You Probably Missed It: The Best Expose' of the Bush Cover-up, Lies and Incompetence

After watching tonight's episode of Bill Moyer's Journal, my wife said to me, "I'll bet most of our friends missed this program." She was probably right..Nine PM on a Friday night on PBS is not a hot place to be. But they missed the most outstanding expose' of the lies, deception, and fraud of the Bush Administration I have ever seen in one 45 minute segment.

All Americans ought to be forced to read the transcript before they enter the polling place this November so that they do not make the same mistake for the 3rd time in a row and, as a result, trample the Constitution even more.

Rep. Henry Waxman [D CA] presented case after case of Bush appointees who appeared before his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Characters like Condi Rice and Blackwater's Erik Prince were shown bobbing and weaving through the questions asked of them. Others outright lied to the committee. One resigned shortly after his lies.

The Bush Administration was shown to be what most of us who have been paying attention to it already knew: it is the most secretive and deceptive administration since Nixon, and much more dangerous. Here are some of the outrageous dealings that Waxman reported:

•Outsourcing of tax dollars to private contractors has been in the hundreds of millions of dollars with little or no accountability.

• The State Department cannot account for $18 billion it 'gave' to the Maliki government in Baghdad.

• Blackwater has sucked hundreds of millions of dollars from the Treasury to do work that is essentially U.S. Army work.

• A secret no-bid contract was given to a Kuwaiti contracting firm to build the U.S. embassy in Baghdad has cost the tax payers of America nearly a billion dollars; slave laborers were kidnapped to work on this building.

• The top deputy of Karl Rove gave a Power point political presentation to the General Services Administration on ways the GSA could help elect more Republicans to Congress; the subpoenaed chair of that department couldn't recall being at that meeting.

• Howard "Cookie" Krongard, The State Department's Inspector General, reported nothing wrong with the Blackwater operations in Iraq despite many claims of wrongdoing; it was uncovered during testimony that his brother sat on the Board of Blackwater, something he lied about.

At the end of the interview with Waxman, Moyers asked this question: "What do you want to know from Condoleezza Rice?"

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: Well, I want a lot from Condoleezza Rice. I want to know, as secretary of state, that she's supervising the money that's being spent by the Department of State in Iraq. That she's making sure that we're not supporting a government that can't rally its own people because it's so corrupt. The second thing, and most important thing I want to know from Condoleezza Rice, is what did she know about the false claim of Saddam Hussein having potential nuclear weapons? And did she participate in a conspiracy with people in this administration the lie to the American people to get us into a war? She's the one, I think, along with the president, has to be held accountable. Because she was the one who was supposed to work with the president to be sure he had the right information, and had the truth before those decisions were made.

You ought to read the entire transcript and send it to 10 of your friends.