That, and I was quoting BGM who used it when someone, I can't remember who, started talking about how he knew who BGM was an was going to "kick his ass" or something. I actually almost wrote "moo-ron" because that is more in line with how my wife and I do it, but I thought for the sake of the sanctity of BBS history I would use what I used. basso, I am sure, is not dense enough to have been serious in his rebuke.
A few points: No, responding to T_J as though he had a serious point of view, and the ability to back it up is according to him, falling into his trap. I don't really care about his declarations of victory, he does that whenever he can't say anything, but I've ceased trying to have a reasonable dialogue with him. It's like debating transcendentalism with Floyd the barber. Secind point...I initially had some interesting discussions with you, when I was standing up for the right to percieve the world through a religious perspective, but sonce you and I have disagreed on a few points, I have gotten an entirely different picture of you myself. You have a tendancy to discuss disagreements with others with the assumption that you are in possession of information they do not have, and when they disagree with you on the interpretation of fact, or point out others which you have not mentioned, you tend to respond with a repetition of the original facts with an " Obviously my education of you didn't take." kind of tone. All of this would be fine, but your thinking is, IMO, too linear. Sort of like Michael Moore...he can make decent points when unopposed, but when someone challenges him, he usually responds by re-phrasing his original point. Now I would never have raised this point with you, as I usually try and confine my criticisms to posts, not posters ( assuming that, unlike T_J, they're not here playing some farcicle psych game only they understand or care about) but this is about the third or fourth time you've come at me with this kind of judgment ( I seem to remember losing points on the twhy scale, etc.) and rather than continue just not responding, I thought I'd clear this up now. If you want to debate on facts, ideas, or whatever, cool, you have some ability, and some interesting perspectives. But if you are going to reduce every conversation to a judgement call based on the assumption that disagreement with you = not yet knowing what you have to say...and aren't going to back that up with actual substance...I'm not really that interested.
Wow!!!! It's as refreshing as it is unexpected to see such an unbiased post in the D&D on this very political Sunday afternoon. Good job 111chase111. You clearly were able to put your political ideologies to the side in making this post and I think your post is one of the few unbiased reactions to this interview that we are likely to see in the D&D or elsewhere. I wish the news media would report the news in the same manner in which you typed this post. Give us a rundown of events of what happened. Leave your opinion off the air and allow the viewer to form their own opinions based on what they hear instead of spoon feeding the viewers with biased opinion.
Let me clarify a couple of things. What I'm talking about here with Jorge and what happened the other time with bigtexxx was what I percieved from you to be out and out rudeness, and I didn't like that, and I think you're better than that and have shown it on this BBS. Any other disagreement with you I'm glad to debate til the cows come home and I'm glad you do it with grace and dignity. Its just that when you start threads entitled "Whats wrong with Catholics?", and continuely passive aggresively mock prayer life or the ideas of old tradition, thats when I get defensive and often strike out with haughty slightly irrational posts. I'd like to thank all those who've read through those by the way. I guess when I said losing points on the twhy scale, I think that was in respect to, I'm not quite sure if someone who cares at all about this and wants to drudge up the thread, the fact like I felt you were trying to rationalize things that you do that "in the past" would have been wrong, but now are not do to shifts in the Earth's moral code status....and I think thats a dangerous game. If you want to disagree with morality thats one thing, but I don't like this constant reworking of it to fit our modern day desires. And its not that you were really doing that a lot. Put it this way, its like you sit there and tell me that all of my values and religious morality are all wrong and ancient pieces of history; cute to look at but utterly untrue. If you're going to disagree with them, do so and just say it. I hate this idea that morality now bends to us rather than we to it. Quit being passive aggressive and just denounce faith (as you have come close to doing) or embrace it, or just leave it be. As far as everything else is concerned-- yeah I'm a cruddy debater at this point, I'm twenty friggin three years old what do you expect, Samuel Johnson-esque rhetoric? But I hate having to say, you know what, everybody thinks premarital sex isn't a sin anymore, I guess its what I should begin to believe. I'm not going to do that, its a slippery slope for me and my beliefs. I will stand up for what I believe to be right, and I think I do it in a way that does not just tell people they are wrong and sinners and going to hell and if I ever do so, please just tell me and we can discuss the matter and my conduct and I'm pretty sure I'll apologize, heck seems like all I ever do on here is apologize. Anyway, I hope that clarifies/articulates some things.
Bush had a few answers that acutally had merit. Regarding being AWOL, he flatly denied it and said his record is open and was already pried into back in the 2000 election. This answer was not circuitous. He also kept reiterating that he made the best decisions he could "at the time" with the intelligence he was given. This answer absolves him of knowingly bringing the country to war on a false premise. Combine this with constantly shifting the reasons for going to war, never admitting his rationale was based on an imminent threat, and he'll always be able to dodge his critics. Almost all other answers were cicuitous, never even addressed the question asked.
Describe this compel, do you mean force legislature on, or use rhetoric in ways that would be meant to persuade someone to see things in one's own fashion? And I shouldn't have said denounce faith but rather denounce morality. I know you're ok with the idea of the existence of God.
Presient Bait -n- Switch looked like a deer in the headlights yesterday. The "Great Communicator" he is not. He did little to stem the tide of his rapidly dropping poll numbers. They'd better trot Osama out from his prison cell a little earlier than late October.
Kerry: Bush told 'stories' about Iraqi prewar threat RICHMOND, Virginia (CNN) --Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. John Kerry accused President Bush on Sunday of changing his story on U.S. intelligence about Iraq during an interview on NBC's "Meet The Press." At a news conference in Richmond, where he was endorsed by Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, Kerry also suggested Bush is revising history on what led him to approach the United Nations before taking military action. In a written statement, Kerry called on Bush to testify before the intelligence commission he has appointed to investigate the prewar intelligence. "This morning on 'Meet the Press,' President Bush said that his decision to go to war with Iraq when he did was because Saddam Hussein had, quote, 'the ability to make weapons,' " Kerry told reporters at the news conference. "This is a far cry from what the president and his administration told the American people throughout 2002. Back then, President Bush repeatedly told the American people that Saddam Hussein, quote, 'has got chemical weapons.' "They told us they could deploy those weapons within 45 minutes to do injury to our troops," Kerry said. "They told us they had aerial vehicles and the capacity to deliver those weapons through the air. And it was on that basis that he sent America's sons and daughters marching off to war." Bush said on "Meet the Press" that he had "expected to find the weapons," but that his decision to go to war was really "based upon that intelligence in the context of the war against terror." (Full story) But Kerry said that the U.S. intelligence community apparently had its own questions about whether Iraq had such weapons. "The problem is not just that he is changing his story now -- it is that it appears he was telling the American people stories in 2002," Kerry said. "He told America that Iraq had chemical weapons two months after his own Defense Intelligence Agency told him that there was, quote, 'no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons.' " Asked about his support for a Senate resolution making war an option, Kerry responded, "We voted for a process" with assurance from the Bush administration that weapons of mass destruction were "the only rationale for going to war." Kerry said he and other lawmakers pushed the administration to build a "legitimate global coalition" and "honor" the process of U.N. weapons inspections by giving it time to find answers. "I noticed today the president said he made the decision to go to the U.N. Let's not revise history completely. We forced the president to go to the U.N. We pushed the president to go to the U.N," he said. Kerry accused the administration of picking and choosing intelligence that promoted its position while leaving out "clear evidence to the contrary." Bush, however, said in his "Meet the Press" interview that "Congress saw the same intelligence I had, and they looked at exactly what I looked at, and they made an informed judgment based upon the information that I had." Kerry said he questions whether the United Nations would now trust U.S. intelligence on any other country. There is an "urgency" to get answers, he said. He reiterated his call for Bush to have "a legitimate and immediate investigation into the extraordinary failure of intelligence or to help explain to the American people whether there were politics in the development of that intelligence." "It ought to be done in a matter of months," Kerry said. "I ask the president to take responsibility and set the record straight and immediately convene people who can give those answers to the American people," he said. In a written statement, Kerry called on Bush "in light of his new information today" to "immediately agree to testify before his intelligence commission." Bush said on NBC that he'd be glad to visit the commission but would not testify. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/02/08/elec04.prez.kerry.iraq/index.html
Claim vs. Fact By David Sirota, Christy Harvey and Judd Legum, The Progress Report February 8, 2004 Statement of John Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress "President Bush wouldn't have agreed to an hour long network interview without a good reason and today he had one: in the span of a week he's faced the dual challenges of a loss of credibility on the war in Iraq and his management of the economy. "His statement this morning that he would cut the deficit in half is simply laughable. Analyses by independent organizations like Goldman Sachs, the Concord Coalition, the Committee for Economic Development, and Decision Economics all project deficits of about $5 trillion over the next decade, even assuming a return to strong growth. "The President's statement that there is 'good momentum' on the job creation front is dishonest: while we are averaging 72,000 new private sector jobs created per month, at that pace, it would not be until May 2007 that this President would have created his first net job. President Bush is well on his way to having the worst job creation record since the Great Depression. His bragging today only served to reinforce his lack of credibility on managing the nation's economy. "And what the President referred to as a "word contest" regarding the threat from Iraq is, in fact, his attempt to change the rationale for going to war and rewrite the history of what has occurred. His argument today that Iraq had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and pass them into the hands of shadowy terrorist networks is inconsistent with the intelligence provided to him. "President Bush sought to restore his credibility today and he clearly failed to do so." Pre-War Intelligence CLAIM: "I expected to find the weapons [because] I based my decision on the best intelligence possible...The evidence I had was the best possible evidence that he had a weapon." FACT: WHITE HOUSE REPEATEDLY WARNED BY INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY. The Washington Post reported this weekend, "President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons." Specifically, the President made unequivocal statements that Iraq "has got chemical weapons" two months after the DIA concluded that there was "no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons." He said, "Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production" three months after the White House received an intelligence report that clearly indicated Department of Energy experts concluded the tubes were not intended to produce uranium enrichment centrifuges. He said, "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," three months after "the CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about" the claim. CLAIM: "We looked at the intelligence." FACT: WHITE HOUSE IGNORED INTELLIGENCE WARNINGS. Knight Ridder reported that CIA officers "said President Bush ignored warnings" that his WMD case was weak. And Greg Thielmann, the Bush State Department's top intelligence official, "said suspicions were presented as fact, and contrary arguments ignored." Knight Ridder later reported, "Senior diplomatic, intelligence and military officials have charged that Bush and his top aides made assertions about Iraq's banned weapons programs and alleged links to al-Qaeda that weren't supported by credible intelligence, and that they ignored intelligence that didn't support their policies." CLAIM: "The international community thought he had weapons." FACT: INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TOLD WHITE HOUSE THE OPPOSITE. The IAEA and U.N. both repeatedly told the Administration it had no evidence that Iraq possessed WMD. On 2/15/03, the IAEA said that, "We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq." On 3/7/03 IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said nuclear experts have found "no indication" that Iraq has tried to import high-strength aluminum tubes for centrifuge enrichment of uranium. At the same time, AP reported that "U.N. weapons inspectors have not found any 'smoking guns' in Iraq during their search for weapons WMD." AP also reported, "U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said his teams have not uncovered any WMD." CLAIM: "I went to Congress with the same intelligence. Congress saw the same intelligence I had, and they looked at exactly what I looked at." FACT: CONGRESS WAS OUTRAGED AT PRESENTATION BY THE WHITE HOUSE. The New Republic reported, "Senators were outraged to find that intelligence info given to them omitted the qualifications and countervailing evidence that had characterized the classified version and played up the claims that strengthened the administration's case for war." According to Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA), many House members were only convinced to support the war after the Administration "showed them a photograph of a small, unmanned airplane spraying a liquid in what appeared to be a test for delivering chemical and biological agents," despite the U.S. Air Force telling the Administration it "sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were being designed as attack weapons." Pre-War Assertions CLAIM: "I believe it is essential that when we see a threat, we deal with those threats before they become imminent. It's too late if they become imminent." FACT: ADMINISTRATION REPEATEDLY CLAIMED IRAQ WAS AN "IMMINENT THREAT." The Bush Administration repeatedly claimed that Iraq was an imminent threat before the war – not that it would "become imminent." Specifically, White House communications director Dan Bartlett was asked on CNN: "Is [Saddam Hussein] an imminent threat to US interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?" Bartlett replied, "Well, of course he is." Similarly, when White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked whether America went to war in Iraq because of an imminent threat, he replied, "Absolutely." And White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the reason NATO allies – including the U.S. – should support the defense of one of its members from Iraq was because "this is about an imminent threat." Additionally, the Administration used "immediate," "urgent" and "mortal" to describe the Iraq threat to the United States. CLAIM: "I think, if I might remind you that in my language I called it a grave and gathering threat, but I don't want to get into word contests." FACT: BUSH MADE FAR MORE DIRE STATEMENTS BEFORE THE WAR. While the President did call Iraq a "grave and gathering" threat, that was not all he said. On 11/23/02, he said Iraq posed a "unique and urgent threat." On 1/3/03 he said "Iraq is a threat to any American." On 10/28/02 he said Iraq was "a real and dangerous threat" to America. On 10/2/02 he said, "The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency" and that Iraq posed "a grave threat" to America. CLAIM: "Iraq had the capacity to make a weapon and then let that weapon fall into the hands of a shadowy terrorist network." FACT: ASSERTION BELIES PREVIOUS INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENT. This assertion belies the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate which told the White House that Iraq would most likely only coordinate with Al Qaeda if the U.S. invaded Iraq. As the NYT reported, "[A] CIA assessment said last October: 'Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks' in the United States." The CIA added that Saddam might order attacks with WMD as 'his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.'" Previously, the CIA had told the White House that Iraq "has not provided chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda or related terrorist groups." And David Kay himself said, " I found no real connection between WMD and terrorists" in Iraq. CLAIM: "And when David Kay goes in and says we haven't found stockpiles yet, and there's theories as to where the weapons went. They could have been destroyed during the war. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq. They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we'll find out." FACT: KAY ACTUALLY SAID WMD HAD BEEN DESTROYED AFTER 1991. David Kay didn't say we haven't found the stockpiles of chemical weapons because they are destroyed, hidden or transported to another country. Kay said that they were never produced and hadn't been produced since 1991. As he said, "Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW program after 1991. Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce and fill new CW munitions was reduced – if not entirely destroyed – during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of U.N. sanctions and U.N. inspections." Investigative Commissions CLAIM: "The reason why we gave it time is because we didn't want it to be hurried... it's important that this investigation take its time." FACT: OTHER COMMISSIONS SHOW THAT THE REPORT IS BEING DELAYED FOR POLITICS. Regardless of upcoming Parliamentary elections, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has set up a similar commission to investigate intelligence that will report by July. Additionally, in 1983 after the terrorist attack on U.S. troops in Beirut, a commission was appointed and completed its report within 2 months. CLAIM: "We have given extraordinary cooperation with Chairmen Kean and Hamilton." FACT: WHITE HOUSE HAS STONEWALLED THE 9/11 COMMISSION. According to the Baltimore Sun, President Bush "opposed the outside inquiry" into September 11th. When Congress forced him to relent, Time Magazine reported he tried to choke its funding, noting, "the White House brushed off a request quietly made by 9-11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean" for adequate funding. Then, the NY Times reported, "President Bush declined to commit the White House to turning over highly classified intelligence reports to the independent federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, despite public threats of a subpoena from the bipartisan panel." And as the Akron Beacon Journal reported last week, "the 9/11 panel did not receive the speedy cooperation it expected. In a preliminary report last summer, the panel's co-chairmen, Thomas Kean, a Republican and former governor of New Jersey, and Lee Hamilton, a Democrat and former congressman from Indiana, complained about lengthy delays in gaining access to critical documents, federal employees and administration officials. They warned the lack of cooperation would prove damaging, ensuring that a full investigation would take that much longer to complete, if at all." Economy/Budgetary Priorities CLAIM: "How about the fact that we are now increasing jobs or the fact that unemployment is now down to 5.6 percent? There was a winter recession and unemployment went up, and now it's heading in the right direction." FACT: THE JOB MARKET CONTINUES TO STAGNATE. Since President Bush's first tax cut in March 2001, the economy has shed more than 2 million jobs. He will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to end his term with a net job loss record. Additionally, the White House Counsel of Economic Advisors pledged that the President's "jobs and growth" package would create 1,836,000 new jobs by the end of 2003 as part of its pledge to create 5.5 million new jobs by 2004. But the economy added 221,000 jobs since the last tax cut went into effect, meaning the White House has fallen 1,615,000 jobs short of their mark. CLAIM: "There is good momentum when it comes to the creation of new jobs." FACT: STATISTICS SHOW THERE IS NOT GOOD JOB MOMENTUM. In the last two months we've seen an average of 73,000 private sector jobs created. At this pace, we wouldn't see a new net job created until May 2007. Even beyond the recession and 9/11, just looking at the recovery since November 2001, the current pace of job growth puts us on track to have the worst jobs recovery since the Great Depression. CLAIM: "But what the people must understand is that instead of wondering what to do, I acted, and I acted by cutting the taxes on individuals and small businesses, primarily. And that, itself, has led to this recovery." FACT: BUSH TAX CUTS HAD LITTLE EFFECT ON SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS. The Bush tax cuts had little effect on small business owners. Under the first tax cut, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports, small business owners "would be far more likely to receive no tax reduction whatsoever from the Administration's tax package than to benefit" because only 3.7% of small business owners are affected by the top tax rate cuts that were the bulk of the plan. Under the 2003 tax cut, the Urban Institute-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates "nearly four out of every five tax filers (79%) with small business income would receive less than the amount" while "52% of people with small business returns would get $500 or less." CLAIM: "The budget I just proposed to the Congress cuts the deficit in half in five years." FACT: WHITE HOUSE ESTIMATES OMIT INEVITABLE COSTS. The President's proposal to cut the deficit in half deliberately "omits a number of likely costs" such as the continued cost of Iraq and its own defense spending plans. All told, he is proposing roughly $3 trillion in new tax cuts and spending, including $1 trillion to make his tax cuts permanent, $70 billion for the Alternative Minimum Tax, and $50 billion more for war in Iraq. The result is that the deficit is predicted to be "in the range of $500 billion in 2009" – not even near half of what it currently is. CLAIM: "The economic stimulus plan that I passed is making a big difference." FACT: STUDY SHOWS TAX CUTS BARELY MADE A DENT. A study by Economy.com attributes only 0.9 percent out of the total 7.2 percent annualized growth in the third quarter to the 2003 tax cut. In other words, the Economy.com analysis suggests that the strength of the economy in the third quarter was not due primarily to the tax cut: Without the tax cut, growth would have still been an impressive 6.3 percent. Personal Military Records CLAIM: Russert – "Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?" Bush – "Yes, absolutely. We did so in 2000 by the way." FACT: RECORDS OFF-LIMITS. On 5/23/2000, the Boston Globe reported, "[A]s Bush has risen in public life over the last several years, Texas military officials have put many of his records off-limits and heavily redacted many other pages." CLAIM: "I did show up in Alabama." FACT: UNIT COMMANDER DOESN'T BELIEVE HE SHOWED UP FOR DUTY. The Boston Globe reports that Bush's assigned unit commander, William Turnipseed, and his administrative officer, Kenneth K. Lott, do not believe that Bush reported. In an interview Turnipseed said, "Had he reported in, I would have had some recall, and I do not. I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had had a first lieutenant from Texas, I would have remembered."
NW...Excellent. On the Iraq/WMD/intel stuff especially. People who continue to believe that Bush simply got bad intel are only doing so out of choice.
Peggy Noonan herself said ut was a terrible interview. I will try to quote as directly as I can: " The President looked tired, worried, and confused. He repeatedly stumbled. He wasn't speaking clearly, and when he tried to clarify things, he just made them worse." There was more. MSNBC analysts, even the normally pro-Republican ones were unanimous that this was a terrible interview. They agreed that Bush came off very evasive, defensive, and rambling. On Iraq, even Pat Buchanan said Bush looked very weak. He said that Bush was making a serious mistake to try and argue that the case for war as presented pre-war is still valid. He said that, if Bush sticks to the WMD/intel 'legal' excuse, " frankly, the case just isn't there." He said Bush should shift to saying stressing that Saddam was a devil in waiting, and that we addressed a "potential threat." As is, he said, Bush is arguing an empty case. And he was the most kind. Others said it was clear that " Bush either didn't speak the truth or didn't know the truth. Which one is worse is up in the air." All agreed that he was totally evasive about the direct questions about his war record, although many thought it would ultimately not be a big issue. All parties, Buchanan included agreed that the Republicans are very worried, that the fact that Bush is doing interviews like this, and talking about things he would clearly rather avoid, is clear evidence of, if not panic, certainly extreme concern. All agreed that Bush came off defensive and muddled. They pointed out that Bush's approval rating, 47%, sits at exactly the same place his father's did at the exact same time in his 2nd term.
Meanwhile, the Republican shills on Faux News said Bush did a great job on Meet the Press. I do believe that if President Bait -n-Switch ever farted into a microphone, Faux News would hail it as a breakthrough policy statement.
And, although it is still early, it looks like he will follow his father's footsteps when it comes to winning a second term.
Mr. Bush's Version When Americans choose a president, their most profound consideration is whether a candidate can make the wisest possible decisions when it comes to war. In the case of George W. Bush, they will not only judge whether the invasion of Iraq was the right decision, but what our president has brought away from that experience. If there were misjudgments about the nature of Iraq's weapons programs or in the ways the administration presented that intelligence to the public, we need to know whether he recognizes them and has learned from them. Yesterday, in an interview with NBC's Tim Russert, after a week in which it became obvious to most Americans that the justifications for the war were based on flawed intelligence, Mr. Bush offered his reflections, and they were far from reassuring. The only clarity in the president's vision appears to be his own perfect sense of self-justification. Right now, the questions average Americans are asking about Iraq seem much clearer than the ones Mr. Bush is willing to confront. People want to know why American intelligence was so wrong about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Mr. Bush didn't have a consistent position on this pivotal issue. At some points during his Oval Office interview, he seemed to be admitting that he had been completely wrong when he told the public just before the war started that the intelligence left "no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." At other moments he suggested the weapons might still be hidden somewhere, or that they may have been transported to another country. At times he depicted himself as having been misled by intelligence reports. But he insisted that George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, was doing a good job and deserved to keep his job. Average Americans are also asking themselves whether invading Iraq would have seemed like the right decision if we knew then what we know now. Mr. Bush doesn't seem willing to even take on this critical question. He repeatedly referred to Saddam Hussein as a dangerous madman, without defining the threat that even a madman, without any weapons of mass destruction, posed to the United States. At one point, his reasoning seemed to be that even if the dictator did not have the feared weapons, he could have started manufacturing them on a moment's notice. To bolster his position, he cited David Kay, the American weapons inspector, as reporting that "Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons." In fact, Mr. Kay said that Iraq's weapons program seemed to have ground to a halt under the pressure of the United Nations inspections and sanctions that Mr. Bush and his staff disdained last year. Mr. Kay said Saddam Hussein retained only the basic ability to restart weapons programs if that pressure were removed. At other times, the president seemed to argue that the invasion was necessary simply to demonstrate that Americans did not back down from a fight. "In my judgment, when the United States says there will be serious consequences, and if there isn't serious consequences, it creates adverse consequences," he said. Although Mr. Bush tried to portray himself as a man who exhausted every peaceful solution, the "serious consequences" were threatened in a United Nations resolution in late 2002 that Mr. Bush was forced to seek to mollify nervous allies after the decision to have a war was essentially made. Mr. Bush's explanation of how he reconciled the current activities in Iraq with his 2000 campaign rejection of "nation building" was simply silly. (American troops are building a nation in Iraq, he said, but they are also "fighting a war so that they can build a nation.") And it's very hard to take seriously Mr. Bush's contention that he was not surprised by the intensity of the resistance in Iraq. The president was doing far more yesterday than rolling out the administration's spin for the next campaign. He was demonstrating how he is likely to think if confronted with a similar crisis in the future. The fuzziness and inconsistency of his comments suggest he is still relying on his own moral absolutism, that in a dangerous world the critical thing is to act decisively, and worry about connecting the dots later. Mr. Bush said repeatedly that he went to the United Nations seeking a diplomatic alternative to war. In fact, the United States rejected all diplomatic alternatives at the time, severely damaging relations with some of its most important and loyal allies. "I believe it is essential that when we see a threat, we deal with those threats before they become imminent," he said. "It's too late if they become imminent." Another question average Americans will be asking themselves this election year is whether the Bush administration, which wanted to invade Iraq even before Sept. 11, manipulated the intelligence reports to frighten Congress and the public into supporting the idea. The president's claim yesterday that Congress had access to exactly the same intelligence he had was inaccurate, and his comments about the new commission he has appointed to look into intelligence gathering made it clear that he has no intention of having his administration's actions included in the probe. Some of Mr. Bush's comments yesterday raise questions even more disturbing than the idea that senior administration members might have misled the nation about the intelligence on Iraq. The nation obviously needs a leader who is always alert to the threat of terrorism from abroad. But it cannot afford to have one who responds to the trauma of 9/11 by overreacting to the possibility of danger. In the coming campaign, Mr. Bush, who described himself as a "war president," is going to have to show the country that he is capable of distinguishing real threats from false alarms, and has the courage to tell the nation the truth about something as profound as war. Nothing in the interview offered much hope in that direction.
$250 million, 10 swing states. Kerry will be turned into the AntiChirst and GWB into Ghandi x King Solomon.
That 250 million won't be enough if the media is willing to report objectively on Bush and his administration, there is not major job creation, and,or Bin Laden is not captured before the election. I'm hopeful that the mainstream media is finally starting to wake up and are finding it harder and harder to ignore reality of the multiple disasters this Administration has fomented. Meanwhile the Administration is finding it harder to keep their finger in the dike.
Meanwhile the Administration is finding it harder to keep their finger in the dike. <insert lesbian joke here>
