NPR’s senior news analyst, Daniel Schorr, reported Wednesday that the Bush administration has been busy keeping the bad news it has known about for months out of the press and away from the public scrutiny.
Iraqi Explosives
The Bush administration knew about the 400 tons of missing explosives a year ago, but still claims no knowledge of how they went missing or who might have taken them. Their knee-jerk reaction, of course, is to say the explosives went missing before US troops invaded, but TV news video that has recently come to light shows US troops inspecting the explosives then being ordered away.
Of course, had the US not invaded, UN weapons inspectors would know where those explosives and other missing equipment and supplies were.
The Cost of War
The Bush administration has been lambasting Kerry for claiming the Iraq war will cost $200 Billion, but has recently submitted spending bills that call for $225 Billion to prosecute the war. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld wrote a memo in which he expressed fear that the war would be a long, expensive, and deadly quagmire, but that too has been under wraps.
How can the administration criticize Kerry for saying publicly what the Bushies are whispering privately? What kind of democracy can stand so many secrets?
Cronyism
The FBI has launched an investigation into contracts awarded to Vice President Dick Cheney’s favorite conglomerate: Haliburton. The company still pays Cheney trucks of money it calls “deferred compensation,” which you’d figure it could afford to do because of the way it over-bills taxpayers for supplies, construction, and services. The Army Corps of Engineers purchasing agent responsible for approving the contracts questioned the amount of competition and the legal grounds for issuing no-bid contracts in the case, but was pressured to sign, then demoted and shipped away.
To the Bush administration, this is all old news, but the American public is learning about it just now. The administration was certainly hoping to keep this news secret until after the election, or longer. This certainly wasn’t the October sunrise they were hoping for.
The administration claims it keeps secrets to increase security, but these secrets are about our faith in government. Four years ago, Bush promised to return dignity to the White House, but instead, his administration has returned to the abusive, secretive ways of one of his predecessors: Richard Nixon.