A White House in Chaos? Insiders report Bush out of control. . .

a White House that is in chaos and disarray as Fitzgerald’s PlameGate indictments descend. Thompson’s sources tell him that “For all practical purposes, governing the nation has stopped at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as aides deal with an increasingly despondent President, mounting scandals and defecting dissidents from the Ship of State. … White House insiders say George W. Bush's mood swings have increased to the point where meetings with the President must be cancelled, schedules shifted and plans changed to keep a bitter, distracted leader from the public eye. ‘He's like a zombie some days, walking around in a trance,’ says one aide who, for obvious reasons, asks not to be identified. ‘Other times he launches into angry outbursts, cussing out anybody who gets near him.’”

Other points made by Thompson (his words), as follows:

-Aides say gallows humor has descended on the White House, where the West Wing is now referred to as "death row" and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, along with Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, are known as "dead men walking," a reference to the last walk death row inmates take to the execution chamber.

-Says one longtime Republican consultant, "They'll have to carry Dick Cheney out of here on a stretcher." But Rove and Libby will be gone if they are indicted and some wonder if the President, whose ability to govern is already limited by despair and detraction, can function without Rove, often referred to as "Bush's brain."… "Rove's role is diminished already," says one White House aide. "He still meets with The President daily but all this has taken its toll. He looks terrible."

-"The façade is gone and we are now seeing the Bush White House in all its incompetent glory," says retired political science professor George Harleigh. "They've ignored reality for too long."

-With Congress distracted by growing scandals swirling around former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Washington has become a daily killing field for anyone involved in the GOP leadership.

-[Larry] Wilkerson, a veteran with 31 years in the Marines and a former director of the Marine War College, sums up what, sadly, will be the legacy of George W. Bush: "If there is a nuclear terrorist attack or a major pandemic you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that'll take you back to the Declaration of Independence."

-Wilkerson isn't the only high-profile Republican operative bailing on Bush. Bruce Bartlett, who served as a Senior Policy Advisor in Bush's father's administration, is about to release a book: Imposter: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Destroyed the Reagan Legacy. Bartlett lost his job at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative Texas think tank, when word of his book project leaked out.

from Free Market News.com
http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=1446