With a tip of the hat to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, Dan Conley summarizes the key scandals of the Bush adminstration, as noted in in John Dean's book, "Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush."
The reason why I'm not interested in discussing the Veepstakes is that there's only one issue worth discussing from here on out in 2004 -- the defeat of George W. Bush. This man who insists on being called Mr. President even though he refuses to take responsibility like one must go down to defeat by the widest margin possible to avoid any opportunity for the GOP electoral thugs to steal another election.
To accomplish this, the anti-Bush forces need to focus on the public/private scandals bubbling under this White House. In his new book "Worse that Watergate", former Nixon White House counsel John Dean lists 11 scandals that could wreck the Bush Presidency. I'll throw in two more to make it an even Baker's Dozen. And here they are ...
1) Bush character issues. We've already had a whiff of these in election 2004 with the focus on Bush's national guard record. And the press (finally) reported on his DWI arrest the week before the 2000 election. But what about Bush drinking and drug use? Bush claims that he learned from the mistakes of his youth ... so why then doesn't a reporter have the guts to ask the obvious question: what did George W. Bush learn from using cocaine?
2) Bush business conduct. Martha Stewart was convicted on a far lesser abuse of our nation's securities laws than George W. Bush may have been guilty of in the late 80s when he sold $800,000 worth of Harken Oil stock only a week before bad economic numbers dropped the value of Harken stock by 40 percent. George Soros served on the board of Harken Oil back then and he's committed to dropping as much of his personal fortune necessary to independent groups to defeat Bush. Somehow I don't think we've heard the last of this story.
3) Dick Cheney's health records. Cheney has stonewalled for nearly four years now on his personal medical information ... and the little that has leaked out indicates that this is a man with serious, chronic heart problems that could manifest at any moment. Cheney's health itself is a problem, but the lengths that the White House has gone to cover up his medical history is the real scandal.
4) Cheney's past business dealings. If Bush's security law violations topped Martha Stewart, Cheney's may top Ken Lay's. Cheney cashed out of Halliburton just in time to avoid a crash in the Halliburton stock from $52 to the high teens. Why did this happen? Because Halliburton hid the costs of a merger with Dresser, which had more than a 100,000 asbestos claims against it when Halliburton purchased it -- something Cheney clearly knew about at the time. The SEC is currently investigating Halliburton and by extension Cheney. And oh by the way, the French government is also investigating whether Halliburton bribed foreign officials to gain new business.
5) Civil rights violations against anti-Bush protestors. The ACLU has sued the White House over heavy-handed tactics used against groups protesting Bush and Cheney appearances, including the use of the Secret Service to keep protestors away from the President. And Dean doesn't even mention the gestapo tactics used in Miami this winter to squelch anti-globalization rallies.
6) Bush's illegal executive order dismantling the Presidential Records Act. This one is a doozy -- Bush ordered a completely turnaround of the PRA that shielded Reagan, Bush I and Bush II records from the public eye. Oh, and what about Clinton records? The Bush administration had no qualms about selectively leaking information about Clinton's pardons in the early weeks of their Presidency.
7) The National Energy Policy records. Dean says the scandal isn't just the secret meetings, but it also extends to the campaign contributors who benefittted directly from this administration's executive orders not just in the Energy Bill, but also in securities, environmental, health and safety regulation. Paul Krugman mentioned one facet of this today in his column about mercury ground water deregulations.
8) The 9-11 commission. Did the White House have adequate information to stop an attack and if so, why didn't they do more? Alternatively, why didn't the White House respond to the U.S.S. Cole attack from 2000?
9) Continuation of Government. Did the White House hand pick hundreds of bedrock conservatives and form a secret government-in-waiting post 9-11 to rule the nation in case of a catastrophic attack? Crazy as it sounds, it appears that's exactly what the White House did ... and if they overly politicized COG and some of the government employees holed up for weeks post 9-11 ever talks, there could be a scandal there.
10) The Iraq War resolution. Dean insists that the White House violated the Iraq War resolution by never sending up a determination that Iraq both had weapons of mass destruction and a hand in the 9-11 attacks while also demonstrating that no diplomatic effort could bring about disarmament and regime change. If it can be proven that the White House knew very well that they had no proof of Iraqi WMDs, this would constitute perhaps the greatest violation of the U.S. Constitution and Presidential war powers in our history.
11) The Valerie Plame Affair. Dean says the exposure of Plame was more vicious and criminal than anything done in the Nixon White House. The question now is when did the White House start the leak cover up and how far did it go.
These are the Dean 11 scandals, I'll add two more:
12) Medigate. The Medicare actuary knew the cost of the Medicare "reform" bill would be hundreds of billions of dollars more than the Bush White House reported to Congress. When he wanted to come forward with this information, he claims his job was threatened. If true, how high does this threat go? The Bush White House's actions here show a contempt for Congress matched only by their war justification.
13) Electoral Theft. No, I'm not talking here about 2000, I'm talking about 2004 and the new touch-screen voting machines with no paper trail. We won't know if this is a real scandal until the election is over and normally I'd say that no White House would be crazy enough to try to steal a U.S. election. But these are not normal times and these aren't normal occupants of the White House.
So, these are the 13 issues for us to hammer on in the months ahead. Let the Kerry campaign stick to the issues and the high road, it's up to the rank and file to push these 13 questions and demand that reporters investigate them throughly. Will more questions emerge in the year ahead? Probably. Will some disappear, possibly.
But the truth must win out. Have heart -- even George HW Bush is now on record as opposing the Iraq War. By November, we might even discover that he voted for Al Gore.
UPDATE: And here's number 14 ... Bush using federal civil servants for political purposes.
SOURCES:
http://www.danconley.com/archives/000305.htm