Are you ready for the new Bush spin?

[Nlighten1]

In my office I have a guy who's brother is a Colonel in the Air Force and is currently working in Norad. One of his brother's jobs is to give the President briefings about once a month. The Colonel said that it is Bush's advisors (read Rumsfeld etc) that are to blame for Bush making the bad choices he has made. He gave an example that Rumsfeld removed 20 pages from a report that was given to the President.
I'm sorry I didn't really listen to him very well because when he was saying this I was thinking to myself, "Bullshit!" and preparing my response but don't be suprised if we see this line of defense start filtering out into the public sphere soon.

[sam sarrha]

1. It is just one LIE to the next, all they know is dirty tricks.

[paulsbc]

2. I believe that

no one can honestly look @ Bush and believe he knows what the heck is going on in the world. By his own admission he doesn't watch any news or read any papers.

He has to be one of the least informed people on the planet, spoon fed what to believe by those "under" him.

The question is who really owns the power in that administration. Bush is just a patsy..

[trogdor]

4. If Bush were paying attention, he's know it was BS.

I think that's the least we should expect from our president - that he or she should pay attention to what the hell is going on.

So:
1. Bush is an idiot with the attention span of a gnat.
or
2. Bush knows full well what is going on, is responsible for what his 'advisors' feed him., and lied - pure and simple.

Either way, he should already be toast.

[moosedog]

13. I think it depends on....

Which bush we are talking about. There are bushes and there is undergrowth and grapevines and brush.

[havocmom]

3. and our response can be that ignorance is no excuse

espcially for the 'leader of the free world' who has thousands of people gathering information for him. If he doesn't know something, it is because he:
1)doesn't want to
2)doesn't care
3)is too friggen stoned/wasted to be bothered
4)is too friggen stupid to understand what he is told

[gratuitous]

5. Wilson previewed this over the weekend

The thrust of his comments seemed to be that President Stupidhead was being "ill served" by his cabal of advisers. Which begs the question: When does the Bush presidency start? He's not to blame for anything that's happened so far, because everything bad that's happened has been either Clinton's fault or the fault of his "ill serving" advisers.

News flash to the media giants: Lil George is all grown up now. He doesn't have to wear the short pants anymore. Heck, he's probably even got his AARP card. You can hold him accountable, because he's supposed to be a fully functioning adult. If we can have a serious debate about whether to try 11 year olds as adults, surely Lil George can be responsible for his own administration.

[wyldwolf]

6. I totally believe that...

Bush isn't smart enough to make any decision other than "bomb 'em."

But that hardly gives Bush a pass. He is responsible just the same.

[colorado_ufo]

7. It doesn't matter how many pages are removed from a report -

you would think that * would notice that the page numbers weren't in sequence! Oh - that's right - he doesn't read the news and just depends on his advisors to tell him what's going on. Still doesn't matter. HE is responsible. HE made the choice not to review the material personally, to rely solely on the word of others. HE is in charge, and the responsibility lies with him.

This colonel should know about the responsibility of leadership and command, so I agree - "Bushit!"

[kentuck]

8. I think Rumsfeld is going to resign and move back to New Mexico...

It's time to spend more time with the family...

[stoystown]

9. Time to fire all of them

but remember, a fish rots from the head down.

[BeFree]

14. Fish rot? Oh yeah?

But the best way to kill a shrub is to chop at it's roots. The shiny leaves can not live without the dirty roots. Deep down in this WH lie a lot of dirty root secrets. These roots of corruption will soon be exposed, courtesy of the CIA-Plame affair.

[ewagner]

10. I posted earlier

that there were some advantages to the "ill-served" defense and I still think there are some.

[AngryYoungMan]

11. All these arguments were used against Reagan; they all failed

Michael Kinsley (at the time New Republic editor) led the charge in the eighties. Either Reagan is too stupid to be President or too evil to be President. There's no other choice! So we win! SCORE! IMPEACHMENT etc.

Except none of that happened, because the Republicans made it go away. Like they might make this go away too.

[boxster]

16. Reagan was a much, much better public speaker than Bush.

Reagan personally had the ability to make people believe utter bullshit. Bush is nowhere near Reagan in that regard. Half the time, he looks stoned; the other half, he looks confused or nervous. He just doesn't have the same Reagan ability to lie utterly convincingly.

That being said, I think that you're right in that the Republicans will try very hard to make this all go away. My vote is a scapegoat; I just haven't figured out which one yet.

[AWD]

12. He promisd us...

...that he would be surrounded by the best people for the job.

If his advisors screwed up, he did NOT surround himself with the best, and is accountable for that malfeasance.

[Gman2]

15. Condi is taking over

Condi Rice is going to take over Iraq. This does speak to at least a lessening of influence from Rumsfeld. I too believe that Bush's admissions to being a stupid fuck will play itself out as future political cover. Condi is a throwaway. If she chokes, they were ready to jettison her anyway. They used her to do the main lying. Her and Powell. I would have thought they would use Powell for the setup as he is quitting after the first term anyway. The good news is, in her taking over all of Iraq, the purpose expressed is so the whitehouse takes all credit. If this blows up, neocons will crawl back in their holes for a long time.

[JHB]

17. It's not because Rummy took out 20 pages and such...

...Remind your guy and/or his brother that Bush was famous for having everything boild down to a one-page memo. If those 20 pages had been left in, he wouldn't have bothered reading them.

Bush didn't make bad choices because of his advisors, his "bad choices" were in choosing them in the first place, in not balancing them out with some pragmatic realists, and by not recognizing the shortcomings of the advisors he selected and replacing them with better people.