Dump Bush —
His Thugs

“I’m the commander. See, I don’t have to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.” Bush (to Bob Woodward)

Cal Thomas quotes Bill Keller, NYT Mag, “George W. Bush is what no one predicted – a powerful president with a pure conservative agenda and a gambler’s instinct. By comparison, Ronald Reagan may look like a moderate.” (Cal Thomas, 1/30/03)

Dick Cheney,
Vice-President

John Ashcroft,
Attorney General

The first thing this old prude did was order drapes to hide a partially naked Justice from view during meetings with the press. That was funny. Now he's ready to shred the Bill of Rights.

"An iron veil is descending over the executive branch." -- Congressman Dan Burton, of Indiana, a very conservative congressman, who is Chairman on the Committee on Government Reform.

[T]here have been 300 roll-backs of the Freedom of Information Act since September 11th. All over America, at the state and local level, as well as the federal government. The Attorney General sent a message to every federal employee, when in doubt, deny any Freedom of Information request. http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_lewis2.html

"In an address to a national US Attorneys' conference on October 1, Attorney General John Ashcroft lashed out at critics of his antiterrorism measures, accusing them of engaging in 'disdain and ridicule,' of opposing every initiative he has undertaken and of 'capitulation before freedom's enemies--the terrorists.' At the same time, unabashed in the face of multiple court rulings declaring his tactics illegal, Ashcroft directed federal prosecutors to 'use the full weight of the law' to 'neutralize' terrorist threats through preventive detention. Ashcroft, Unabashed
by David Cole, 10/10/02, http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021028&s=cole

"Remember, though, that Ashcroft, who managed to lose a Senate race to a dead man, was not picked for his smarts but rather as a naked political concession to his fellow right-wing fundamentalists. The new President wanted to assure conservative zealots that he would hew to their religious commandments when it came to appointments of prosecutors and judges--and to zing ACLU liberals by putting an extremist in charge of our nation's civil liberties." The Job Has Become Too Big for Ashcroft by ROBERT SCHEER, 5/28/02, http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020610&s=20020528

Donald Rumsfeld,
Secretary of Defense

"We're capable of winning decisively in one (war) and swiftly defeating in the case of the other. And let there be no doubt about it," Rumsfeld testily responded to a reporter's question whether a war with Iraq could embolden North Korea to take action against South Korea.

John Poindexter,
Liar and Perjurer

John Poindexter proudly explains that he did not tell Ronald Reagan certain things so that the President would not no something that might get him in trouble, but that Poindexter was sure he was doing what the President wanted. So, here's a guy who usurps power, lies to his own boss and Congress, for the good of... who? It amazing this guy can find a job in Washington. It is nearly satire that he will be spying on you and me.

Ari Fleischer, Minister of Disinformation

THE PECULIAR DUPLICITY OF ARI FLEISCHER

Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, ... spoke with a cool, quick certainty, unhindered by any sense of conscience. A profile in GQ--not many Hill staffers receive such attention--dubbed him the "flack out of hell."

But what Fleischer does, for the most part, is not really spin. It's a system of disinformation--blunter, more aggressive, and, in its own way, more impressive than spin. Much of the time Fleischer does not engage with the logic of a question at all. He simply denies its premises--or refuses to answer it on the grounds that it conflicts with a Byzantine set of rules governing what questions he deems appropriate. Fleischer has broken new ground in the dark art of flackdom: Rather than respond tendentiously to questions, he negates them altogether.

Fleischer does this so well, in part because of his breathtaking audacity: Rather than tell a little fib--i.e., attacking the facts most open to interpretation in a reporter's query--he often tells a big one, challenging the question in a way the reporter could not possibly anticipate. Then there's his delivery: Fleischer radiates boundless certainty, recounting even his wildest fibs in the matter-of-fact, slightly patronizing tone you would use to explain, say, the changing of the seasons to a child.

The New Republic Online: Defense Secretary (1 of 2) by Jonathan Chait, 5/30/02

Richard Perle,
part of the shadow cabinet

Perle served as a foreign-policy adviser in George W. Bush's Presidential campaign — he had been an Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan — but he chose not to take a senior position in the Administration. In mid-2001, however, he accepted an offer from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to chair the Defense Policy Board, a then obscure group that had been created by the Defense Department in 1985. Its members (there are around thirty of them) may be outside the government, but they have access to classified information and to senior policymakers, and give advice not only on strategic policy but also on such matters as weapons procurement. Most of the board's proceedings are confidential.

The New Yorker: Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?, by SEYMOUR M. HERSH, 3/17/03

hits.