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Dubya's long shown a troubling interest in reviving the bad old days of the Republican Eighties. First he resuscitates a crew of reprobates who first broke the la ... er, served under Ronald Reagan and Dubya's daddy, and now he's reviving the sort of illegal acts that led to the Iran-Contra scandal.
Here's Bob Woodward, as quoted at cbsnews.com from his 60 Minutes appearance last night:
"[On Nov. 21, 2001,] President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically, and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, ‘What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.’"Rumsfeld reportedly told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam -- and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check.
”Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the preparations in Kuwait, specifically to make war possible.”
“Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. …Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the Treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this."
Woodward is, of course, right about this sort of financial shell games being explicitly prohibited in the Constitution -- specifically in Article I, Section 9, Clause 7.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
This bunch of crooks is not just inept or misguided, folks. They're evil, lying, conniving, dangerous bastards.
Posted by brett at 05:39 PM | TrackBack