I make a conscious and concerted effort to keep the tone on this site relatively subdued. Readers won’t find much in the way of profanity here, nor all-caps calls for Bush’s impeachment. It’s just not my style, no matter how frustrated I get.
That said, sometimes the Bush White House makes it awfully difficult to maintain a sense of restraint. Take, for example, some of the revelations from Bob Woodward’s interview on last night’s 60 Minutes.
For the most part, Woodward was sharing information that we already knew. There were three items, however, that I hadn’t heard before. In all seriousness, each of these could be fairly be characterized as possibly criminal conduct.
First, Bush diverted resources from Afghanistan to secretly prepare for war in Iraq without Congress’ approval.
Woodward says immediately after that, Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam — and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check.
“Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the preparations in Kuwait, specifically to make war possible,” says Woodward.
“Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn’t know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. …Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this.”
Some have noted the inherent problem with diverting resources away from a fight against the real enemy — Afghanistan and al Queda. That’s true, of course, and demonstrates how recklessly irresponsible the Bush administration has been. But then there’s the matter of diverting money without congressional approval.
There’s a hint of Iran-Contra here. Sure, Bush didn’t have to illegally sell arms to a sworn enemy the way Reagan did, but there’s the small matter of Bush taking money Congress allotted for one purpose and deciding, instead, that he’d rather secretly prepare for a different undeclared war. There’s a word to describe this kind of behavior: illegal.
Oddly enough, this wasn’t the most dramatic revelation from Woodward’s interview. This was:
“Saturday, Jan. 11, with the president’s permission, Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney’s West Wing office, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, is there with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says, ‘Top secret. No foreign.’ No foreign means no foreigners are supposed to see this,” says Woodward.
“They describe in detail the war plan for Bandar. And so Bandar, who’s skeptical because he knows in the first Gulf War we didn’t get Saddam out, so he says to Cheney and Rumsfeld, ‘So Saddam this time is gonna be out, period?’ And Cheney — who has said nothing – says the following: ‘Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.'”
[…]
But this wasn’t enough for Prince Bandar, who Woodward says wanted confirmation from the president. “Then, two days later, Bandar is called to meet with the president and the president says, ‘Their message is my message,'” says Woodward.
Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told 60 Minutes that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election — to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day.
Woodward says that Bandar understood that economic conditions were key before a presidential election: “They’re [oil prices] high. And they could go down very quickly. That’s the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly.”
It’s hard to describe how stunning this is. Much has been made of the fact that the White House told Bandar about the war in Iraq before they told Colin Powell. Frankly, I don’t care. Powell has been shut out of Bush’s foreign policy apparatus from the beginning. This isn’t a shock; it’s typical.
But consider what Woodward has explained here. The administration’s top officials shared classified information about military planning with a foreign ambassador. And not just any foreign ambassador — Saudi Arabia’s ambassador. Bandar and the Bushes may be close buddies, but Saudi Arabia’s role in the war on terror is rather, shall we say, ambiguous. How did Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Franks justify sharing this top secret information?
And finally, Woodward explained the Bush and Bandar discussed manipulating gas prices so as to help Bush’s political prospects in the election, reminiscent of another Reagan-era controversy.
In an administration scarred by scandal, this may be the most serious of them all. If the president conspired with a foreign government to influence a national election, it’s an impeachable offense. Period.