to Win a War–During last week’s debate, Bush opined:
I don’t see how you can lead this country in a time of war, in a time of uncertainty, if you change your mind because of politics.
Bush’s target, of course, was Kerry’s alleged “flip-flops” on Iraq. But he might as well have been talking about himself, as this article from the Los Angeles Times indicates:
The Bush administration plans to delay major assaults on rebel-held cities in Iraq until after U.S. elections in November, say administration officials, mindful that large-scale military offensives could affect the U.S. presidential race.
Although American commanders in Iraq have been buoyed by recent successes in insurgent-held towns such as Samarra and Tall Afar, administration and Pentagon officials say they will not try to retake cities such as Fallouja and Ramadi — where the insurgents’ grip is strongest and U.S. military casualties could be the highest — until after Americans vote in what is likely to be an extremely close election.
“When this election’s over, you’ll see us move very vigorously,” said one senior administration official involved in strategic planning, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Once you’re past the election, it changes the political ramifications” of a large-scale offensive, the official said. “We’re not on hold right now. We’re just not as aggressive.”
Any delay in pacifying Iraq’s most troublesome cities, however, could alter the dynamics of a different election — the one in January, when Iraqis are to elect members of a national assembly.
If there was ever any doubt that political expediency is Bush’s most sacred value, this should put those doubts to rest once and for all.
Update: DeLong goes ballistic on this one:
Think about what this means. Think hard. Think very hard.
The generals say we should move now. Moving now gives us the greatest chance of victory at the lowest likely cost. Moving later gives us a lesser chance of victory at a higher cost in terms of our soldiers’ lives. But moving later is helpful to the Bush-Cheney campaign.
Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Impeach them now.
Newsweek has an informative article about the apostasy of L. Paul Bremer III and the White House attempt to put the lid back on. But it buries the lead lede, and misses the real point in an interesting and sadly predictable way.
MSNBC – Inner Circle No More? At the heart of the controversy is a still-unresolved dispute over who was mainly responsible for one of the biggest mistakes of Bremer's 15-month tenure in Iraq, one that is commonly ascribed to him. This was the decision in May 2003 to reverse the efforts of Bremer's predecessor, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, to put the ragged elements of the Iraqi Army to work. After Bremer formally disbanded the army, some disaffected soldiers were believed to have joined the insurgency, which still rages.
Administration officials said today that this decision was made on the ground in Iraq, rather than in Washington. Before the war, the plan was to get rid of Iraqi Army officers but use regular troops for security and reconstruction after Saddam's ouster. But Bremer “flipped that around,” said a White House official. He added that Bremer and his deputy, Walt Slocombe, made the decision by themselves.
But Bremer and Garner have previously indicated the decision was made in Washington. According to one official who attended a meeting that Bremer had with his staff upon his arrival in Baghdad in mid-May of 2003, Bremer was warned he would cause chaos by demobilizing the army. The CIA station chief told him, “That's another 350,000 Iraqis you're pissing off, and they've got guns.” According to one source who was at the meeting, Garner then asked if they could discuss the matter further in a smaller meeting. Garner then said: “Before you announce this thing let's do all the pros and cons of this, because we are going to have a hell of a lot of problems with it. There are a hell of a lot more cons than there are pros. Let's line them all up then get on the phone to [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld.” Bremer replied: “I don't have any choice. I have to do this.” Garner then protested further, but Bremer cut him off. “The president told me that de-Baathification comes before the immediate needs of the Iraqi people.”
That Bush himself is directly and personally responsible for one of the major boneheaded judgments of the post-invasion period explains a lot. It should have been the lead lede of the story, not that poor Mr. Bremer can expect a horse's head in his bed Real Soon Now.
But lurking behind the story is yet another example of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Somehow, GW Bush is only potentially responsible for errors he personally orders? He has no responsibility for how his team screws up? Even when he keeps them around?
Talk about teflon!
Via the would be funny if it didn't hurt The Poor Man: It's Hard Work!, we learn about GW Bush work ethic. [Warning: contains rudeness.]
I'd rather be thinking about other things, but the CBS memo scandal won't die. Or was it a scandal?
Consider Paul Lukasiak's latest, WAS THE 'KILLIAN MEMO SCANDAL' A SET UP. Lukasiak argues,
Newly released documents from George W. Bush’s personnel files lead new weight to the theory that the White House engineered the recent scandal regarding CBS’s use of the “Killian memos”. Acting under a court order, on Friday, September 24, the Department of Defense released 10 new pages of documents, including an official Texas Air National Guard memo which conclusively refutes the technological questions that were raised about the “Killian memos.”
And it can now be shown that these “new documents” were deliberately withheld by the White House when it released “absolutely everything” on February 13, 2004.
The document in question is a memo written to “First Lieutenant George W. Bush” notifying him of his promotion to First Lieutenant. The memo is dated Febrary 19, 1971, more than a year before the date on the first of the Killian memos. And, like the Killian memos, this document uses a “proportionately spaced font”, and has all the characteristics of a document produced on a modern day computer using “Microsoft Word”.
When the White House released “all the documents” in February, they were arranged in three groups; “Personnel File from Texas ANG”, Personnel File from NPRC in 2000”, and Personnel File from NPRC in 2004”1. (“ANG” is “Air National Guard”, “NPRC” is the National Personnel Records Center”, which holds the “master files” of all former military personnel.)
The proportionately spaced “promotion memo” in question was among those documents released under FOIA to at least two researchers in 2000, including a reporter from a major media organization, and Marty Heldt, an independent researcher from Iowa. In other words, this memo was provided to the White House as part of the “Personnel File from NPRC in 2000”, but was withheld by the White House when it released “all the documents” in February.
The Department of Defense, under orders from the Bush administration, fought a lawsuit filed by the Associated Press in July to have the original microfiche records examined to determine if documents were withheld by the White House. And even though the DoD released Bush’s flight records on September 10th, just when the “Killian memo” controversy was gaining steam, and released 200 additional pages of records on September 17th, it did not release the “proportionately spaced” memo at either point.
It was not until the date on which a Federal court order required all documents to be released, September 24th, that the Department of Defense finally released the “proportionately spaced” document, even though this document was in the “2000 NRPC files.” And it was not until the next week that the document was made available to the general public on the DoD website…
I don't know what to make of all this. It feels a bit like beating a dead horse, but as the author of the meticulously researched AWOL project, Lukasiak has earned our attention even if he has something outlandish to say. (Thus, 'the horse that won't die'.) I just wish there were some way to dump this in the inbox of the people CBS has appointed to head its self-investigation.
Repetition and a docile media are all it takes to get away with telling a little lie or a big one these days. Here's yet another sample of how little GW Bush cares about the truth, brought to you by Orcinus. …and how reporters don't fact check even the obvious whoppers.
If I may repeat myself, the biggest reason that we should care about Lt. Bush's National Guard service is that 30 years later he still can't own up to the truth — the same tenuous relationship to reality that is the cause of so many recent US casualties in WMD-free Iraq.
Jotwell Blenderlaw