What a year it's been

Since it's been a little over a year since Bush took the 2004 election courtesy of thinkprogress.org I'd like to review

2004

November 3: Bush Pledges To Reach Out the Whole Nation In Second Term. Bush: “So today I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent: To make this nation stronger and better I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation.”

November 8: Federal Judge Rules Bush Overstepped Constitutional Grounds In Brushing Aside Geneva Conventions In Treatment of Detainees.

November 9: Presidential Election Revealed Major Voting System Failures.

November 17: House GOP Changes Rule Requiring Leaders To Step Down If Indicted.

November 30: Red Cross Investigation Uncovers Widespread Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo.

December 6: Class-Action Suit on Behalf of Soldiers Filed Against Pentagon’s ‘Stop-Loss’ Orders.

December 8: Soldier in Iraq Questions Rumsfeld About Why They Are Not Receiving Proper Armor; Rumsfeld Says ‘You Go To War With the Army You Have.’ At a townhall with Secretary Rumsfeld, a National Guard soldier says, “Our vehicles are not armored. We’re digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that’s already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.” Rumsfeld responds: “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

December 8: Homeland Security Whistleblower Shown the Door. Clark Ervin, “the man who has issued many critical reports about the mismanagement and security flaws at the Department of Homeland Security, was told Wednesday night that he was out of a job.” Ervin was replaced by Dick Cheney’s son-in-law, Philip Perry.

December 11: Bernie Kerik Withdraws From Nomination To Be Homeland Security Secretary. Kerik’s nomination was withdrawn after it was revealed (among other scandals) that Kerik had long-standing ties to a firm allegedly run by the New Jersey mob and had used an apartment donated for weary Ground Zero police and rescue workers for an adulterous affair. [Link] Despite Kerik’s questionable past, it was President Bush “who insisted on naming the former New York City police commissioner as secretary of Homeland Security despite derogatory information about him.”

December 20: Top Army Reserve General Writes Memo Warning That Reserves Are “Rapidly Degenerating Into a ‘Broken’ Force.”

December 29: Bush Administration Criticized For Slow Response To Tsunami Disaster. International aid organizations complained that Bush was being “stingy” and “insensitive” due to his administration’s slow response to the tsunami disaster.
2005

January 7: Documents Reveal Armstrong Williams Received $240,000 To Hawk ‘No Child Left Behind.’

January 12: Search for Iraq’s WMD Comes To Quiet End. “The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.”

January 20: President Bush’s Inauguration.

January 26: Single Deadliest Day For U.S. Forces In Iraq. “U.S. forces suffered their deadliest day since the war in Iraq began when 31 servicemen were killed.”

February 4: Alberto Gonzales Confirmed; Receives Stronger Than Expected “Protest Vote” For Role In Torture Memos. “Despite a stronger than expected protest vote,” Alberto Gonzales was confirmed as Attorney General. “[O]pposition grew over what [senators] considered evasive and equivocal answers to questions about his role in administration memorandums that appeared to condone some types of torture of prisoners held in the campaign against terrorism.”

February 9: Medicare Prescription Drug Bill Revealed To Cost $600 Billion More Than Promised.

February 10: Jeff Gannon Retires As “White House Reporter” After Being Exposed. Gannon, who had been writing for Talon News and GOPUSA, resigned after questions were raised about his background.

February 14: Bush Asks for $82 Billion Supplemental For Iraq, Pushing Cost of Iraq War Over $200 Billion.

February 15: Former Official In White House Faith-Based Office Blasts White House’s Inattention To “Poor People.” David Kuo, former Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives: “From tax cuts to Medicare, the White House gets what the White House really wants. It never really wanted the ‘poor people stuff.’”

March 16: Bush Appoints Principal Iraq War Architect Paul Wolfowitz to World Bank. “The reaction from the board was unfavorable,” one World Bank official said. “Mr. Wolfowitz’s nomination today tells us the U.S. couldn’t care less what the rest of the world thinks.”

March 21: Bush Interrupts Vacation to Fly Back to Washington and Sign Schiavo Bill In the Middle of the Night. A bill intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, a severely brain-damaged Florida woman, “got final congressional approval a few minutes after midnight, and was signed quickly shortly after 1 a.m. by President Bush, who had flown back to the White House from his Texas ranch to be ready to act quickly…”

April 12: Bush Appoints Central Iran-Contra Player As Top Intel Official. Bush’s nominee for the director of national intelligence played an active role in the controversial “secret arming of [Nicaraguan] contra rebels from bases in Honduras” back in the early 1980s.

April 15: U.S. Report Shows Global Terrorist Attacks Tripled in 2004: “The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government’s top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.”

April 20: Bush Signs Bankruptcy Bill. The bill makes it harder for average Americans to recover from financial misfortune by declaring bankruptcy, allowing no exceptions even for victims of identity theft, those suffering from debilitating illness, or U.S. service members.

May 1: Bush’s 60-Day Social Security Tour Ends; More Americans Oppose Privatization. As Bush’s Social Security tour came to end, an ABC News-Washington Post poll showed that 64 percent of Americans disapproved of Bush’s handling of Social Security, up from 56 percent in March when the tour began.

May 1: Downing Street Memo first published in the London Sunday Times.

May 12: Bolton Receives ‘No Recommendation’ From Senate Committee. For “only the third time in 22 years,” the Senate Foreign Relations Committee “has sent a nomination to the Senate without a favorable recommendation.”

May 25: FBI Documents Show Guantanamo Detainees Had Complained About Quran Desecration. Following riots allegedly sparked by a Newsweek report about Quran abuse by U.S. interrogators, Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita had said there were no “credible allegations” of such activities.

May 31: Vice President Cheney Says Iraq Insurgency In Its “Last Throes.”

June 1: William Donaldson Pushed Out as SEC Chairman. White House caves to the business lobby, which was “fed up with what it believes is…a chairman who has been a tougher regulator than expected,” and had made clear “that it would like nothing more than to see Mr. Donaldson gone.”

June 15: Autopsy Shows Schiavo Was Blind, Contradicting Frist’s “Diagnosis.” On the Senate floor, Frist said that video footage suggested to him that she “certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli.”

June 17: White House Caught Doctoring More Climate Documents: In the lead up to a G-8 summit, White House officials caught “working behind the scenes…weakening key sections” of a global warming action proposal.

June 20: Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) Says Bush Administration is “Losing in Iraq.” “Things aren’t getting better; they’re getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality,” he said. “It’s like they’re just making it up as they go along. The reality is, we’re losing in Iraq.”

July 2: Federal Agents Raid Rep. Duke Cunningham House. Agents conduct unannounced raids on the offices of defense contractor MZM, the congressman’s controversial former home in California, as well as the Duke Stir, the boat owned by the defense contractor but on which Cunningham had inexplicably been living for more than a year.

July 4: Karl Rove Confirmed as One of Matt Cooper’s Sources For Plame Identity.

July 11: The White House Stone Wall on CIA Leak Scandal Begins. During his press briefing, Scott McClellan says 23 times that he could not comment because there is an “ongoing investigation.”

July 11: Army Misses Recruiting Goal for Ninth Straight Month.

July 14: Senate Cuts Transit Security Funding by $50 Million: Just eight days after terrorist attacks struck London’s bus and underground metro systems, conservative “leaders beat back a series of attempts – pressed by senators from states with large urban centers – to increase money for mass transit protection by as much as $1.4 billion.”

July 26: For The First Time, Majority Says Bush Misled America Into War: For the first time, “a majority of Americans, 51%, say the Bush administration deliberately misled the public about whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”

July 27: Frist Bends to White House, Derails Detainee Torture Amendment. Under pressure from President Bush, Frist “derailed a bipartisan effort to set rules for the treatment of enemy prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other military detention camps by abruptly stopping debate on a $491 billion defense bill.”

July 28: Right-Wing Twists Arms and Extends Vote Deadline to Pass CAFTA.

August 1: Bush Names Bolton U.N. Ambassador in Recess Appointment. The recess appointment gave Bolton a year and a half at the UN “unless he wins over Senate critics in the interim or gets another recess appointment.”

August 2: Bush Kicks Off Longest Presidential Vacation in 36 Years. “The president departed Tuesday for his longest stretch yet away from the White House, arriving at his Crawford ranch in the evening to clear brush, visit with family and friends, and tend to some outside-the-Beltway politics.”

August 10: Bush Surrenders War on Pork. “Yesterday, Bush effectively signed a cease-fire — critics called it more like a surrender — in his war on pork. He signed into law a $286 billion transportation measure that contains a record 6,371 pet projects inserted by members of Congress from both parties.”

August 28 - September 3: Bush Administration Botches Response to Hurricane Katrina.

September 7: Tom DeLay’s PAC Indicted.

September 12: Michael Brown Resigns From FEMA.

September 19: Top White House Procurement Officer Indicted. David Safavian, who headed the federal procurement office in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), accused by federal agents of “lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s dealings with the federal government.”

September 23: SEC Launches Probe into Stock Sales Of Sen. Bill Frist.

September 28: Tom DeLay Indicted, Resigns Leadership Position.

October 3: Harriet Miers Nominated to the Supreme Court.

October 4: Bush Admits Defeat on Social Security. In a press conference, Bush said, “There seems to be a diminished appetite in the short term” for dealing with Social Security.

October 25: Harriet Miers’ Nomination Withdrawn.

October 25: U.S. Military Suffers 2,000th Fatality in Iraq.

October 28: I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby Charged With Five-Count Indictment.


Let's see.. Nov 9: Election problems,the whole Terry Schaivo mess,many indictments, many investigations amazing what he's been able to get away with.

The only thing I won't really complain about is his handling of the Tsunami. I thought between W. his father and President Clinton they did well enough.