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More W?
A vote for Jeb gets you all those brilliant advisers who told W what to do.
Jeb Bush’s foreign policy team is eerily familiar, in one Venn diagram
By Philip Bump February 18
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush will announce his foreign policy vision in a speech Wednesday in Chicago. Accompanying that speech is a rollout of a slate of experts who will help guide the candidate on foreign policy issues.
If Bush's goal is to present himself as his "own man," that list of advisers undermines the point somewhat: 19 of the 21 people on it worked in the administrations of his father or brother. We've identified the roles each played in the past three Republican administrations, divvying them up as needed in the following Venn diagram.
It's easy to suggest that the above diagram indicates that Jeb Bush is hopelessly linked to his brother and father. But it's important to remember that the foreign policy team of any Republican president probably would draw heavily from the experience of the past three Republican administrations — each of which had a Bush at or near the top. Many of the foreign policy names on the alternate-universe Mitt Romney transition team appear above — although Romney branched out a bit more. That may be because he was four years closer to the low point of the Iraq war and some of the Bush-era advisers on foreign policy were still too damaged.
https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-ap...nv4.png&w=1484
Bush has access to a lot of people by virtue of his family's long history in Washington. That can be a mixed blessing. "Each president learns from those who came before — their principles . . . their adjustments," Bush plans to say in Chicago. "One thing we know is this: Every president inherits a changing world . . . and changing circumstances." And, on occasion, they inherit the same advisory team.
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The BCE will keep recycling the same team of criminals and whores until they are all dead and buried. And even then, they will probably be on speed dial from Hell.
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STEPHEN HADLEY
Role In Going To War: As then-Deputy National Security Advisor, Hadley disregarded memos from the CIA and a personal phone call from Director George Tenet warning that references to Iraq’s pursuit of uranium be dropped from Bush’s speeches. The false information ended up in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address. [Washington Post, 7/23/03]
Key Quote: “I should have recalled at the time of the State of the Union speech that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue. … And it is now clear to me that I failed in that responsibility in connection with the inclusion of these 16 words in the speech that he gave on the 28th of January.” [Hadley, 7/22/03]
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JOHN HANNAH
Role In Going To War: As deputy national security advisor to Vice President Cheney, Hannah served as the conduit between Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress and the Bush administration, passing along false information about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction that the administration relied upon to justify the invasion. Hannah was also a principal author of the draft speech making the administration’s case for war to the UN. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA director George Tenet rejected most of the content of the speech as exaggerated and unwarranted. [Newsweek, 12/15/06; NYT, 10/30/05]
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PAUL WOLFOWITZ
Role In Going To War: Wolfowitz said the U.S. would be greeted as liberators, that Iraqi oil money would pay for the reconstruction, and that Gen. Eric Shinseki’s estimate that several hundred thousand troops would be needed was “wildly off the mark.” [Washington Post, 12/8/05; Wolfowitz, 3/27/03]
Key Quote: “The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason [for going to war].” [USA Today, 5/30/03]
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