Bush, George W.

Charles Dharapak | The Associated Press

   Rudy Giuliani, during a campaign stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said that President Bush's response to terrorism will ensure that his legacy is that of "a great president."

    Giuliani: "He will be, I believe, a president who will be viewed by history for this one decision as being a great president. He decided in a flash to put our country on offense against terrorism."

     More: "He reversed years of being on defense. He reversed it immediately. He put us immediately on offense, and we have been safe as a result of that. And he deserves credit for that."

   Reactions: to Giuliani's point, or why he keeps pushing this position?

Should Congress send it back?

   George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

    The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

   “There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

More here.

   BUT: Why is Tenet turning on his masters now? Shouldn't he have resigned and gone public with this during the run-up to the war?

   And does this add some tinder to the smoldering impeachment movement? 

    UPDATE: The Senate's No. 2 Democrat says he knew that the American public was being misled into the Iraq war but remained silent because he was sworn to secrecy as a member of the intelligence committee. "The information we had in the intelligence committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn't believe it," Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said Wednesday when talking on the Senate floor about the run-up to the Iraq war in 2002.     "I was angry about it. [But] frankly, I couldn't do much about it because, in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to secrecy. We can't walk outside the door and say the statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that is being given to this Congress."

   A New Hampshire Union Leader editorial says Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "must go." But according to a Newsweek source, President Bush's support of Gonzales is about saying "screw you" to Democrats.

   Credit Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally with saving the leader of the free world from self-immolation. Seems President Bush almost blew himself up by trying to plug an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of Ford's hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid at the White House last week.  Mulally actually had to shove the president away from the outlet to avoid the mishap. Here's the whole story, complete with photo.

  On a close vote, the U.S. House just approved a war spending bill that includes a withdrawal date from Iraq.

   To help get reluctant lawmakers on board, Democrats  added sweeteners to the $124 billion emergency supplemental spending bill -- a move Republicans decried.

   At JustOneMinute, Tom Maguire uses the AP story to give a good back-and-forth on today's Valerie Plame testimony.

  Former Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins is now contradicting a quote to the LA Times and says the Blunt probe wasn't a factor in his firing.

   CNN reports that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove sharply dismissed an allegation Thursday that he was behind a 2000 rumor that Sen. John McCain was the father of an illegitimate African-American child.

    "That is absolutely not true, and I take offense," Rove said in response to a question during an appearance at Troy University in Troy, Alabama. "If you have any bit of evidence that anybody connected with the Bush campaign was involved in that, you bring it forward, because it is a reckless charge."

   More:  "The Bush campaign had nothing to do with it, and the Bush campaign endeavored to stamp out those kinds of things because they hurt George Bush and helped John McCain, not the other way around," Rove added. "Either I'm a genius, or I'm an idiot. Only an idiot would spread trash like that and expect to do their candidate any good."

  Here's the whole story and a video: Rove confronts critic

    Anti-war lawmakers in Congress are "undermining" U.S. troops in Iraq by trying to limit President Bush's spending requests for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday.

   Hitting out at lawmakers who profess to back the troops but oppose Bush's plans in Iraq, Cheney said proof of their commitment would come as they consider legislation to provide nearly $100 billion for the rest of this year's costs of the wars. The rest of the story is here.

  The White House today played down talk of a pardon for Scooter Libby.

...of four of five counts for obstruction of justice.

   President Bush has enlisted former Sen. Bob Dole and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala to lead an investigation of problems at the nation's military and veterans' hospitals. Here's AP's story.

   The commander of the  Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Army Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, was relieved of his duties today in the wake of a scandal over outpatient treatment of wounded veterans at the Washington hospital complex.

    Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who serves as surgeon general of the Army and commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command, will take over temporarily. But he's also facing questions in the scandal.

   The firing comes on the heels of a scathing Washington Post story about how top officials at Walter Reed, including Kiley, knew about the deplorable conditions and ignored complaints.

   According to the article, among those complaining to Kiley, who had been the commander before becoming Army surgeon general, was the wife of a Republican congressman. The couple stopped visiting the wounded at Walter Reed due to their frustrations.

   The congressman's wife told the newspaper that she once visited a soldier who was lying in urine on his mattress pad in the hospital. When a nurse ignored her, Beverly Young said, "I went flying down to Kevin Kiley's office again, and got nowhere. He has skirted this stuff for five years and blamed everyone else."

   Another part of the story described how the wife of then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield was taken to a support meeting for wives, mothers and girlfriends of wounded servicemen who described the bad outpatient care. Some did not know who Joyce Rumsfield was. At the end of the meeting, she asked one of the staff members whether she thought that the soldiers her husband was meeting on his visits had been handpicked to paint a rosy picture of their time there. The answer was yes.

   When Walter Reed officials found out that Rumsfeld had visited, they told the friend who brought her -- a woman who had volunteered there many times -- that she was no longer welcome on the grounds.

   And finally, the Post reported that last week, the Army relieved of duty several low-ranking soldiers who managed outpatients. This week, in a move that some soldiers viewed as reprisal for speaking to the media, the wounded troops were told that early-morning room inspections would be held and that further contact with reporters is prohibited.