Quotes from article that appeared in the May 6, 2005 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
More GOP Fractures Emerge As Dems Batter Bush Policy
Sources familiar with what they call a White House reorganization say that President Bush is so dysfunctional that Vice President Dick Cheney has assumed virtual control over all policy initiatives. His former role as "chief enforcer" of Republican Party Congressional discipline has been taken up by top Bush political advisor Karl Rove. According to these sources, Rove has solicited Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League of B´nai B´rith (ADL), to run slander operations against targetted Democrats.
Rove, the sources report, has been working overtime for the past week, battling with leading Congressional Republicans who have shown signs of breaking with the White House on a wide range of issues, including: the controversial nomination of John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; the so-called "nuclear option," banning filibustering of judicial nominees; and some of the most draconian of the Bush-Cheney Schachtian budget cuts to social services, starting with Medicaid.
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In a dramatic show of force, there was an extraordinary demonstration outside the Capitol on April 26, in opposition to a Bush-mandated Senate Finance Committee hearing on privatization. It was perhaps an unprecedented sight in Congressional history: 125 Democratic Members of the House and Senate marched together before a 3,500-person rally outside the Capitol, to sign a "Declaration of Unity To Protect Social Security and Stop Privatization." (Scores more returned to Washington to sign it later in the day.)
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Meanwhile, Bush´s Bolton nomination is now in real jeopardy. The Los Angeles Times confirmed on April 27 that on ten separate occasions, Bolton asked the National Security Agency (NSA) to provide intercept data on U.S. government officials who were in contact with foreign governments. There is widespread speculation that among the officials Bolton tracked via NSA taps, were former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
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The White House took another big hit on April 27 when the House of Representatives, by an overwhelming vote of 406-20, reversed the new Ethics Committee rules that would have allowed the Committee´s five Republican members to block any investigation. Previous rules, now restored, assured that a tie vote would trigger an investigation. The issue centers on the corrupt House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who is under investigation by a Texas grand jury and several Federal law-enforcement agencies for taking payoffs from lobbyists, and other crimes.
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This emerging combination was also evident on April 26 when, by a 348-72 vote, the House of Representatives passed a bipartisan non-binding resolution calling for the Administration´s $16 billion in Medicaid cuts to be restored (the Senate had already done the same), and for the creation of a bipartisan Congressional commission to come up with a plan to save Medicaid. It is plain to all sensible lawmakers that Medicaid and Medicare—and not Social Security—confront a crisis in maintaining health-care infrastructure vital to national security.
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The danger in this situation, as one senior continental European source pointed out, is faced with the collapse of popular support for the Administration, that the forces behind the Bush-Cheney regime could seek a new "Reichstag fire" solution—a contrived incident which leads to more dictatorial power. At this moment, the only issue that bolsters support for the Bush-Cheney regime is the war on terrorism—initiated by the "Reichstag Fire"-type events of 9/11.
But all is not well on the counter-terror front, either. American troops remain horribly bogged down in Iraq. The State Department failed this week to suppress the annual report on terrorism, after Congressional Democrats, led by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), made an enormous public stink about the attempted cover-up. The report, released April 27, showed a tripling of serious terrorist incidents in 2004, compared to the previous year. Serious incidents in Iraq jumped from 27 in 2003 to 201 in 2004. And those numbers, experts report, are themselves significantly watered down.
