Truth - Al Franken [99]
ME: He didn’t know that there existed those three groups?
PHILLIPS: That’s right. This is pretty basic. You’re going to go to war in a country, you should know who lives there.
Remember, Bush is a man who ran for president in 2000 on a pledge to “usher in an era of responsibility.” In his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention that year, he was specific. “To lead this nation to a responsibility era,” he said, “that President himself must be responsible.”
Once Powell had told Bush that he would be responsible for Iraq and its people, not to mention our troops as well, you would think that Bush would have done everything in his power to make sure he was doing the right thing.
In a Frontline report on the 2004 presidential election, Richard Clarke contrasted the way in which the last two presidents processed information. Of Bush, Clarke said:
He doesn’t reach out, typically, for a lot of experts. He has a very narrow, regulated, highly regimented set of channels to get advice. One of the first things we were told was “Don’t write a lot of briefing papers. And don’t make the briefing papers very long.” Because this President is not a reader. He likes oral briefings, and he likes them from the national security adviser, the White House chief of staff, and the vice president. He’s not into big meetings. And he’s not into big briefing books.
With Clinton, it was different:
The contrast with Clinton was that Clinton would hold a meeting with you. And he read your briefing materials. But also, having read your briefing materials, he would have gone out and found other materials somehow. He would have directly called people up. Not people in the government, necessarily. Experts, outside the government. Or he would have found magazine articles, or—or books on the subject. So that, when you were briefing him, frequently you had the feeling that he knew more about the subject than you did. And he wasn’t showing off. He had just done his homework.
We know George W. Bush is not an intellectually curious person. But he’s president. And when he was about to send American men and women to war, it was his responsibility to suck it up and do the reading. It was all there for him. All he had to do was care enough to look at it.
Anthony Zinni, a four-star general who as commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command held the same job as Norman Schwarzkopf and Tommy Franks, summed up the consequences of Bush’s style of leadership:
In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption.
Every day our soldiers and Marines are paying for choices made not just during the war, but before it. And President Bush still refuses to hold anyone accountable for prewar failures—least of all, himself.
At 5:30 A.M. Baghdad time on March 20, 2003, the first Tomahawk missile slammed into a bunker where Saddam Hussein wasn’t. Bush’s war on terrorism had entered its most irrational phase yet.
13 Mission Redacted
Off the Coast of San Diego—May 1, 2003
“Remember, Mr. President; don’t touch anything when we’re landing, sir.”
Commander John “Skip” Lussier was concerned. The President had tried manning the controls for a moment after takeoff and had almost rolled the S-3B Viking.
“I’m a trained pilot, Commander,” Bush said churlishly. “And I outrank you.”
“I know, sir. But seriously, Mr. President, a carrier landing is very precise. Really. Just keep your hands to yourself. Please.”
“Can I at least lower the gear?”
“No!”
Lussier immediately regretted snapping at his commander in chief.
“No, sir,” the pilot corrected himself.
The President fidgeted in his seat for a moment, and then tried a different tack. “You know, I was an ace fighter pilot when you were in diapers.”
“We both know that isn’t true, sir. Now, please, if you could just keep quiet for these last few minutes.