Calling criticism of his son “grossly unfair,” President George H. W. Bush attacked critics of President Bush’s Iraq policy.

“Do they want to bring back Saddam Hussein, these critics?” the elder Bush told USA TODAY in a rare interview. “Do they want to go back to the status quo ante? I don’t know what they are talking about here. Do they think life would be better in the Middle East if Saddam were still there?”

In reality, critics of Bush’s policies are “talking about” the repeated, foreseeable and avoidable failures of his Iraq war policies. The war has undermined American security, underfunded national priorities, and increased the threat of terrorism. Rather than “go back to the status quo ante,” progressives have called for a new direction in Iraq and proposed numerous strategies to bring our troops home and stabilize the region. Unfortunately, the former President Bush would rather lash out at straw men than engage the actual criticisms of “these critics.”

UPDATE: ThinkProgress points out that “Bush Sr. has offered the most cogent explanations for why regime change was a poor strategic decision.”

On November 3rd, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who last year admitted that “the idea of trying to cast blame on Clinton [for the 9/11 attacks] is just wrong,” suggested that President Bill Clinton’s cuts to military and intelligence budgets during the 1990s left the country unprepared for a terror attack.

“And now as I said, I don’t pretend that he (Clinton) could predict September the 11th. People are not prophets, even presidents,” said Giuliani. “But he did have his head in the sand. He was cutting those military budgets and intelligence budgets while Islamic terrorists were killing Americans.”

In reality, “the Clinton administration poured more than a billion dollars into counterterrorism activities across the entire spectrum of the intelligence community, into the protection of critical infrastructure, into massive federal stockpiling of antidotes and vaccines to prepare for a possible bioterror attack, into a reorganization of the intelligence community itself.” Here is more:

- From 1993 to 2001, the proposed budget of the National Foreign Intelligence Program – which funds the departments and agencies that make up the national intelligence community – rose by 20 percent.”

- Between 1996 and 2000, “the budget of the Counter-Terrorism Center – which seeks to anticipate and prevent terrorist attacks – doubled.”

- According to the New York Times, “the FBI’s counterterrorism budget increased annually between 1999 and 2001 by an average of 14.5 percent.”

- In 1997, former CIA Director George Tenet said: “We have spent the last seven years rebuilding our clandestine service. As Director of Central Intelligence, this has been my highest priority.”

Moreover, as the Body Politik’s Jordan Grossman pointed out in June, “a June 1995 Presidential Decision Directive issued by Clinton for the first time emphasized concern about terrorism “as a national security issue,” not just a matter of law enforcement.”

Clinton’s directive declared that the United States saw “terrorism as a potential threat to national security as well as a criminal act and will apply all appropriate means to combat it.” For the last three years of his presidency, Clinton “raised the issue of terrorism in virtually every important speech he gave.”

Ironically, Giuliani admitted that it was he who had “his head in the sand” about the threat of terrorism before 9/11. According to Wayne Barrett, a reporter for New York’s Village Voice and author of Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, leaked memos describing Giuliani’s private testimony before the 9/11 Commission suggest that he knew nothing about Al Qaeda.

Giuliani acknowledged that even though he had received information on threats between 1998 and 2001, “At the time I had no idea it was al Qaeda.” He further told the commission that after 9/11, “we brought in people to brief us on al Qaeda. … We had nothing like this pre 9/11, which was a mistake.”

This Sunday, after Pakastani President Pervez Musharraf “imposed emergency rule and suspended the constitution in a bid to save his job,” an adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “saw a silver lining in the rapid turn of events”

“Thank heavens for small favors,” the official said. Compared to Pakistan, “Iraq looks pretty good.”

In reality, Musharraf’s “crackdown on the political opposition, the media and the courts” is no ’small favor,’ and the situation in Iraq is a mess. Manan Ahmed of Global Affairs blog suggests that the ’small favor’ of Pakistani chaos was partly the result of President Bush’s failed foreign policy.

Pakistan needed our help a year ago. It needed a genuine push for democratic processes back in March. We left unchecked, and unhindered, a megalomaniac “enlightened moderator”. We keep insisting on our own interests ahead of the interests of the people of Pakistan. We remain steadfast in our belief that those people are not as developed nor as functional as we would like them to be. Pakistan needs a strong dictator. The fallacy … the gross oversight … has always been that he was never in control.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, while violence may have slightly decreased, the Iraqi government has made no progress towards national political reconciliation, Iraq’s reconstruction efforts have stalled, and “the number of Iraqis killed in insurgent and sectarian attacks rose in October.” As ThinkProgress pointed out, “this recent reduction in violence should be taken with a grain of salt, as it coincides with increased sectarian cleansing and a massive refugee displacement.”

According to a recent Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey, 51 percent of Americans believe that the war in Iraq is going “not too well” or “not at all well.” Unfortunately, the Bush administration is more concerned with perceptions, than dealing with its significant, repeated, and avoidable foreign policy blunders.

While “thirteen million toys have been recalled in the last two months due to unsafe levels of lead,” Nancy Nord, the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) — the agency responsible for protecting Americans from faulty products– has “taken dozens of trips at the expense of the toy, appliance and children’s furniture industries” and other industries regulated by the CPSC.

“This is a blatant violation of the ethics code,” said Craig Holman, an expert on governmental ethics law for the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. The rules allow nonfederal sources to pay for trips, “but not if you’re a private party with business pending before the agency,” he said.

Rather than regulate industry, Nancy Nord has allowed herself to be coddled by it. The agency, operating under a “budget [that] is half of what it was in the 1970s,” has resorted to encouraging businesses to voluntarily recall lead-laced products and currently employs “exactly one full-time toy inspector and only 15 inspectors who oversee all of the imports under the agency’s jurisdiction — a $614 billion market.”

While President Bush’s FY 2008 budget proposal cuts CPSC’s funding and reduces the number of staff from 420 to 401, Nord has resisted Congressional proposals to expand the CPSC. Calling such efforts “unnecessarily burdensome,” Nord sent two letters to Congress opposing legislation to double CPSC’s budget to $141 million, increase its staff by 20 percent, “require pre-market testing for children’s products,”protect industry whistle-blowers and help prosecute companies that violate safety regulations.”

Earlier this week, the Campaign for America’s Future, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Sherrod Brown and Congresswoman Rosa DeLaura called for Nord to step down. Pelosi:

Any commission chair who [says] … we don’t need any more authority or any more resources to do our job, does not understand the gravity of the situation. I call on the president of the United States to ask for the resignation.

UPDATE: But as Steve Benen points out, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel put it best: “Now we know why Nancy Nord opposes efforts to give the Consumer Product Safety Commission more resources: Who needs more resources when the industries you regulate will pay your expenses for you? After taking dozens of trips on the industry dime, it is now time for Mrs. Nord to take a permanent vacation from her post.”

Today’s New York Times editorial confronts the Bush administration’s “trash talking” of Iran.

Four years after his pointless invasion of Iraq, President Bush still confuses bullying with grand strategy. He refuses to do the hard work of diplomacy — or even acknowledge the disastrous costs of his actions…The world should not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, but there is no easy fix here, no daring surgical strike. […]

Large numbers of Iranians are fed up with their government’s corruption and repression and with being branded a pariah state. Rain down American bombs, however, and the mullahs and Iran’s Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are more likely to be turned into national heroes than hung from lampposts.

As The Body Politik has previously pointed out, Iranian reformers and International Atomic Energy Agency chairman Mohammed ElBaradei agree with this assessment. Yesterday, on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, ElBaradei stressed that he has not seen any evidence of an active nuclear program in Iran and encouraged the administration to continue pursuing diplomacy.

I very much have concern about confrontation, building confrontation, Wolf, because that would lead absolutely to a disaster. I see no military solution. The only durable solution is through negotiations and inspections. … My fear if that we continue to escalate from both sides from both sides that we would end up into a precipice, we would end up into an abyss.

ABC News is reporting that former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) is backing off his Nixon era critique of executive power. Back in 1974, when he was “chief GOP council on the Senate Watergate Committee,” Thompson predicted that “in the future the president is not going to be the sole individual to determine what is a matter of national security” and “suggested the possibility of an executive and legislative committee to take on the task.”

But in tonight’s interview with Nightline, Thompson suggests that while President Nixon “used the umbrella of national security to do some things that were not in fact in the interest of national security,” President Bush has not.

“Thompson said he sides with the Bush administration in its struggle with Congress over “issues of surveillance” and believes that the Bush must “stand firm in executive authority.”

In reality, President Bush has also “used the umbrella of national security” to expand the powers of the executive branch and squash political criticism and protest.

- In December 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft “authorized federal agents to monitor political and religious groups without evidence of criminal activity.”

- In 2003, The New York Times reported that the Bush administration was using the FBI to collect “extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators.”

- In 2005, an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request revealed that the FBI “has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups.”

- According to “a secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News” in December 2005, the Pentagon has monitored nearly 1,500 different protest events in a 10-month period, including nearly four dozen anti-war meetings “that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center.”

- Documents exposed during litigation in January 2006 revealed that “the National Security Agency has been spying” on a Quaker-linked peace group in Baltimore “going so far as to document the inflating of protesters’ balloons, and intended to deploy units trained to detect weapons of mass destruction.”

- Pentagon documents released by the ACLU in November 2006 “show the Department of Defense monitoring the activities of a wide swath of peace groups, including Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, Code Pink, the American Friends Service Committee, the War Resisters League, and United for Peace and Justice.”

Ironically, Thompson’s 1974 approach to limiting executive authority over national security issues may be more necessary now than it was then. Unfortunately, Thompson is too aloof to notice.

Think Progress notes that “in his weekly news conference today, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sharply criticized” the Bush administration’s new sanctions against Iran, warning that they will bring “the United States one step closer to war.”

“Unilateral sanctions rarely, ever work,” Hagel said by phone during his weekly news conference. “I just don’t think the unilateral approach and giving war speeches helps the situation. It will just drive the Iranians closer together.” […]

“It escalates the danger of a military confrontation,” Hagel said.

“I certainly think engagement is critical … direct engagement,” said Hagel. “That’s what great powers do.”

Hagel’s criticism is echoed by reformists in Iran. According to Mohsen Mirdamadi, one of Iran’s top reform politicians, “the threat of an attack helps Ahmadinejad’s political agenda.”

Any U.S. military action against Iran will only boost radicals within Iran … Military action will set back democracy in Iran for a decade or two.

The AP is reporting that “devastating wildfires in Southern California,” now in their fourth day, “have caused at least $1 billion in damage in San Diego County alone.” President Bush, who signed “a major disaster declaration for California in the wake of wildfires,” expressed concern for the safety of Southern Californians.

I want the people in Southern California to know that Americans all across this land care deeply about them, we’re concerned about their safety, we’re concerned about their property, and we offer our prayers and hopes that all will turn out fine in the end. In the meantime, they can rest assured that the federal government will do everything we can to help put out these fires.

Unfortunately, Bush’s prayers won’t alleviate the equipment and personal shortages that have plagued relief efforts. According to Orange County Fire Chief Chip Prather, firefighters’ lives were threatened because too few crews were on the ground. “Had we had more air resources, we would have been able to control this fire,” Prather said.

Such equipment is probably in Iraq. According to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), “right now we are down 50 percent in terms of our National Guard equipment because they’re all in Iraq. The equipment — half of the equipment, so we really will need help.”

Lawmakers have warned the Bush administration of the dangers of an ill equipped National Guard. Earlier this year, “an independent commission created by Congress to study the National Guard called the equipment shortage unacceptable.”

The Commission on the National Guard and Reserves noted the new responsibilities imposed on the Guard since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Iraq war have led to a utilization of National Guard personnel and equipment that “is not sustainable over time.”

In South California, that time is now. The Bush administration is once again unable to meet the needs of a community in need.

Today, the House will vote on a watered-down version of the Employment Non- Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that “would make it illegal to fire, refuse to hire, or fail to promote employees simply based on sexual orientation.”

The measure enjoys wide public support. According to a recent poll by Hart Research Associates,”60 percent of voters support a federal law to prevent discrimination in the workplace.” During his third debate with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), even President Bush acknowledged that homosexuals should be respected.

You know, Bob, I don’t know [if homosexuality is a choice]. I just don’t know. I do know that we have a choice to make in America and that is to treat people with tolerance and respect and dignity. It’s important that we do that. And I also know in a free society people, consenting adults can live the way they want to live. And that’s to be honored.

But apparently, the President now believes that businesses are not part of the America that treats “people with tolerance and respect and dignity.” Yesterday, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy “making clear that despite the exemption compromise, “senior advisors” will still recommend that President Bush veto the bill.”

H.R.3685 is inconsistent with the right to the free exercise of religion as codified by Congress in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

Indeed, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) states that “government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.” Yet the law has this exemption:

Government may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

Ending discrimination in the workplace, regardless of one’s religious convictions, has ample legal precedent. As the ACLU points out, during the last fifty years, “Congress has responded when it found that the merit system was not working, and that some Americans were being denied employment for reasons that were arbitrary and unfair, such as discrimination based on race, religion, gender, national origin, and disability.” Laws aimed at restoring the merit system “have been — and continue to be — an essential part of making the Fourteenth Amendment’s promise of equal protection of the law a reality.”

In its basic structure, ENDA parallels Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law that prohibits employment discrimination based on race, religion, gender, and national origin. It provides the same procedures and remedies that Title VII provides, except that it explicitly excludes any of the affirmative action relief that is sometimes available to address race and gender discrimination.

Moreover, under the President’s reasoning, a business should be able to fire an employee for engaging in an adulterous affair, premarital sex, fathering a child out of wedlock, or any other behavior an employer finds immoral. Pam’s House Blend asks:

What if you worked for a company where the person in charge was athiest and had a deep resentment for people of faith, especially those that expressed that faith, not just by evangelizing on the job, but simply by putting up their favorite prayer or passage in their cubicle. Now imagine that employer firing that person for even the smallest expression of their chosen faith regardless of the fact that the person might be the hardest, and most efficient worker for that company. Wouldn’t that just get your blood boiling?

To protect minorities from becoming targets of workplace discrimination, President Bush must sign ENDA and extend to them the “tolerance and respect and dignity” he promised.

The Caucus is reporting that “it is on in Iowa between Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton.” Obama is arguing that Clinton’s vote in favor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which “called for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to be declared a foreign, terrorist organization,” gives President Bush Congressional authorization to “justify an attack on Iran as a part of the ongoing war in Iraq.” From the Obama mailing:

Why is this amendment so dangerous? Because George Bush and Dick Cheney could use this language to justify keeping our troops in Iraq as long as they can point to a threat from Iran. And because they could use this language to justify an attack on Iran as a part of the ongoing war in Iraq.

Clinton has responded in kind:

Let me be clear – I am opposed to letting President Bush take any military action against that country without full Congressional approval. And I see nothing today that would justify giving that approval.

Ironically, Clinton has used similar language to justify her 2002 vote granting the President authorization to go to war with Iraq. In a speech on the Senate floor, here is how Clinton explained her vote:

Even though the resolution before the Senate is not as strong as I would like in requiring the diplomatic route first and placing highest priority on a simple, clear requirement for unlimited inspections, I will take the president at his word that he will try hard to pass a U.N. resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible.

But a day before casting the vote, Clinton “voted against the Levin amendment, which would have required UN approval for the use of force against Iraq; and, failing that, another Congressional vote authorizing the President to use American military force…Clinton’s other notable Senate action on that day was drawing a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, saying Saddam had given “aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members.”

Since then, Clinton has argued that she was duped by the President.

I voted for [the resolution] on the basis of the evidence presented by the administration, assurances they gave that they would first seek to resolve the issue of weapons of mass destruction peacefully through United Nations sponsored inspections, and the argument that the resolution was needed because Saddam Hussein never did anything to comply with his obligations that he was not forced to do,” Clinton writes. “Their assurances turned out to be empty ones, as the administration refused repeated requests from the UN inspectors to finish their work. And the ‘evidence’ of weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaida turned out to be false.

But President Bush has made similar diplomatic assurances in his approach towards Iran. According to the New York Times, “the United States has said it is pursuing a diplomatic approach to Iran, including the threat of a new round of United Nations sanctions, but it has refused to rule out military action to halt Iran’s nuclear program.” Has Clinton been duped again?

In recent days, the President and the Vice President have both stepped-up their war rhetoric against Iran. President Bush warned of the risk of ‘World War III’ if Iran acquires “the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” and Vice President Cheney warned Iran of “serious consequences” should it continue to develop a nuclear weapon.

Thus, the question remains: if Clinton believes that the President misled her in the lead-up to war with Iraq, why does she still trust the administration’s “diplomatic assurances” on Iran?