6 Bush Scandals To Come - David Corn (Whoa! - read this!)

UpInArms

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Thu Dec-23-04 05:49 PM
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6 Bush Scandals To Come - David Corn (Whoa! - read this!)

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/05/the-corn.php

The curse of the second term — it’s been around for decades. Clinton had Monica. Reagan had Iran-Contra. Nixon had Watergate. So what will be the "best" scandals of the Bush administration in the coming year or so? Here’s a look ahead.

Carlyle-gate. The Al Jazeera network reveals (and The New York Times confirms) that shortly before the recent election, the board of the Carlyle Group — the gargantuan global investment firm that counts the elder George Bush and former Secretary of State James Baker as advisers — voted George W. Bush a seat on its board. A sitting president on the board of a company that owns military contractors and can benefit from his decisions? The White House calls it an innocent mistake and that Carlyle’s board had passed a resolution guaranteeing Bush a spot on the board in the "unlikely event" that he was defeated. "Seems as if there was a typo in the resolution that was finally approved," a White House spokesperson explains. "And after the election, Carlyle simply forgot about it. By the way, they didn’t even bother to tell the president about it."

The Oil-for-Guns Scandal. In an operation run out of the Defense Department’s recreational-supplies division, U.S. officials — overseen by a member of a book group regularly attended by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz — siphon oil from Iraqi supplies, sell it on the black market to North Korean representatives, and use the proceeds to buy weapons for a band of Iranian fundamentalist Christians plotting to overthrow the government of Tehran. When asked about the unfolding scandal, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld replies, "Would I want to have an unlimited budget that nobody in Congress had any say over in order to try all sorts of neat things I’d rather not read about in the papers? You betcha. Did I have any foreknowledge of this operation? Good gracious, I’d be a fool to answer that."

Americagate. In response to an "informal" suggestion from Dick Cheney to PBS — conveyed while Congress was considering the network’s budget — PBS launches a new show on United States history called Up With America. Its host is Lynne Cheney. In the first segment, she explores whether slaves brought over from Africa ended up in better living conditions than their relatives back home. The second episode is titled "The Benefits of Ignoring the Native American Experience." After the program starts airing, the White House approves a 7 percent increase in PBS funding. Asked whether there was any quid pro quo, Bush says no and adds, "Laura and I have just loved watching Antiques Roadshow and NOW With Bill Moyers." Cheney’s office maintains that he has nothing to do with Halliburton’s underwriting the series.

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