buzz twang

White House officials have all but given up on their official email system, preferring private, un-archived, and unaccountable email addresses.

If true, it’s worth examining. If there is nothing to hide, you don’t hide. Of course, it could also mean that WH employs don’t feel secure communicating via email because of internal pressure and oversight. Both I suspect. But, this quote is certainly interesting:

“We just got a bit lazy,” said one aide. “We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed. We saw that with the Clintons but I don’t think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong.”

Yes, power does that to people. “It’s not fascism when we do it.”

Saudi King Abdullah, whose country is a close US ally, on Wednesday slammed the “illegitimate foreign occupation” of Iraq in an opening speech to the annual Arab summit in Riyadh.

“In beloved Iraq, blood is being shed among brothers in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and ugly sectarianism threatens civil war,” Abdullah said.

He also said that Arab nations, which are planning to revive a five-year-old Middle East peace plan at the summit, would not allow any foreign force to decide the future of the region.

You gotta hand it to Dubya. When he fucks up, he does it full throttle.

The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt.

Phoenix Woman at FireDogLake has the lowdown.

So many principles that Republicans held dear when they were trying to take Clinton down are no longer operative. This certainly applies to a 1998 column now whizzing around the Internet that ran under the headline “Executive Privilege is a Dodge.” It was written by Tony Snow, who is now Bush’s press secretary.
To investigate Clinton—even his Christmas card list—was God’s work. To investigate Bush is “to head down the partisan road of issuing subpoenas and demanding show trials,” as the president put it this week.

Who needs real honest moral values when you roll with the Almighty and you have His digits? 43’s high rollaz scratchin’ for scrilla!

In the months ahead, our patience will be one of our strengths — patience with the long waits that will result from tighter security, patience and understanding that it will take time to achieve our goals, patience in all the sacrifices that may come…

I’m a patient man… We will look at all options and we will consider all technologies available to us and diplomacy and intelligence. (Bush in reference to the probable ouster of Saddam Hussein from power.)

President Bush is running short on patience with Iraq, he told reporters Tuesday morning. ‘It appears to be a re-run of a bad movie,” Bush said. ‘[Iraqi President Saddam Hussein] is delaying. He’s deceiving. He’s asking for time. He’s playing hide-and-seek with inspectors. One thing is for certain — he’s not disarming.”

“Iraq had a weapons program…. Intelligence throughout the decade (of the 1990s) showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced with time we’ll find out they did have a weapons program.”- President Bush.

“I think there’s an interesting lesson here on patience… The president has it. He will continue to have it.” – Former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer referring to Bush’s attitude towards finding WMD’s in Iraq.

Though experts have raised questions about the significance of the ties between Saddam Hussein’s former government and al Qaeda, Bush said that “al Qaeda and other global terror networks recognize that the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s regime is a defeat for them.” Calling that broader conflict a “test of our perseverance, our patience and our will,” an impassioned Bush said the “stakes could not be greater,” adding: “Our only goal, our only option, is total victory in the war on terror.” Bush made no concession to those who have argued that the administration should devote more troops and money to Iraq’s rehabilitation. (emphasis added) [...]

As top White House aides have done in recent weeks, Bush today likened the effort to transform Iraq and the Middle East to the reconstruction of Germany and Europe after World War II, which he called a “massive undertaking” that “took years, not months.”

Bush said the United States will not spend “years and years” in Iraq as a new government takes shape.

President Bush pleaded for Americans’ patience Wednesday on what he conceded was “a very discouraging day” of death and violence for U.S. troops in Iraq. He urged Iraqis to defy terrorist threats and vote in Sunday’s elections.

Bush held a White House news conference hours after more than 30 American troops perished in a helicopter crash in western Iraq and insurgents killed five others in the deadliest day yet for U.S. forces. The deaths pushed the American toll above 1,400.

Unwavering in the course he has set, Bush pledged: “We’ll have the troop levels necessary to complete the mission. And that mission is to enable Iraq to defend herself from terrorists — homegrown or terrorists that come in from outside of the country.” He made clear that Iraq is nowhere near ready to handle its own security, and he talked about U.S. involvement over the next year. (emphasis added)

Responding to growing unease over the war in Iraq, President Bush laid out a stay-the-course “strategy for victory” Wednesday and urged Americans to muster the “time and patience” to carry it out.

Bush conceded that victory is “going to take a long time” and the United States “will not put more pressure on the Iraqi government than it can bear.” He also noted, however, that the United States won’t wait indefinitely for conditions to improve in the war-torn nation.

“My administration will carefully consider any proposal that will help us achieve victory,” he said. “We’ve got patience but not unlimited patience.”

A subdued and at times humble President George W Bush delivered his seventh State of the Union speech to a skeptical audience this morning, pleading for patience over Iraq because “it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle”. Describing an Iraq riven by a “tragic escalation of sectarian rage and reprisal” he conceded “this is not the fight we entered in Iraq but it is the fight we are in”. Most Democrats sat stony faced as he urged: “So let us find our resolve and turn events towards victory.”

President Bush on Monday said his decision to send more troops to Iraq has yielded some “hopeful signs,” but he told the country that more time is needed to determine whether the strategy is successful.