A Memorial to the Honorable Men and Women Who Have Resisted the Bush Administration

Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 04:04 PM

As dishonorable as this administration is, it has been opposed by a steady stream of men and women--civilian and military--whose own sense of right and wrong put the members of the Bush administration to shame.  As in any environment where corruption and deception rule the day, most of these honorable people have paid a price for their ethics, ranging from loss of their job to smears of their reputation, to harassing litigation.

The Nation Institute's tomdispatch.com has a three part "memorial" to 200+ bureaucrats and government officials who have resigned, transferred, been forced out, or otherwise changed positions because of their opposition to the administration's policies.  

You have undoubtedly heard of some, such as Richard Clarke, the former chief adviser on terrorism, and Paul O'Neill, the former Secretary of the Treasury.

You might have heard of others, such as Larry Lindsey, a Bush economic adviser fired after going public with his estimate that the Iraq war would cost $200 billion, General Eric Shinseki who was "rendered ineffective" by Rumsfeld's announcement that the General would retire, not long after telling congress that Iraq would require several hundred thousand troops, and Karen Kwiatkowski, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force who retired from her job in the Dept. of Defense citing behavior in the highest levels of that Department which were "aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline."

There are many, many more that you have probably not heard about, such as several military officers assigned to act as prosecutors of the detainees at Guantanamo, who requested reassignment rather than work under the rules and conditions that the administration had set up there.  Or Joanne Wilson, who quit as commissioner of the Department of Education's Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) the day after the Bush administration announced that it would close all RSA regional offices and cut personnel in half.  Or Jesselyn Radack, an attorney in the Justice Department's Professional Responsibility Advisory Office who worked on the case of John Walker Lindh (the "American Taliban"),  who  put her career on the line to ensure that the judge in the case received copies of e-mails she had written, but which disappeared from the file, indicating her opinion that the FBI had committed ethics violations in the case; she was forced out of her job, as well as a later private sector job, spent $100,000 defending against criminal and bar association charges brought by the government, but ultimately dropped or dismissed, and put on the government's "no-fly" list.

It's fascinating and disgusting reading.  Check out "the fallen legion," Part 1, Part 2  and Part 3.