{"id":5763,"date":"2005-11-07T12:23:40","date_gmt":"2005-11-07T17:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5763"},"modified":"2005-11-07T12:23:40","modified_gmt":"2005-11-07T17:23:40","slug":"and-the-hacks-just-keep-on-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/and-the-hacks-just-keep-on-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"And the hacks just keep on coming"},"content":{"rendered":"

Given the Harriet Miers fiasco, the Mike Brown tragedy, and the White House’s general embrace of a “hackocracy<\/a>” in which political hacks are given key government posts, it’s tempting to think the Bush gang will be more cautious in appointing ideological allies to high office.<\/p>\n

And yet, it keeps happening. The New Republic noted<\/a> one of the brand new examples.<\/p>\n

Take Paul J. Bonicelli, who was just appointed to oversee the U.S. Agency for International Development’s democracy and governance programs, which play a vital role in Bush’s efforts to democratize Iraq and the broader Middle East. <\/p>\n

No doubt, Bonicelli will be a welcome addition. After all, he isn’t just any run-of-the-mill Bush hack. He’s an academic. Just before his appointment, Bonicelli served as dean of academic affairs at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, a fundamentalist institution whose motto is “For Christ and for liberty,” and which has had notable success placing its students in White House internships. Patrick Henry College requires all its affiliates to sign a “statement of faith” indicating that they believe “Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, is God come in the flesh,” “Jesus Christ literally rose bodily from the dead,” and “all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity.” <\/p>\n

How brilliant: If bringing democracy to the Middle East is the Bush administration’s crusade (and Muslims have been very touchy about Bush’s use of that word), why not put a real evangelist in charge? No doubt Muslims the world over will welcome someone looking to save them, not just from oppressive regimes, but from “conscious torment for eternity” as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, to summarize, the man Bush tapped to coordinate our military intelligence in the war on terror also happened to be an anti-Muslim religious zealot<\/a>, while the man Bush tapped to help bring democracy to the Middle East is a Christian evangelist who teaches at a fundamentalist college.<\/p>\n

I wonder what Al-Jazeera viewers will make of this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given the Harriet Miers fiasco, the Mike Brown tragedy, and the White House’s general embrace of a “hackocracy” in which political hacks are given key government posts, it’s tempting to think the Bush gang will be more cautious in appointing ideological allies to high office. And yet, it keeps happening. The New Republic noted one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}