[Mb-civic] Maureen Dowd

[Mike Blaxill]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110505E.shtml

    Fashioning Deadly Fiascos 
    By Maureen Dowd 
    The New York Times

    Saturday 05 November 2005

    I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Men are simply not biologically suited to hold
higher office. The Bush administration has proved
that once and for all.

    These guys can't be bothered to run the
country. They are too obsessed with frivolous
stuff, like fashion and whether they look fat.
They are catty, sometimes even sabotaging their
closest friends. They are deceitful minxes and
malicious gossips.

    And heaven knows they're bad at math.
Otherwise, W. would realize that a 60 percent
disapproval rating, or worse, means that most
Americans would like some fresh blood in the
administration. It's appalling to see ringleaders
of the incompetent, mendacious crew who rushed
into Iraq but not New Orleans getting big
promotions and posh consulting jobs.

    Let's first consider the astonishing new
cache of Brownie e-mail released by the
Congressional panel investigating the
heartbreaking Katrina non-response.

    Batting away the frantic warnings of death
and doom in New Orleans, bubble-headed Brownie
boasted of his style sense, replying to a staffer
who told him his outfit looked "fabulous" on TV:
"I got it at Nordstrom."

    In another e-mail to staffers, he preened:
"If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you'll
really vomit. I am a fashion god."

    Brownie had other things on his mind besides
managing the most expensive natural disaster in
US history: restaurants and dog sitters, and
marshaling spin for stories about his past
management gaffes at the International Arabian
Horse Association.

    By Sept. 4, with disaster apartheid in full
view, Brownie was getting e-mail advice from his
press secretary: "You just need to look more
hardworking," Sharon Worthy wrote the FEMA
Fashionista. "ROLL UP THE SLEEVES!"

    It may seem unfathomable that W. has kept
Brownie, one of the biggest boobs in US history,
on the federal payroll as a $148,000-a-year
consultant.

    But President Bush may be empathetic to
Brownie's concerns about looking good. Obsessed
with losing the seven pounds he'd gained around
his waist, W. was so focused on getting back his
hourglass figure that his staff had to compile an
emergency DVD of Katrina news stories before he
could be dragged away from biking.

    Unless it's some catty attempt to undermine
someone you're pretending to like, how to explain
the Mean Girls cabal headed by Dick Cheney, Rummy
and the Rummy aide Douglas Feith? These hawkish
Heathers lured W. into war with hyped
intelligence and then clawed out Colin Powell's
eyes to take charge of the occupation, only to
bollix up the whole thing beyond belief and send
the president's ratings cratering.

    The former Powell chief of staff, Col.
Lawrence Wilkerson, who often verbalizes what Mr.
Powell does not say because the ex-secretary of
state does not want to be in a public catfight
with the cabal, charged on NPR that the cabal
issued directives that led to the abuse of
prisoners by US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    "It was clear to me," he said, "that there
was a visible audit trail from the vice
president's office through the secretary of
defense down to the commanders in the field that
in carefully couched terms - I'll give you that -
that to a soldier in the field meant two things:
we're not getting enough good intelligence and
you need to get that evidence - and, oh, by the
way, here's some ways you probably can get it."

    Colonel Wilkerson called David Addington, the
shadowy Cheney counsel who has been promoted to
Scooter's chief of staff job, "a staunch advocate
of allowing the president in his capacity as
commander in chief to deviate from the Geneva
Conventions."

    Heathers have their own rules. Having ignored
the warnings that an invasion would cause an
insurgency, the Vice squad stepped up the torture
to try to stop an insurgency born amid the
arrogant, incompetent occupation.

    The colonel also described how Vice shaped
war policy. Mr. Cheney's fiercely ideological
staff monitored the National Security Council
staff in such Big Brother fashion that some of
the N.S.C. staff "quit using e-mails for
substantive conversations because they knew the
vice president's alternate national security
staff was reading their e-mails now."

    Colonel Wilkerson said that there was an
N.S.C. memo that made a compelling argument for a
large number of troops being necessary in Iraq,
"and to this day, I don't know whether that
memorandum ever got to the president of the
United States."

    Women are affected by hormones only at times.
Vice's hormones rage every day.