Don’t blame Bush; he just works there

April 13, 2007

The disconnect was awkward and difficult to explain. On Tuesday, Bush said extending tours of duty for U.S. troops in Iraq is “unacceptable.” On Wednesday, Bush’s Defense Department announced that extending tours of duty is now administration policy.

Yesterday, I urged someone in the White House press corps to ask presidential spokesperson Dana Perino if Bush was clueless on Tuesday. As is turns out, today, someone did.

Q So why did he tell the American Legion that people would be staying in Iraq longer because of the Democrats, when his own Pentagon, 24 hours later, was going to keep people there longer?

PERINO: Well, one, I don’t know if the President knew about the — the meeting — remember, yesterday morning is when Secretary Gates came and talked to the President. […]

Q And so the President didn’t know about his own policy until Wednesday?

PERINO: I’m not aware that the President knew that there was going to be — that Secretary Gates had come to any decisions.

Yes, it’s the ever-popular “Don’t blame me, I just work here” defense. The Commander in Chief, in a time of war, is so concerned about the troops’ tours of duty that he has no idea that his Defense Secretary is extending deployments from 12 to 15 months. Better yet, that’s not a partisan attack from a White House critic — that’s the White House’s own defense to explain why the right hand doesn’t know why the further-to-the-right is hand is doing.

There is, however, another possible explanation, which the Bush gang may be reluctant to admit.

Nico explains:

What explains the strange timing? As Atrios noted, when the Pentagon announced its new policy on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Gates said he was angry that the news had been leaked to the press. That has sparked suspicion that the deployment extension was actually supposed to be announced after Bush had vetoed Congress’ Iraq legislation “so that he could try to claim it was their fault.” In that scenario, Bush’s remarks on Tuesday were just meant to prime the pump. […]

Could it really be that President Bush was completely unaware of the Pentagon’s new policy until hours before it was made public? Or is the White House now trying to cover up a botched plan to blame Congress for its own decision to further strain the U.S. military, a move that has hurt Bush politically and angered troops on the ground?

When “we’re clueless” is more politically palatable than the alternative explanation, you know this is a White House in a tailspin.

You can’t buy this kind of comedy. We’ve known from the beginning that *everything* in the White House is done by and for the political wing, but to have this transparent attempt at political gamesmanship blow up like this is beyond priceless.

They are fools, they will always be fools. And now they aren’t even clever fools anymore. Hilarious.

  • They are fools, they will always be fools. And now they aren’t even clever fools anymore. Hilarious.

    … and unfortunately, we have a year and a half left to tolerate these cretins.

  • Yep. The commenter Atrios cites is on the money, in my view. These gutys have made a lot of enemies over at the Pentagon, and it’s biting them in the ass from here on out.

  • Noticing that the leak occurred shortly after the President’s speech, I couldn’t help but wondering if the leaker recognized the ruse for what it was and deliberately short-circuited it.

  • Who could possibly think that extending every single soldier’s tour of duty in Iraq another three months could possibly be kept under wraps? These guys are complete idiots.

  • Thanks god someone leaked it! That kind of Rovian tactic used to work to stain the Dems.

  • See, if we had a “war czar” (or “Generalissimo”, as I like to call it) in charge of our ratscrew-of-a-war, Bush could spend more time doing the stuff he’s more qualified for, like supervising Easter egg hunts and reading to 1st graders.

  • Defense Secretary Gates said he was angry that the news had been leaked to the press.

    Oooh! Can we call this GatesGate?

    Where can the White House go from here? This is “I’m not going to fire Rummy”/”Rummy, you’re fired,” on steriods. Instead of a lag of a couple of months between contradictory statements, we’re talking hours and the impact is a lot bigger than one arsehole finally going his way. Even if there wasn’t a conspiracy afoot to blame the extension on the Democrats (‘cha right) how can the Spintronic3000 produce an explanation without making someone look like a fool?

    If Bush really didn’t know about this drastic measure it means Gates did know and didn’t tell him. Shouldn’t he be fired? If Bush knew and did his speechifying anyway, he lied to a bunch of veterans. Way to support the troops.

    I guess if they get really desperate they could say they’re just kidding and only wanted America to see what will happen if the Democrats don’t grab ankles and hope people are too busy feeling relieved to call BushCo a bunch of pre-school drop outs.

    Man, I’m getting tired of popcorn. Time for some nachos.

    And is it me or does Perino already look a little shop worn?

  • By the way, please consider what a meltdown this will be for the White House Office of Smear and Slime ( “Hello, Mr. Rove!” )

    Republicans like to grab onto one tag line and beat it into the ground, constantly hammering it into people’s skulls until their brains turn to jelly.

    They probably figured this one would be good for a couple of weeks and may not even have a good backup line to take its place, at least not for a while.

    Look for the White House to sound even more clueless in the media for a bit as they’re forced to recyle the same tired old lines that will make them seem even more irrelevant than before.

    I love it.

  • The answer is orange,

    And is it me or does Perino already look a little shop worn?

    Agreed. And the freudian slip of “12 years” is telling. months, years, whatever…

  • Is it me or does it seem that since Plamegate erupted the White House’s political operatives (I’m looking at you Karl) have been so busy ass-covering and dealing with their own problems that they can no longer deal with looming scandals preemptively like they used to?

    I’m glad someone in the Pentagon spilled the beans on the White House’s latest stabbing of the troops in the back. The price of loyalty to W is far too high for anyone in uniform to not look after themselves first.

  • This was the information equivalent of a fragging. Bush would definitely have tried to use that tour extension as a weapon. He’s just that scummy.

    And gee, I wonder why a military insider would leak that information, when they knew it would really hurt George W Bush, who served so admirably, and now leads the troops so intelligently?

    Heh.

  • Defense Secretary Gates said he was angry that the news had been leaked to the press.

    There’s another, more justified explanation for such anger. Ideally, the DoD would’ve informed the families of the troops first, instead of letting them hear the bad news via the media.

    Indeed, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) complained about this very thing, though she blamed the Pentagon with botching the announcement.

  • Like I said yesterday, there is no “starnge timing.” The supply for this had to be planned out months in advance, because the “stuff” these 15-month troops will need is the same “stuff” that’s going to these so-called “surge” brigades. Add to this the NG unit from Ohio that’s going over in June, instead of their scheduled deployment (which was supposed to be in 2009), and it’s pretty obvious that this country’s getting itself “Bu$hwhacked….”

  • 2Manchu wrote:

    “…Bush could spend more time doing the stuff he’s more qualified for, like supervising Easter egg hunts and reading to 1st graders.”

    Now you are really giving him a lot of credit there. I’m not sure he’s even qualified for either of those jobs.

  • I think Bush would do very well reading to 1st graders, as long as somebody helped him with the big words like “and” and “the”.

  • Now we’ll never get to see the “lost” e-mails. All resources are now focused on finding the leaker.

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