The Rant Continues...
Enjoy this moment, Dems. It's a free-fire zone on George W. Bush, a magical time when all the world's ills can be blamed on a lame duck President of the other party, even as your own party controls an even less popular Congress. Question: How much is oil up since the Dems took Congress? Answer: About 90%. No matter, you can blame it on Bush.
But the sweetest rage must be saved for recriminations about Iraq. It's an occasion for fine, Olbermanesque speechifyin' all brimming with righteous indignation. With the benefit of hindsight, everyone knows now that they would have been able to calibrate exactly how much force would be required to secure the country. In case you hadn't noticed, the country has been secured. We're not getting hit by terrorists anymore. What's the complaint, exactly? That maybe the country could have been secured by doing less? The President should have gambled that Saddam would have stayed out of it, that he'd gotten rid of every last WMD, that he'd sworn off his support for terrorists, that he wouldn't have dropped a couple of his oil-for-food billions to take a shot at us? Well, when Obama gets elected, we'll see how well that kind of thinking keeps us safe.
Actually, if you knuckleheads had half a brain you'd be rooting your asses off for W to take care of Ahmadinejad before your boy gets in there. Dinner-jacket will take Obama's lunch money and then kick his ass. Then he'll lob a nuke into Israel and dare Barry to do something about it. How you like me now, Obama? You want to talk?
History may well judge George Bush harshly, but if it does, it won't be because he did too much. It'll be because he didn't do enough. At a time when the West held a decisive edge in military power, bin Laden offered us the pretext to take decisive action against all our enemies--Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Saddam, Syria, Iran and North Korea. Bush made a start at it, but the job is not done, despite the great victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. And yes, they're victories, but partial victories don't count. History is replete with examples of great powers who underestimated the resolve of their enemies.
If Obama gets in, there is simply no way he'll have the resolve, or the political capital, to hold the line against Iranian nukes--and just like that the West's strategic advantage will be gone. From that point onward, our choice will be gradual capitulation or the most horrible war imaginable.
Americans alive today for the most part have only known peace and great prosperity. The world can change very suddenly.
In a a way, Bush is a victim of his own success. He succeeded so completely at shutting down terror, he opened the door to criticism that he'd done too much.
Better than not enough.
Enjoy this moment, Dems. It's a free-fire zone on George W. Bush, a magical time when all the world's ills can be blamed on a lame duck President of the other party, even as your own party controls an even less popular Congress. Question: How much is oil up since the Dems took Congress? Answer: About 90%. No matter, you can blame it on Bush.
But the sweetest rage must be saved for recriminations about Iraq. It's an occasion for fine, Olbermanesque speechifyin' all brimming with righteous indignation. With the benefit of hindsight, everyone knows now that they would have been able to calibrate exactly how much force would be required to secure the country. In case you hadn't noticed, the country has been secured. We're not getting hit by terrorists anymore. What's the complaint, exactly? That maybe the country could have been secured by doing less? The President should have gambled that Saddam would have stayed out of it, that he'd gotten rid of every last WMD, that he'd sworn off his support for terrorists, that he wouldn't have dropped a couple of his oil-for-food billions to take a shot at us? Well, when Obama gets elected, we'll see how well that kind of thinking keeps us safe.
Actually, if you knuckleheads had half a brain you'd be rooting your asses off for W to take care of Ahmadinejad before your boy gets in there. Dinner-jacket will take Obama's lunch money and then kick his ass. Then he'll lob a nuke into Israel and dare Barry to do something about it. How you like me now, Obama? You want to talk?
History may well judge George Bush harshly, but if it does, it won't be because he did too much. It'll be because he didn't do enough. At a time when the West held a decisive edge in military power, bin Laden offered us the pretext to take decisive action against all our enemies--Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Saddam, Syria, Iran and North Korea. Bush made a start at it, but the job is not done, despite the great victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. And yes, they're victories, but partial victories don't count. History is replete with examples of great powers who underestimated the resolve of their enemies.
If Obama gets in, there is simply no way he'll have the resolve, or the political capital, to hold the line against Iranian nukes--and just like that the West's strategic advantage will be gone. From that point onward, our choice will be gradual capitulation or the most horrible war imaginable.
Americans alive today for the most part have only known peace and great prosperity. The world can change very suddenly.
In a a way, Bush is a victim of his own success. He succeeded so completely at shutting down terror, he opened the door to criticism that he'd done too much.
Better than not enough.
posted by alwaysright at
4:48 PM
7 Comments:
Of course you can blame Bush for oil prices, this Congress did not start an unneccessary war in the middle east, centered around two of the largest oil producers. Bush did, he has also gone twice, cap in hand, to the Saudi princes begging for production increases and has been rebuked both times, why?
This is not a 'magical' time, it is a terribly tragic time, America is catching up with us Dirty Fucking Hippies and realizing that this administration and its president have been dishonest, mendacious and disingenious since the day the SCOTUS installed them. And it is not just Democrats as you so willfully imply, Republicans too are as disgusted and thoroughly reviled by the antics of an executive run amuck.
As for your beloved war in Iraq and your bloodthirst for another one with Iran... it's really all your ilk know how to do really well, fuck-up wars! Far from learning a lesson from our headlong rush into war with Iraq you insist on starting another one with a country that suffers only from having another hot head no-nothing as its president. Iran's regional aspirations are at least transparent and ultimately doomed to failure, they may be a player now but not because of their nuclear ambitions but because America has put them center stage and they are enjoying the limelight and the leverage provided to them by our ill-conceived, ill-prepared and mismanaged six year escapade in Iraq.
Obama and Clinton to a certain extent represent change, a change from the tired, flawed and reckless neocon imperialists thinking that has brought this countries reputation, treasury and hard fought for moral superiority to its knees.
Neocons are not a patriots, they are a fifth column with only a preset reflex for hate, bile and bitter resentment. Build in a false machismo and contempt for anything outside of their narrow world view and you invite the circumstances swirling around our nation right now. Bitter divisions, inequality, senseless wars, incompetent governance, radical interpretations of executive priviledge and the dissolving of the very laws that made this country a paragon of freedom.
The best you can do is rubbish the opposition with trite, baseless and juvenile innuendo, why? Because you lost the policy war, you lost the battle for the hearts and minds and most importantly you lost the war. Even the hardcore are already accepting these concepts, whilst you and McCain still talk fatuously about "Victory" and not "Surrendering". It's risible, really.
How did the war cause a doubling of oil prices since November '06? Oh and by the way, the Saudi's have brought on more production.
Why is this such a tragic time? 9/11 was a tragic time. We haven't been attacked since. I'd say that's cause for celebration. Buck up!
Markets and politics have some similarities. After awhile, oil prices are going up because they're going up, and the President's unpopular because the President's unpopular. Peope are just more comfortable being with the crowd. The trick is to recognize when the herd has swung too far. To me, the price of oil is too high and the President too unpopular.
If you want to talk about dishonesty and mendacity, you'd need to go a long way to match that of the anti-war crowd. The administration has been accused of fixing the intelligence (they didn't), lying about Saddam seeking uranium in Africa (he did), it goes on and on.
The President has been subjected to vicious, dishonest and unjustified attacks. Now it's just piling on and it's unseemly, not to mention shortsighted. After he's gone from office, someone is going to have to govern.
This thing comes down to this: You think that the war in Iraq was unnecessary. I agree. No war is necessary. You can always not fight. It is possible that we could have left Saddam alone, focused on Afghanistan, and maybe even have caught bin Laden, just like the popular fairy tale goes.
Unfortunately, there's no way to know whether that would have been sufficient to secure the country. Maybe it would have, and we could have avoided this whole horrible nightmare of Iraq. We'll never know.
In the brutal calculus of war, just one more 9/11 would have cost as many civilian lives as we've lost in combat in Iraq. Would it have been better to pre-empt bin Laden in Afghanistan, or are we required to wait to be attacked before we use force? When you believe a dangerous and unstable madman like Saddam, who had used WMD in the past, possesses WMD and could put them in the hands of someone like bin Laden, are we supposed to let him attack us first before we use force?
These are pretty tough issues. I happen to believe the administration made the only choice they could have, and that any responsible president would have done the exact same.
If we're less safe today, and I don't believe we are, it will be because of the scorched earth politics of the left that will effectively tie the hands of the next President. Having seen what happened to George Bush, will the next President have the political courage to do what's necessary to protect the country?
Fixing the intelligence, they did... see Colin Powell and his own admissions, see Scott McClellan, see the 'Dodgy Dossier' see any Knight-Ridder (McClatchy) article from 2002 to 2004, read the speaches of Kennedy and the other thirty or so Democratic Senators who refused to sign on to the sham perpetrated by this administration, my god man, the evidence is overwhelming and damning. Saddam sought Uranium in Africa, he didn't, this little speculative piece of innuendo propogated by Cheney has been debunked to death, it is a lie, piled on a lie, based on an outright forgery. You really have to start keeping up with reality.
I understand you are convinced... you have to be, without your blind adherence to neocon orthodoxies, what do you have left? Nothing!
As for the anti-war crowd? Well, for the most part, they got it absolutely right and that must be incredibly galling for you 'serious' people on the right with your previously untried theories of American hegemony exposed as the ramblings of mad men by the hot wind storms of desert realities.
It's time to find a new plan Stan...
Seeing that it was the position of US, UN, and just about every other intelligence agency in the world that Saddam possessed WMD BEFORE Bush took office, I find it hard to accept that they were somehow able to go back in time to "fix" the intelligence. They didn't, and three different bipartisan commissions found it so.
Likewise, it has absolutely never been debunked that Saddam sent his minister to discuss trade with Niger, whose only export is uranium. The dispute has centered around the word "attempted". Wilson and others have claimed, correctly, that he didn't succeed. That doesn't mean he didn't try, which is what the administration claimed. A pretty fair amount of yellowcake was actually found in Iraq, which of course they should never have had.
The antiwar crowd has gotten very little right as far as I can see. They've simply preyed upon the normal doubts and insecurities of prosecuting something as consequential as war. They've done so in a dishonest and cowardly fashion, and they now hate the President for not capitulating a year ago, persevering and winning the war.
No bi-partisan commission has investigated the 'fixing' of intelligence, in fact, thay deliberately abrogated that line of inquiry probably, at the request of the WH and embarrassed liberal hawks esconced in positions of power.
Only the British investigated the pre-war material and they found it to have been 'doctored'. Caviats, clarifications and rebuttals once accompanied the reports but were removed in favor of unqualified statements represented as facts. Curveball was laughed out of the CIA but his testimony filled Powells briefing to the UN and various reports circulating within Feith's shop and the WHIG disinformation campaign.
Don't you know any of this stuff? It's really scary how misinformed you are, I read everything both right, left and apolitical, you really have to catch up. You appear to be lost in a revisionist, apologist nightmare.
Wrong! There was no official British finding that intelligence was doctored. And there were, in fact three bipartisan commissions which found that no undue influence was used by the administration to produce the intelligence about WMD. It was the opinion of our and everybody else's intelligence BEFORE Bush took office that Saddam had not divested all of his WMD.
The CIA was asked to produce a definitive report and conclusion, which they did in October, 2002. Their conclusion: "Slam Dunk", to quote Clinton appointee, George Tenet.
Don't try to rewrite history, dude. That might fly in the lefty blogosphere, but not here.
Senate Intelligence Committee's Phase II Report on Pre-War intelligence released today.
Always Wrong!
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