Washington Post: President of Fabricated Crises

[complain jane]

This is an excellent piece I just found in the Washington Post:

President of Fabricated Crises

...But when historians look back at the Bush presidency, they're more likely to note that what sets Bush apart is not the crises he managed but the crises he fabricated. The fabricated crisis is the hallmark of the Bush presidency. To attain goals that he had set for himself before he took office -- the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the privatization of Social Security -- he concocted crises where there were none...

<snip>

...With crisis concoction as its central task -- think of how many administration officials issued dire warnings of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein or, now, by Social Security's impending bankruptcy -- this presidency, more than any I can think of, has relied on the classic tools of propaganda. Indeed, it's almost impossible to imagine the Bush presidency absent the Fox News Network and right-wing talk radio...

<snip>

Source

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

1. That was right on the mark...

Thanks for sharing that one. I emailed it from the WashPost page to family/friends.

[kodi]

2. george bush will go down in history as the little president who cried wolf

.

[complain jane]

3. He's ruined so much. US credibility, the media's credibility

(not that the media didn't do themselves in as well), faith in the electoral process, and the integrity of the WH. Such lying scumbags.

[indigobusiness]

14. He's a walking catastrophe.

He's sailed this ship past the brink, and kept right on sailing.

[ladjf]

6. Much worse than that.

[msgadget]

11. No, The Great Manipulator

I'm just a straight-shootin' guy and what I want is what you want, which is to make me and my cronies richer than the manure my campaigns have shoveled.

[Technocrat058]

4. A divided country.

The effects of the Bush presidency. A more devided country than this union has seen in decades. If he keeps messing up I don't think the republicans will be able to recover from this any time soon.

[Ironpost]

7. I should hope not.

[Inland]

5. "fundamentally invested in the spread of disinformation"

"We've had plenty of presidents, Richard Nixon most notoriously, who divided the media into friendly and enemy camps. I can't think of one, however, so fundamentally invested in the spread of disinformation -- and so fundamentally indifferent to the corrosive effect of propaganda on democracy -- as Bush. That, too, should earn him a page in the history books. "

[opihimoimoi]

8. Are these Bushies not fearful of the Truth...that history will deal them

a hard blow? Only sheer arrogance on a level unknown in America for a long time can accomplish this.

The Truth can take the test of TIME, BushCo and his lies will surely NOT.

[Vitruvius]

15. Before WWII, the British Col. Meinertzhagen told Hitler to his face that

history would judge the Nazis harshly. Hitler's reply: "WE will write the history."

And now you know what Bu$h thinks.

[BarbaRosa]

9. He's a fabricated President

you expected substance?

[wabeewoman]

10. They are wrong.

Social security is far from the SECOND scare. Remember the patriot act?? I remember them passing it in the night and poor Senator Byrd saying they didn't even have time to read it. Everything they have done has been by creating a crisis, hurrying their solution through. Lets see, drug benefit, clear skies, no child left behind. It rather an interesting phenomomen-make a crisis, try to convince people you have the solution without telling them what the solution is, pass the law without giving legislators time to read or think, and move on to the next phony crisis. And of course, most important, fill up the legislation with rules to suppress the people and enrich your friends. Historians will ponder what were we thinking.

[Vitruvius]

12. And 9/11 was Bu$h's biggest fabricated crisis -- and most successful.

Followed by his unnecessary war of aggression in Iraq.

And both the phony terror strike / MIHOP and a phony war to rally the people are straight out of the Nazi playbook. The former is known in game theory as "the Reichstag fire ploy".

Before Bu$h MIHOP on 9/11, his presidency was going down the tubes. After, he was riding high. When his ratings started -- once again -- to sag, he gave us the Iraq war.

And the climate of fear Bu$h & Co created with 9/11 and the Iraq war helped make the public receptive to all their other fabricated crises.

The cost? 3,000 dead on 9/11, plus over a thousand Americans dead in Iraq, plus over 100,000 dead Iraqis.

Which is no problem for Bu$h & Co.

[orpupilofnature57]

13. pretty much invented himself after that, what a legacy, (The Great

Opportunist).