Think Progress gives a run down on the outgoing Bush Administration in The Top 43 Appointees Who Helped Make Bush The Worst President Ever:
1. Dick Cheney — The worst Dick since Nixon. The man who
shot his friend while in office. The “
most powerful and controversial vice president.” Until he got the job, people used to actually think it was a bad thing that the vice presidency has historically been a do-nothing position. Asked by PBS’s Jim Lehrer about why people hate him, Cheney rejected the premise, saying, “
I don’t buy that.” His top placement in our survey says otherwise.
2. Karl Rove — There wasn’t a scandal in the Bush administration that
Rove didn’t have his fingerprints all over — see
Plame,
Iraq war deception,
Gov. Don Siegelman,
U.S. Attorney firings,
missing e-mails, and more. As senior political adviser and later as deputy chief of staff, “
The Architect” was responsible for
politicizing nearly every agency of the federal government.
3. Alberto Gonzales —
Fundamentally dishonest and
woefully incompetent, Gonzales was involved in a
series of
scandals, first as White House counsel and then as Attorney General. Some of the most notable: pressuring a “feeble” and “barely articulate” Attorney General Ashcroft at his
hospital bedside to sign off on Bush’s illegal wiretapping program;
approving waterboarding and other
torture techniques to be used against detainees; and leading the
firing of U.S. Attorneys deemed not sufficiently loyal to Bush.
4. Donald Rumsfeld — After
winning praise for leading the U.S. effort in ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001, the former Defense Secretary
strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq and then grossly
misjudged and
mishandled its aftermath. Rumsfeld is also responsible for
authorizing the use of torture against terror detainees in U.S. custody; according to a bipartisan Senate report, Rumsfeld “conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were
appropriate treatment for detainees.”
5. Michael Brown — This
former commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association was appointed by Bush to head FEMA in 2003. After Katrina
made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, Brownie promptly did a “
heck of a job”
bungling the government’s relief efforts, and was
sent back to Washington a few days later. He
was forced to resign shortly thereafter.
6. Paul Wolfowitz — As Deputy Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2005, Wolfowitz was one of the primary architects of the Iraq war, arguing for the invasion
as early as Sept. 15, 2001. Testifying before Congress in February 2003, Wolfowitz said that it was “
hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself.” Wolfowitz eventually admitted that “
for bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction,” as a justification for war, “because it was the one reason everyone [in the administration] could agree on.”
7. David Addington — “Cheney’s Cheney” was the “
most powerful man you’ve never heard of.” As the leader of Bush’s legal team and Cheney’s chief of staff, Addington was the
biggest proponent of some of Bush’s most
notorious legal abuses, such as
torture and warrantless surveillance, and is a
loyal follower of the so-called unitary executive theory.
8. Stephen Johnson — The “
Alberto Gonzales of the environment,” EPA Administrator Johnson
subverted the agency’s mission at the behest of the
White House and
corporate interests,
suppressing staff recommendations on pesticides,
mercury,
lead paint,
smog, and
global warming.
9. Douglas Feith — Undersecretary of Defense for Policy from 2001-2005, Feith headed up the notorious
Office of Special Plans, an in-house Pentagon intelligence shop devised by Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to
produce intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. A subsequent investigation by the Pentagon’s Inspector General found the OSP’s work produced “
conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence.”
10. John Bolton — As Undersecretary of State, Bolton offered a
strong voice in favor of invading Iraq and pushed for the U.S. to disengage from the
International Criminal Court and key international
arms control agreements. A recess appointment landed Bolton the job of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, despite his stringent
animosity toward the world body. Today, he spends his time calling for
war with Iran.
11. John Yoo — As a lawyer for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Yoo
authored a series of legal memosdetainee to be buried alive.
12. Ari Fleischer — Bush’s first press secretary helped redefine the role as that of liar-in-chief rather than informer of the public,
earning a reputation as “the world’s most dishonest flack.” Whereas his successors sometimes looked uncomfortable lying, Fleischer was having fun, spinning a cowed and gullible press corps through two massive tax cuts and the initiation of a war undertaken on false pretenses.
13. John Ashcroft — In 2003, as Bush’s first Attorney General, Ashcroft
approved waterboarding and other torture techniques on detainees. Ashcroft’s nomination was controversial, as he had a history of
opposing school desegregation. The chief
architect of the invasive Patriot Act, Ashcroft maintains to this day that Bush is “among the most
respectful of all leaders ever” of civil liberties.
14. Henry Paulson — Even as the financial system was crashing down around him, Treasury Secretary Paulson insisted for months that the banking system was “
safe and sound.” Once he decided that the economy needed saving, Paulson requested nearly
unfettered authority to send billions of taxpayer dollars to banks with
no oversight.
15. L. Paul Bremer — This
Presidential Medal of Freedom winner took over the Coalition Provisional Authority in May 2003. Under his mismanagement, the
insurgency exploded in Iraq. Bremer claimed he had
all the troops he needed to secure the country, overestimated the strength of the new U.S.-trained Iraqi army,
disbanded the Iraqi army leaving thousands of Iraqi soldiers with
no income and no occupation, and enacted a
de-Baathification law that barred many experienced Iraqis from government positions.
Numbers 16 to 43 here.This urge to evaluate the Bush presidency will not last long however - President-elect Obama is already placing such a heavy gloss on those years that it almost amounts to an initial re-write.I mean, I think personally he is a good man who loves his family and loves his country," Obama said in an exclusive interview with CNN's John King....Obama also said he thought Bush made "the best decisions that he could at times under some very difficult circumstances."
