Your response obviously took a lot of time and effort. You know your Bush history. Nice job. But, with all due respect, many of the claims were not rebuked or addressed. In most of the points, what was said was "Well, what about (insert name here)?" That's not defending anything -- just that he's not the worst guy out there. That's hardly an endorsement. It's like defending Eddie Griffin by saying "At least he's not Michael Jackson." Again, I respect the time and work you put into your very-well researched response. I just think the focus could have been shifted a bit.
Yes and the departing admin told Bush the #1 priority was Al Qaeda and the Bushies dropped the ball since they hate Clinton with such vehemence they didn't want to *continue* a Clinton project.
What Clinton project? Bill even admitted they passed up an opportunity to grab him from the Sudanese! Lobbing a couple of cruise missiles at bad intel just to deflect criticism is not a project. Give me a break.
I've already posted Blumenthal's interviews when the book was released, but just posted the first match on google. http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/03/08/27.html The Weekly Standard vs. BuzzFlash.com and Sidney Blumenthal: Part I A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL A while back the Wall Street Journal called BuzzFlash "the shrillest and most dimwitted political site on the web." We are regular targets of invective from the right wing shills (who are cousins to the kind of journalists who staffed Pravda under Soviet rule). So we weren’t surprised when the Rupert Murdoch Neo-Con rag, The Weekly Standard, accused BuzzFlash and Sidney Blumenthal of slander. Here is an excerpt from the September 1st edition of the Murdoch publication (available only to paid subscribers), entitled "Another Phony Anti-Bush Slander": BuzzFlash.com, a sort of Drudge Report for the left, has joined forces with former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal to spin the line that the Clinton administration was heroically tough on terrorism but that the Bush administration, despite being "fully briefed by Clinton staffers about the imminent threat posed by terrorism," fell asleep at the switch until 9/11. Under the banner "Bush Ignored the Terrorist Threat," BuzzFlash readers can enjoy excerpts from Blumenthal's recent book "The Clinton Wars," in which he recounts transition meetings between Clinton and Bush national security officials. In one, we learn that Clinton NSC adviser Sandy Berger "told them that Osama bin Laden was 'an existential threat' and told them he wanted 'to underscore how important this issue is.'" In another transition briefing, according to Blumenthal, "Richard Clarke, head of counterterrorism in the NSC, the single most knowledgeable expert in government, gave a complete tutorial on the subject." The Weekly Standard was reacting to two excerpts from Blumenthal’s scrupulously documented book, "The Clinton Wars," which were recently posted on BuzzFlash [LINK]. Here was our introduction to the second excerpt from "Clinton Wars": With permission of the author and his publisher (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux), the second section we are reproducing (beginning on page 795 of the book) finds Blumenthal reflecting on Bush's White House stature before and after 9/11. It includes information on how the Bush team was fully briefed by Clinton staffers about the imminent threat posed by terrorism. Blumenthal reveals shockingly how the Bush national security team ignored an explicit warning about al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden before 9/11 from within the National Security Council itself -- and how the official who gave them that red alert was isolated as a result. [\b] BuzzFlash contacted Sidney Blumenthal to get his response to The Weekly Standard attack. "September 11th was the biggest security failure in American history and it was George W. Bush who neglected the issue and was the president that failed," Blumenthal told BuzzFlash. "The right is trying to blame President Clinton and Democrats generally for the lapses of the Bush administration. Bush has spent his whole life ducking responsibility, having his father's friends cover up his escapades and advance his career and portfolio, and having a political machine blame others and make excuses for his incompetence while hailing him as a great leader. But it's Bush who bears the responsibility. The buck stops there." As for the BuzzFlash response to The Weekly Standard, one editorial won't be sufficient. But we’ll start off by quoting from a recent BuzzFlash editorial [LINK]: Lies have, of course, also been the basic tool used by the Bush administration to fend off criticism of its failure to protect America from 9/11. In a recent BuzzFlash editorial, we mentioned, yet again, one of the most astonishing lies in a long list of audacious mendacity. It’s still worth repeating (Note that in this incident, Condi Rice once again carried the water for Bush): Well, let's take a look at a couple of examples from 2002. In the spring of that year, revelations were coming out that Bush had been warned of an imminent terrorist attack on the U.S. during a briefing in the summer of 2001, but ignored the warning and went off to vacation on his ranch for a month. Then came September 11th and the Bush Cartel acted as if it were all a big surprise. Other information about the Bush Cartel being asleep at the wheel in preventing the terrorist attack also began to emerge. There were starting to be rumbles in Congress about an independent investigation of 9/11 being created. Cheney even called Tom Daschle to threaten that an independent investigation would make the United States more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The Bush Cartel hauled out Condi to "explain" that it was true that Bush had been warned that Al-Qaeda hijackings might occur in the near future, but that Bush wasn't told about plans to attack the World Trade Center or Pentagon so he didn't take action to protect them. The press dutifully accepted this explanation. But as BuzzFlash pointed out at the time -- and we assume most second graders would understand this, but apparently not the mainstream press -- the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon WERE hijackings. If Bush had taken steps after his pre-9/11 security briefing to put law enforcement on heightened alert, he might very well have prevented the hijacking attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. But the American press and the TV pundits couldn't figure out this little bit of basic common sense and convinced the American public that Condi had cleared everything up. It staggers the mind that they could get away with this transparent, nonsensical, lie. Condi admitted that Bush was warned about potentially imminent hijackings, the source of the 9/11 attacks. That is the bottom line, period. Furthermore, if Bush was warned in the summer of 2001 that Al-Qaeda was planning spectacular hijackings and did nothing significant to increase airport security, what does that tell you? Another point that seemed to cast doubt on Condi's claims of Bush innocence in terms of having failed to prevent 9/11 was that she claimed that no one had known that Al-Qaeda was planning to attack buildings with planes. But that was quickly disproved by BuzzFlash and other sites who pointed out that Bush had attended a G-8 conference in Genoa, where anti-aircraft missiles were deployed for the specific reason that intelligence gathering had revealed Al-Qaeda was planning to attack buildings in the Italian city, targeting the G-8 conferees. That was one reason Bush slept on a boat offshore. And that occurred before the "smoking gun" briefing in the summer of 2001! The lie that Rice told to explain away Bush's pre-9/11 briefing on the threat of deadly hijackings by Al Qaeda was the political equivalent of robbing a bank in broad day light -- and getting away with it. And beyond the known lies about Bush failing to prevent 9/11, there are all the details that the Bush Cartel still refuses to share with the American public. Insiders on the Congressional 9/11 commission have indicated that much of this information would be damning to Bush. It is vital to remember that The Weekly Standard is owned by Rupert Murdoch. The attack (on Blumenthal’s valid assertions that the Bush administration did almost nothing to fight Al-Qaeda prior to 9/11) was reprinted in the New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch. No doubt, it will resurface on the always "Unbalanced and Unfair" FOX News, owned by Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch is very skilled at creating an echo chamber for his pro-Bush views. He does the same thing in England, where he uses multiple media outlets to support pro-war, pro-privatization, and pro-deregulation positions. Most importantly, he uses his interrelated media outlets to attack individuals who challenge the puppet government of the Bush administration. If there weren't the Rupert Murdochs of the world running news organizations that are really vehicles for pro-Bush and pro-Blair propaganda, both governments would have collapsed long ago. In the United States, when you combine the media clout of NewsCorps with other pro-Bush media empires like Clear Channel radio, you have, in essence, a privatized government propaganda dissemination service. Clear Channel, after all, is still organizing pro-Bush rallies (in the guise of "supporting our troops," even when Bush is abandoning them to die), most recently in the Pacific Northwest as Bush made his fundraising rounds there. So why then would The Weekly Standard react in such a nervously defensive manner to Blumenthal’s assertion that Bush was asleep at the wheel in fighting Al-Qaeda before 9/11? A recent Harvard University study might touch upon at least part of the answer: "While the pages [of newspapers] are more or less equally partisan when it comes to supporting or opposing a given presidential administration's policy pronouncements, the conservative pages are more partisan -- often far more partisan -- with regard to the intensity with which they criticize the other side. Also ... conservative editorial pages are far less willing to criticize a Republican administration than liberal pages are willing to take issue with a Democratic administration." [LINK] That means supporting the figurehead running the government, even if he daily reveals himself to be an uninformed puppet. Take, for instance, Bush’s remarkable ignorance about whether or not we have increased or decreased troops in Afghanistan, as reported in the Washington Post: "We've got about 10,000 troops there, which is down from, obviously, major combat operations," he [Bush] said. "And they're there to provide security and they're there to provide reconstruction help. But both those functions are being gradually replaced by other troops. Germany, for example, is now providing the troops for ISAF [International Security Assistance Force], which is the security force for Afghanistan, under NATO control. In other words, more and more coalition forces and friends are beginning to carry a lot of the burden in Afghanistan." In fact, the 10,000 troops in Afghanistan represent the highest number of U.S. soldiers in the country since the war there began. By the time the Taliban government had been vanquished in December 2001, U.S. troops numbered fewer than 3,000 in Afghanistan. And three months later, in March 2002, when the last major battle against remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda took place in eastern Afghanistan, about 5,000 U.S. troops were in the country. [LINK] It’s like having a blind, brain-damaged parakeet as president. All the Chickenhawk Neo-Con "endless war" advisors sit around the parakeet and recommend war, deregulation, rollback of environmental protections, government contracts for campaign contributors, making America into an official Christian state, and so forth. Because the parakeet is mentally deficient, he keeps nodding his head all the time. The advisers interpret his nodding head as approval for their destructive plans. The Bush corporate media shills prop up the parakeet by insisting that his head nods are proof of his decisiveness and wisdom. This is what passes for good government with the Republicans and their media enablers! It doesn't even matter if it means America was and is at greater risk for terrorism with a brain-damaged, nodding parakeet sitting in the White House. It doesn't matter that he is a puppet for reckless fundamentalist zealots, driven by narrow-minded illogical ideology. All that matters is rabidly supporting the "team effort." Maybe the team is being led over the cliff, but that’s a mere trivial complaint -– a sign of flaccid weakness. So The Weekly Standard, a propaganda broad sheet for Rupert Murdoch’s efforts to shape the U.S. government to meet his own needs and world views, criticizes Sidney Blumenthal rather than admitting the sad truth: Cheney and Bush were too preoccupied with larding up the pantry for their corporate contributors to notice that America was about to be attacked by terrorists. Indeed, just prior to September 11th, Bush was taking his annual month-long vacation at his faux, photo-op ranch, where he is right now. And while The Weekly Standard fills up its pages with panicky criticisms of BuzzFlash and Blumenthal, our soldiers continue to die in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the death Monday, August 25, of another U.S. soldier in Iraq, the number of U.S. troops who have died there since May 1, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations, rose to 138, more than those who died BEFORE Bush declared "Mission Accomplished." Since Monday, three more U.S. soldiers have died. At least 76 American soldiers have died in Iraq since Bush recklessly declared, "Bring them on." Remember how the deaths of the Saddam sons were supposed to slow down attacks on our soldiers? 48 U.S. soldiers have died since that time. And that doesn't include the hundreds that have been wounded. [LINK] The pages of The Weekly Standard are more than just fish wrap for the Murdoch agenda; they are bloodstained broadsides that defend the indefensible.
Also, the Bushies can't even get Afghanistan right and leave a vast swaft of Afghanistan and Pakistan as a safe haven for Al Qaeda to regroup and start drug production for funds. They do an incomplete job there, then their ADD causes them to focus on the only tinpot dictator without WMD and do an incomplete job there. (Not only that, George Bushie claims this is going as expected, even though we can't even fly helicopters during the day without going to extreme measures.) The Bushies are king of irresponsibility. They start wars they don't want to finish, crying to the world, hey, give a brother a hand, even if we called you all stupid and cowards for not helping in the invasion bit, now the world has a responsibility for fixing the Bushies screwups. Plus if anything goes wrong while we are in charge, it's Clinton's fault.
What Clinton project? Bill even admitted they passed up an opportunity to grab him from the Sudanese! Lobbing a couple of cruise missiles at bad intel just to deflect criticism is not a project. Give me a break. Do you even know anything about what the CIA was doing in Afghanistan under Clinton's orders during all this time?
The so-called Clinton "deal" is a myth. Never happened, but it's continuously circulated in the conservative media to make Bush's incompetence look less insulting. Some peasant guy said he saw bin Laden once, and called America to say they could have him. That's it, literally. Look it up. I still can't believe conservatives have the audacity to blame Sept. 11 and the "War on Terror" on Clinton. Unreal. Conservatives called Clinton "obsessed" with terrorism, and he did more against terrorism than any other president before him. But don't take my word for it -- look back at his budgets, policies and initiatives. It's all there, in black and white. He passed on this information, programs and initiatives (and NUMEROUS warnings about bin Laden and Al Quada) to Bush, but the Bush Administration didn't take it seriously. They had other priorities -- missile defense and Iraq, being chief among them. I don't necessarily "blame" Bush for not taking these warning seriously. I mean, who did? Hell, when Clinton was pushing all this "terrorism" stuff, I thought he was full of crap, too. I thought it was a waste of money spending money on so-called terrorists -- that's one of the reasons I didn't support him in his last term. But saying Clinton is at fault for Bush's incompetence is *completely* wrong. Sac up, take responsibility, and move on. But blaming the last guy is gutless.
Yes......absoulutely nothing. They did nothing in Afghanistan. Not at all true. Clinton authorized the CIA to do all sorts of intelligence work in Afghanistan. When Bush needed the CIA post 9/11, all the infrastructure and tons of contacts with the Northern Alliance were already in place, specifically due to Clinton orders. The CIA had been arranging for arming and preparing the Northern Alliance to fight Al Qaeda in the '90s. They had paramilitary teams wandering Afghanistan for years. For all the talk about a cut in HUMINT over the last decade, there was plenty in Afghanistan. That's why the CIA was so quickly able to make connections with the Northern Alliance and why the CIA was the first group in there. Normally, developing those relationships takes tons of time - not here. All of this was done to give the administration options against Al Qaeda. The big mistake Clinton made was not authorizing assassination for the CIA - but he authorized & funded virtually everything else for them.
Anti-Terror Spending Scattered, Unchecked http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6311-2003Nov22.html Millions for Area Remain Unused, May Be Forfeited By Jo Becker, Sarah Cohen and Spencer S. Hsu Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, November 23, 2003; Page A01 Two years after Congress approved a massive infusion of cash to help gird the Washington area against terrorism, much of the $324 million remains unspent or is funding projects with questionable connections to homeland security. In the aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington, lawmakers doled out the money quickly, with few restrictions and vague guidelines. Left to interpret needs on their own -- with little regional coordination -- cash-strapped local and state officials plugged budget holes, spent millions on pet projects and steered contracts to political allies. The District funded a politically popular jobs program, outfitted police with leather jackets and assessed environmental problems on property prime for redevelopment. In Maryland, the money is buying Prince George's County prosecutors an office security system. In Virginia, a small volunteer fire department spent $350,000 on a custom-made fire boat. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments used some of the money for janitorial services. The Washington Post traced the path of the region's first wave of homeland security aid from its distribution through its final use, a trail that has been largely unexamined by federal regulators. The analysis included a review of contracts, grant proposals and purchasing databases obtained through open records laws as well as more than 100 interviews. The findings represent the first detailed evidence of how jurisdictions are spending a major new stream of federal dollars. Since that first allotment, Congress has approved at least $180 million in additional grants to the region, and more is on the way. In many ways, the funds have helped the Washington area become better prepared than it was when terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001. The region has earmarked at least $63 million -- about one-fifth of the total -- for compatible radio systems, long considered critical so rescuers from different jurisdictions can communicate with each other in an emergency. Police, firefighters and public health workers have undergone disaster training and are better equipped to handle conventional attacks and weapons of mass destruction. They have more gear to protect them, more ambulances and firetrucks and more heavy equipment to defuse bombs or locate victims buried beneath rubble. Local governments have at their disposal new blueprints on how to respond to a terrorist attack. But critical needs remain unaddressed, according to federal assessments and interviews. Many of the region's hospitals are already strained, and without adding beds and personnel, would be overwhelmed if thousands needed medical attention in an emergency. In the District, hospital officials estimate that just 400 beds could be freed in a disaster. Some police officers are still waiting for basic protective gear. Public health labs swamped by the anthrax attacks of 2001 have no more capacity today. Most local governments have no efficient way to give instructions to residents shut off from radio and television, such as a "reverse 911" system that automatically telephones people at home. There is no comprehensive plan to unite families separated in a disaster. James S. Gilmore III, a former governor of Virginia who heads a congressionally mandated terrorism panel, said better priorities must be set for local jurisdictions. "If you simply fund every local desire, the demand for money is going to be so great," Gilmore said, "that you are going to break the back of the economy, which is exactly what the terrorists would like." Congress approved the funds within 100 days of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when lawmakers were shaken by the region's chaotic response and the country and its capital seemed at their most vulnerable. The aid went out with the philosophy that because local governments knew their own needs best, they would be given wide latitude in how to spend their windfall. But despite the urgency and the historic nature of the new terrorism mission, the undertaking was beset by many of the same problems and inefficiencies as other large government programs. Slowed by inertia, purchasing rules and, in some cases, mismanagement, local and state governments have had difficulty spending the funds. Overall, nearly 40 percent of the money remains unspent. The District stands to lose more than $1.1 million of the $168.6 million it received because it failed to spend or sign contracts for the full amount by a Sept. 30 deadline, although city officials say that figure could decrease when a final tally is complete. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments lost $149,000. The suburbs are further behind: In Maryland and Virginia, nearly half of the $101.5 million has not been spent or promised in a contract. Unlike the District, however, Maryland and Virginia jurisdictions will not lose unspent funds because their deadlines are malleable. District, state and county officials said they did the best they could, with little guidance, to make the region a safer place as quickly as possible. Dennis R. Schrader, who was hired this year to oversee Maryland's homeland security spending, said the money was spent "with good intentions." This is a marathon, not a sprint," he said. "It's a learning process -- we're going to make mistakes, and that's okay, but we're also going to be doing good things." The new federal Department of Homeland Security is attempting to bring more accountability and regional cooperation to the process. But those arguing for much stronger direction from Washington say more money will be frittered away without a clear national plan spelling out what first responders need to be able to do in an emergency and more stringent guidelines on how the money should be spent. "We're talking billions and billions, and this money ought to be spent according to national, minimum standards," said former senator Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.), chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations' homeland security task force. "Unless we get these standards in place, we're going to have money wasted." Politics and Protection In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, lawmakers settled on money for New York, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania not just because of their proximity to the crash sites, but also because their representatives in Congress sat on the appropriations committees. Members made their own deals and in some cases inserted projects that did not fit into a larger, regional plan. The politically active Bethesda-Chevy Chase Fire Squad lobbied Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) for protective clothing and equipment above that given to dozens of other Montgomery County stations -- and got it. "Frankly, the county was surprised at some of the political maneuvering we were able to do," Chief Ned Sherburne proudly said of the squad's lobbying effort. Since the original allotment, Congress has handed out emergency aid in keeping with another time-honored political tradition: Every member's district gets something. While experts including Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge say more money ought to go where the threat is greatest, Congress this year forced Ridge's agency to dole out the majority of the funds based on a population formula that gives states such as Kentucky and North Dakota more money than the District. States and local governments are taking a similar approach. The District of Columbia Hospital Association chose a formula that guaranteed every city hospital a share of an $8 million grant. That meant that the Psychiatric Institute of Washington, a small, private hospital, received money to buy security cameras for its wards, a new van and a garage gate that officials say will help keep out illegal parkers from nearby American University. This approach won't work in the war on terrorism, said U.S. Rep. Christopher Cox, a California Republican who is pushing legislation that would direct money based only on threat and risk assessments. "If we were talking about equipment and training for our armed forces, we wouldn't make the argument that it had to be done on a pork-barrel basis," he said. "The danger is that you solve a political problem but fail to achieve the homeland security mission because you are sending money to the wrong places for the wrong things." Political considerations also played a role when it came time to award homeland security contracts. In the District, for instance, contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars went to a former mayor and to a close confidant of Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D). Max Brown, who from 1995 to 2000 served as Williams's legal counsel and then deputy chief of staff, was paid $130,000 as a subcontractor to a team hired to run emergency preparedness seminars. District officials said they knew of Brown's involvement with Kroll Government Services, a consulting firm, when the company won the bid. In its proposal, the company touted Brown's involvement, saying its team included members who "speak with a local accent." "Was Brown's participation a dealmaker? No," said one senior aide who evaluated the competing bids and spoke on condition of anonymity. "Did it help? Yeah, probably." Brown's firm, Group 360, also received a noncompetitive $15,000 contract to help the city lobby for changes in federal communications policy. Documents show that Brown initially was paid out of emergency funds, but the city repaid the money after The Post inquired about the contract. . . . . . The litany of waste and abuse goes on for three more pages.
How many times do we have to post the evidence that shows that Clinton did not have a chance to grab Osama from the Sudanese. It's been posted in at least two threads, and possibly more. They investigated the offer to grab Bin Laden, and found that it wasn't credible, in the slightest.
World's most expensive pub meal - George W. Bush http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/22/1069027391752.html Bush's $2m mushy peas By Paul Stokes and Sally Pook November 23, 2003 The Sun-Herald Eyes on the prez... Students crowd the windows and security officers stay alert as George Bush arrives at Sedgefield junior high school. It was billed as a quiet pub lunch in the English countryside: a chance for President George Bush to mix with ordinary folk, sample traditional fish and chips and enjoy a kitchen-table chat at the constituency home of his friend and ally, Tony Blair. The political fiction was always going to be hard to maintain, but even by the standards of the President of the United States of America - and a Texan at that - Friday's visit to Sedgefield was quite a performance. Two jumbo jets, two liveried presidential helicopters, four more US Navy helicopters, a motorcade of limousines, 200 US secret service agents and 1300 English police were required to unite Mr Bush safely with his fish and mushy peas. Total cost? £1 million ($2.3 million). Not all heads of state choose to travel in such style. While Mr Bush clattered off from the Buckingham Palace lawns, heading to Heathrow and then to Sedgefield in County Durham, the Queen boarded the train to Winchester to open an army museum. . . . Mr Rayner said it had not been decided who would pay for the £11.45 ($27) meal, but he didn't begrudge the President his visit. "But with all the security costs, perhaps this really was the most expensive pub lunch in history."
Most unfinished wars : George W. Bush. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101031201-548999,00.html Dearth of Troops A lack of manpower is becoming a serious issue for peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan By TIM MCGIRK Monday, Nov. 24, 2003 While the U.S. and its allies have dithered for months over whether to deploy more troops outside Kabul, Afghanistan's countless warlords have established a reign of terror in the nation's small towns and rural areas. At the same time, a recrudescent Taliban, aided by its al-Qaeda allies, has stepped up attacks on U.S. troops and reconstruction efforts in southern and eastern regions of the country, assassinating 13 aid workers since May. The latest, a French U.N. employee, was shot in the face and killed early last week by suspected Taliban gunmen in the southern town of Ghazni. Although NATO has finally decided to send additional soldiers to establish what it calls "islands" of stability outside the capital, its 19 member nations have managed to scrape together only 200 extra troops for the task — all from Norway. Afghan security officials expected 3,000. Of the troops already in Afghanistan — from Canada, Britain, Germany and many other countries — few can be spared from their current duties. Roughly 8,500 U.S. soldiers are busy hunting down the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and some 5,300 NATO troops are required for security in Kabul. That is because 30,000 unruly, battle-hardened and under-paid Northern Alliance soldiers remain in the city, and their commanders, who despise Afghan President Hamid Karzai, have ignored the allies' polite requests that they leave. Manpower is not the only problem. NATO, for all its wealth and might, has only three working helicopters at its disposal in Afghanistan. And the U.N. and other aid agencies, citing security concerns, have suspended operations in the impoverished south and east. "If we fail" to restore civil order in the country, NATO Secretary-General George Robertson told reporters at the NATO parliamentary assembly this month, "we will find Afghanistan on all of our doorsteps." Unfortunately, dire warnings alone will not win the Afghan peace. From the Dec. 01, 2003 issue of TIME magazine
We are literally less safe now than ever. Oh yeah, hypocrisy on readiness levels... http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...s6dec06,1,103850.story?coll=la-home-headlines . . . President Bush could take political heat for the decline in readiness. During his run for president in 2000, he struck hard at the Clinton administration for permitting two small divisions just back from missions in the Balkans to lower their readiness levels for four months. . . . By permitting the units to, in effect, drop their guard and recharge, the Pentagon is taking a calculated risk that it won't be forced to fight a war with a major adversary such as North Korea on short notice. Not since the all-volunteer military was established in 1973 has the army allowed so many of its units to fall to such low readiness levels. . . . "We got ourselves into a pickle here," said retired Army Maj. Gen. Edward Atkeson. "You've got to realize that this is not a draft army. This is a volunteer army. And it's a married army, and people are not going to want to re-enlist if we don't give them some kind of a break. We've stretched this thing way beyond its design capabilities. We didn't design the army to fight another Vietnam." . . .
At least each soldier is worth the same form letter... http://www.msnbc.com/news/1001847.asp?0cl=c1 Sympathy Forms Bush famously refuses to attend GIs’ funerals. But couldn’t he send something more personal to grieving families? Dec. 5 — President Bush’s surprise visit to see the troops last week hasn’t stopped the grousing over how he is handling the war dead DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES for his job see Bush’s absence from soldiers’ funerals as great fodder for their cause. War opponents and media cynics accuse him of obfuscating the reality of the prolonged conflict. But what do the families of the dead soldiers themselves think? As usual, reason lies outside the Beltway. There, you can also find grace in the face of tremendous sorrow. Take Denise Marshall of Georgia, for example. Her husband, John, is the oldest soldier to die in Iraq so far. The lifelong Army veteran was 50. “It takes a lot of mental preparation to be ready for something like his,” she says of his death. The top brass at Fort Stewart, where the Marshall family (with its seven kids) is based, no doubt chose Denise to meet President Bush several weeks ago because of her composure. It was the first of a series of private meetings he has had with fallen soldiers’ families here and in London recently. When he was in England, his meeting with a small group of handpicked families raised the ire of some Britons. But Marshall understood that Bush couldn’t meet with everyone and she felt that she and the other nine families were there as representatives, not tokens. Her view on the president’s funeral policy was equally sanguine. She didn’t expect a personal appearance, but says: “I think that if he can’t make it himself that he should designate an individual with a high enough status that makes his presence known.” That seemed like a reasonable solution to many of the families I asked. No president has ever attended every funeral of every soldier. Even President Clinton was selective in his visits. He didn’t want to set the precedent of having to go to every one or being seen to play favorites, his former aides recall. And yet the Bush White House has at times acted defensively about Bush’s approach. Sometimes aides suggest that Clinton was just an attention seeker (which set off a new round of barbs between the Bushies and the Clintonites). Other times they point out that Bush is “writing” letters to each of the soldiers’ families instead of going to the services. So I asked some families about the sympathy letters they had received. I assumed that they were in the Bush family style. Both his father and his mother come from a generation of note writers. His mother’s Christmas list is notoriously long and his father is famous for his handwritten notes. This Bush has followed suit, often using his thick Sharpie to pen short notes to friends, foes and fund-raisers. But those are not the letters Bush is “writing.” They are form letters. With the exception of the salutation and a reference to the fallen soldier in the text, the letters the families shared with me are all the same. Now some one has gone to the trouble of finding out if the given name of the solider and the name he or she used were different. And Bush does sign them all personally. But it would be more accurate to say he is “sending” all the families letters, a practice that goes back many presidents. Maggie Caldwell of Massachusetts was still a newlywed when a mine exploded under the Humvee of her husband, Todd, in Iraq. A few weeks later, she received Bush’s letter. “Something a little more personal would have been nice,” she says. Maggie is not running for office or writing a snarky column, she just wants to know that her nation appreciates what Todd—and she—have sacrificed
Bush's refusal to attend even one funeral still disgusts me. Sending form letters to families of the dead soldiers literally makes me sick. It makes me so mad, it's hard for me to even articulate my thoughts clearly. Sometimes, you've just gotta put politics aside and do what is honorable. And Bush won't do it. Hell, even LBJ and Nixon paid respects to fallen soldiers they sent to war. Clinton dodged the Vietnam draft and he still honored soldiers who died on his watch. Whether Bush's refusal is character-driven or political doesn't really matter. It just shows that Bush cares more about appearances than substance.
LBJ attended 2 funerals for military servicemen. No President since has attended one, though several have attended memorial services for groups of soldiers killed in single events (Iran hostage rescue, USS Stark, USS Cole, etc...). It has been US policy since 1991 for Presidents not to attend services for individuals. http://www.hnn.us/articles/1784.html
