When Mike Brown resigned from FEMA, he kept an important streak alive among Bush staffers: no one is ever shown the door for incompetence.<\/p>\n
As near as I can tell, there have been four high-profile dismissals since Bush took five years ago:<\/p>\n
* Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill<\/b> was forced out<\/a> in December 2002 when Bush needed a scapegoat for poor economic performance. O’Neill’s big mistake was telling the president the truth about the White House’s misguided tax policies.<\/p>\n * White House Economic Advisor Lawrence Lindsey<\/b> was shown the door when he publicly contradicted<\/a> the president’s message about the costs of the war in Iraq. Lindsey said the war would cost the United States between $100 billion and $200 billion, while the rest of the Bush gang insisted<\/a> the war would largely finance itself<\/p>\n * Former Army Gen. and Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki<\/b> received less-than-lovely parting gifts from the Bush gang when he told Congress in February 2003 that it would take “several hundred thousand troops<\/a>” to occupy post-war Iraq. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz went after Shinseki with a vengeance, arguing that the general was “wildly off the mark<\/a>.”<\/p>\n * Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke<\/b> got the boot when he urged<\/a> the White House not to invade Iraq and insisted that they focus on Afghanistan, Al Queda, and Osama bin Laden.<\/p>\n These four have one thing in common — they told the truth and got punished for it, because the truth was inconsistent with the White House line. <\/p>\n