The Bush Administration has entered full destructo mode. They have only two months left to complete destruction of everything. Most of us think they’ve already succeeded admirably, but there’s more to be done. For instance:
At the Bush administration’s direction, the Environmental Protection Agency is working on a new rule that would weaken pollution regulations for power plants, allowing them to increase emissions without adding controls.
EPA officials have been working on a fast track to meet a Saturday deadline, but many of them are arguing against changing the rule, said former EPA attorney John Walke and an EPA career official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the official wasn’t authorized to make statements.
They said that the EPA was expected to decide in November on another eleventh-hour rule that would allow more power plants to be built near national parks and wilderness areas.
This kind of stuff will be happening from now until January. Regulatory change rarely attracts attention, but it is precisely the place an administration can do the most good, and, in the case of the Bush folks, precisely where it can wreak the most destruction.
Meantime, on another front, the Bush folks are teaching our Iraqi puppets a little lesson about sovereignty:
Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, informed Iraqi officials last week that if their country doesn’t agree to a new agreement governing American forces in Iraq, it would lose $6.3 billion in aid for construction, security forces and economic activity and another $10 billion a year in foreign military sales.
The warning was spelled out in a three-page list that was shown to McClatchy on Monday. Iraqi officials consider the threat serious and worry that the impasse over the so-called status of forces agreement could lead to a crisis in Iraq. Without a new agreement or a renewed United Nations mandate, the U.S. military presence would become an illegal occupation under international law.
So Bush is playing a game of chicken in Iraq. If the Iraqis don’t back down, his little war will become a clear and undoubted violation of international law, bereft of the fig leaf of legitimacy it has enjoyed hitherto. Unfortunately, it would also leave Obama with another major headache as he enters the White House, which is probably one of the reasons they’ve decided to blackmail the Iraqis. Like retreating armies throughout history, the Bushies have adopted a scorch earth policy. What they can’t take with them, they’ll destroy.
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