A few more examples:
Why did the President chastise Ashcroft when Ashcroft released the memo about the wall? The wall was one of the main reasons we didn't prevent 9/11. But releasing the memo made the Clinton Administration look bad. Horrors.
Why the cover up about Able Danger?
Why did Sandy Burgler get away with a slap on the wrist?
Why haven't the leakers and publishers of classified national security info been prosecuted?
Why did the Administration lose its nerve about confirming Saddam's intent to obtain yellowcake? Everything Bush said about it in the State of the Union was true and has been confirmed by two independent commissions (British and American).
Why was David Kaye prevented from talking to the American press about the transfer of WMD to Syria? He was allowed to talk to the British press about it.
And so on.
I have been frustrated at the lack of "fight back" that President Bush has used re: the War in Iraq...but, I have told myself that the reason he doesn't give speeches, or let his surrogates tell about those things, like the WMDS and such...is national security.
I think he feels that since the war is critical to our safety..and it is still in a precarious spot...for HIM to just try to justify himself..at the expense of possible "secrets" being told that could harm our troops or our strategy...he isn't going to do.
Re: the lack of prosecution of Sandy Berger and others...I have no idea...
As far as the Republicans that want to distance themselves because they are "tired of carrying his water"...they need to get with OTHER Republicans like Specter and Graham and McCain...that have spent this whole time telling President Bush that they are EQUAL to him.
Either the Congresscritters are responsible for themselves as EQUALS...or they feel it is President Bush's job to HELP them do theirs....can't have it both ways.
No wonder he doesn't trust people.
Some things on your list I did not know about. I didn't know Ashcroft got chastised for releasing The Wall memo. Sheesh. One of the few shining example of honesty and Ashcroft got taken to the wood shed?
And how distressed we all were when Sandy Burglar got to la-di-da walk away with classified documents! You got that right.
Oh an my, yeah...the infamous yellowcake uranium, Joe Wilson and Val Plame. Now THERE'S a fine example of a stupid decision. That mindless hysteria got played and did more damage than we will ever know. The fact that it was Armitage who did the deed got what? One day's play? While the Plame thing went on for MONTHS!
You know what I think? I think there's has got to be a reason, a nefarious reason, why so much was mishandled. For sure I've read so many Freep threads about all this, listened to Rush and others lament how leaks went unprosecuted, how Burglar got away with theft, on and on and on. There's only ONE reason, beyond total incompetance and I'm not ready to believe this YET. It has to be that there's a whole bunch in the pubbie party guilty of the same thing.
Now I don't know of any pubbie who stole classified docs from the national archives but put that aside for a sec. Perhaps some of the pubbie guys were ALSO leaking to the Times. Thus prosecutre NO ONE rather than risk losing a seat.
Or else it's total incompetance. Hey, perhaps Bush was overwhelmed what with the 2000 election delayed and all and he couldn't just willy-nilly fire everybody. Dubya has had MORE major events thrown at him than any other president almost. He had Katrina, that Chinese airplane thing early on, of course September 11, the war in Iraq, the Korean problem, the Syria/Lebanon thing. The mind boggles. The little bit Clinton had to be bothered with took too much time from his Monica Moments. And still we have a booming economy, have had no further terrorist attacks for five years and we survived 9-11 very well.
Sheesh, this administration and the pubbies should be flying high.
The fact that they're not illustrates SOMETHING...something seriously wrong with how things are run.