Delusions of Rose Colored Grandeur

What is it about the Bush administration that makes it so difficult for them to tell the American people the truth? They have, for example, and according to many credible sources, such as Washington Post reporter and author Bob Woodward, been shying away from giving the public the facts about what is really happening in the Iraqi war. Woodward’s explosive new book “State of Denial” takes Bush, Cheney, and Rumfeld, et al, to task for constantly painting a rosier pictures of conditions on the ground inside this war-torn country than actually exist. The Bush administration’s response to these allegations, according to TV’s David Letterman, was to “deny them”.

Bush has declared that America is safer because of our efforts in Iraq. Yet he is contradicted by his own intelligence agencies who state in a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that our efforts in Iraq have resulted in nothing less than a recruiting bonanza for radical Muslims. And according to this estimate, rather than curb the spread of terrorism, it has exacerbated it.

Thomas Ricks, author of an equally explosive book entitled “Fiasco: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq”, goes even further. In an interview on PBS, Ricks opined that the Iraqi situation is becoming more unstable every day, and the failure of the U. S. to check this turmoil could be disastrous. A bad case scenario, and one that is seemingly taking place, would see the U. S. would bogged down in Iraq far longer than the optimists of the Bush administration ever predicted. In a worse case scenario, the Iraqis would grow tired of the U. S. Military’s presence and rally around a new strong man (such as the influential Shi’ite cleric, Muqtada Al Sadr, whose militia is one of the country’s strongest), and this new figure would become a new Saddam Hussein. In the worst case scenario, the unrest that is taking place in Iraq would spill over to other countries in the region and threaten the world’s oil supply, leading to global recession, or worse still, global depression.

So where did the Bush administration get its rose-colored glasses that so deludes it into thinking that black is white, up is down, and right is left? One reason it continues to think of its war efforts in terms so positive is that it refuses to even consider anyone’s opinion that does not match its own. It has so determined to continue to wage this poorly thought-out war that not even members of the President’s own party, or of his administration, have been immune to the ostracism that Bush, et al, have been intent on imposing on the war’s opponents. Even a man with the prestige that former Secretary of State Colin Powell possessed went unheeded, as he tried, according to author Karen DeYoung, to impress upon the President as best he could, the dangers of invading Iraq. DeYoung’s book, “Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell” chronicles the efforts made by the retired four-star General to shape opinion in the White House in the rush to this war, and his efforts to forestall it. Despite being Bush’s point man at the U. N., Powell sought to “(trim) the garbage” from his speech in which he helped make the case for an Iraqi invasion, “garbage” supplied by Vice President Dick Cheney. His efforts went un-rewarded, and the author as much as suggests that for them, this hero and planner of the first, successful, Iraqi war, was fired.

A more unsettling idea behind the obstinacy of the Bush administration, again according to Bob Woodward, is the person to whom the architects of the Iraq strategy may be turning for advice. Yes, Mr. Woodward declares that none other than Henry Kissinger, whose “Bombs for Peace” strategy led to the grand failure in the Vietnam War, is again center stage, and is, with the aid of the current administration, fighting the Vietnam War all over. So much for the resemblance between these two conflicts. Kissinger, according to Woodward, has always felt that the only reason we did not prevail in Vietnam, was that we lacked the will to win. And he has convinced his current clients that “victory is the only meaningful exit strategy”.

On a more positive note for the Bush administration, it is, if nothing else, consistent in its governing philosophy. It seems to be wearing these same rose-colored glasses, as it attempts to spin what might be its greatest liability into an election-year asset. Yes, the deficit spending that made its return after a very brief, and unexplained period of fiscal responsibility manifested during the coalition government of Democrat Bill Clinton and the GOP-led Congress, has returned, and was ballooning to figure of over $400 billion, when the President came forth with what appeared to be some good news. The deficit, the President proudly announced, was declining, and would be considerably smaller than was first predicted. In fact, the President proudly announced that the deficit would be some $177 billion smaller.

What the President didn’t tell anyone was that the deficit would be smaller because the government would again be borrowing the surplus from the Social Security trust fund (which amounts to over $177 billion), and use this to hide the real size of the deficit. The borrowed funds would be replaced by another, and very likely, worthless, IOU from the feds.

Yes, the President, who has been campaigning, since winning his second term in office, to privatize Social Security, is using the surplus this fund still generates, to make it appear as though he is making headway with his economic policies. Of course, he isn’t the first politician to commit this sin. For a good look as to how the feds have always misused this fund, go on line and read a report entitled “Grandfather Trust Fund and Deficit Report” by M. W. Hodges. This report details the time-honored tradition of borrowing from such trust funds to paint a rosier picture of the spending habits of our government. Or rather, I should say, to hide how much more we have always spent than what we are taking in. Still, it seems that the current administration has found that such a practice fits in rather nicely with its policy of presenting abject failure as glowing success.