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1/25/2006

Incompetent

In other words, a fuck-up.
Incompetence is not one of the seven deadly sins, and it's hardly the worst attribute that can be ascribed to George W. Bush. But it is this president's defining attribute. Historians, looking back at the hash that his administration has made of his war in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina and his Medicare drug plan, will have to grapple with how one president could so cosmically botch so many big things -- particularly when most of them were the president's own initiatives.

In numbing profusion, the newspapers are filled with litanies of screw-ups. Yesterday's New York Times brought news of the first official assessment of our reconstruction efforts in Iraq, in which the government's special inspector general depicted a policy beset, as Times reporter James Glanz put it, "by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting [and] secrecy." At one point, rebuilding efforts were divided, bewilderingly and counterproductively, between the Army Corps of Engineers and, for projects involving water, the Navy. That's when you'd think a president would make clear in no uncertain terms that bureaucratic turf battles would not be allowed to impede Iraq's reconstruction. But then, the president had no guiding vision for how to rebuild Iraq -- indeed, he went to war believing that such an undertaking really wouldn't require much in the way of American treasure and American lives.

It's the president's prescription drug plan (Medicare Part D), though, that is his most mind-boggling failure. As was not the case in Iraq or with Katrina, it hasn't had to overcome the opposition of man or nature. Pharmacists are not resisting the program; seniors are not planting car bombs to impede it (not yet, anyway). But in what must be an unforeseen development, people are trying to get their medications covered under the program. Apparently, this is a contingency for which the administration was not prepared, as it has been singularly unable to get its own program up and running.

Etc.

1 Comments:

At 4:27 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bush seems to go into everything blindly, obviously the war in Iraq, and everything he's involved with. It seems like when the Iraq war started it's purpose changed a lot. First it was over terrorist ties, then just to overthrow Saddam, and then they were liberating the Iraqi's. I saw a cardboard standup at a Republican party booth once well two actually, it was Bush next to Lincoln. How can the two even be compared? One was for the abolishment of slavery, and the other didn't really liberate anyone, Bush had no intention of helping the Iraqi people, he just wanted to get his hands on some oil, and settle a grudge on behalf of his father maybe? I don't know, I guess he knows why for sure, and I think most of us have a pretty good idea of what the truth about it all is. Thanks for Swag, and your blog Bat Guano, it helps me feel like someone is on my side.

 

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