By Walter Simpson
Buffalo, NY – Asleep at the switch. Irrelevant. Distracted. Inadequate. Doing whatever they tell him to do. On vacation, again.
Those are the images I had of President Bush - while Condoleeza Rice, Bush's National Security Advisor, kept telling the 9/11 panel and the American people that George W. Bush was a hands-on leader. On top of things. Working day and night, doing his job to keep us safe.
Her testimony was completely unbelievable. I am not sure if she legally perjured herself. But I do know it was high farce.
What should be clear to everyone is that the Bush Administration was not focused on the terrorist threat when it came to office and in the days leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. To the contrary, it's priorities were tax cuts for the wealthy, implementing an energy plan to enrich the oil and coal industries, pushing forward with a Star Wars missile defense (even when tests showed the technology didn't work), planning the demise of Bush Sr.'s arch-enemy Saddam Hussein, and throwing bones to right wing kooks to shore up the President's conservative base.
In the Bush White House, counter-terrorism advisor Richard Clark was a voice in the wilderness. His warnings about a pending al Qaeda attack were studiously ignored by Condoleeza Rice and the President of the United States.
Condi may have been distracted by her area of expertise, the Cold War. Too bad it ended in 1991 when the Soviet Union disintegrated. And she was probably on the phone with her old employer.
"Hello, Chevron. This is Condi Rice. I still love you guys and oil and everything. But for God's sake take my name off that oil tanker. I'm national security advisor now. I already have a lot of splainin' to do, you know about terrorism and stuff. The last thing I need is for the subject to turn to oil and that oil tanker you dedicated to me."
"What's oil got to do with it?"
"Exactly. Nothing! That's our position. We got the media to buy it. And nobody is asking about my ties to big oil or the Bush family ties to Saudi Arabia. We like it that way. So PLEASE bury that tanker."
Shame on me for imagining dignified Condi Rice wearing a Chevron label pin during her 9/11 commission testimony. My image of the President is no better. I see him clearing brush and fixing fences on the back forty of his ranch wearing a "What? Me, worry?" Alfred E. Newman baseball cap.
Am I the only one struck by a recent ABC News story reporting that George W. Bush has been on vacation at his Texas ranch or at Camp David for 40% of his presidency?
Bush took an extended Easter vacation, as American soldiers continue to die in Iraq. He was on vacation when Condoleeza Rice testified. He apparently was too busy to watch her testimony but did call her from his pickup truck to congratulate her for doing such a good job.
Bush was also on vacation on August 6, 2001, when he was handed the Daily Presidential Briefing entitled Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S. Condi said it wasn't a call to action. That's for sure. The President is said to have been too distracted by stem cell research at the time to give it a second thought.
The sad truth is that our president is a day dreamer, a no show.
I'd like to be a fly on the wall. I would like to know who is running the Bush White House? Karl Rove, his political consultant? Dick Cheney, his Vice President who we now know must be by Bush's side when he testifies before the 9/11 commission? Imagine if the President had to testify by himself. I'm sure he would be as clueless as he was when Tim Russert interviewed him for "Meet the Press" in February or at his press conference last week when he seemed at a loss without his cue cards.
With all this baloney, a con job this big can't go unnoticed forever. Here's a president who deserves a full time, permanent vacation.
Listener-Commentator Walter Simpson is energy officer at the University at Buffalo.