Casualties of the Bush Administration
by
Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt
by Nick Turse and Tom
Engelhardt
As
the American toll in Iraq climbs
toward 2,000 dead and 15,000 wounded, and the horror of those shortened
or constricted lives continues to sink deep into American communities,
various memorials to the fallen American soldiers, journalists,
contractors, and sometimes Iraqis as well have sprung to
life. Arrays of combat boots; labyrinths and candlelit displays
for the dead; actual walls and "walls"
on-line; newspaper
"walls" as well as walls of words; not to speak of websites
with ever-growing military
and civilian casualty counts.
The American Friends Service Committee, for example, has an exhibit,
"Eyes Wide
Open," that has long traveled the country, featuring "a pair
of boots honoring each U.S. military casualty, a field of shoes
and a Wall of Remembrance to memorialize the Iraqis killed in the
conflict, and a multimedia display exploring the history, cost and
consequences of the war." The exhibit began with just over 500 combat
boots and now features almost 2,000.
Informal memorials and citizens' efforts are part of the growing
movement against George Bush's Iraq War. Walls of every sort are
being built. In Asheville, North Carolina, for example, as part
of a "peace park,"
townspeople have been building their
own Iraq Wall with each "sponsored" stone representing one American
who has died there. Planned also is "a memorial to the Iraqi dead,
presently estimated at over 100,000." Sometimes these projects are
very personal, even individual, ranging from spontaneous displays
of candles on beaches to, in the case of one reader who wrote in
to Tomdispatch, a garden/labyrinth of the American dead built in
her own backyard.
These "walls," each with its own character, all influenced by architect
Maya Lin's Vietnam Wall in Washington (which movingly reflected
a grim American disaster and defeat), are signs of a growing sense
that this war is a horror and a dishonor to which the honorable
have fallen (a sense backed strongly by the latest opinion polls).
But the particular dishonor this administration has brought down
on our country calls out for other "walls" as well. Perhaps, for
instance, we need some negative walls built, stone by miserable
stone, to cronyism, corruption, and incompetence. In the next few
weeks (as in the last few), we seem certain to see the dishonor
of this administration spread around widely. In addition to the
Iraq situation, ever devolving into further chaos
and anarchy, there was, of course, the recent catastrophic failure
of FEMA; then the squalid fall of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
as "the Hammer" got hammered. There is the ongoing fiasco of Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist's sale of family stock in a "blind trust"
just before its price plummeted. He's now under investigation for
possible violations of insider trading laws and the SEC
has just subpoenaed his "personal records and documents." Soon,
it seems, there will be dishonor
to go around as the expected Fitzgerald indictments in the Plame
case come down. (Caught in the crosshairs of Plame case scandal
is the New York Times, a paper tied in knots and at war with
itself, which managed to loose both former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's
famed op-ed on Saddam's nonexistent Niger yellowcake and
Judith Miller, the near-neocon journalist whose reporting helped
bring us to the edge of the Iraq War. To catch up on this aspect
of things, make sure to read Jay Rosen's remarkable recent columns
at his PressThink
blog.)
With all this in mind, it seems a worthwhile endeavor to remind
the world of those who opposed an administration whose actions,
in the end, are likely to make the
no-bid Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920s look like a tempest
in... well, a teapot in the no-bid Halliburton era. Bernard Weiner
of the
Crisis Papers blog has already written a kind of verbal "wall"
to honor those mainly journalists and bloggers of every sort
who fought to hold the line against this administration in media
bad times and are here to watch the process of rollback happen.
At Tomdispatch, we had another idea. Below Nick Turse has created
the beginnings of a "wall" to quite a different legion of the fallen;
in this case, the governmental casualties of Bush administration
follies, those men and women who were honorable or steadfast enough
in their government duties that they found themselves with little
alternative but to resign in protest, quit, or simply be pushed
off the cliff by cronies of this administration. Here are the first
42 names of those we thought might be put on such a wall (and brief
descriptions of their fates). ~ Tom
The
Fallen Legion: Casualties
of the Bush Administration
By
Nick Turse
In late August 2005, after twenty years of service in the field
of military procurement, Bunnatine ("Bunny") Greenhouse, the top
official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in charge of awarding
government contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, was demoted.
For years, Greenhouse received
stellar evaluations from superiors until she raised objections
about secret, no-bid contracts awarded to Kellogg, Brown & Root
(KBR) a subsidiary of Halliburton, the mega-corporation Vice
President Dick Cheney once presided over. After telling congress
that one Halliburton deal was "was
the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed
during the course of my professional career," she was reassigned
from "the
elite Senior Executive Service... to a lesser job in the civil
works division of the corps."
When Greenhouse was busted down, she became just another of the
casualties of the Bush administration not the countless
(or rather uncounted) Iraqis, or the ever-growing list of American
troops, killed, maimed, or mutilated in the administration's war
of convenience but the seemingly endless and ever-growing list
of beleaguered administrators, managers, and career civil servants
who quit their posts in protest or were defamed, threatened, fired,
forced out, demoted, or driven to retire by Bush administration
strong-arming. Often, this has been due to revulsion at the President's
policies from the invasion of Iraq and negotiations with North
Korea to the flattening of FEMA and the slashing of environmental
standards which these women and men found to be beyond the pale.
Since almost the day he assumed power, George W. Bush has left a
trail of broken careers in his wake. Below is a listing of but a
handful of the most familiar names on the rolls of the fallen:
Richard
Clarke: Perhaps the most well-known of the Bush administration's
casualties, Clarke spent thirty
years in the government, serving under every president from
Ronald Reagan on. He
was the second-ranking intelligence officer in the State Department
under Reagan and then served in the administration of George H.W.
Bush. Under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, he held
the position of the president's chief adviser on terrorism on the
National Security Council a Cabinet-level post. Clarke became
disillusioned with the "terrible
job" of fighting terrorism exhibited by the second president
Bush namely, ignoring evidence of an impending al-Qaeda attack
and putting the pressure on to produce a non-existent link between
al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. (His memo explaining that there was
no connection, said Clarke, "got
bounced and sent back saying, ‘Wrong answer. Do it again.'")
After 9/11, Clarke asked for a transfer from his job to a National
Security Council office concerned with cyber-terrorism. (The administration
later claimed it was a demotion). Quit, January 2003.
Paul
O'Neill: A top official at the Office of Management and Budget
under Presidents Nixon and Ford (and later chairman of aluminum-giant
Alcoa), O'Neill served nearly two years in George W. Bush's cabinet
as Secretary of the Treasury before being asked to resign after
opposing the president's tax cuts. He, like Clarke, recalled Bush's
Iraq fixation. "From
the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein
was a bad person and that he needed to go," said O'Neill, a permanent
member of the National Security Council. "It was all about finding
a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go
find me a way to do this.'" Fired, December 6, 2002.
Flynt
Leverett, Ben Miller and Hillary Mann: A Senior Director for
Middle East Affairs on President Bush's National Security Council
(NSC), a CIA staffer and Iraq expert with the NSC, and a foreign
service officer on detail to the NSC as the Director for Iran and
Persian Gulf Affairs, respectively, they
were all reportedly forced out by Elliott Abrams, Bush's NSC
Advisor on Middle East Affairs, when they disagreed with policy
toward Israel. Said Leverett, "There
was a decision made… basically to renege on the commitments
we had made to various European and Arab partners of the United
States. I personally disagreed with that decision." He also noted,
"[Richard]
Clarke's critique of administration decision-making and how
it did not balance the imperative of finishing the job against al
Qaeda versus what they wanted to do in Iraq is absolutely on the
money… We took the people out [of Afghanistan in 2002 to begin preparing
for the war in Iraq] who could have caught" al Qaeda leaders like
Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri. According to Josef Bodansky,
the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terror and Unconventional
Warfare, Abrams "led
Miller to an open window and told him to jump." He also stated
that Mann and Leverett had been told to leave. Resigned/Fired,
2003.
Larry
Lindsey: A "top
economic adviser" to Bush who was ousted when he revealed to
a newspaper that a war with Iraq could cost $200 billion. Fired,
December 2002.
Ann
Wright: A career diplomat in the Foreign Service and a colonel
in the Army Reserves resigned on the day the U.S. launched the Iraq
War. In her
letter of resignation, Wright told then-Secretary of State Colin
Powell: "I believe the Administration's policies are making the
world a more dangerous, not a safer, place. I feel obligated morally
and professionally to set out my very deep and firm concerns on
these policies and to resign from government service as I cannot
defend or implement them." Resigned, March 19, 2003.
John
Brady Kiesling: A career diplomat who served four presidents
over a twenty year span, he tendered his
letter of resignation from his post as Political Counselor in
the U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece on the eve of the invasion of
Iraq. He wrote:
"…until
this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding
the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests
of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.
The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not
only with American values but also with American interests. Our
fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the
international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon
of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson.
We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web
of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current
course will bring instability and danger, not security."
Resigned,
February 27, 2003.
John
Brown: After nearly 25-years, this veteran of the Foreign Service,
who served in London, Prague, Krakow, Kiev and Belgrade, resigned
from his post. In his
letter of resignation, he wrote: "I cannot in good conscience
support President Bush's war plans against Iraq. The president has
failed to: explain clearly why our brave men and women in uniform
should be ready to sacrifice their lives in a war on Iraq at this
time; to lay out the full ramifications of this war, including the
extent of innocent civilian casualties; to specify the economic
costs of the war for the ordinary Americans; to clarify how the
war would help rid the world of terror; [and] to take international
public opinion against the war into serious consideration." Resigned,
March 10, 2003.
Rand
Beers: When Beers, the National Security Council's senior director
for combating terrorism, resigned he declined to comment, but one
former intelligence official noted, "Hardly
a surprise. We have sacrificed a war on terror for a war with
Iraq. I don't blame Randy at all. This just reflects the widespread
thought that the war on terror is being set aside for the war with
Iraq at the expense of our military and intel[ligence] resources
and the relationships with our allies." Beers later admitted, "The
administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the
war on terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure…
As an insider, I saw the things that weren't being done. And the
longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got
up and walked out." Resigned, March 2003.
Anthony
Zinni: A soldier and diplomat for 40 years, Zinni served from
1997 to 2000 as commander-in-chief of the United States Central
Command in the Middle East. The retired Marine Corps general was
then called back to service by the Bush administration to assume
one of the highest diplomatic posts, special envoy to the Middle
East (from November 2002 to March 2003), but his disagreement with
Bush's plans to go to war and public comments that foretold of a
a
prolonged and problematical aftermath to such a war led to his
ouster. "In
the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at
a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at
worse, lying, incompetence and corruption," said Zinni. Failed
to be reappointed, March 2003.
Eric
Shinseki: After General Shinseki, the Army's chief of staff,
told Congress that the occupation of Iraq could require "several
hundred thousand troops," he was derided by Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Then, wrote the
Houston Chronicle, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "took
the unusual step of announcing that Gen. Eric Shinseki would be
leaving when his term as Army chief of staff end[ed]." Retired,
June 2003.
Karen
Kwiatkowski: A Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force who served
in the Department of Defense's Near East and South Asia (NESA) Bureau
in the year before the invasion of Iraq, she wrote in her
letter of resignation:
"…[W]hile
working from May 2002 through February 2003 in the office of the
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Near East South Asia and
Special Plans (USDP/NESA and SP) in the Pentagon, I observed the
environment in which decisions about post-war Iraq were made…
What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order
and discipline. If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar
bits of ‘intelligence' found sanctity in a presidential speech,
or why the post-Hussein occupation has been distinguished by confusion
and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside
the Office of the Secretary of Defense."
Retired,
July 2003.
Charles
"Jack" Pritchard: A retired U.S. Army colonel and a 28-year
veteran of the military, the State Department, and the National
Security Council, who served as the State Department's senior expert
on North Korea and as the special envoy for negotiations with that
country, resigned (according to the
Los Angeles Times) because the "administration's refusal to
engage directly with the country made it almost impossible to stop
Pyongyang from going ahead with its plans to build, test and deploy
nuclear weapons." Resigned, August 2003.
Major
(then Captain) John Carr and Major Robert Preston: Air
Force prosecutors, they quit their posts in 2004 rather than
take part in trials under the military commission system President
Bush created in 2001 which they considered "rigged against alleged
terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." Requested and granted
reassignment, 2004.
Captain
Carrie Wolf: A
U.S. Air Force officer, she also asked to leave the Office of
Military Commissions due to concerns that the Bush-created commissions
for trying prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were unjust. Requested
and granted reassignment, 2004.
Colonel
Douglas Macgregor: He retired from the U.S. Army and stated:
"I
love the army and I was sorry to leave it. But I saw no possibility
of fundamentally positive reform and reorgani[z]ation of the force
for the current strategic environment or the future… It's a very
sycophantic culture. The biggest problem we have inside the… Department
of Defense at the senior level, but also within the officer corps
is that there are no arguments. Arguments are [seen as] a sign
of dissent. Dissent equates to disloyalty." Retired, June 2004.
Paul
Redmond: After a long career at the CIA, Redmond became the
Assistant Secretary for Information Analysis at the Department of
Homeland Security. When, according
to Notra Trulock of Accuracy in Media, he reported, at a congressional
hearing in June 2003, "that he didn't have enough analysts to do
the job… [and] his office still lacked the secure communications
capability to receive classified reports from the intelligence community…
[t]hat kind of candor was not appreciated by his bosses and, consequently,
he had to go." Resigned, June 2003.
John
W. Carlin: According to the Washington Post, Carlin,
the "Archivist
of the United States was pushed by the White House… to submit
his resignation without being given any reason, Senate Democrats
disclosed… at a hearing to consider President Bush's nomination
of his successor." "I asked why, and there was no reason given,"
said Carlin, but the Post reported that some had "suggested
Bush may have wanted a new archivist to help keep his or his father's
sensitive presidential records under wraps." Although he had stated
his wish to serve until the end of his 10-year term, and 65th birthday
in 2005, Carlin surrendered to Bush administration pressure. Resigned,
December 19, 2003.
Susan
Wood and Frank Davidoff: Wood was the Food and Drug Administration's
Assistant Commissioner for Women's Health and Director of the Office
of Women's Health; Davidoff was the editor emeritus of the journal
Annals of Internal Medicine and an internal medicine specialist
on the FDA's Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee. Wood resigned
in protest over the FDA's decision to delay yet again, due to pressure
from the Bush administration, a final ruling on whether the "morning-after
pill" should be made more easily accessible despite a 23-4 vote,
back in December 2003, by a panel of experts to recommend non-prescription
sale of the contraceptive, called Plan B. In an email to colleagues,
Wood, the top FDA official in charge of women's health issues, wrote,
"I
can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence,
fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional
staff here, has been overruled." Days later, Davidoff quit over
the same issue and wrote in his resignation letter, "I
can no longer associate myself with an organization that is
capable of making such an important decision so flagrantly on the
basis of political influence, rather than the scientific and clinical
evidence." Wood: Resigned, August 31, 2005. Davidoff: Resigned,
September, 2005.
Thomas
E. Novotny: A deputy assistant secretary at the Department of
Health and Human Services and the chief
official working on an international treaty to reduce cigarette
smoking around the world, Novotny "stepped down," claimed Bush administration
officials, "for personal reasons unrelated to the negotiations";
but the Washington Post reported that "three people who ha[d]
spoken with Novotny… said he had privately expressed frustration
over the administration's decision to soften the U.S. positions
on key issues, including restrictions on secondhand smoke and the
advertising and marketing of cigarettes." Resigned, August 1,
2001.
Joanne
Wilson: The commissioner of the Department of Education's Rehabilitation
Services Administration (RSA), she quit, according to the
Washington Post, "in protest of what she said were the administration's
largely unnoticed efforts to gut the office's funding and staffing"
and attempts to dismantle programs "critical to helping the blind,
deaf and otherwise disabled find jobs." On February 7, 2005 the
Bush administration announced that it would close all RSA regional
offices and cut personnel in half. Quit, February 8, 2005.
James
Zahn: According to an article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in the
Nation magazine, Zahn, a "nationally respected microbiologist
with the Agriculture Department's research service" stated
that "his supervisor at the USDA, under pressure from the hog industry,
had ordered him not to publish his study," which "identified bacteria
that can make people sick and that are resistant to antibiotics
in the air surrounding industrial-style hog farms"; and that
"he had been forced to cancel more than a dozen public appearances
at local planning boards and county health commissions seeking information
about health impacts of industry mega-farms." As a result, "Zahn
resigned from the government in disgust." Resigned, May 2002.
Tony
Oppegard and Jack Spadaro: Oppegard and Spadaro were members
of a "team of federal
geodesic engineers selected to investigate the collapse of barriers
that held back a coal slurry pond in Kentucky containing toxic wastes
from mountaintop strip-mining." According to the Environmental Protection
Agency, this had been "the greatest environmental catastrophe in
the history of the Eastern United States." Oppegard, who the headed
the team, "was fired on the day Bush was inaugurated… All eight
members of the team except Spadaro signed off on a whitewashed investigation
report. Spadaro, like the others, was harassed but flat-out refused
to sign. In April of 2001 Spadaro resigned from the team and filed
a complaint with the Inspector General of the Labor Department…
he was placed on administrative leave a prelude to getting fired."
Two months before his 28th anniversary as a federal employee, and
after years of harassment due to his stance, Spadaro
resigned. "I'm just very tired of fighting," he said. "I've
been fighting this administration since early 2001. I want a little
peace for a while." Oppegrad: Fired, January 20, 2001. Spaddaro:
Resigned, October 1, 2003.
Teresa
Chambers: After speaking with reporters and congressional staffers
about budget problems in her organization, the U.S. Park Police
Chief was placed on administrative leave. Then, according
to CNN, just "two and half hours after her attorneys filed a
demand for immediate reinstatement through the Merit Systems Protection
Board, an independent agency that ensures federal employees are
protected from management abuses," Chambers was fired. "The American
people should be afraid of this kind of silencing of professionals
in any field," said Chambers. "We should be very concerned as American
citizens that people who are experts in their field either can't
speak up, or, as we're seeing now in the parks service, won't speak
up." Fired, July 2004.
Martha
Hahn: The state director for the Bureau of Land Management,
"responsible for 12 million acres in Idaho, almost one-quarter of
the state" for seven years, Hahn found her authority drastically
curtailed after the Bush administration took office. She watched
as the administration blocked public comment on mining initiatives
and opened up previously protected areas to environmental degradation.
After she locked horns with cattle interests over grazing rights,
she received a letter stating she was being transferred from her
beloved Rocky Mountain West to "a
previously nonexistent job in New York City." "It's been a shock,"
she said. "I'm going through mental anguish right now. I felt like
I was at the prime of my career."
Hahn was told to accept the involuntary reassignment or resign.
Resigned, March 6, 2002.
Andrew
Eller: Eller "spent many of his 17 years with the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service protecting the [Florida] panther. But when
his research didn't jibe with a huge airport project slated for
the cat's habitat and Eller refused to play along he was given
the boot," wrote the
Tucson Weekly. "I was fired three days after President Bush
was re-elected," said Eller. "It was obviously reprisal for holding
different views than [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] management
on whether or not the panther was in jeopardy, and pointing out
that they were using flawed science to support their view." Fired,
November 2004.
Mike
Dombeck: The chief of the Forest Service resigned after a 23-year
government career. In his resignation letter, the pro-conservation
Dombeck stated,
"It was made clear in no uncertain terms that the [Bush] administration
wants to take the Forest Service in another direction ...." Resigned,
March 27, 2001.
James
Furnish: A
political conservative, evangelical Christian, and Republican
who voted for George W. Bush in 2000 as well as the former Deputy
Chief of the U.S. Forest Service (who spent 30 years, across 8 presidential
administrations working for that agency), Furnish resigned in 2002
due to policy differences with the Bush administration. "I just
viewed [the administration's] actions as being regressive," said
Furnish. In acting according to his conscience, instead
of waiting a year longer to maximize retirement benefits, Furnish
lost out on about $10,000 a year for the rest of his life. Resigned,
2002.
Mike
Parker: In early 2002, Parker, the director of the Army Corps
of Engineers testified before Congress that Bush-mandated budget
cuts would have a "negative impact" on the Corps. He also admitted
to holding no "warm and fuzzy" feelings toward the Bush administration.
"Soon after," reported the
Christian Science Monitor, "he was given 30 minutes to resign
or be fired." In the wake of the devastation caused by hurricanes
Katrina and Rita, Parker's clashes with Mitch Daniels, former director
of the Office of Management and Budget, can be seen as prophetic.
Parker remembered one such incident in which he brought Daniels,
the Bush administration's budget guru, a piece of steel from a Mississippi
canal lock that "was completely corroded and falling apart because
of a lack of funding," and
said, "Mitch, it doesn't matter if a terrorist blows the lock
up or if it falls down because it disintegrates either way it's
the same effect, and if we let it fall down, we have only ourselves
to blame." He recalled of the incident, "It made no impact on him
whatsoever." Resigned, March 6, 2002.
Sylvia
K. Lowrance: A top Environmental Protection Agency official
who served the agency for over 20 years, including as Assistant
Administrator of its Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance
for the first 18 months of the Bush administration, Lowrance retired,
stating, "We will see more resignations in the future as the administration
fails to enforce environmental laws." she
said, "This Administration has pulled cases and put investigations
on ice. They sent every signal they can to staff to back off." Retired,
August 2002.
Bruce
Boler: An EPA scientist who resigned from his post because,
he
said, "Wetlands are often referred to as nature's kidneys. Most
self-respecting scientists will tell you that, and yet [private]
developers and officials [at the Army Corps of Engineers] wanted
me to support their position that wetlands are, literally, a pollution
source." Resigned, October 23, 2003.
Eric
Schaeffer: After twelve years of service, including the last
five as Director of the Office of Regulatory Enforcement, at the
Environmental Protection Agency, Schaeffer submitted a
letter of resignation over the Bush administration's non-enforcement
of the Clean Air Act. He later
explained:
"In
a matter of weeks, the Bush administration was able to undo the
environmental progress we had worked years to secure. Millions
of tons of unnecessary pollution continue to pour from these power
plants each year as a result. Adding insult to injury, the White
House sought to slash the EPA's enforcement budget, making it
harder for us to pursue cases we'd already launched against other
polluters that had run afoul of the law, from auto manufacturers
to refineries, large industrial hog feedlots, and paper companies.
It became clear that Bush had little regard for the environment and
even less for enforcing the laws that protect it. So last spring,
after 12 years at the agency, I resigned, stating my reasons in
a very public letter to Administrator [Christine Todd] Whitman."
Resigned,
February 27, 2002.
Bruce
Buckheit: A 30-year veteran of government service, Buckheit
retired in frustration over Bush administration efforts to weaken
environmental regulations. When asked by NBC
reporter Stone Phillips, "What's the biggest enforcement challenge
right now when it comes to air pollution?," the former Senior Counsel
with the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department
of Justice, and then Director of EPA's Air Enforcement Division,
was unequivocal: "The Bush Administration." He went on to note that
"this administration has decided to put the economic interests of
the coal fired power plants ahead of the public interests in reducing
air pollution." Resigned, November 2003.
Rich
Biondi: A 32-year EPA employee, Biondi retired from his post
as Associate Director of the Air Enforcement Division of the Environmental
Protection Agency. He
stated, "We weren't given the latitude we had been, and the
Bush administration was interfering more and more with the ability
to get the job done. There were indications things were going to
be reviewed a lot more carefully, and we needed a lot more justification
to bring lawsuits." Retired, December 2004.
Martin
E. Sullivan, Richard S. Lanier and Gary Vikan: Three members
of the White House Cultural Property Advisory Committee, they all
resigned from their posts to protest the looting of Baghdad's National
Museum of Antiquities. In
his letter of resignation, Sullivan, the Committee's chairman,
wrote, "The tragedy was not prevented, due to our nation's inaction,"
while Lanier castigated "the administration's total lack of sensitivity
and forethought regarding the Iraq invasion and the loss of cultural
treasures." Resigned, April 14, 2003.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, eyes began to focus on the Federal
Emergency Management Agency and the political appointees running
it. What had happened to the professionals who once staffed FEMA?
In 2004, Pleasant Mann, a 17-year FEMA veteran who heads the agency's
government employee union told Indyweek:
"Since
last year, so many people have left who had developed most of
our basic programs. A lot of the institutional knowledge is gone.
Everyone who was able to retire has left, and then a lot of people
have moved to other agencies."
Disillusionment with the current state of affairs at FEMA was cited
as the major cause for the mass defections. In fact, a February
2004 survey by the American Federation of Government Employees found
that 80% of a sample of remaining employees said FEMA had become
"a poorer agency" since being shifted into the Bush-created
Department of Homeland Security. What happened to FEMA has happened,
in ways large and small, to many other federal agencies. In an article
by Amanda Griscom in Grist
magazine, Jeff Ruch, the executive director of Public Employees
for Environmental Responsibility, made reference to the "unusually
high" rate of replacement of scientists in government agencies during
the Bush administration. "If the scientist gives the inconvenient
answer they commit career suicide," he said.
However
defined, the casualties of the Bush administration are legion. The
numbers of government careers wrecked, disrupted, adversely affected,
or tossed into turmoil as a result of this administration's wars,
budgets, policies, and programs is impossible to determine. Although
every administration leaves bodies strewn in its wake, none in recent
memory has come close to the Bush administration in producing so
many public statements of resignation, dissatisfaction, or anger
over treatment or policies. The aforementioned list of casualties
includes among the best known of those who have resigned or left
the administration under pressure (although not necessarily those
who have suffered most from their acts). Perhaps no one knows exactly
how many government workers, at all levels, have fallen in
the face of the Bush administration. Those mentioned above are just
a few of the highest profile members of this as yet uncounted legion,
just a few of the names we know.
NOTE:
If you know of others, or are one of the "fallen legion" yourself,
please send the information (and whatever supporting material you
would care to supply) to fallenlegionwall@yahoo.com
with the subject heading: "fallen legion" to add another name to
the "wall." This is a subject TomDispatch would like to return to
in the future.
Special thanks to Rebecca Solnit for providing the idea for this
piece, and so "commissioning" it.
October
15, 2005
Tom
Engelhardt [send him mail]
is editor of TomDispatch.com,
a project of the Nation
Institute. He
is the author of several books, including The
Last Days of Publishing: A Novel and The
End of Victory Culture. Nick Turse works in the Department
of Epidemiology at Columbia University and as the Associate Editor
and Research Director at TomDispatch.com. He writes for the Los
Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Village
Voice, and regularly for Tomdispatch on the military-corporate
complex, the homeland security state, and various other topics.
Copyright
© 2005 Tom Engelhardt.
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Engelhardt Archives
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