The real issue: Bush is incompetent

Richard Reeves sums up the failed Bush presidency pretty well:

"...With protestors somewhere out of sight, the Republican National Convention will be a celebration of the ideology, values and interests served by this second Bush presidency.
Whether you agree or disagree with the words pouring from the podium over Americans who see reflections of themselves in George W. Bush, the real issue of this election will not be mentioned. The core issue is this: Our President is incompetent. He is not a good President.

1. ...He has divided the country; we are all part of a vicious little hissing match. We were united and humbled on September 12, 2001. We are divided and humliated now, telling lies about each other.
2. He has divided the world. “We are all Americans now” headlined Le Monde on that September 12. Now there are days when it seems as if they are all anti-Americans.
3. He is leaving no child or grandchild without debt. He has taken the government from surplus into deficit in the name of national security and increased private investment. We can pay the debt in two ways: with more government revenues (taxation) or by borrowing -- against the sweat and income of new generations. The President has chosen to borrow.
4. He campaigns as a champion of smaller government, but is greatly increasing the size and role of government. Ideological conservatism, it turns out, costs just as much or more than ideological liberalism...
5. He is diminishing the military of which he is so proud now as commander-in-chief. The invasion and occupation of Iraq have obviously not worked out the way he imagined -- naked torture was not the goal. But the far greater problem for the future is that our proud commander has revealed the hollowness behind unilateral superpower. From the top down, we have not been able to win Iraq much less the world. And going into Iraq has compromised and crippled the war on terror he declared himself.
6. He is diminishing scientific progress, the great engine of the 20th Century. Only the truly ignorant can believe that the proper role of government is to hinder medical research and environmental study in the name of God.
7. He is diminishing the Constitution of the United States. Cheesy tricks like amending the great text of freedom defined to attack homosexuality can be dismissed as wedge politics. But it is worse to preach against an activist judiciary while appointing more activist judges who happen to hold different beliefs, particularly the idea that civil liberties are the enemies of patriotism, security and freedom itself.
8. He has surrounded himself with other incompetents. The Secretary of State is presiding over the rape of diplomacy and its alliances, the Secretary of Defense has sent our young men and women into situations they were never meant or trained to handle, and now they are being ordered into battle by an appointed minister in far land. The National Security Adviser does not seem to know that her job description includes coordinating defense and diplomacy. And then there was our $340,000 a month local hire, Ahmed Chalabi, sitting in the gallery of our House.
9. He has been unable or unwilling to deal with declining employment and the rising medical costs of becoming an older nation.
10. He is, as if by design, destroying the credibility of the United States as a force for peace in the world -- an honest broker -- particularly in the Middle East.

The list is longer, miscalculation after miscalculation. President Bush has not been able to function effectively at this pay grade. He may mean well, but this has been a difficult time and he is in over his head..."

Where's Bin Laden????

Even some conservatives are disappointed in Bush's failure to nab Bin Laden. This was written in 2002:
"President Bush is telling us now there's more to this war than Osama bin Laden.
That sounds to me like he's losing hope of ever finding the terrorist most responsible for planning and executing the Sept. 11 attack on the United States. Apparently, according to news reports, the administration is now convinced that bin Laden was present in a cave complex in Tora Bora late last year when it was targeted by U.S. military forces. But the U.S. failed to nab him because proxy troops and aerial bombardment were used as the primary means of attack, rather than a ground assault.
...That's the trouble with fighting wars by proxy. That's the trouble with multinational coalitions. That's the trouble with confusing objectives. The U.S. government has been celebrating the liberation of Afghanistan. I celebrate it, too. But let's not forget, this was not the mission. America was attacked on Sept. 11, and our primary job remains to hunt down the mastermind of that operation. Until we do that, we have failed in our primary mission. "
- Joseph Farah

Well, Joe, it's 2004 and we still haven't done it. And the situation is even more desparate now. The arrest of the Pakistani Khan, Al Qaeda's computer expert, showed that the old Al Qaeda leadership is still calling the shots and can still organize attacks worldwide. Many terrorism experts, who had thought that the old Al Qaeda was disabled, were surprised. Essentially, Bin Laden and his deputies are still lethal and still in hiding.

Bush apparently thinks we will forget the name "Osama" and get distracted by switched objectives, like liberating Afghans or Iraqis, or finding other terror cells. But while I'm glad that Iraqis and Afghans are freed, our objective was always to get Bin Laden and his top deputies. Catching small fish won't cut off the head of the beast. Until Bin Laden is dead or in chains, America will be under attack. This is the real sin of the Bush administration: Failing to catch Bin Laden and now pretending that he doesn't exist. Let's see if Bush dares to mention the name "Bin Laden" at the GOP convention in New York.

U.S. Struggles to Win Hearts, Minds in the Muslim World

Diplomacy Efforts Lack Funds, Follow-ThroughBy Robin Wright, Washington Post, August 20, 2004

"The Bush administration is facing growing criticism from both inside and outside its ranks that it has failed to move aggressively enough in the war of ideas against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups over the three years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "
...
"But Middle East experts -- and some frustrated U.S. officials -- complain that the administration has provided only limited new direction in dealing with anti-American anger among the world's 1.2 billion Muslims and is spending far too little on such efforts, particularly in contrast with the billions spent on other pressing needs, such as homeland security and intelligence."

"'It's worse than failing. Failing means you tried and didn't get better. But at this point, three years after September 11, you can say there wasn't even much of an attempt, and today Arab and Muslim attitudes toward the U.S. and the degree of distrust in the U.S. are far worse than they were three years ago. Bin Laden is winning by default,' said Shibley Telhami, a member of a White House-appointed advisory group on public diplomacy and Brookings Institution scholar."

The Case Against George W. Bush

Here's a great piece by President Reagan's son:
The son of the fortieth president of the United States takes a hard look at the son of the forty-first and does not like what he seesBy Ron Reagan, Esquire, September 2004
"It may have been the guy in the hood teetering on the stool, electrodes clamped to his genitals. Or smirking Lynndie England and her leash. Maybe it was the smarmy memos tapped out by soft-fingered lawyers itching to justify such barbarism. The grudging, lunatic retreat of the neocons from their long-standing assertion that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama didn't hurt. Even the Enron audiotapes and their celebration of craven sociopathy likely played a part. ... I began to get calls from friends whose parents had always voted Republican, "but not this time." There was the staid Zbigniew Brzezinski on the staid NewsHour with Jim Lehrer sneering at the "Orwellian language" flowing out of the Pentagon. Word spread through the usual channels that old hands from the days of Bush the Elder were quietly (but not too quietly) appalled by his son's misadventure in Iraq. Suddenly, everywhere you went, a surprising number of folks seemed to have had just about enough of what the Bush administration was dishing out. A fresh age appeared on the horizon, accompanied by the sound of scales falling from people's eyes. It felt something like a demonstration of that highest of American prerogatives and the most deeply cherished American freedom: dissent."

"Oddly, even my father's funeral contributed. ... People were treated to a side-by-side comparison—Ronald W. Reagan versus George W. Bush—and it's no surprise who suffered for it. Misty-eyed with nostalgia, people set aside old political gripes for a few days and remembered what friend and foe always conceded to Ronald Reagan: He was damned impressive in the role of leader of the free world. A sign in the crowd, spotted during the slow roll to the Capitol rotunda, seemed to sum up the mood—a portrait of my father and the words NOW THERE WAS A PRESIDENT. "

" IN THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH and confusion of 9/11, Bush, who on that day was in Sarasota, Florida, conducting an emergency reading of "The Pet Goat," was whisked off to Nebraska aboard Air Force One. While this may have been entirely sensible under the chaotic circumstances—for all anyone knew at the time, Washington might still have been under attack—the appearance was, shall we say, less than gallant. So a story was concocted: There had been a threat to Air Force One that necessitated the evasive maneuver. Bush's chief political advisor, Karl Rove, cited "specific" and "credible" evidence to that effect. The story quickly unraveled. In truth, there was no such threat. "

" If ever there was a time for uniting and not dividing, this is it. Instead, Mr. Bush governs as if by divine right, seeming to actually believe that a wise God wants him in the White House and that by constantly evoking the horrible memory of September 11, 2001, he can keep public anxiety stirred up enough to carry him to another term."

"The president ought to be ashamed"

First we learn that Tricky Dick Cheney nixed an Intelligence Czar years ago, and nixes it again now.
http://www.slate.com/id/2104867/
Then more bad news: The Bush team blew the cover of a mole inside Al Qaeda, which could have possibly led to Bin Laden himself:
Leak Allowed al-Qaida Suspects to Escape
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The disclosure to reporters of the arrest of an al-Qaida
computer expert allowed several wanted suspects from Osama bin Laden's terror network to escape, government and security officials said Tuesday. Two senior Pakistani officials said the reports in "Western media" enabled other al-
Qaida suspects to get away. "Let me say that this intelligence leak jeopardized our plan and some al-Qaida
suspects ran away," one of the officials said on condition of anonymity. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) acknowledged Sunday that Khan's name had been disclosed to reporters in Washington "on background," meaning that it could be published, but the information could not be attributed by name to the
official who had revealed it.

An even more frightening example of Bush negligence--loose nukes:
An American Hiroshima" That is what I find baffling: an utter failure of the political process. The Bush administration responded aggressively on military fronts after 9/11, and in November 2003, Mr. Bush observed, "The greatest threat of our age is nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in the hands of terrorists, and the dictators who aid them." But the White House has insisted on tackling the most peripheral elements of the W.M.D. threat, like Iraq, while largely ignoring the central threat, nuclear proliferation. The upshot is that the risk that a nuclear explosion will devastate an American city is greater now than it was during the cold war, and it's growing."

Instead of securing our ports from nuclear cargo, or locking up the loose stockpiles in Russia, Bush (who sat out the Vietnam war) is busy smearing John Kerry, a decorated war vet, with the help of some unseemly characters. One of Bush's "Swift Boat Veterans" was a Nixon henchman targeting a young "enemy" Kerry. Another turns out to be a racist, anti-Semite, anti-Catholic.

Inconveniently for Bush, the popular populist John McCain also denounced the smear tactics, calling it similar to the ones used against him. And retired General Tommy Franks breaks ranks with the administration and calls Kerry "absolutely" qualified to become President.

Max Cleland, another highly decorated war hero, former Congressman, and 9/11 Commission member, was right:
"The president ought to be ashamed"
Former Sen. Max Cleland blasts Bush's "Nixonian" stonewalling of the 9/11 commission, his "lies" about Iraq, and his flight-suit photo op on the USS Lincoln after "hiding out" during Vietnam.

Bush -- the ultimate Flip-Flopper

Anyone remember "humble foreign policy"? How about finding Bin Laden "dead or alive"?

"The list of Bush major policy U-turns is as audacious as it is long. Among the whiplash-inducing lowlights:
In September 2001, Bush said capturing bin Laden was "our number one priority." By March 2002, he was claiming, "I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important."
In October 2001, he was dead-set against the need for a Department of Homeland Security. Seven months later, he thought it was a great idea.
In May 2002, he opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission. Four months later, he supported it.
During the 2000 campaign, he said that gay marriage was a states' rightsissue: "The states can do what they want to do." During the 2004 campaign, he called for a constitutional ban on gay marriage."
- KerrySanAntonio