<p>^^^</p>
<p>Okay interesteddad, I edited it. I’ll admit I have an anti-Hilary animus and as a result just made an assumption about her position; I don’t pay attention to her. Sorry about that.</p>
<p>Oops, I wasn’t able to delete the second statement where I wrote she was being a contortionist, the one you quoted.</p>
<p>BTW, if we want to move beyond the minutia and examine what went wrong in the Bush administration for historical purposes, it’s really quite simple:</p>
<p>The executive branch is supposed to be set up with multiple constituencies (State, Defense, etc.) that ensure a President is getting a balanced presentation of risks and policy options. The system is supposed to have significantly conservative inertia to overcome before committing to the use of force.</p>
<p>The Bush administration was structured in a way that Cheney/Rumsfeld could bypass the normal foreign policy structure – a big mistake. This was further compounded by a yes-woman sychophant National Security Advisor who failed in her primary responsibility: to present all sides of an issue to the President. By cutting the State Department (and its institutional hesitancy for military action) out of the loop, the system failed. This was compounded by Rumsfeld/Cheney ignoring the institutional reluctance of the military commanders to use military force.</p>
<p>Those will be the lessons the historians take away from the Iraq disaster. The administration was structurally flawed.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>
Perhaps in the stickerey of cut-n-paste you overlooked the part where I wrote that I did not like any of the presidential candidates running and that, even more, I felt that the only decent candidate, Ron Paul, would be taken down by the current “deciders” of the political party. I would not now, nor would I have in the past, have voted for the current decider/president. It is just that one party tends to reflect my views, at least in part, more than the other.</p>
<p>You assume too much: I am not a party girl, at least not in this sense you would make me out to be. I am intellectually conservative in a classical sense, that’s as far as it goes. I hate politics and I am not real big on those that follow it.</p>
<p>It is my opinion that most of the political class, in 2001, wanted war, certainly a majority did with only a few forceful exceptions. Now the majority opposes war. How clever. I was never for the war, I opposed it…and I never took any satisfaction in being proved right.</p>
<p>
I would go with your instincts here.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, ultimately this is a question of choice, but I totally agree with the spirit of what you said. Actually Paul O’Neill, the first Treas. Sec. under the Current Occupant (Bush) talked about being appalled at how impoverished discussion and analysis was in the Administration and how it had been 180 degrees different when he was in the Nixon Administration, that there were active debates and really informed people weighed in on both sides with the president engaged… You can say a lot of things about Nixon, but he was certainly a much stronger intellect than Bush is.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re just saying the same thing a different way. Assigning blame across the board, with co-equal intentionality. Most people were stampeded into this war, at least as it was directed, including quite a few I believe who voted for it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>These instincts find their genesis in the same place that thinks you made a fool of yourself in your posts today. As per your suggestion, I stand by them.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In this, we are totally in synch.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>BH,</p>
<p>I am sure that it would make you and those you snuggle with more comfortable to believe that our republic is in fact a monarchy–sacre bleu!–but sadly–perhaps–it is not. </p>
<p>And if the war had to happen because of forces beyond the control of our elected representatives, then perhaps they get a pass…but my instinct tells me it was not fate but politics that moved them to get-in-line. </p>
<p>What’s more, I do hold this administration first and foremost responsible for this war. So I am not sure that I get your point. I am not cutting anyone any slack, not from any branch of government.</p>
<p>But neither do I cut congress any slack.
Congress exists, in part, to check the bad habits of the bully-executive. Either the legislators did their job and agreed with the war and the case made for it (stand-up guys and gals) or they did not do their job while sheepishly disagreeing (limp-limbed-intellectuals, as above).</p>
<p>So let’s get this out of the way:</p>
<ol>
<li>I opposed the war.</li>
<li>I was not for the election of this president (I could not vote at the time).</li>
<li>The war is the legacy of this president; it’s his historical moment and the virtual ruin of his party for some time to come.</li>
<li>I made a fool of myself in my posts today. As you surmise.</li>
</ol>
<p>Hmmm?</p>
<p>To your credit (?) you do, however, seem to live in a world of good teams and bad teams, BH. The political sport, I suppose. Some dring beer and watch football on tv. Some a latte and MSNBC. You cheer for one team vociferously …and well: Huzzah!
Your party should be glad to have someone the likes of you even if they have a lot just like you. Anyhow, I am sure they are ecstatic, as they should be.</p>
<p>But I do not.
When it comes to politics, I see the world composed of:</p>
<ol>
<li>knucleheads, </li>
<li>hypocrites, </li>
<li>slackers, </li>
<li>bad guys far-out on the margins ( a tiny minority). </li>
</ol>
<p>All otherwise known as “do-gooders” and those who care. Sounds better.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Bedhead, you are wrong on both points. There were other people stirring the pot for war besides the administration and one of those people was Al Gore. Gore apparently has bought all of the used teflon that Ronald Reagan had when it comes to his position on the war. It is amazing the number of people who should know better who think that he was always against the war. This is Al Gore beating the drums for war in a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations in February, 2002:</p>
<p>
<a href=“Explainers | Council on Foreign Relations”>Explainers | Council on Foreign Relations;
This speech, taken along with his recent denunciation of the war and Bush is highly illustrative what a major creep Al Gore is. At the time the speech was given Bush was at his most popular and the mood of the nation was such that we really wanted to do something, anything to get back for 9/11. So Gore comes out and praises Bush’s use of the terrm “Axis of Evil” and trumps it with a call for war. Then, once the mood of the nation takes a turn, Gore is following right along with his new song. Gore needs to learn a thing or two about leadership - and honesty.</p>
<p>
Exactly! And Gore represents many other democrats. When the mood of the country supported the war with Iraq, they were all on board the ship. When the ship hit a sand barge, the democrat rats are the first to jump off the ship and say “It wasn’t me who was driving that ship.”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, FF, I have to admit you are right. I went back and looked at the record of statements by Gore. Though Gore did come out decisively immediately in the lead-up to the war against a rush to a unilateral war, he did make the statements you cited as well as others that lie logically between the two (as well as chronologically).</p>
<p>It doesn’t disprove the basic point that this Administration used its bully pulpit, the intelligence apparatus, the credibility of such folks as Colin Powell at the UN, and that PRIMARY, though not sole responsibility lies with it.</p>
<p>Don’t lose sight of the larger point.</p>
<p>And as a Democrat who is not a pacifist, but who thought this war was a strategic blunder, I would like to see forgiven any Republican or Democrat who went along with the charade so long as they help speed a solution to the problem. The way it’s going now, there is a lot of jockeying to avoid being tainted with the brush of defeat. But Bush should be painted with that brush since he, as the primary agent, got us into this mess in the first place.</p>
<p>By the way, as a proponent on these boards for the so-called surge, how do you think it’s doing?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Agreed. That, and IMO false intelligence pushed by the Administration. I don’t think that we live in a monarchy, but I am disgusted at people that spend a lot of time trying to give full slack to Bush, a la “he was a good guy who was misled.”</p>
<p>I actually think that as much as we’ve drawn figurative blood – or tried – today, we probably see a lot of issues about this war the same. And I have never rejoiced, not one iota, in Bush’s failure, though I think he’s a slacker who failed upwards because of his family name.</p>
<p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>I am not quite as cynical as you, though time spent close to powerful politicians (before I got out of the game) doesn’t put me so far from your viewpoint. I have some faith in some. But I think number 3 is far from right, I have never known a politician to be a slacker – especially within 100 yards of a camera or reporter. At that point, they generally become sprinters. Towards, that is. But seriously, even venal politicians generally have to put in a fair amount of work these days. Generally.</p>
<p>Who is this Gore you guys say represent Democrats? I haven’t seen any of his campaign appearances, nor do I recall seeing any fundraising reports filed with the FEC for a Gore campaign.</p>
<p>^
Well, diversions have to be seized wherever they are available. ; )</p>
<p>Razorsharp #87: I have followed the Joe and Valerie Wilson saga carefully and I want to extend my congratulations! You have successfully regurgitated several of my favorite (and widely repudiated) right-wing talking points used repeatedly since summer 2003 to smear their reputations. (Did you see earlier this week, per a filing by Patrick Fitzgerald, that it turns out Valerie Wilson was in fact a covert agent, which was something her husband had claimed all along?) Let’s agree to let history be the judge. But if I were a betting woman, I would put my money on the Wilsons.</p>
<p>Calmom, I have also followed the Wilson matter and am pretty confident in my conclusions. They are based on Wilson/Plame’s own words and reports from various senate committees. The conclusion that Wilson outted his own wife came from the Washington Post, not exactly your right wing rag. Whether right wing groups point out the truth does not make it any less the truth. </p>
<p>I don’t think it was ever in dispute that Plame was a covert agent. </p>
<p>I am not much on betting either. But if you needed money to bet, Joe Wilson has a lot of extra cash from his book all about himself. Plame will have a lot of money soon after she sells her book (coincidently all about herself). They have made their bets and won big. Trashing Bush is always profitable. Follow the money.</p>
<p>A) Since Bob Novak’s infamous “outing” of Valerie Wilson, right-wing blogs et al have continuously disputed that she was covert at that time. (And it would be naive of me to think that Fitzgerald has put that lie to rest.)</p>
<p>B) That Washington Post editorial penned Fred Hiatt has been widely discredited. You can look it up.</p>
<p>C) Since Valerie Wilson’s book has not yet been published, how can you claim that it is “all about herself?”</p>
<p>Carlmom, I danced this cha-cha with Razorsharp and several other CC regulars a year or two ago. The obvious distortion of facts in the right wing blogs (generally by careful omission of facts or stressing an ambiguous minor event) is evident to anyone who cares to dig through the source material, but it just gets tiring after the second or third time. I actually did read the several government reports on the Wilson/Niger matter, as well as additional source data, in order to personally assess the facts (as well as the questionable quality of some of the information many base conclusions on.) But the blog echos will hear what they want to hear, no matter how many times you dig up the facts and point them out, item by item. What’s interesting to me is the seething, uncontrollable rage the right feels towards Wilson and Plame. Why? They’re hardly central players in the mess BushCo has gotten itself into.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ha, this very thing has completely amazed me as well. It’s such a footnote to everything. Gawd.</p>
<p>You can read Patrick Fitzgerald’s sentencing memo this week to the judge in the Scooter Libbey case here:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/libby-sentencing-memo/?resultpage=1&[/url]”>http://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/libby-sentencing-memo/?resultpage=1&</a></p>
<p>Good summary of the case and the seriousness of the charges.</p>
<p>IMO, Armitage, Rove, Libby, and Cheney should all be convicted of treason in this case.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They would have been – and justifiably so – if they had done these things in the Clinton Administration.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thanks for starting out my day with a hearty laugh. That was quite funny!</p>
<p>First, Fitzgerald didn’t even find any evidence to even charge Libby with a crime directly related to the Plame outing, but just the insinuation that a crime has been committed and that he is guilty is enough to convict not only him but Rove and Cheney as well. For Fitzgerald to try to get a stiffer sentence based on a "crime’ that he has no evidence to prove happened just goes to show what a political witch hunt this has become. Meanwhile, Sandy Berger gets off with a slap on the wrist for intentionally stealing and destroying classified documents - but yeah, Clinton people are always treated much more harshly that Bush people. That’s a good one.</p>