The general in charge of investigating torture at Abu Ghraib, on his experience in dealing with the Bush Administration:

“I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me,” Taguba said. “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”

And also:

“The whole idea that Rumsfeld projects—‘We’re here to protect the nation from terrorism’—is an oxymoron,” [Gen.] Taguba said. “He and his aides have abused their offices and have no idea of the values and high standards that are expected of them. And they’ve dragged a lot of officers with them.”

I seem to recall that Bush promised to restore integrity to the executive branch, and that he spent part of his 2000 convention speech (*) complaining about how Clinton had ruined the military, or something like that. And instead of being on honest president, Bush has run a government with a Will to Power ethic straight out of Lord of the Flies.

(*) I also found this quote of George Bush, speaking in the third person, lying about his plans for Social Security:

To seniors in this country: You earned your benefits, you made your plans, and President George W. Bush will keep the promise of Social Security. No changes, no reductions, no way.

Given that we recently had a big political debate in the country, for the better part of a year, about a Republican plan to privatize Social Security, the least the press could do would be to point out obvious contradictions between what the president says, and what he does. But I don’t recall reading any mention of anything like this.

At least Don Corleone kept his promises.

Posted by Ben Brothers at 1:38 pm, 18 June 2007 and filed under War and Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.