Fashioning Deadly
Fiascos
By MAUREEN DOWD,
Op-Ed Columnist, NYTimes on the Web, November 5, 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, bubbleheaded
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 U.S. 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
U.S. 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 U.S. 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.
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