American Family Voices
Bush administration's tactics of mass deception
Wed Mar 17 16:36:54 2004
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Deception Perception
3/17/2004
http://www.americanfamilyvoices.org/projects/DailyRealityCheck.asp?ID=102

The Bush administration's tactics of mass deception are varied and powerful. Yesterday we recounted a number of misleading statements uttered by high-ranking administration officials on last Sunday's news talk shows. But making false claims is only one type of weapon in their vast arsenal. On other issues, from health care to the environment, the Bush administration proactively worked to regulate not only the flow, but also the creation of information to skew evidence in favor of their policy agenda.

The Environment
President Bush has been no friend to the environment, mainly because environmental protection interests often clash with his fondness for in industry and special interest handouts. But rather than simply concede this point, Bush has gallingly attempted to portray himself as an environmentally friendly president. The idea behind this apparently is to overshadow the administration's dismal record simply by calling policies that will result in more air pollution the "Clear Skies" initiative, or calling policies that promote more logging the "Healthy Forests" initiative, or distributing a few well-placed photos of the president clearing brush from his ranch. Of course, when the president advocates things like tax breaks for gas-guzzling SUVs, drilling in the Artic Wildlife National Reserve, and making it easier for power plants to upgrade their facilities without upgrading their anti-pollution measures, it's virtually impossible to hide his reputation as anti-environment.

Now several longtime officials in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have come forward and revealed that mercury emission regulations were tainted by the work of political appointees within the administration. Professional EPA staffers were directed not to undertake standard studies on the issue, while the appointees crafted the mercury proposal by relying heavily on language supplied by utility lobbyists.

"There is a politicization of the work of the agency that I have not seen before," said Bruce Buckheit, who has two decades of federal environmental experience under his belt. "A political agenda is driving the agency's output, rather than analysis and science."

Former EPA administrator Christie Whitman claims that she was unaware that the scientific process was being subverted, and current EPA chief Mike Leavitt has ordered more studies into the matter.

In the meantime, the Bush administration's Environmental PROTECTION Agency has stuck our nation with blatantly pro-industry rules. Instead of acting in the best interest of the health for all its citizens, it has once again acted in the best interest of the wallets of a select group. "A few sandbags to stem the tide of this public outrage is not sufficient," said Susan West Marmagas of the Physicians for Social Responsibility. Read more here and here.

Health Care
Of course, anyone following the Bush administration's code of conduct in the Medicare issue shouldn't be at all surprised that industry handouts were so cavalierly distributed by the EPA. After all, even a cursory glance at the Medicare changes reveals that the president's friends in the health care industry were the major beneficiaries of the new rules. Now it appears as though the Bush administration overplayed their hand on the issue and hid the total cost of the revisions from Congress, in an effort to rush the bill into law.

The Medicare program's longtime actuary, Richard Foster, has publicly claimed that his job was threatened if he did not stop presenting his cost estimates to congressional workers who requested them. Foster calculated that the new Medicare program would carry a $534 billion price tag – roughly $140 billion higher than the numbers used by the president in selling the legislation.

The furor over this apparent deception has grown so great that Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has called for an inquiry into the matter, and immediately blamed Thomas Scully, who played a large role in negotiating the project on the administration's behalf. "There seems to be a cloud over the department because of this," Thompson said. He's right, but that might also be due to the lenient air quality regulations of this administration.

The Bush administration has already spent a bundle on a failing ad campaign to sell these Medicare changes, and projects to spend an eye-popping total of $80 million of taxpayers' money to promote their agenda. Between the enormous special interest handouts, the distortions of the real cost, and now this ineffective, inefficient and inaccurate ad campaign, this policy is drowning in controversy. The Medicare overhaul was supposed to be a major policy victory for President Bush. Instead, like so many of his other initiatives, it turned into a major victory only for his industry friends. Read more here.

Iraq
Now, back to some good old-fashioned, straightforward deceptions by the Bush administration. In fact, about 237 of them to be exact, according to a new report compiled by the Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee and released yesterday. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) requested the report, which focused on statements made by the president, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Waxman said the report illustrated a "systematic distortion of the intelligence on Iraq," and indicated that the matter should be subject to further investigation.

Here is an excerpt from the report:



"Most of the misleading statements about Iraq – 161 statements – were made prior to the start of the war in Iraq. But 76 misleading statements were made by the five administration officials after the start of the war to justify the decision to go to war."



Read more here, and access the entire report here.

Unlike Saddam Hussein's alleged WMD stockpiles, we don't need to send in investigators to find President Bush's tactics of mass deception. As his administration's conduct on these three issues demonstrates, he is openly flaunting them. Whether it's limiting the use of science in the EPA, threatening the job of a government worker over Medicare, or simply making 237 misleading statements about Iraq, the Bush administration has shown no signs of remorse for its blatantly political agenda and its yawning credibility gap.

(SUB) HEADLINE OF THE DAY

"2 Kuwaiti Firms Win New Iraq Fuel Deals, Both Were Halliburton Subcontractors"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64895-2004Mar16.html

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