Frank Rich: Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush

[Me.]

Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush

“TO paraphrase Al Pacino in “Godfather III,” just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can’t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration’s high ambitions.

That’s why the president’s flip-flop on the release of detainee abuse photos — whatever his motivation — is a fool’s errand. The pictures will eventually emerge anyway, either because of leaks (if they haven’t started already) or because the federal appeals court decision upholding their release remains in force. And here’s a bet: These images will not prove the most shocking evidence of Bush administration sins still to come.

There are many dots yet to be connected, and not just on torture. This Sunday, GQ magazine is posting on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld’s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. The piece is not the work of a partisan but the Texan journalist Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain,” the 2007 Bush biography that had the blessing (and cooperation) of the former president and his top brass. It draws on interviews with more than a dozen high-level Bush loyalists.

Draper reports that Rumsfeld’s monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America’s most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers. But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.” Cont…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17rich-5.html?_r=1

[Skittles]

1. damn straight he can't

nor should he

[Mari333]

2. kick and rec

'I’m not a fan of Washington’s blue-ribbon commissions, where political compromises can trump the truth. But the 9/11 investigation did illuminate how, a month after Bush received an intelligence brief titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” 3,000 Americans were slaughtered on his and Cheney’s watch. If the Obama administration really wants to move on from the dark Bush era, it will need a new commission, backed up by serious law enforcement, to shed light on where every body is buried.'

[Me.]

3. A Commission Is A Good Starting Place

but only of it leads to serious law enforcement activity

[kentuck]

11. Commissions are usually begun when the public outrage reaches unbearable levels.

We have to make it unbearable for them.

[Me.]

15. Seems Like Tide Is Rising

Why did anyone seriously think this would go away?

[tomp]

20. believe me, it won't. that's why i'm opposed to it. nt

[flyarm]

13. THE9/11 commission was a fraud and a damn white wash! eom

[pnorman]

16. Granted, but that was because Bush & Cheney did their best to block it.

Failing in that, they did their best to prevent it from digging very deep. In that, they were largely effective. I don't see that in either Obama or Holder.

pnorman

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R

[msongs]

5. can't we all just get along...and forget about this past nonsense? bipartisanship is so today nt

[gratuitous]

6. We turned the page on Nixon, Reagan and Bush 1

And we got Rumsfeld, Cheney, Negroponte, Abrams, and thug after bloodthirsty thug coming back into our government at the highest level, wreaking more havoc, spreading more death and chaos, and cheapening our country all over the world.

It's time to bring these criminals to justice.

[Me.]

8. We Need An Endgame.

The recycling of criminals and their activity must be stopped once and for all. You've only had to listen to the Cons this past couple of weeks to know that if they ever get in again it will start all over. Not to mention those who've been burrowed in. They need to have the pants scared off them.

[pacalo]

7. "It will soon be every man for himself."

"The more we learn piecemeal of this history, the more bipartisan and voluble the call for full transparency has become."

"Court cases, including appeals by the “bad apples” made scapegoats for Abu Ghraib, will yank more secrets into the daylight and enlist more anxious past and present officials into the Cheney-Pelosi demands for disclosure."

"'Did President Bush know everything you knew?' Bob Schieffer asked Cheney on 'Face the Nation' last Sunday. The former vice president’s uncharacteristically stumbling and qualified answer — 'I certainly, yeah, have every reason to believe he knew...' — suggests that the Bush White House’s once-united front is starting to crack under pressure."

[Uzybone]

9. Great article, lets hope Rich doesn't turn the page himself

he and the rest of the non-conservative media need to beat this drum to death.

[kentuck]

10. And the last sentence....

"If the Obama administration really wants to move on from the dark Bush era, it will need a new commission, backed up by serious law enforcement, to shed light on where every body is buried."

[tomp]

21. a lovely thought that will never come to pass.

obama has shown he is not the man.

[Me.]

22. It's Still Too Soon To Tell

imho

[tomp]

35. your opinion, and you're entitled to it.

care to wager.

[RainDog]

12. Great editorial

we, as a nation, cannot just "move on" from the abuses of power and remain a democracy based upon the rule of law.

[mindwalker_i]

14. "Obama can't turn page on Bush"

Only Mark Foley can do that.

[Senator]

17. K&R

[Kablooie]

18. He's right that Bush will continue to haunt Obama unless there is accountability.

If the Bush administration is truly brought to justice and made accountable for their crimes, then and only then, will the American people be able to put the Bush years behind them and move into the future.

Without allowing closure on the Bush years, they will remain in the forefront of the American mind for the duration of Obama's presidency, and beyond.

[northernlights]

19. the bush/cheney crimes against humanity will continue to haunt *all of us*

unless and until there is full accountability. There can never again be trust in government without it. Without trust there is no moving forward, only in circles.

[Me.]

23. If There Is Not Full Accounting It Will Happen Again

Mondale said precedent is like leaving a loaded pistol on a kitchen table, sooner or later someone is going to come along, pick it up and shoot

[sojourner]

24. k&r

[stoll]

25. funny thought

Reading this I had a funny thought pop into my head. If Bush and company would have not done anything that they did, but Bush cheated on Laura there would probably be some kind of full blown witch hunt, commission, and the works. But in Washington it appears that it works the other way around. Make decisions that wreck millions of lives under the suspicion of enormous conflicts of interest(Iraq, KBR, the list is almost infinite) and they will use you for a political football, but generally leave you to be. But if one person cheats on a spouse (to be sure not a good thing) they will have them strapped to a polygraph machine, on national television, with the prosecutor standing behind them seeking the death penalty. What the hell.

[walldude]

26. Welcome to DU.. and the infidelity thing only works if you are a Democrat

Many Republicans are on their 3rd and 4th wives. Newt and Rush the new party leaders are on their 3rd and Newt was cheating on his 2nd while he was Speaker... Then you have David Diaper-Man Vitter, and you can find lots more here:
http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Examples_of_Republican_hypocrisy_on_moral_values


It's only bad if you are a Democrat.

[Me.]

27. Well We Don't Know That He Didn't Cheat

There were always those Condi rumors,but dems usually don't pursue those rumors while Cons do.

Welcome.

[Utopian Leftist]

28. Just when you think you've seen it all . . .

out comes another jaw-dropping splurge like this; from GQ of all places.

Amazing and horrifying!

[Batgirl]

29. re: those cover sheets -- seriously creepy, indeed

"Take the one dated April 3, 2003, two weeks into the invasion, just as Shock and Awe hit its first potholes. Two days earlier, on April 1, a panicky Pentagon had begun spreading its hyped, fictional account of the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch to distract from troubling news of setbacks. On April 2, Gen. Joseph Hoar, the commander in chief of the United States Central Command from 1991-94, had declared on the Times Op-Ed page that Rumsfeld had sent too few troops to Iraq. And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1 : 9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Including, as it happened, into a quagmire.)

{{{{shudder}}}}

[JDPriestly]

30. Well said. We need prosecutions.

[MasonJar]

31. We must keep up the pressure on Obama, because it is the right thing

to do. We need a Special Prosecutor, not another commission.

[jazzjunkysue]

32. "the Bush Pentagon fielded a clandestine network of retired military officers

and defense officials to spread administration talking points on television, radio and in print while posing as objective “military analysts.”

Yup. And they were obvious. I remember watching them, feeling that they were lying: Just making up shit as they went along.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

34. I'm glad a DUer didn't write this article...

...no one is being accused of high treason!

K&R

[nankerphelge]

36. The coversheets are indeed seriously creepy...

http://men.style.com/gq/features/topsecret

[KoKo]

37. It was an interesting read... K&R..

:kick:

[C_eh_N_eh_D_eh]

38. This thing must be done.

One of the founding principles of the United States was that government must answer to the people, and be held accountable for its actions. As the President of the United States, it is Barack Obama's responsibility to see that principle upheld. Long before '08, it was obvious that whichever Democrat took over from Fuhrer Fratboy would have to lance a lot of boils on both sides of the aisle in order to redeem the government in the eyes of the people. If Obama didn't realize that, he should have. And if he didn't want to do it, then he should have bloody well stayed in Chicago.

[Captain Hilts]

39. Rich helped give us GWBush, so he can't get past the Bush presidency either. nt