Bush Administration

WEST CORNWALL, Conn. - Now that United Nations weapons inspectors have arrived in Iraq, most Americans want the inspection process to work. But the hawks in the Bush administration are petrified that it will, and doing their best to undermine it. As recently as Nov. 21, Richard Perle, a top Pentagon adviser and No. 1 cheerleader for war in Iraq, told a group of astonished British parliamentarians that even a "clean bill of health" from U.N. chief weapons...

Finally, someone who sees things clearly! Cal Thomas hit the nail on the head by asking "why would you think you would be better off in four years [under Obama] when you're worse off today than you were four years ago?" ("A winning pick," Aug. 15). I was happy to see a change four years ago, hoping that a new administration was the answer to some of our many problems. But I haven't seen any movement in the right direction. Can we seriously blame the Bush administration forever? A change every four years sends a serious message: Get it cleaned up during your first term and we will happily vote you in for a second.

WASHINGTON - Until Oct. 3, the Bush administration had achieved nearly perfect pitch in the war against terror. Along with Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush had captured, in word and deed, the magnitude of the life or death struggle we now face against Islamo-fascism. Mr. Bush promised in his speech before Congress that in fighting terror he would not "tire," he would not "falter," he would not "fail." He has faltered already. Saying now - now - that the United States supports the idea of a Palestinian state is to reward our enemies.

I disagree with the conclusion drawn of your editorial about the Justice Department's Operation Fast and Furious ("Faster and more furiously," June 22). While it's not as pressing an issue as the economy, the Fast and Furious scandal is important, and it's important that the American people get some answers. Contrary to the way it was portrayed in your editorial, Fast and Furious was very different from the program the Bush administration ran. Under the Bush administration, the guns were tracked.

WASHINGTON -- The White House stepped up its pressure yesterday on senators engaging in direct talks with Syrian leaders, saying their trips to Damascus risk undermining U.S. efforts to encourage democracy in the Middle East. The visits come at a particularly difficult time for the Bush administration, which has largely rejected the recommendation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that the United States engage with Syria and Iran to bring the sectarian violence in Iraq under control. The administration's relations with Damascus are in a deep freeze in response to, among other things, suspicions that Syria has been involved in at least two high-profile political assassinations in Lebanon and has blocked international attempts to investigate the killings.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is off to a rough start in its relations with Russia, and much of the reason is its insistence that Russia cease selling military technology to Iran. The Bush team is right to worry about Russian arms sales to Iran, a country that still supports terrorism, refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist, and sits astride the critical Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. But the administration is wrong to pick up where the Clinton administration left off and treat all such sales equally.

WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials are becoming increasingly concerned about how to handle thousands of Iraqi refugees, including a number of deserters who may become targets of the Iraqi military once U.S. and allied forces leave the country.With neither Saudi Arabia nor Kuwait willing to accept the refugees, the United States is exploring the possibility of camps in the 9-mile-wide border zone to be monitored by U.N. forces under a permanent cease-fire resolution now awaiting approval.

WASHINGTON -- A report by the federal archivists who collected thousands of White House computer tapes in the waning hours of the Bush administration indicates that several sets of the tapes, ordered preserved by a federal judge, have been lost.A Feb. 16 memo from the National Archives panel that gathered the material said that "many dates are missing" from the piles of computer tapes hastily collected in the final 18hours of the administration.A lawyer involved in the case that led to the judge's order said it appeared that "several sets of tapes had been erased, perhaps inadvertently."

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is ending its days i power with a series of striking decisions affecting national parks, forests, agriculture, land, industrial wastes and endangered species.The decisions -- some supported by business interests, some by environmentalists -- make this the most active period of the Bush presidency on natural resource issues.Just last week, the U.S. Forest Service, a unit of the Department of Agriculture, said it would end clear-cutting on 5.3 million acres of national forest in the Sierra Nevada to save the habitat of the California spotted owl and head off a possible threat of its extinction.

WASHINGTON -- It may sound peculiar, but the question being asked in Washington these days is whether George W. Bush, the president's oldest son, is becoming the Nancy Reagan of the Bush White House.Put another way: Is the younger George Bush the member of the first family with the most political clout?Events last week suggested as much.It was George W. Bush who first gave John H. Sununu the authoritative word that his time was up as guardian of the Oval Office. Twenty-four hours later, the normally combative Mr. Sununu quietly handed his resignation to the president.

Reviewing the multibillion-dollar U.S. aid program in Afghanistan two years ago, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pronounced it a "heartbreaking" failure and promised to make a successful aid program the centerpiece of a revamped strategy to defeat the Taliban. Recent U.S. government reports suggest that the Obama administration instead doubled down on a flawed strategy, pouring large sums into projects that have fueled corruption, distorted local economies and left Afghanistan with technology it won't be able to maintain after NATO forces leave.

Peggy Alley says President Obama should be impeached (Readers respond, Nov. 8). I remind Ms. Alley however, that all the conditions she mentions, including enforcement of immigration laws, existed, and in most cases were created, during the Bush administration. American citizens were losing jobs, having their homes foreclosed on and having to choose between food and prescriptions. Illegal immigrants were coming into the country in record numbers and sending their children to public schools.

Let's see: The Bush administration inherits a budget surplus, racks up record deficits, and more than doubles the national debt. No tea partiers. Through lax regulations, our economic house of cards comes tumbling down and Wall St., GM, and Chrysler are bailed out by the Bush administration. No tea partiers. President Obama enters office on Jan. 20, 2009. Within about a month we get the Tea Partiers. Perhaps Ron Smith is correct. Perhaps there is no racism involved. Perhaps it's only stupidity.

With the economy still sputtering, unfinished wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and health care reform under attack, it's little wonder President Barack Obama isn't eager for a distracting debate over the Bush administration's policy on torture to extract information from suspected terrorists. But a report released Monday revealing new details of the abuses carried out by the agency shows why Mr. Obama will have to tackle the subject. Indeed, within hours of the report's release, the Justice Department announced a criminal probe of alleged detainee abuses, and the White House said it will assume direct control of interrogations of terror suspects.

WASHINGTON - -After years of silence, top Bush administration political adviser Karl Rove went on a public relations offensive Thursday, saying he did nothing wrong in the controversial firings of nine U.S. attorneys and that soon-to-be-released White House documents and his closed-door congressional testimony on the subject will bear that out. Rove's comments, made through his lawyer Robert D. Luskin, prompted immediate charges of foul play by congressional...

From the beginning, President Barack Obama said he wanted to look forward rather than back. That's why he pledged early on to hold harmless CIA officers who engaged in torture deemed legal by the Bush administration, opposed prosecuting the Bush-era Justice Department lawyers who sanctioned the abuses, announced plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and began phasing out the military tribunals set up to try detainees. Mr. Obama took all these steps in an effort to put the mistakes of the past behind him and avoid opening a Pandora's box of bitter partisan recrimination over the policies of his predecessor that might distract from the important work of fixing the economy, health care, energy policy and foreign relations.

THE UNITED STATES belongs at the international conference on racism in Durban, South Africa. Although the Bush administration is hinting that it may skip the event, which begins Aug. 31, U.S. interests are better served by dialogue, not avoidance. The United States has expressed concern about an emerging attempt by some Arab countries to once again equate Zionism with racism. But organizers are already backing away from that, and the best way to fully quash the notion would be to attend the conference and speak up against it. Bush administration officials also are reluctant to confront the issue of reparations for slavery.

IT WAS A shocking statement, harmful to the national interest. But there was the Bush administration's undersecretary of state, John R. Bolton, speaking before a United Nations conference, opposing efforts to rein in the world's illicit arms trade. His negative statement led other delegates to conclude that Mr. Bolton and the Bush administration were trying to undermine the United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons, which meets in New York through July 20. Mr. Bolton was pandering to the gun lobby that contributed so heavily to the Bush campaign last year.