1-2 punch from NYT Editorial Page: Herbert and Krugman

[gristy]

These were posted separately last night, but the threads have sunk, so I am reposting. Hopefully the mods will let this stay.

The gloves have come off. The New York Times tells it like it is.

Shaking the House of Cards
By BOB HERBERT

Published: October 3, 2003

No wonder the sky-high poll numbers for President Bush have collapsed. The fiasco in Iraq is only part of the story. The news on one substantive issue after another could hardly be worse. It's almost as if the president had a team in the White House that was feeding his credibility into a giant shredder.
<snip>
Now that so much has gone haywire - Iraq, the economy, America's standing in the world - the tough questions are finally being asked about President Bush and his administration.

Perhaps foreign policy was not Mr. Bush's strength, after all. And even diehard Republicans have been forced to acknowledge that the president was surely wrong when he insisted that his mammoth tax cuts would be the engine of job creation. And nothing has ever come of Mr. Bush's promise to be the education president, or to change the tone of the discourse in Washington, or to deal humbly and respectfully with the rest of the world.

Americans are increasingly asking what went wrong. How could so much have gone sour in such a short period of time?

Was it incompetence? Bad faith?

Loud warnings were ignored for the longest time. Now, finally, the truth is becoming more and more difficult to avoid.

link

'Slime and Defend'
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: October 3, 2003

On July 14, Robert Novak published the now-famous column in which he identified Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, as a C.I.A. "operative on weapons of mass destruction," and said "two senior administration officials" had told him that she was responsible for her husband's mission to Niger. On that mission, Mr. Wilson concluded ? correctly ? that reports of Iraqi efforts to buy uranium were bogus.

An outraged President Bush immediately demanded the names of those responsible for exposing Ms. Plame. He repeated his father's statement that "those who betray the trust by exposing the names of our sources" are "the most insidious of traitors." There are limits to politics, Mr. Bush declared; Mr. Wilson's decision to go public about his mission had embarrassed him, but that was no excuse for actions that were both felonious and unpatriotic.

Everything in the previous paragraph is, of course, false. It's what should have happened, but didn't.
<snip>
But the true test of patriotism isn't whether you are willing to wave the flag, or agree with whatever the president says. It's whether you are willing to take risks and make sacrifices, including political sacrifices, for the sake of your country. This episode is a test for Mr. Bush and his inner circle: a true patriot wouldn't hesitate about doing the right thing in the Plame affair, whatever the political costs.

Mr. Bush is failing that test.

more

[meti57b]

1. it's what happens when the president is a mindless brainless front man ...

for a corrupt self-serving administration.

[Dudley_DUright]

2. As the original poster of both editorials

I endorse your efforts. The more folks that see and read these two articles, the better.

[Cat Atomic]

3. Wow. Pretty harsh.

Our press is still corporate sewage, of course. It's just that now, even the corporate sewage is starting to feel the sting of Bush's policies.

The fact is that the Bush Administration is not just utterly incompetent. They have an agenda to funnel political power and public money to small groups of extremely wealthy people. They've wanted to roll back progress in civil rights and labor causes. And at all these things, they've been tremendously successful.

They simply define "success" differently than almost everyone else.

[nostamj]

4. these are MUST READs....

these are MUST SEEs...

CARTOONS! The "Leak|Spin Leak|Spin Leak|Spin" Edition

[Spazito]

5. Thanks for the links...

it is good to see some hard hitting articles coming out and looking at the WHOLE picture!

[hedda_foil]

6. This snippet from inside Herbert's article says it all imho

The vicious release to news organizations of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer could serve as a case study of the character of this administration. The Bush II crowd is arrogant, venal, mean-spirited and contemptuous of law and custom

[protect freedom impeach bush now]

8. Bush2 is arrogant, venal, mean-spirited, contemptuous of law

...The Bush II crowd is arrogant, venal, mean-spirited and contemptuous of law and custom.


yup.

AND We all knew it,
here at DU EVEN before the right-wing coup 2000.

[rasputin1952]

7. I take particular notice to the last paragraph...

of Krugman's text.

For all of the howling in the night about 'patriotism', it certainly seems to me that those in this administration have lost all sense of the word, and have no concept that True Patriotism is active. Real patriots are willing to risk all they have, in order to preserve what they deem as necessary for their country to survive. A True Patriot would never endanger the security of his/her country, and stand up to those who would send this republic into the dustbin of history.

This administration has never understood this, and most likely never will. As with all zealots, they have eyes to see only that which they wish to see; and ears to hear only what they wish to hear.

They are about to crumble, and it will be messy.