ustxtxb_obs_2005_11_18_50_00013-00000_000.pdf

Lilith’s clients need your help NOW! ii A Fund for Reproductive Equity The Lilith Fund assists women in exercising their fundamental right to reproductive freedom by removing financial barriers to abortion. you can help make sure that poverty does not prevent women’s access to abortion in the Lone Star State. Last year we spent more than $17,474 on direct client services. This year we have spent $38,000. This has exhausted our bottom line. Please donate generously. Your contribution is tax deductible. P.O. Box 684949 Austin. Texas 78768-4949 www.lilitlifund.org [email protected] DISSENT IS EDUCATIONAL. SUPPORT PUBLIC LIBRARIES and the Observer by donating a tax-deductible Observer subscription to the Texas public library of your choice. Visit our website www.texasobserver.org , or public libraries and to order a subscription. The Texas Observer OPENING THE EYES OF TEXAS FOR FIFTY YEARS ing. And now we’re seeing the wreckage. The most obvious example: Iraq. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their cohorts campaigned for the war against Saddam Hussein. They were going to show their toughness, regardless of the costs. The second example: the illegal detainment program at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the use of torture against prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere. The third example: the Federal Emergency Management Agency. When Bush’s enforcer, Joe Allbaugh, was appointed to head FEMA, he only had the campaign script. So in May 2001, after just a few weeks on the job, Allbaugh told the Senate that, “Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management.” Allbaugh didn’t stick around. He left after just 26 months. He didn’t have time to do the real work of governing. He had to turn the Don’t Fuck With Us campaign into cash. His firm, The Allbaugh Company, now advises clients on getting federal contracts. One of his clients: KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton. The most sickening part of Bush’s still-emerging legacy is that the brunt of his hubris is being felt not by Libby, Rove, or their unindicted co-conspirators, but by innocent people. The innocents include the thousands of American soldiers who have been killed or maimed in Iraq, the millions of Iraqis who have been displaced as their country has been shredded, and the tens of thousands of hurricane victims on the Gulf Coast who were left to fend for themselves because know-nothings like Allbaugh deemed FEMA “oversized.” The Greek tragedians warned us about overbearing pride. Bush ignored them. Now we are witnessing his downfall. Alas, there is no joy in that. Bush’s excessive pride is injuring America far more gravely than al-Qaeda did on September 11. And it may be decades before our country recovers. Robert Bryce is a contributing writer for the Observer. NOVEMBER 18, 2005 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 13