With less than three weeks left to go before President George W. Bush leaves office, the attempts to rewrite his legacy are starting to shift into overdrive — Laura Bush, Condoleeza Rice, and John Bolton are among the most recent minions who are busily trying to justify Bush’s criminal regime — as anything goes to save Bush’s legacy woes.
As noted by Helen Thomas, a columnist for Hearst Newspapers, both President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are leaving office, passing the disaster of their making on to President-elect Barack Obama, with no remorse and no regrets. For now I’ll focus on President Bush and his legacy. More information on Vice President Dick Cheney’s legacy of deception can be found in this article from The Nation. It has become rather entertaining watching the attempts to justify Bush’s Imperial Presidency. Many of Bush’s atrocities were committed with the blessings of many in Washington.
Courtesy of Bush, the U.S. became the recipient of illegal wars, Guantanamo, torture and rendition, an economy that was raped and pillaged by corporate greed and deregulation, gross negligence in the handling of the destruction of New Orleans, destruction of civil liberties and Constitutional protections at home, illegal surveillance and wiretapping, a politicized ‘Justice’ Department, a politicized Federal Court system, up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court and a ruined reputation abroad among many other things.
The hypocrisy from the Bush administration regarding torture is astounding. If it weren’t for the fact that many died while being illegally tortured — with written approval from President Bush — at the hands of the U.S., it could be considered funny. After trying to rewrite laws and justifying his use of torture and claiming impunity with colluded legal opinions from Justice Department lawyers, Bush’s Justice Department wants the son of a former Liberian President imprisoned for 147 years for torturing people when he was chief of a brutal paramilitary unit during his father’s reign. In other words, the Bush administration wants torture committed by political leaders to be punished in a court of law while trying to justify Bush’s use of torture. Incredible.