Waiting For The Heads to Roll (Fineman in Newsweek)

[huckleberry]

By Howard Fineman
Newsweek
Updated: 12:53 p.m. ET Feb. 11, 2004Feb. 11 -

I keep waiting for the bloodletting to begin, the ritual slaughter of careers that comes with controversy in the capital. George W. Bush is a loyal man—and loyalty is a good thing—but I don't see how he can survive the searing politics of Iraq (if, indeed, survival is possible at all) without the dramatic departure of some people, maybe even Vice President Dick Cheney.

"WMD" stands for "weapons of mass destruction," of course, but the acronym also could be short for "war means defeat" if the president, as they used to say in various administrations, fails to "get out ahead of the story."

Rather than do that, so far, he's done everything he can to play sitting duck by not blaming anyone for the fact that we went to war in Iraq on what turned out to be (and what some argued at the time was) bogus information about the imminence of the threat.

more at
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4241839/

[Homer12]

1. Bush is not blaming anybody becuase the finger pointing...

...Will eventualy lead back to him and his administration.

Afterall, they were the one's that really really wanted this war in the first place.

[Skittles]

2. the "searing politics of Iraq", Howard?

Is that what a media whore calls the worst foreign policy disaster an American "president" has created since Viet Nam ??????

[IndianaGreen]

3. Heads will roll!

Some poetic justice!

[spooky3]

16. Only the heads at the top should roll.

They're the ones responsible. Scapegoating is just as immoral as lying.

[Sticky]

4. This is Tweety's ongoing question

Who will be accountable?

[glarius]

5. What proof is there that "George W. Bush is a loyal man" according to

what Fineman declared?...They throw out these statements and nobody ever challenges them, so they become accepted as gospel by the American public....Just as they have repeated the mantra that Bush is "straight forward, honest, trustworthy, compassionate"....Name one incident for each of those qualities...I can't think of ANY!...This selling of George Bush has been so clever and devious and it has WORKED!....SAD SAD SAD!

[kskiska]

6. "Loyalty" is a one-way street to the Bushes

GWB is not himself a "loyal" man, but he expects loyalty from his underlings. And his definition of a loyal person is a "yes man," as Paul O'Neill discovered.

[indepat]

9. Moreover, can anyone name even one policy or action designed for

the common good, for the benefit of our rather country rather than to reward wealthy patrons including large corporations? To wit: name one thing he has done for the public good, in the public interest, and you are a better man than I, Gunga Den.

[Bonhomme Richard]

7. His problem is that his people are not loyal

The people around him are as sleazy as he is and he knows it. They are only going to look out for whats good for them. If it means spilling the beans then they will do it. He need look no farther than O'Neill for the payback he will get.
And lets not forget this, he is a puppet, simple as that, so which of the masters is going to fall on a sword?

[BigBigBear]

8. Fineman is waiting for accountability from this bunch?

And here I was, thinking he had actually been paying attention the last three years...:rolleyes:

The politics of Iraq are hardly "searing". Bush hides behind the War On Terror, Cheney reminds us how dangerous the world is, and everyone pays the "better safe than sorry" tax...and the lies, the deceit, the ruination of American prestige, the plunge into decades of debt, the shrouded serviceman funerals, the empty rhetoric about being a "war president", all of it continues.

The next terror attack will confirm their hypothesis (terrorists still hate us, we need forceful leadership in the WH), just as it will confirm ours (these ideologues are playing board games with our security and losing).

Someone has written this nation into a cruel fantasy novel.

[DemBones DemBones]

10. Well said, BBB. These ideologues are also

playing board games with our economy and the social entitlement programs that we have all paid into, such as Social Security retirement insurance and disability insurance, Medicare, Medicaid. They've emptied the Social Security treasury and passed this new bill that will force those on Social Security to go into HMO's in order to gain some alleged benefit for prescription drugs, which I predict will be of little if any help.

The recession was begun by Bush and Cheney talking down the economy during the 2000 election and continuing to do so once they took office (and I do mean took office.) It was a blatant attempt to cause a recession that they could blame on Clinton, who had balanced the budget and taken the country from a huge Reagan era deficit to a large surplus.

Deceit and blaming others are at the center of all their acts as they go about systematically redistributing money from the majority of Americans to their rich cronies.

Let's run those Bush bastards out of Washington for good!

[Snappy]

11. Fineman, focus on....

The Office of Special Plans. After you have done your homework come back and let us know what your view is then.

[grytpype]

12. Wow, Fineman is a whole extraordinare...

... and he's looking for some high-level resignations! I mean Cheney, come on, he's the most powerful veep in memory!

[The Zanti Regent]

19. Whoreward Fineman has been covering up for these whores for years.

Everything he does, even when he burps and farts, is a lie!

[grytpype]

13. Ha ha ha ha! Get this!!!

"Maybe, to his credit, Bush accepts the fact that firing every soul in Washington would not solve his problem, which is that it was he—in one of the biggest gambles of the modern presidency—who issued the order to invade Mesopotamia."

"Maybe, to his credit"???? The guy is the biggest fuckup in Presidential history, and we're supposed to GUESS that he realizes he's responsible, and then give him CREDIT for it???

"At the least, it seems, he was poorly served."

Uh, that's an interesting theory. Another interesting theory is that he was too lazy and stupid to say "no" to the crackpots who have been dying to invade Iraq since '91.

[murielm99]

14. This guy is one of the reasons I canceled my subscription to

Newsweek.

He is the one who did that "Bush and God" cover story, in March 2003.

His biggest talent is shrub puff pieces, and so few readers seem to realize that.

He was the one who talked about their CLOTHES during the Gore/Shrub debates, too.

I wrote countless letters to Newsweek criticizing his blanket statements and sycophantic praise of Shrub. They never appeared in print, so I decided to save my money.

[Merlin]

15. Well said! Excellent point, grytpype.

"Maybe, to his credit"???? The guy is the biggest fuckup in Presidential history, and we're supposed to GUESS that he realizes he's responsible, and then give him CREDIT for it???

[JasonDeter]

17. The bush*ites keep saying the WMD could be found in a garage

He may not be kicking anyone out of his admin because he knows which garage they're in and waiting for the oportune time to reveal it to the world. October surprise?

[rfkrocks]

18. He can't blame

anyone else because he wanted the war as much as anyone in HIS cabinet and they know it which is why he is stuck. also, its amazing how the death of fellow humans in war becomes a Washington politics piece. doesn't that "he was poorly served" line bring your blood to a boil? How about responsibility-i can think of some dems that took some "the buck stops here" Harry Truman, JFK after the bay of pigs etc. But then the story (written in American and Iraqi blood, in spiraling debts financed by outrageous spending and ill timed tax cuts, in the culture war which now pits fellow citizen against fellow citizen), is Bush believes responsibility is someone else's problem.

[Disturbed]

20. Fineman

He is a slug. Dubya the Dunce is responsible even though he is a puppet. He wouldn't dare fire anyone because they would start singing an outa tune song with lyrics that would lead to jailtime of the entire Bushco gang. This bunch make the Cosa Nostra look like lightwieghts.