The Center for American Progress has really sunk their teeth into the controversy surrounding the Bush administration diverting $700 million from appropriations meant for the war Afghanistan and spending it to prepare for a different war in Iraq. CAP has a helpful backgrounder exploring the various legal obligations the White House appears to have ignored and today’s Progress Report is also chock full of scandal tidbits.
At this point, there are two main tracks to the controversy: the lack of proof to bolster the White House’s claims and the ever-changing spin that seeks to explain the scandal away.
First, it seems like it would be surprisingly easy for the Bush administration to make this controversy go away. White House officials realize that Congress had to be notified about the transfer and now insist that lawmakers were notified. Fine. Prove it.
While the administration sent two documents to Congress outlining some spending, both the 8/9/02 and 10/17/02 White House notifications in question said nothing about Iraq, instead only mentioning deliberately vague things like “increased situational awareness” and “increased worldwide posture.”
How about Scott McClellan? Any help from the press office? Afraid not.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan did not deny the president secretly diverted money, but claimed, “Congress was kept fully informed of all expenditures.” He provided no proof. He also had no answer as to why top congressional appropriators such as Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) said they had never been informed.
Second, there’s the wholly unpersuasive spin.
Wolfowitz had a swing and a miss:
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz also did not deny Woodward’s fundamental assertion, instead trying to absolve the White House by claiming, “No funds were made available that had Iraq as the only objective.” Wolfowitz also implied there was no need to notify Congress because Congress supposedly authorized the spending in its October 2002 war resolution. But that resolution included no authorization to spend money without notifying Congress. White House ally Sen. John Warner (R-VA) tried to shut further questioning down, saying, “At this point I think the matter has been fully responded to.” But at least one conservative lawmaker indicated that Wolfowitz’s answers were unsatisfactory: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “said there would be hearings into possible fund diversions and ‘the mechanics of moving money around.'”
Bush’s lackeys on the Hill want to change the subject:
House Appropriations Chairman Bill Young (R-FL), the man charged with overseeing federal spending, also refused to deny Woodward’s charges. He instead tried to deflect the issue with a non-sequitur, “saying the $700 million was small compared with $159 billion in additional money Congress has provided to fight terrorism since the 2001 attacks.” He implied that because over a half billion dollars was not a lot of money, and because of a supposed “lack of specificity” by Woodward, “it is impossible to determine what specific funds” were spent without congressional approval.
White House spin enters the realm of the absurd:
The LA Times reports White House Deputy Press Secretary Trent Duffy also did not deny Woodward’s charges, instead acknowledging that money was used for a “significant buildup” of troops in the Persian Gulf — but only “to aid weapons inspectors.” Of course, the United Nations’ weapons inspectors never requested hundreds of thousands of troops to mass on the Iraqi border.
And Condi Rice makes a fool of herself:
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told CBS’s Face the Nation that, while she had no details about the $700 million, circumventing Congress was acceptable because Afghanistan and Iraq are “within the entire region.” Her answer ignored the fact that Asia and the Mideast are separate geographic regions – more than 1400 miles separate Kabul and Baghdad. By Rice’s logic, this would mean Austin, Texas is in the same region as Nicaragua. In fact, the U.S. State Department has two separate bureaus and two separate Assistant Secretaries of State to deal with Iraq and Afghanistan. Her answer also ignores the fact that fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan (as approved by Congress) had nothing to do with invading Iraq.