Friday, November 07, 2008

Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Coyote. Wile E. Coyote, genius.

There's an almost surreal quality to the outgoing Bush administration publicly warning president-elect Obama that terrorists see transitions between governments as a good time to attack.

This is after all the administration that ignored multiple warnings about the 9/11 attacks from Clinton administration officials like Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke or George Tenet in order to focus on the important issues like renewing Star Wars missile defense program. Berger warned Condoleeza Rice months before the attacks that terrorism would "consume far more of her time than she would have imagined."


“For the next 75 days, all of us must ensure that the next president and his team can hit the ground running,” Mr. Bush said in an emotional speech to hundreds of employees of the executive branch on the South Lawn of the White House.
Dude, the next president isn't going to just hit the ground running. He's going to leave your worthless team in the dust. You're about to see what he feels like to be the Coyote trying to catch the Roadrunner.

I did find this a bit annoying:


Mr. Bush has said he is determined to conduct an orderly transition. The White House wants to avoid a repeat of the kind of news reports that plagued President Bill Clinton when he left office amid questions about whether members of his staff, irked at having to turn their offices over to Republicans, removed the letter W from some computer keyboards.
How nice of the author of this article to underplay what exploded into a major vandalism scandal only a few days after Bush took office. It included accusations that the outgoing Clinton administration cut telephone wires, wrecked computers, left graffiti on the walls, stole presidential seals and even towels off of Air Force One. A General Accounting Office investigation found most of the accusations to be bunk.


"Certainly people inside the [Bush] administration fed this story," says an angry John Podesta, Clinton's former chief of staff. "At least they got what they wanted out of it."

A close look at the way the scandal mushroomed bolsters Podesta's view: The Bush administration helped the vandal scandal along, publicly appearing to try to douse the flames, while privately fanning them with detailed, off-the-record allegations of damage. On Tuesday, after the GAO's review was made public, Fleischer was left trying to spin himself out of a very deep hole, insisting he had tried to "knock down" the vandal story when it first emerged.

But a transcript of Fleischer's Jan. 25 briefing on the issue contradicts him. It shows the Bush spokesman coyly encouraging reporters' suspicions about the vandal scandal, while refusing to confirm or deny the reports of damage. According to one leading White House reporter, the story was also nudged along by two unnamed Bush aides.
Yesterday, Bush was referring to this "scandal" when he told his staff without any sense of irony to “conduct yourselves with the decency and professionalism that you have shown throughout my time in office.”
After 8 years of this administration we've seen decency and professionalism as something that are in short supply at this White House. Lying about their opponents and bare-knuckled politics are the way they conduct business. They have been from the start.

8 comments:

Ubermilf said...

A class act from the very beginning.

Randal Graves said...

I'd love to say 'don't let the door hit you bastards on the way out' only if the rest of the sentence would be 'as you're frogmarched to your jail cells where you'll be serving multiple life sentences in the beautiful Guantanamo facility' but then I wake up.

Bloody hell, how I hate these cellular creatures.*

*people reserved for actual people

Don Snabulus said...

Bush's vandalism extends to the entire republic. Obama is going to need a big mop.

Lockwood said...

You know, I had almost forgotten that eerie forshadowing of what the country was to face over the next 8 years. I had been under the impression that the whole vandal-scandal had turned out to be a hoax, and I'm glad to see that confirmed. Unfortunately, the trashing of the country, and the crap smeared all over everything, is all too real during this transition. I suspect (sadly) that Obama will be too much of a gentleman to even mention it, let alone undertake appropriate prosections.

Life As I Know It Now said...

It's always opposites day at the Bush White House so when he says he wants to help he really intends to hinder and when he says be professional he means when they are to act like underhanded shits.

Dean Wormer said...

ubermilf-

I'll say.

randal-

I think you're insulting cellular creatures.

don-

Great way of putting it.

lockwood-

In the article it mentions that Bush is setting up a non-partisan transition team to avoid these issues. More likely he wants to avoid accusations of vandalism. They think everybody is just as scummy as they are.

liberality-

Up is downism thrives at Bush White House.

Westcoast Walker said...

I didn't know about the vandal scandal - If Obama is true to his rhetoric he will rise above this sort of petty partisan posturing and get down to the business of undoing 8 years of criminal activity - though I am sure Dubya is going to throw one helluva kegger and barbeque before he leaves, and I am sure there will be chicken bones and beer cans all over the white house lawn.

Dean Wormer said...

westcoast-

It will be a terrible mess, no question. They're going to take all the "O"s from the keyboards.