Firas Durri

WTF—did I slip into an alternate universe or something?

• June 6: Claude Hankes Drielsma, Ahmed Chalabi’s buddy ‘investigating’ corruption in the UN oil-for-food program (to be proven by documents in Chalabi’s possession that nobody else gets to see), says all his data got wiped out somehow. Both his primary storage and his backup in a Baghdad office were destroyed by hackers. Ok, whatever—next time, don’t systems store explosive intelligence in vulnerable systems.
• June 30: The Bush administration denies a Freedom of Information Act for the Justice Department’s database on foreign lobbyists, saying that it might crash the database. The system will be stable by December, apparently, and they can get the list then. Ok, whatever—next time, don’t hold public records in systems that can implode just by running an export command.
• July 8: “Military records that could help establish President Bush’s whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.” Ok, whatever—hey waitaminute…

What the hell? How gullible can a whole nation be—how much information just keeps disappearing into a black hole? The Bush train is so far off its tracks, it’s not even alarming anymore. Just pathetic.

Related voices:

It’s pretty darn scary when a president starts to act like this. I lived through Nixon and, believe me, this guy is starting to behave the way Nixon did in the final days.

Calls the Irish embassy to complain, for Goddess sakes, when an Irish reporter asks him a tough question or two! Has protestors hauled away from his speeches. Storms off the stage when he’s asked a question about his largest campaign contributor doing the perp walk. Not only refuses to speak to one of the nation’s most important African American groups, but then can’t leave well-enough alone and has to announce that the “scheduling conflict” was a lie and that the real reason he won’t address them is because they’ve had the unmitigated gall to dare to criticize him in the past.

[...]

It’s a race. It’s a race between chronological time and this man’s alcohol-ridden, increasingly out-of-touch id. I hope we win. Come on November 2nd.

Hecate | Homepage | 07.10.04 – 4:24 pm | #

Billmon,

Why do I feel like I’m living through Vietnam, Watergate and the Rise of the Third Reich …

All at the same time?!!!

Posted by: Don in Colorado at June 7, 2004 10:47 PM

—

I’m waiting for it to start raining frogs, myself.

Posted by: Billmon at June 7, 2004 10:52 PM

November, November.

More Bush-bashing links. The reason this is different from the usual stream of partisan wrangling is that many things seem to be wobbling in Bush-Cheney Co. all at once. Witness:

• The Supreme Court rules that the Bush administration can’t keep enemy combatants anywhere without a right to trial (HRW article; Amnesty International is less upbeat (they say “it will only matter if prisoners held without charge or trial are freed”.)
• Foreign policy
  • Fred Kaplan: “It’s good that Bush has at last realized that diplomacy is the only way to solve the crisis. But he’s come a bit late to this epiphany. North Korea has greatly strengthened its hand in the interim.”
  • Paul Krugman: “Insurgents are blowing up pipelines and police stations, geysers of sewage are erupting from the streets, and the electricity is off most of the time — but we’ve given Iraq the gift of supply-side economics.”
  • Joe Klein: “But George W. Bush is facing a long, hot summer of investigations and exposes that will last deep into the campaign season, and last week, for the first time, a Gallup-CNN poll indicated that a majority of Americans think that the war in Iraq was a mistake.”
• General state
  • Cheney gets booed at a Yankees game (ESPN story).
  • Josh Marshall: “Cheney et al. can see all sorts of bad business coming down the pike in the next few months — much of it already on the public radar screen, some of it still clogged up no doubt in back channels, newsrooms and new rounds of dirty-tricksterism. It seems clearly to be getting to them.”
  • Looking at the Bush campaign’s “Kerry’s Coalition of the Wild-eyed” ad, Jacob Weisberg says,
    

    What exactly does the Bush-Cheney campaign think that these Democrats have in common with Hitler? Basically, it’s that they’re too darned excited about politics. They yell. They criticize harshly. They use bad language. The message here, to the extent there is one, is: “Don’t be like Hitler—chill out!”

    “A state of perpetual optimism is either a dangerous delusion or a calculated pose. In the case of the Bush campaign, it’s evidently the latter. Comparing one’s opponent to Hitler is not, in fact, the sign of a confident or optimistic candidate. To the contrary, it’s the act of a fearful and cynical candidate who is willing to use any tactic to avoid defeat.”

Oh, and GeorgeWBush.com runs on IIS and is open to remote vulnerability scans.