Bush-Cheney administration

Overview

This page covers the actions of George W. Bush's administration while he was President of the United States.

This administration had the good fortune (for them) of having Congress, the Senate, and the Presidency all controlled by the same party (itself having been taken over by the neoconservatives, a very self-protecting bunch), from the time of Bush's inauguration in 2001 until the November 2006 elections, thus acting with unusual unity. In the absence of any apparent dissent between these various bodies, acts of Congress and the Senate during that time can reasonably, therefore, be considered acts of the administration itself.

Personnel

• George W. Bush, President
• Dick Cheney, Vice-President
• Karl Rove, advisor/strategist and Deputy Chief of Staff
• Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
• Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State
• former personnel
  • Lewis Libby, former Chief of Staff and assistant for National Security Affairs to Dick Cheney; resigned 2005-10-28 after being indicted on criminal felony charges
  • John Ashcroft, former U.S. Attorney General; resigned 2005-02-03, stating "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are both friends with Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia

Congress

• 109th US Congress, 2004-2006: Republican-led; often described as "the worst Congress in history"
• 110th US Congress, 2007-2009: Democrat-led; power-shift was a backlash against the 109th

Related Pages

• corruption in the Bush administration

Actions

Actions attributable to members of GWB's administration, including the majority-GOP-controlled Congress where there was no noticeable protest or apology from the President (and therefore presumably met his approval) are considered to be acts of this administration. Acts which are more or less directly attributable to GWB himself should be listed on his page.

• Has illegally assigned unprecedented powers to the President
• Apparently ignored many pre-9/11 warnings
• Spent $1.62 billion on advertising in 2.5 years (see [1] and [2]), an apparently unprecedented amount
• Changed a $5 trillion budget surplus into a $5 trillion budget deficit in only four years (while continuing to reiterate the ever-popular big lie about "tax-and-spend Liberals") – see US Presidential Administration Budgets); [3] (2006-03-06)
• The Invasion & Occupation of Iraq, which was carried through under false premises, was poorly planned, and has been thoroughly mismanaged [4]
  • Apparently stole millions of dollars from the Iraqi government [5] [6]
  • Has been less effective at rebuilding Iraq (despite multibillion-dollar levels of funding) post-invasion than Iraqis were in rebuilding it themselves (despite sanctions) after the 1991 war [7]
• Lackadaisical response to Hurricane Katrina
• 2006-09-12 HR 6054, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, is introduced
• 2006-05-15 U.S. restores full diplomatic relations with Libya
• 2003-10-30 Utah Public Lands First Victim of Bush Administration Anti-Wilderness Policies

Characteristics

• Repeatedly claims the United States is more secure now than it was immediately after 9/11, despite abysmally plummeting military readiness levels
• Has made it clear that they believe torture to be a legitimate weapon [8] in the "war on terror", which is consistent with repeated reports of torture by US military and officials
• Appears to be encouraging the spread of evangelism in the armed forces, to the point of inviting religious control of the US military
• Anti-science/reality, although they claim to be pro-science
  • 2007-03-23 Faking science? Bush team must think we're stupid by Leonard Pitts, Jr.: names several examples of prior offenses
  • 2006-11-28 How Old Is the Grand Canyon? Park Service Won't Say: "Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology"
  • 2005-06-21 The Assault on Scientific Freedom
  • "It is unambiguous that the GOP Congress cuts funding for the National Science Foundation and NOAA even while calling for "more research" on global climate change." [9]
• Anti-transparency:
  • Accused of "waging a war against the journalistic standards and practices that underpin not only a free press but our democracy"
  • Skyrocketing secrecy: "Government secrecy has reached a historic high, even compared to the Cold War (San Diego Union July 3). Federal departments are classifying documents at a rate of 125 per minute... or two per second... and inventing new kinds of classification, while declassification efforts that peaked under the Clinton Administration have slowed to a crawl." ([10] 2005-09-02 entry) See also:
    • Gutting the Freedom of Information Act
    • U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review
    • Cold War Missiles Target of Blackout: "The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information that the government long provided even to its enemy the former Soviet Union: the numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War."
  • Suppression of contradictory viewpoints:
    • Squelching of constructive critical discussion (e.g. "public dissent is strongly discouraged by the White House" mentioned in [11]; use of IRS as a tool for preventing dissention); also Eliminating Dissent in the Media
    • Repeated incidents of action against whistleblowers:
      • Bunnatine Greenhouse: The Washington Post The Carpetbagger Report (possibly problematic links: [12] [13])
      • 2004-11-14: Bush Plans to Purge the 'Disloyal' at CIA: "The White House has ordered the new CIA director ... to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush..." (a clear case of Equating the Individual with the Office) (also another source)
      • The Plame affair
    • Repeated misrepresentation and suppression of scientific data (Science Abuse, and see also "anti-science" above)
      • articles about James Hansen:
        • 2006-03-19 Rewriting the Science (from the 60 Minutes TV show) (slashdot)
        • 2006-01-30 Top climatologist accuses US of trying to gag him

Articles

• 2006-11-20 The Next Act by Seymour M. Hersh: inside notes on the administration's Iran strategy, both pre- and post- election
• 2006-10-17 The Worst Congress Ever by Matt Taibbi

Opinion

• 2007-06-14 Shamelessness has been refined by Leonard Pitts, Jr.: "No administration in living memory has shown Team Bush's ability to reverse itself so blithely, to deny the obvious so serenely, to ignore precedent, propriety and responsibility with such placid unconcern for consequences or public perception."
• 2007-04-24 Fascist America, in 10 easy steps: "From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all."
• 2005-11-24 The long march of Dick Cheney (by Sidney Blumenthal, in Salon.com): "The hallmark of the Dick Cheney administration is its illegitimacy. Its essential method is bypassing established lines of authority; its goal is the concentration of unaccountable presidential power."
• 2005-10-17 issue of Newsweek: On K Street Conservatism by George F. Will: "The fact that none of those responsible for the postwar planning, or lack thereof, in Iraq have been sacked suggests – no, shouts – that in Washington today there is no serious penalty for serious failure."

News

• 2007-03-09 Hyperpartisanship Watch by Kevin Drum: the Department of Justice under George W. Bush initiated far more investigations of Democrats (262) than Republicans (37) in local government offices, while the figures were much more balanced (36 to 30) for national-level offices more likely to attract national attention.
• 2006-11-20 Democrats call for ouster of U.S. health official: new family-planning chief apparently favors abstinence-based contraception
  • Discussion: Fake Family Planning Guy Has To Go
• 2006-08-20 I.R.S. Enlists Help in Collecting Delinquent Taxes: "Although I.R.S. officials acknowledge that this will be much more expensive than doing it internally, they say that Congress has forced their hand by refusing to let them hire more revenue officers, who could pull in a lot of easy-to-collect money."