Exit interview: 14 questions no one asked President Bush

President Bush is about to leave his job of eight years, but mysteries remain about his time in the White House. In the exit interview, let’s ask him 14 questions he has yet to be asked.

(OK, it’s 40 questions with the follow-ups.)

1. Palestinian statehood

Why, on Oct. 2, 2001, did you announce that you favored an independent “Palestinian state” without first gaining some equally significant concession from the Palestinians? Wasn’t it obvious that, with the U.S. taking such a position, Palestinian leaders who had been calling for their own land for more than three decades would now lose any incentive to demonstrate they are fit to run a separate nation responsibly? Wasn’t it also obvious that, coming just three weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, your concession would be seen as a reward for terrorism? We’ve heard speculation, but you can set us straight on this. What happened there?

2. Ending repression

In your Sept. 12, 2002, United Nations speech, making the case for action against Saddam Hussein’s fascist regime, you first cited Saddam’s violation of U.N. Resolution 688, which required Saddam to stop repressing the Iraqi people. Considering that was your first point against Saddam, why didn’t you continue making at least as many arguments for liberation as for assuring that Saddam was disarmed? Were you afraid of losing the votes of dictatorships in the U.N.? After the invasion, why didn’t you explain better that you were pleased no WMDs showed up to interfere with the liberation of 25 million Iraqis?

3. Cease-fire violations

Why didn’t you make a better case that, by breaking cease-fire conditions for 12 years, with the repression, the backing of terrorists, the missing Kuwaiti POWs and the disrupted U.N. arms inspections, Saddam himself had resumed the battle? Wasn’t he, in effect, a convicted mass murderer who had cut off the GPS ankle bracelet that was a condition of his parole?

4. Cheney’s ethics

Why didn’t you ask Vice President Dick Cheney to resign in 2002 or 2003, to avoid the appearance of a conflict with his Halliburton ties? Didn’t that appearance of a conflict unnecessarily taint the heroic and hard work of those U.S. troops liberating Iraq and Afghanistan?

5. Dixie Chicks

Why didn’t you just invite the Dixie Chicks to the White House? Doesn’t it seem the group’s leader Natalie Maines, who on March 10, 2003, told a London audience she was “ashamed” to be from your home state of Texas, had succumbed naively to the pro-fascist hysteria in the weeks before Iraq’s liberation?

6. Jessica Lynch

Why didn’t you straighten out the story of Army Private Jessica Lynch? When news agencies throughout the world falsely reported that “the White House” or “the Pentagon” claimed that Lynch had been “fighting to the death” before her March 23, 2003, capture in Iraq, why didn’t you or your staff correct them? Why didn’t you tell them the White House said no such thing, but that Lynch was a hero simply for putting herself in harm’s way in Iraq’s liberation? Why didn’t you point out that it was The Washington Post’s reporters Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loeb who blew that story by finding one know-nothing “official,” quoting him on the “fighting to the death” rumor, letting other news agencies repeat the tale, and then failing to correct the falsehood as soon as they knew the “official” was a bad source?

7. Iraq museum looting

Why did you never reveal just how dangerously wrong the news reporting was on the “emptying” of the Iraq National Museum in the first days after Saddam’s regime was toppled? Almost every major news agency in the world reported that 50 to 100 percent of the Baghdad museum’s artifacts were removed by looters on April 10-12, 2003, as U.S. troops watched. The truth was that looters removed only 1 percent of the archaeological treasures, and museum workers stole another 2 percent of the pieces in an earlier inside job. About 97 percent of the museum’s contents were protected and preserved, in spite of Saddam’s troops setting up sniper’s nests inside and on top of museum buildings. The sensationally erroneous news reports inspired French President Jacques Chirac to declare the looting a “crime against humanity,” and almost certainly motivated some Iraqis to take up arms against the reportedly nasty, uncaring and even thieving American liberators. Why did you never object to the false looting stories and offer the facts?

8. Saddam and uranium

Why did then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, on June 8, 2003, recant your 2003 State of the Union statement that “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”? Note that, even after a thorough, year-long investigation, the British government continued to stand by that statement as “well founded”? Did someone at the White House panic after reading Nicholas Kristoff’s New York Times column of May 6, 2003, which described an anonymous “former U.S. ambassador to Africa” who, after a CIA-paid trip to Niger, took credit for “debunking” forged documents on uranium sales to Iraq? Note that the Senate Intelligence Committee later found out the former ambassador – Democrat Joseph Wilson – had never seen the forged documents. Why didn’t you just ask Prime Minister Tony Blair about the British intelligence, which as it turned out did not rely on forged documents at all? Do you regret those 16 words were taken back?

9. Scooter Libby

Is it possible that you panicked I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby into lying to the FBI about his telling two television reporters that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA, even though mentioning her CIA job probably was no crime? On Oct. 7, 2003, you told reporters who asked about the Plame story, “I’ve constantly expressed my displeasure with leaks, particularly leaks of classified information…. I don’t know if we’re going to find out the senior administration official [who leaked information about Plame]. Now, this is a large administration, and there’s a lot of senior officials. I don’t have any idea. I’d like to. I want to know the truth.” Didn’t your reference to “leaks of classified information” imply that you believed the leaks to be a crime? Didn’t your statement that you wanted to find out who the leaker was also imply that you wanted the leaker brought to justice for a crime? Exactly one week after you made those comments, the FBI interviewed “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, for the first time. Can you see how he might have been spooked by your words into covering up his legal contacts with the press?

10. Whistleblowing on the CIA

Why didn’t you also point out that almost any knowledgeable official might have told the press about Valerie Plame’s CIA connection simply because every political junkie in Washington was wondering why in God’s name the CIA sent that Democratic hack Wilson, Plame’s husband, on that 2002 trip to Africa? Why didn’t you note that, far more likely than trying to punish Wilson, the person who pointed out that Plame worked for the CIA was blowing the whistle on how the CIA sends spouses of its employees on junkets, and how those spouses then don’t even write up a report on what they find? Isn’t that motive – whistleblowing – the only way to explain that, almost simultaneously to Libby’s mention of Plame to members of the press, a relatively obscure deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, no friend of yours, was giving Plame’s name to columnist Robert Novak? Considering how there is no doubt that Armitage mentioned Plame to help Novak understand the otherwise inexplicable Wilson trip, and Novak was the first journalist to make Plame’s CIA employment public, isn’t it clear the retaliation motive was a diversionary invention of the Democrats, who wanted to be seen as victims?

11. Hurricane Katrina

During the Hurricane Katrina flooding, why did no one at the White House respond Sept. 1, 2005, to television news reporters’ passionate demands that panicked Superdome evacuees get help? Someone from the White House of FEMA could have gone down there immediately and found out that the reported rapes, murders and deadly dehydration were not occurring, and assured everyone who felt locked in that they could leave soon. On the nights of Sept. 1 and Sept. 2, was anyone at the White House watching TV? When did Scott McClellan tell you what Fox News’ Shepard Smith was saying about the chaos and fear in New Orleans?

12. Harry Reid

What did you really think when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, on April 19, 2007, that “This war is lost”? Did Reid ever offer to help win the Iraq war?

13. Financial meltdown

How did Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd get away with pulling the plug on the economy with so little public criticism? Had Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought off the leaders of both major parties?

14. Global warming

Despite the increased rate of carbon dioxide emissions during most of your administration, how did the planet manage to avoid further warming?

President Bush says he now plans to write a memoir on his White House years. If he won’t take these questions now, he’d be wise to put the answers in the book.

Frank Warner

See also: Discussion at No Left Turns.

Comments

[CJW]

You always go over that Palestinian statehood thing as though they had to concede nothing. You are still wrong. That had to concede Israel's right to exist, no small matter at all.

[Frank Warner]

My point is, we should have made sure the Palestinians conceded Israel's rights publicly before we conceded publicly that they could have a state.

If the Palestinians today were still unsure that the U.S. would ever consider an independent state for them, even if they recognized Israel's right to exist, they'd be more careful to show their ability to run a nation peacefully.

Palestinian statehood was an almost unimaginable dream when it was never talked about on the other side of the bargaining table. Now the Palestinians assume they have it.

[jj mollo]

It doesn't matter what the "Palestinians" concede or don't concede. There is no representative entity of those people, by that name or any other, which could conceivably make a promise that it could be expected to keep. There is no there there.

[Frank Warner]

Arafat had the power to enter a fairly detailed peace treaty in 2000. But he didn't.

Now, after 9-11 and our "two-state" concession, things are far too chaotic to expect any Palestinian leader will have enough respect and trust to hammer out an agreement of any importance. We're at least a few years away from another real opportunity.

By the way, I asked these 14 questions in part to find out how President Bush reached some of the decisions he made. He may have some real good reasons for making decisions that look crazy from the outside.

Still, no one is asking Bush anything except the trap questions like, How bad was liberating Iraq? Do you regret punishing Valerie Plame (as if)? Do you hate yourself as much as we Democratic news reporters hate you?

[jj mollo]

Yes, I found the atmosphere of that last press conference appalling. They were almost embarrassed that they were there. You'd think he was a pederast.

I don't think he will go down as a great president, but he did some great things and that's what they should have dwelt on. He'll probably do great things in the future. He's not a stupid man.

[Frank Warner]

I'll judge each president by how many of the oppressed he has freed and how many tyrants he has made tremble.