Frank Rich: Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush

[fedupinBushcountry]

TO paraphrase Al Pacino in “Godfather III,” just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can’t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration’s high ambitions.
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There are many dots yet to be connected, and not just on torture. This Sunday, GQ magazine is posting on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld’s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. The piece is not the work of a partisan but the Texan journalist Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain,” the 2007 Bush biography that had the blessing (and cooperation) of the former president and his top brass. It draws on interviews with more than a dozen high-level Bush loyalists.

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But the new administration doesn’t want to revisit this history any more than it wants to dwell on torture. Once the inspector general’s report on the military analysts was rescinded, the Obama Pentagon declared the matter closed. The White House seems to be taking its cues from the Reagan-Bush 41 speechwriter Peggy Noonan. “Sometimes I think just keep walking,” she said on ABC’s “This Week” as the torture memos surfaced. “Some of life has to be mysterious.” Imagine if she’d been at Nuremberg!

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The administration can’t “just keep walking” because it is losing control of the story. The Beltway punditocracy keeps repeating the cliché that only the A.C.L.U. and the president’s “left-wing base” want accountability, but that’s not the case. Americans know that the Iraq war is not over. A key revelation in last month’s Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainees — that torture was used to try to coerce prisoners into “confirming” a bogus Al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein link to sell that war — is finally attracting attention. The more we learn piecemeal of this history, the more bipartisan and voluble the call for full transparency has become.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17rich-5.html?_r=1&ref=opinion">more

[SpiralHawk]

1. The k and the r

I hope the Obamster reads this and gets a freaking clue.

[SpiralHawk]

2. "I hope Obama doesn't read it. Smirk." - xCommander AWOL (R)

"Hell, me and my Republicon Homelander Chickenhawk cronies have gotten away with all the stunts we have pulled so far on you dumb Americans, while reaping massive war profits. Don't spoil our fun and profit now. Smirk."

- xCommander AWOL (R)

[Turbineguy]

3. They still need

to rid the government of Bush appointed moles.

[SpiralHawk]

4. Gigadittoes -- anti-American moles of the Homelander persuasion

are a puss-filled pimple on the ass of honest democracy...just like the ass pimple that 'earned' Rush Limbuagh his cherished opportunity to dodge the draft, initiate drug abuse, and become a Homelander Hero advocating the FAIL of America.

[butterfly77]

6. And that is what is the problem...

in a lot of areas. Some here seem to think that they it is so simple to do what the pres promised he is trying to get through the big things while he can,he knows that the american people are uninformed and fickle. If only we heard all of the complaining that I hear about the president when others were in there messing everything up.

[HOLOS]

5. imho. O is trying to stay alive ...