ALL THE PRESIDENT'S CROOKS AND WEAKLINGS

McClellan

Powell


Tenet

Speer

Former Bush II Press Secretary Scott McClellan has published his memoir of his years in the White House. Surprisingly, it is highly critical of his boss. McClellan now joins a unsavory group of current and ex-officials in the Bush II administration, an analysis of which makes evident some of the reasons why it was the worst in American history.

There was Paul Wolfowitz. The neocon Deputy Defence Secretary was a chief architect of the Iraq War. Like all of the neocon hawks, he studiously avoided serving in the U.S. military. He grossly underestimated the war's cost and did not plan for its aftermath. He left his post in 2005 for his sinecure engineered by Bush II - the Presidency of the World Bank. Faster than you can say Moqtada al-Sadr, he found a girlfriend among the Bank's staff. He gave her a healthy salary increase. When accused of being in a conflict of interest, working through Dick Cheney's daughter he got his gal pal seconded to the State Department. Alas, it didn't work. He was forced to resign in disgrace - but not before he negotiated a healthy severance payment for himself.

There was Bush's first Secretary of State, Colin Powell - the blue chip black Republican General and hero of Desert Storm. He either knowingly or with wilful blindness beat the drum in the UN and elsewhere about Saddam's non-existent weapons of mass destruction and the security dangers they posed for the world. Soon after, Powell says, he began to have misgivings about the intelligence giving rise to the phony weapons of mass destruction issue. He also disagreed as to the conduct of the War. But he did not resign. He served to the end of the first Bush term. He voiced public criticism of the Iraq war only after leaving office. While he continued to serve Bush despite his state of unease, thousands of Iraqis and American soldiers continued to die. Of course, he wrote a book about his hellish experience and has made millions on the rubber chicken circuit since, dining out on his awful Bush II stories.

Then there is George Tenet. Tenet was a holdover from the Clinton years as Director of the CIA. Big George and his officials provided the faulty intelligence of Saddam's WMDs. Tenet assured his boss that proof of the WMDs was a "slam dunk case." He also approved torture techniques. He mercifully resigned in June of 2004. For his incompetence, the President awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Tenet too has written a book of his experiences which has made money. Like Powell, he is now critical of his former boss but - again like Powell - didn't have the guts to resign in protest when most of the blood was being spilled. Like most of Bush's chicken hawks, Tenet had never served in military service of his country.

Then there was Lewis 'Scooter' Libby. 'Scooter' - such a harmless, upbeat, chipper name. 'Scooter,' had been Bush's Assistant to the President, Chief of Staff to Cheney, and was Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs. He was found guilty by a jury of his peers of five charges including perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame outing affair. For his transgressions, 'Scooter' was fined 250 grand, ordered to do 400 hours of community service and sentenced to three years in the slammer. Following upon his sentencing, his former employer Bush commuted the three years to zero. 'Scooter' also avoided serving his country in uniform as a young man, thus joining the 'chicken hawk' brigade of people like Wolfowitz, Cheney, Tenet and Bush (records of whose military career are mysteriously scant).

Then of course there is former Defence Secretary Rumsfeld, the serial blunderer and bullshit artiste of the war, who incompetently underestimated the manpower and financial demands of the mission, provided inferior equipment and supplies for his men in uniform, and consistently lied to the American people about the war's progress. Rummy also approved torture methods. He used a signing machine to write his letters of condolences to aggrieved families who lost loved ones who were fighting the war. He finally packed it in during Bush's second term amid mounting public criticism and unease about the war. At last report he is seeking a publisher for his memoirs so he can add to his ill-gotten gazillions earned in the private sector pre-Bush II. He is also facing lawsuits and criminal proceedings in several corners of the world that are likely to harass him to his grave.

There is the Vice President Dick Cheney. Joined at the hip was Rummy, he still maintains there were connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam, an allegation akin to the one about the moon being made of green cheese. He too is a supporter of torture and whatever is going on in Guantanamo. Cheney was a heavy duty oil guy and CEO of the renowned Halliburton corporation before going back into politics to become Bush II's Rasputin. Given his oily persona he has taken a keen interest in the Iraqi oil fields and the multinational oil companies' access to them. His dishonesty with the American people about the War in Iraq is only matched by Rumsfeld and the President himself. Cheney too is likely to be hounded by litigation in the years ahead arising from his war time actions, the cost of which - like Rumsfeld's - is likely to be paid by the U.S. taxpayer. Cheney too never wore a U.S. military uniform.

And now an unlikely character emerges out of the shadows. A forty year old cherubic, portly, Texas motormouth, Scott McClellan, a former press secretary to Bush II from 2003 to 2006. Like Tenet and Powell, the frat boy and political groupie has written a book of his White House experience. Its weighty title is 'What happened.' In his oeuvre he claims to have had grave misgivings about Bush's Presidency. Bush, he said, was interested in carrying on a permanent campaign and not thoughtfully and objectively addressing issues. He further opined that the Plame incident, Hurricane Katrina, and the war were all badly handled. McClellan, like Tenet and Powell, did not see fit to quit and publicly criticize the administration. In fact, he was pushed out of his press secretary job. Thus, the mayhem and abuses continued with not a peep from McClellan - until now.

Like Tenet and Powell, McLellan resurrects the memory of Albert Speer. Speer, you will remember, was the brilliant German Nazi architect who masterminded much of the Third Reich's wartime plans and was responsible for maintaining the production of armaments during the war. While he was on trial in Nuremberg after the war, he did a mea culpa and apologized. Thus he, unlike many of his colleagues, escaped the gallows and was out of the Spandau jail after a measly twenty years.

The consequences for the Bush sad cast of characters are not as serious as they were for Speer and his cronys. However, one can see the same process taking place. They are in effect apologizing or making excuses to avoid the wrath of history in the years ahead.

With friends like these running the country, the United States certainly needs no enemies. The Bush years were a perfect storm - a dumb, ideologically driven, uncurious President surrounded by reckless and cowardly ideologues like himself, or weaklings who although they may have known better, did nothing to stop the carnage. So history will judge.

SANA'A : LAST OF THE 1001 NIGHTS

I have been traveling far from home over these past 10 days. As a result, thoughts of Fast Eddie or Bush's pal Steve Harper have happily subsided. They have been replaced by thoughts and observations of one of the most interesting locales of my journey.

I'm writing in my hotel room in Sana'a, the capital of the Republic of Yemen. It is Tuesday, 9 AM (or Monday, 10 PM Mountain Standard Time in Calgary). This is my third visit to Yemen since 1998. I am staying at the 'Movenpick' Hotel, a modern concrete and marble, supposedly 5-star establishment, operated by the Swiss food, restaurant and hotel chain conglomerate. The hotel is a couple of years old and situated on a dramatic rise overlooking the entire spread-out city of 2 million. It boasts a spa, a few restaurants, large out-door pool area, etc. and could be found anywhere in the world. Its staff that serves the public at the front line are largely European or Philippino, with a smattering from East Africa and Yemen. Despite the City's Arabian and Islamic history, and the country's location at the bottom of the Saudi Peninsula, a visitor can have a scotch in the basement disco bar or his room. Non-alcoholic beverages only are served in the public areas.

The Movenpick is symbolic of the new Yemen. The expanisive, gaudy and elaborate Qatari embassy across the street from my hotel is also a part of the new Yemen, as are the villa palaces closer to the center of town which are owned and operated by wealthy Sheikhs. So too are the Porsche and Audi car dealerships.

But there is also still plenty of the old Yemen to be seen and savored. Sana'a is an ancient city with a thousand minarets and at least one mosque that almost dates back to the days of Mohammed. The old walled city in the center of town - a UNESCO heritage site - is now part of a sprawling urban mass stretching for miles in all directions.

The inhabitants of the old walled city used to lock themselves up within its walls at night not more than 50 or so years ago. It contains thousands of traditional Yemeni, flat-roofed, earth toned, Arabic-style homes of two, three or four levels, built side-by-side over the last several hundred years. Its streets are narrow and winding and the population dense.

In the city throughout the day, we see Arab men who wear traditional headbands, smocks and sandals and women wearing pitch-black shrouds and veils with narrow, horizontal eye-slits in their veils. Poorer women, and there are plenty of them, are generally completely covered and clad in untailored and multicolored fabric remnants. With sky-high birthrates, kids are running around everywhere. There are also plenty of refugees throughout the city eking out a living by seeking alms. Usually the ones seen are women who have fled from the tribulations of East Africa directly across the Red Sea.

The old Suq, also in the center of town, with its vast and complex maze of narrow lanes and streets, is a scene right out of an old Warner Brothers adventure yarn. There are stalls hawking everything from cell phones to frankensense. The jimbaya, the traditional sheathed curved dagger, encased in brightly colored Islamic design belts, is a favorite buy for tourists. Even today, ordinary Yemeni men wear the jimbaya together with the rest of their Arab garb of smocks, sandals and head-dresses in the towns and cities. The jimbaya worn by Yemeni men is as ubiquitous as the tie worn by men in North America.

People are largely friendly, with quick smiles and happy demeanors.

But there is third world, grinding poverty as well. North American orderliness and cleanliness on the streets and roads are invariably absent. But the colours, architecture, Islamic calls to prayer, and the Arab style are not to be missed. Sana'a is an exotic city. It is changing, and the changes have been significant in 10 years. But it retains its unique charm. This is a place to visit and enjoy.

On the political front, Yemen is a tolerant and struggling democracy, that holds general and local elections. There are tribal confrontations from time to time, as well as a Shia revolutionary movement in the north that from time to time is costly in terms of lives lost. So far, the Government continues to prevail. The memory of the Civil War in the early nineties however, lingers in the minds of its people.

One last point. We see in Sana'a a multitude of pictures of Sadam Hussein and Moqtada Al Sadr, side-by-side, in store and car windows. Sadam and Moqtada Al Sadr were mortal enemies - one secular and Sunni and the other religious and Shia. Yet together, in Yemen, they are elevated to hero status. What is the westerner to make of that?

Sadam was always more-or-less well regarded in Sunni-dominated Yemen. Yemen did not support the coaltion organized by Bush I in the first Gulf war. Moqtada Al Sadr, the firebrand clergyman and the Iraqi Shia leader of the Shia militia in Baghdad, and Sadam were mortal enemies. Indeed, Sadam was responsible for the hanging of Moqtada's father, and Moqtada's friends (some people even say Moqtada was there in person) presided over Sadam's execution. So how could it be that these mortal enemies are widely regarded together as heroes to the Yemeni people?

The Arab proverb states that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' Historically, Sadam was a minor friend of Yemen, and Moqtada, neither friend nor foe of Yemen, but certainly an enemy of Sadam's. So how do they both become friends of Yemen such that Yemenis rank them as heroes? Because they have an enemy who from the Yemeni perspective is an enemy of Yemen. And who might that be?

The public display of the plethora of photographs of those mortal enemies together as heroes in the streets of Yemen, points to the dismal failure of the policy of the United States Government in the Middle East. To most of the 25 or so million Yemenis, George W. Bush's America is no friend of Yemen.