Alter ties Plame to Bush administration pattern

[wiggs]

Today in www.Huffingtonpost.com, Alter's article touches on the bigger picture of administration incompetence. There's more to do, but this is the sort of big picture the public needs to see more of....going back 5 years and shedding light on incompetence. Someone needs to point out and document that the same incompetence is seen in all policy areas, including FEMA/Katrina, and that each policy area will have its own quagmire that future generations will inherit. Administration decisions can't help but fail and the longer Bush is in office the more problems will surface.

The Plame case needs to be seen in the context of the bigger picture.

The Price of Loyalty
The consequences of a bias for loyalty over debate have been devastating. Issues don't get aired; downside risks remain unassessed.

Newsweek
Jonathon Alter

snip

This has been the Bush pattern. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill presciently says a second tax cut is unaffordable if we want to fight in Iraq—he's fired. Bush's economic adviser Larry Lindsey presciently says the war will cost between $100 billion and $200 billion (an underestimate)—he's fired. Army Gen. Eric Shinseki presciently says that winning in Iraq will require several hundred thousand troops—he's sent into early retirement. By contrast, CIA Director George Tenet, who presided over two of the greatest intelligence lapses in American history (9/11 and WMD in Iraq) and apparently helped spread "oppo ammo" to discredit the husband of a woman who had devoted her life to his agency, receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The conventional Washington explanation is that this is just old-fashioned politics. As long as you don't lie to a grand jury, there's nothing illegal here. But the consequences of a bias for loyalty over debate—even internal debate—have been devastating. The same president who seeks democracy, transparency and dissent in Iraq is irritated by it at home. O'Neill tells his story in a book by Ron Suskind called "The Price of Loyalty," and that title is the missing link in explaining the failure of the Bush presidency. The price of loyalty is incompetence. Issues don't get aired; downside risks remain unassessed.

Instead of reaching out and encouraging disagreement, Bush let neocons like Libby and Paul Wolfowitz hijack his foreign policy. Amazingly, the pros and cons of invading Iraq were never even debated in the National Security Council. If you had doubts, like Colin Powell, you were marginalized. (Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, said last week that a "cabal" of isolated policymakers ran a government of dangerous "ineptitude.") Consider the case of Brent Scowcroft. According to last week's New Yorker, former president Bush has tried to arrange a meeting between his old national-security adviser (and best friend) and his son. But after Scowcroft wrote a 2002 op-ed piece titled "Don't Attack Saddam," the president has consistently refused his own father's request. Now we know that Bush's lack of curiosity has proved fatal.

snip

[LSparkle]

1. Scott Ritter, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Eric Shinseki, Joe Wilson

Janis Karpinski, Lawrence Lindsey ... the list goes on and on and on.