No-Show on the Campaign Trail

At his final rallies, Barack Obama is gleefully telling crowds that Dick Cheney's endorsement this weekend of John McCain was well-earned. George W. Bush is offering no such target by staying completely out of sight, but he did rate a mention in Pennsylvania yesterday, albeit as an afterthought.

“I think," John McCain said, "that Tom Ridge--and President Bush--deserve some credit for the fact there’s not been another attack on the United States of America since 9/11.’

Aside from that, it's been all silence since McCain proclaimed "I am not President Bush' in the final debate.

The actual president, according to press secretary Dana Perino, is "pretty focused" on "getting this economy back in order" in seclusion at Camp David.

He will come out of hiding the weekend after next for a meeting of world leaders in Washington to discuss the global financial crisis but may have even less clout there than in the presidential campaign

His problem, according to a New York Times editorial, is "utter lack of credibility when it comes to the central question of how to regulate national and global financial markets to ensure that this disaster never happens again. Eight years and a huge financial crash later, and Mr. Bush is still extolling the corrective powers of unrestrained markets."

Bush's final days in power are making King Lear look like a party animal.

A Star-Spangled Story

On Monday morning, when the future of the American Dream was teetering under the Capitol dome, George W. Bush was in the East Room of the White House presenting the National Medal of Science and Technology and Innovation to men and women "whose discoveries have changed America and the world."

Their names ranged from Willson to Lefkowitz to El-Sayed to O'Malley, a mosaic of the ethnic and cultural diversity that reflects the strength of a country where everyone, if you go back far enough, comes from an immigrant family.

One of them was my cousin, Leonard Kleinrock. His father and mine came here after World War I, with nothing but hope and struggled through a Depression to give their children a better life than they had had.

The citation read: "The 2007 National Medal of Science to Leonard Kleinrock for his fundamental contributions to the mathematical theory of modern data networks, and for the functional specification of packet switching, which is the foundation of Internet technology. His mentoring of generations of students has led to the commercialization of technologies that have transformed the world."

I can tell you all this here only because of the achievements that led to his being called "the father of the Internet" and at a moment in history when we all need to be reminded that America is a place where, with determination and hard work, everything is possible.

Picking Up the Pieces

The cleanup crews are at work on Wall Street, President Bush cancels a fund-raising trip to cheer on his mop-up gang in Washington and, barely within camera range, the presidential candidates and Congress are blathering about who's to blame for the financial storm.

Unlike the hurricane damage in Texas, there is profit lurking somewhere in the Wall Street wreckage and, if the past is any guide, the would-be Warren Buffets should soon be emerging from their storm cellars and bidding for the best bits and pieces.

The stock markets are starting to stabilize as profit potential wrestles with fear for the free-lunch crowd trying to measure when the worst is over and the aftermath has begun. Vultures know by instinct when to swoop in.

As always, most of us will be examining our financial wounds and reaching for band-aids while the greed-is-good gang move in to do what they do best, but they too serve a social function by sopping some of the panic out of the system so we can stop agonizing and start believing that everything is going to be all right.

Bush defended government bailouts today, saying. "These actions are necessary and important, and the markets are adjusting to them." It's hard to argue with that, but maybe the next Administration and Congress will do a better job of reading the storm signals and getting taxpayers to higher ground.

Bush's Final Bow

As the only president eligible for the Witness Protection Program, George W. Bush will start practicing his post-White House demeanor with a stealth appearance at the Republican Convention in September.

"Convention planners, the White House and the McCain campaign," the New York Times reports, "are wrestling with how to choreograph a proper send-off for Mr. Bush...while hustling him out the door in time for Mr. McCain to look like his own man."

As of now, the plan calls for a quick cameo on opening night, followed by a round of forced cheers and, in the immortal words of the Terminator turned governor, "Hasta la vista, baby."

But some Republicans think even this is too much. One California Congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, says, "I don’t think there are a lot of people who want to see him at the convention,” and suggests the Commander-in-Chief “should stay home from the Republican convention, and everybody would be better off.”

John McCain certainly might be. Someone of his age is at serious risk of physical injury from having to elude Bush's embrace while keeping a frozen smile on his face.

Whistle-Blowing MSM Dogs Don't Hear

Behind the media popcorn of Scott McClellan's revelations, relatively unnoticed is a new book by the former American commander in Iraq that should be red meat for historians.

This week's Time has an excerpt from "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story" by Gen. Ricardo Sanchez that nails his Pentagon boss Don Rumsfeld, along with the rest of the Bush Administration, for "gross incompetence and dereliction of duty" at the start of the unfolding disaster.

This is no out-of-the-loop flunky's account of what happened, but the testimony of the man in the middle of it all, one of the generals whose advice Bush maintained he would follow but obviously did not.

The Central Command, Gen. Sanchez writes, had originally planned 12 to 18 months of active troop deployments but then "had completely walked away by simply stating that the war was over...

"That decision set up the United States for a failed first year in Iraq. There is no question about it. And I was supposed to believe that neither the Secretary of Defense nor anybody above him knew anything about it? Impossible! Rumsfeld knew about it. Everybody on the NSC knew about it, including Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, and Colin Powell. Vice President Cheney knew about it. And President Bush knew about it.

"There's not a doubt in my mind that they all embraced this decision to some degree. And if it had not been for the moral courage of Gen. John Abizaid to stand up to them all and reverse [Gen. Tommy] Franks's troop drawdown order, there's no telling how much more damage would have been done.

"In the meantime, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty."

Amid all the whistle-blowing in Washington these days, this particular one by Gen. Sanchez should be heard loud and clear, but so far the media dogs are not responding to its frequency.

Bush's Iraq Sacrifice

Before his five-day Middle East tour of lame-duck quacking on Israel's 60th birthday and to hold hands with Saudi Arabia's gas-price gougers, President Bush revealed his personal sacrifice for the war in Iraq: He stopped playing golf.

In his first on-line interview, he told Politico and Yahoo News, "I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

But Bush insisted that his own hardship was worth it to avert a doomsday scenario that, in the event of a premature US withdrawal, "extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States."

"The United States pulling out of Iraq or pulling out of the Middle East or not maintaining a forward presence would send all kinds of signals throughout the Middle East," he said. "And it would shake everybody's nerves, and it would embolden the very same people that we're trying to defeat."

Asked if he was "misled" into starting the war, the President refused to pass the buck: “Do I think somebody lied to me? No, I don't. I think it was just, you know, they analyzed the situation and came up with the wrong conclusion.”

Oh.

Trapped in Bush's Old Movie

Muqtada al Sadr is splintering the peace in Baghdad and Basra, militias are murdering and looting, but our toy soldier President is still out speechifying to captive stateside military audiences about how splendidly the war is going and belaboring Congressional Democrats for "hectoring" Iraqi leaders as they "try to work out their differences."

After five years, over 4000 American lives and half a trillion dollars, George W. Bush has no patience for critics whose "prescription is always the same: retreat." Today he ridicules anti-war Democrats: "They claim that our strategic interest is elsewhere and if we would just get out of Iraq, we could focus on the battles that really matter."

Then the President sets them straight: "If America's strategic interests are not in Iraq, the convergence point for the twin threats of al Qaeda and Iran, the nation Osama bin Laden's deputy has called the place for the greatest battle, the country at the heart of the most volatile region on earth, then where are they?"

The critics could furnish him with a list, starting with Afghanistan, Pakistan and homeland security, but that might intrude on George W. Bush's fantasy life.

With every passing day, he is looking more like the deluded character in "Arsenic and Old Lace" who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt and keeps running up the stairs with a saber, yelling "Charge!" and the rest of us feel trapped in his bad movie praying for the lights to come back on.

4001, 4002, 4003...

Milestones are news--the fifth anniversary, the 4000th death--and news shield us, as any drug does, from the pain of reality. We swallow some words and images about Iraq and turn to newer news--about Hillary and Barack, the economy, March Madness, storms and flooding, the HBO miniseries on John Adams.

"People don't actually read newspapers," Marshall McLuhan said half a century ago. "They get into them every morning like a warm bath."

This week we wash away our consciousness of the continuing dying and killing in the Mideast with soothing words from Bush and Cheney in Washington, John McCain in Baghdad and the muffled sounds of impotent anti-war Democrats.

"One day people will look back at this moment in history," the President tells us after a roadside bomb kills four US soldiers, "and say 'thank God there were courageous people willing to serve' because they laid the foundation for peace for generations to come."

"The president carries the biggest burden," Dick Cheney says. "He's the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans, but we are fortunate to have a group of men and women...who voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm's way for the rest of us."

"We're succeeding," John McCain insists, "I don't care what anybody says. I've seen the facts on the ground...I don't think I would change the strategy now unless General Petraeus recommended it. I think he's trusted by the American people, the president and by me."

Meanwhile, Shiite militia are shutting down neighborhoods in west Baghdad, the Mahdi Army is fighting police in Basra and cease-fires are starting to "unravel." But there will be no anniversaries or milestone deaths next week to make news from Iraq.

As far as we will know, none of it is happening.

Betting on a Dead Horse, Again

Political chaos in Pakistan could bring nuclear headaches for the US, and what our government is doing to prop up a failing regime recalls efforts three decades ago on behalf of our old ally, the Shah of Iran.

The McClatchy Newspapers report: "The Bush administration is pressing the opposition leaders who defeated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to allow the former general to retain his position, a move that Western diplomats and U.S. officials say could trigger the very turmoil the United States seeks to avoid.

"U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, said this week that they think Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally, should continue to play a role, despite his party's rout in parliamentary elections Monday and his unpopularity in the volatile, nuclear-armed nation."

Pressuring the newly elected anti-Musharraf majority to retain our iffy friend may turn out to be the kind of mistake we made in the late 1970s on behalf of the Shah before and after he was deposed in Iran. Despite Jimmy Carter's misgivings, he was persuaded by Henry Kissinger and his oil friends to let the old US ally come here, which resulted in occupation of the American Embassy in Tehran for 444 days and the ongoing hostility with Iran.

President Bush has reacted to the Pakistan elections with a wishful observation that "it's time for the newly elected folks to show up and form their government, and the question then is, will they be friends of the United States, and I certainly hope so."

Behind the scenes, however, the White House is urging the newly elected Pakistanis not to reinstate the judges Musharraf ousted last year, who would likely try to remove him from office--a strategy that veteran State Department officials feel could backfire.

But not to fear, Henry Kissinger is still around to give the Administration the benefit of his wisdom and is helping John McCain with foreign policy advice.

What could possibly go wrong?

Lust and Logorrhea on the HBO Couch

A new series, "In Treatment," is trying to do for psychotherapy what "The Sopranos" did for organized crime. But from the evidence thus far, Dr. Melfi and her star patient can rest easy. Talk alone, without Bada Bing pole dancers and bloody on-camera murders, won't cut it.

In our time, HBO has provided a sociological index of upper middle-class anxieties and guilty pleasures from "Sex and the City" to "Six Feet Under."

Now comes "In Treatment," half-hour sessions confined to consulting rooms and self-absorbed talk-talk-talk.

In one story line, the therapist has to fend off the sexual advances of a gorgeous patient and, while trying to help a hostile couple decide about aborting a pregnancy, has his couch stained by a miscarriage, which leads to his wife's cleaning up the mess and, in passing, unloading her rage about his indifference and taunting him with news of her affair with a divorced business type. This sends the therapist to his therapist who recommends unloading the gorgeous sexual predator and is rewarded by accusations about her mishandling of an ancient case of counter-transference.

Holy Freud! In an interview this week, George W. Bush dismissed a question about his relationship with his father as "shallow psychobabble." If the President has a taste for deep psychobabble, HBO has just the thing for him.

Bush: "I'm Just a Simple President"

George W. Bush certified John McCain as a "true conservative" yesterday.

In emeritus mode on Fox News, the President told Chris Wallace his successor-in-waiting "is very strong on national defense" and "tough fiscally. He believes the tax cuts ought to be permanent. He is pro-life. His principles are sound and solid as far as I'm concerned."

Asked about resistance from the Rush Limbaugh-Ann Coulter wing of the GOP, the President was confident McCain can "convince people that he is a solid conservative and I'll be glad to help him if he is the nominee."

In view of Bush's iffy record on the domestic agenda of the Rabid Right, that may not solve McCain's problem, but the Decider is upbeat about the party's prospects for November.

He pooh-poohed Barack Obama's popularity with his customary political acumen and accuracy: "The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he's going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad."

"Why do you think he's gotten this far if people don't know what he stands for?" Wallace asked.

Bush's answer was on the money. "You're the pundit," he said. "I'm just a simple president."

Playing President

In last night's Theater of the Absurd, a Lame Duck is quacking at the podium while the ducklings-in-waiting look on, pretending to listen before they waddle out for their turn on the TV stage.

You could have watched the President's last State of the Union address with the sound off and not turned it up as his would-be successors did their predictable soliloquies--Hillary Clinton with a smile as tight as duct tape, dodging questions about Bill; Barack Obama modestly insisting he's no JFK but basking in his Kennedy aura for the day; Mitt Romney mouthing "Washington is broken" platitudes followed by non-sequiturs that Harold Pinter would not have dared to write.

On his way out, George W. Bush is besieged by legislators holding out their programs to be autographed for some e-Bay auction years from now on another planet.

For a coda, a nice-looking schoolteacher named Kathleen Sebelius comes out to review the production by lecturing the "political pundits" before they review it and "obsess over the reactions of members of Congress: 'How many times was the President interrupted by applause? Did Republicans stand? Did Democrats sit?' And the rest of us will roll our eyes and think, 'What in the world does any of that have to do with me?'"

This Washington revival does ample justice to the definition of Theater of the Absurd as "broad comedy, often similar to Vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images; characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism."

Now the actors are off to tour the hinterlands for audiences who will watch with as much puzzlement as they did last night, if they stayed awake for the whole production.

Notes From the Ice Floe HMO

The British have a solution to their health care crisis--cut off the undeserving sick and send the old off on ice floes the way Eskimos did a century ago.

In a new survey, doctors call for National Health Service treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives, an idea that may appeal to the Bush Administration as a solution to runaway Medicare costs.

One in three British doctors said that "elderly patients should not be given free treatment if it were unlikely to do them good for long," according to the Telegraph.

As an octogenarian candidate for that Ice Floe HMO, I can report that American insurers have made significant headway in that direction. The doctor and hospital performing my shoulder surgery had to make do with Medicare allowances, since my supplemental insurer deemed that, for a person of age, the need to be pain-free would be an unwarranted luxury.

But all is not lost, even in Britain. Responding to the survey findings, a doctor speaking for the British Medical Association said: "If a patient of 90 needs a hip operation they should get one. Yes, they might peg out any time, but it's not our job to play God."

Tell that to the Republican Congressmen who recently voted once again to sustain President Bush's veto of expanded S-CHIP coverage for poor children.

Free Money for All

The bipartisan smiles in Washington signify that the President and Congress have agreed to give the economy a $150 billion jolt, less than a year's worth of what it costs to keep American troops fighting and dying in Iraq.

Democrats who gave up on de-funding the war will face the voters this fall with a "victory" over an impending recession to paper over their failure to do what they were elected to do in November 2006.

For consumers who overspent by $3 trillion dollars since 2001 (according to Business Week's chief economist), there will be free money and cheaper credit thanks to the Fed to keep doing what they did to get us into trouble in the first place.

The talking-head economists on TV will give us contradictory explanations of how this all works, but the bottom line seems to be that "fiscal discipline" for both individuals and the government has gone out of style in the Bush era, along with restraint over the use of military power.

Is it naïve to suggest that the money being wasted in Iraq could be stimulating the economy and rebuilding America's infrastructure without any loss of life?

Dumb and Dumber in Iraq

It took two kinds of stupidity to get us into the war--the Bush-Cheney Neo-Con brand and Saddam Hussein's. We get a closer look at the latter this weekend from the FBI agent who interrogated him after his capture.

Shrewd Saddam was so sure the US wouldn't invade, he told George Piro, that he refused to let inspectors verify that he had no WMD in order to fake out Iran.

"For him," Piro discloses on Sixty Minutes, "it was critical that he was seen as still the strong, defiant Saddam" to "prevent the Iranians from reinvading Iraq."

During the run-up to the war, it was hard enough to reconcile George Bush's picture of the murderous dictator planning to send us a mushroom cloud with the buffoon on a balcony firing a rifle into the Baghdad air.

Even more baffling was our certainty that the invasion would be a "cakewalk" and our eagerness to send American troops into battle against nuclear and chemical weapons that could cause massive casualties.

As a reward for his bluffing and our being wrong about his WMD, Saddam ended up at the end of a rope, and we ended up with an endless occupation.

The Truth About 935 Bush Lies

Did it take a thousand untruths to get us into Iraq? Not quite.

According to a new study by two non-profit journalism organizations, "President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials...made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

The orchestrated campaign has been documented by the staffs of the Fund for Independence in Journalism and the Center for Public Integrity to create a data base of deception.

Some of the highlights:

.On August 26, 2002, Dick Cheney made a speech saying "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." The CIA had no idea of the basis for that claim.

.A month later, in his weekly radio address, the President said: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given...This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year."

.In July 2002, asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists, Don Rumsfeld answered, "Sure" despite the fact that his own Defense Intelligence and the CIA had no such evidence.

.A year later, President Bush told Polish TV: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." The two labs he cited, a team of experts found, "had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons."

The report concludes that the Bush Administration "led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses." White House reaction: "The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world." Add that to the list.

Now that 935 lies to get us into Iraq have been documented, collated and counted, how many more is it taking to keep us there?

Iraq Mousetrap for the Next President

As Democratic candidates make promises to voters about troop withdrawal, George W. Bush is in the Middle East trying to tie the hands of his successor in office.

In November, he joined Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in a declaration of principles to negotiate an agreement to guarantee US troop presence for years. It would replace the existing Security Council mandate authorizing multinational forces in Iraq and become a sworn obligation for the next president. Yesterday, Bush announced in Kuwait that they are moving ahead with the plan.

According to Michael Hirsh of Newsweek, "The target date for concluding the agreement is July, says Gen. Doug Lute, Bush's Iraq coordinator in the White House--in other words, just in time for the Democratic and Republican national conventions."

The intention is to bypass Congress and commit the next president to Bush's agenda. "We don't anticipate now," Gen. Lute has said, "that these negotiations will lead to the status of a formal treaty which would then bring us to formal negotiations or formal inputs from the Congress."

Last month, Hillary Clinton urged Bush not to sign any such agreement without congressional approval since it would be difficult if not impossible for a future president to breach. White House silence has been deafening.

Touting the Surge's success, Bush said yesterday that "long-term success will require active U.S. engagement that outlasts my presidency."

If the Democratic Congress tries to head him off at the pass with legislation, its legality would be challenged and the Bush years would end where they started--in the Supreme Court.

Breaking News...

Vice-President Dick Cheney is under sedation after what sources describe as "a medical incident" earlier this week following reports that Iranian speedboats had menaced US warships in the Persian Gulf.

Informed sources report that Cheney, wearing President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" flight jacket, had convened an emergency meeting of the National Security Council and ordered preparations for a nuclear strike against Tehran.

According to an unnamed Defense Department official, the Vice-President cited intelligence from his own sources that the Revolutionary Guard planned to kidnap President Bush in Israel and force him to appear for questioning on Iranian TV in a college auditorium as revenge for President Ahmadinejad's humiliation at Columbia University last year.

During this "rather disjointed presentation," a Security Council member indicated off the record, the Vice-President became so agitated that medical attention was sought and Cheney is now "resting comfortably" at an undisclosed location.

US forces have been ordered to stand down and, for the remainder of President Bush's Middle East trip, Secret Service protection has been stepped up for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the event that she may have to serve temporarily as Acting President.

Bush's Belated Change About "Change"

The man who set the theme for this year's election is off to the Middle East today on a quest to salvage something there, after conceding the US faces “economic challenges” at home, a euphemism for the threat of recession reflected in rising oil prices, the home mortgage crisis and a weakening job market.

After jawboning the Israelis and Palestinians to make nice, President Bush will be reunited with Tony Blair, who is there on a similar mission for the "Quartet"-- the US, UN, European Union and Russia--to reminisce about the glory days when they were going to topple Saddam Hussein and bring democracy to the region.

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley still insists that the promotion of freedom as a "counterpoint" to terrorism remains "the essence" of the Bush strategy. "I don't think he's pulled back," Hadley says.

But most observers disagree. According to the Christian Science Monitor, "The trip will showcase a president shifting his focus from the big idea of a free and democratic Middle East to more traditional US foreign-policy goals: an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, the containment of a threatening state--in this case Iran--and the assurance of US energy security at a time of $100-a-barrel oil."

The belated dialing down of Neo-Con ambitions, if not the rhetoric, to remake an intractable part of the world is welcome and should inspire the next President to define change in more traditional American terms.

Bon Voyage to Bush

The good news is that our President will be elsewhere much of next year, giving him less time in Washington to start disastrous wars and subvert the Constitution.

The bad news: He will be abroad, winning hearts and minds for America with his wit, warmth and incomparable charm.

In early January, Bush makes his first visit to Israel with side trips to the West Bank, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

In February, he goes to Africa, in April to a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Romania, in June the U.S.-European summit in Slovenia followed by a July meeting of Group of Eight leaders in Japan, the summer Olympics in China and a November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Peru.

The US Secret Service and security people around the world will be exhausted by year's end. The Republican candidate for President should be relieved by not having to explain why the incumbent is not out there campaigning for him. And Dick Cheney could be a total wreck from overseeing all the Neo-Con mischief himself after the loss of Rove, Gonzales, Libby, Meiers and so many of the other elves.

Meanwhile, the sightseeing could do Bush some good after a year in the bunker and provide some upbeat material for the final chapter of his Presidential memoirs.

When they pack his bags, the White House staff could do the country a service by forgetting to put in the veto pens.