The Asset Strippers In Charge At USA Inc.

By Cernig

Thanks to Ron at Middle Earth Journal, you can read chunks of Frank Rich's Times Select column today. Rich lays it on the line as he describes how the current scandals surrounding such figures as Gonzales and Wolfowitz track back, be easy steps, to the culture of corruption and cronyism that meant the Iraqi misadventure was always going to fail under Bush's leadership.

Rich's conclusions echoes my own view, that the Bush administration's mentality is more that of hostile-takeover asset strippers than of a board dedicated to the stewardship of USA Inc. His last graph:

Had Iraqi reconstruction, like the training of Iraqi police, not been betrayed by politics and cronyism, the Iraq story might have a different ending. But maybe not all that different. The cancer on the Bush White House connects and contaminates all its organs. It’s no surprise that one United States attorney fired without plausible cause by the Gonzales Justice Department, Carol Lam, was in hot pursuit of defense contractors with administration connections. Or that another crony brought by Mr. Wolfowitz to the World Bank was caught asking the Air Force secretary to secure a job for her brother at a defense contractor while she was overseeing aspects of the Air Force budget at the White House. A government with values this sleazy couldn’t possibly win a war.

Like the C.I.A. leak case, each new scandal is filling in a different piece of the elaborate White House scheme to cover up the lies that took us into Iraq and the failures that keep us mired there. As the cover-up unravels and Congress steps up its confrontation over the war’s endgame, our desperate president is reverting to his old fear-mongering habit of invoking 9/11 incessantly in every speech. The more we learn, the more it’s clear that he’s the one with reason to be afraid.

Pop over to MEJ and read the rest.