George Bush is hanging out with liars and murderers again

Condemnation would be an after the fact event..............should the U.S. intervene to attempt to save lives when things get bloody on the subcontinent?

 

Or...

perhaps you're just looking for something to complain about. The concept here is that one uses hyperbole to point out that some arguements, which appear in one light in the normal scheme of things, appear another way when taken to extremes.

The idea was that when viewed in the normal path of events, the spurrious arguement that 'it's all just spin' may seem like a reasonable way to dismiss a political transgression. My point was that when taken to extreemes that arguememt seems silly.

If you have any further problems with subtle points, please let me know. I will be happy to explain these things to you.

 

Sigh.

Not worth the Trader's time.... I'm picking my arguments now. Must ration the brilliance.

 

edit

 

you wrote a whole lot here for nothing...my post was meant in jest, given b-bob's right before it...he then responded with a smiley afterwards to my post...i am largely ignorant of kissinger's track record, so i can't speak intelligently on this one at all...not as if i ever speak intelligently in other threads, but you know what i mean!

 

I thought it was great. Sorry I got you in so much trouble, MadMax. Not my intent ... this time.

 

Kissinger Denies Client Conflicts
Sept. 11 Panel Leaders Promise to Sever Any Problematic Ties

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 2, 2002; Page A06


Former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger and former Senate majority leader George J. Mitchell, who will head the new commission to look into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said yesterday they would sever relations with any clients that are involved in their investigation.

They also said they would conduct an aggressive, wide-ranging inquiry over the next 18 months. Although saying it was "premature" before the other eight commissioners are named to say whether President Bush, former president Bill Clinton or even foreign leaders or foreign intelligence agencies would be called for questioning, Kissinger did not rule that out.

"We will follow the facts where they lead," Kissinger said on CNN's "Late Edition." "When there is felt to be the need that there's information that only the president might have, that's when that question will arise and that's when we will pursue the facts with the leaders," he said. "If they lead in the direction of the need for looking into the actions of foreign countries or what foreign countries knew, my personal recommendation will be to explore that."

The possibility that conflicts of interest could arise between Kissinger's clients at his New York-based consulting firm and the targets of the investigation was raised yesterday by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Kerry said, "I think it is going to be extraordinarily important for Dr. Kissinger to prove to the nation that he comes to this without any linkages that could remain suspect."

Asked on "Fox News Sunday" about Kerry's remark, Kissinger said, "If there are any clients that are involved in the investigations, I will certainly sever my relations with them. But I cannot conceive that there will be any."

On CNN, Kissinger announced that he has no Saudi clients, does not represent any Middle East governments and would not "permit a foreign government to affect my judgment." Mitchell, a lawyer associated with a Washington law firm, said that none of his clients or those of his firm cause a conflict, but that if it turned out they did, he would sever the relationship.

Kissinger said he expects that the commission, as part of its inquiry into al Qaeda's money trail, will look into the question of whether contributions from Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, may have benefited two of the hijackers. "This is an issue which we undoubtedly will bring before the commission," Kissinger said, "and I think it's inappropriate to discuss now how we will pursue it."

Kissinger indicated that he expected all the commissioners to be named before the Dec. 15 deadline and that the staff would be divided into different areas with commissioners appointed to handle those areas where they have expertise.

Mitchell said he expected the panel to get full cooperation, adding that the legislation establishing the commission requires all government agencies to cooperate.

Mitchell pointed out that the law requires the panel to begin by reviewing the voluminous record of the House-Senate committee before starting its own independent investigation, but he said it would be up to the full commission to determine where the panel goes after that. He said it would be "premature and unwise" before the others are named "to indicate who we're going to question and when."

Both men said they expected the panel to come up with not just facts about the past but also recommendations for the future. Kissinger added, as he had done last week when named, that after talking privately to the president he was under the "impression" that Bush would implement any recommendations but "of course he has to make his own judgment."

Asked about a sharply critical newspaper editorial by the New York Times that criticized him for not being independent because of current commercial interests and his past use of government power and secrecy, Kissinger responded that the newspaper "will apologize for this editorial when our report is submitted."

 

don't worry..i get into enough trouble with very little assistance, usually. no biggie!

 

That was hilarious B-Bob and MadMax.

I thought Peter Sellars did a brilliant take on Kissinger in Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb". The man is utterly ruthless and slightly mad. Borderline genius, but don't turn your back on him.

An incredibly poor choice to head this panal. Where DOES Dubya get his ideas??

 

I swear I just posted this. Maybe there's another thread with a Kissinger article?

edit--OK, I just found it above and will remove this duplicate. I'm an idiot.

 

Kissinger was at Harvard when Strangelove was made, and was relatively obscure. It is unlikely that he was the inspiration.

"Both Kubrick and Sellers denied that Dr.Strangelove was inspired by Henry Kissinger. Sellers said, "Strangelove was never modeled after Kissinger, that's popular misconception. He was always Wernher Von Braun. But the one gloved hand that kept rising to salute, well, the man was a Nazi. That idea just came to me, it was entirely spontaneous. And Stanley stopped everything and shot the gesture with three cameras." Peter Sellers, A Film History by Michael Starr.

 

<b>achebe</b>: Please explain the "again" in your thread title.

 

chatterbox
Will Kissinger Screw Rumsfeld?
The 9/11 commission creates an opportunity for revenge.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, December 2, 2002, at 3:06 PM PT

Various people have explained why Henry Kissinger is a bad choice to run an investigation into what went wrong on Sept. 11. He's a liar. He's an apologist for corrupt regimes. Through his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, he has a commercial interest in not shaking things up. (In a Slate column, Christopher Hitchens hit all these notes, and more.) Kissinger's defenders, of whom the most surprising is the longtime Kissinger critic William Safire, are not terribly convincing when they argue that Kissinger will do a good job because he is a better man than many give him credit for. (Safire's new line is that although Kissinger used to be a bad man, he's evolved into a good man.) But Chatterbox thinks it's still possible that Kissinger may—emphasize may—prove a smart choice to run the commission precisely because he's the same Machiavellian schemer he always was. The 9/11 committee carries great potential to become a vehicle for Kissinger's revenge against his bitterest bureaucratic foe.

That would be Donald Rumsfeld. Almost everybody has forgotten the story of how Rumsfeld kneecapped Kissinger when he was Gerald Ford's defense secretary, but Jason Vest documented it last year in the American Prospect:

As the 1976 election approached, a Kissinger ally was not the best thing to be. Ford was running scared from archconservative Ronald Reagan and his supporters, who held that two of the Ford administration's higher profiles—Kissinger and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller—were too liberal. … Rumsfeld began to chip away at Kissinger's access and public image. Some of Kissinger's partisans in the press corps found Rumsfeld's campaign against the K so heavy-handed they virtually outed him as Kissinger's nemesis, by making Rummy's identity as a Kissinger-bashing source obvious. … In early December 1975, Ford and Kissinger embarked on a Pacific Rim swing. Afterward, Kissinger was going to head to Moscow, hoping to conclude negotiations for SALT II. En route to Jakarta from Hong Kong, however, Rumsfeld cabled Air Force One, rebuking Kissinger for even considering a Moscow trip without consulting Rumsfeld and others. Kissinger's Russia sojourn was nixed. Then, on December 6, columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak reported that a number of Ford advisers were "outraged" at Kissinger's "drafting top secret proposals for major concessions to Moscow." The column implied that only one man could save the republic from the betrayal of giving away the nuclear farm: Donald Rumsfeld.

According to Vest, Kissinger now claims he has buried the hatchet with Rumsfeld. But Kissinger never struck Chatterbox as a let-bygones-be-bygones kind of guy. Now that he's chairman of the 9/11 commission, Kissinger will have the opportunity to assess the level of scrutiny the Pentagon gave during the first nine months of the Bush administration to a possible attack by al-Qaida. This theme has gone largely unexplored during the past year, while the screw-ups of the FBI and the CIA have been studied in some depth. It's not hard to imagine Kissinger deciding that Rumsfeld ought to have diverted some of the attention he lavished prior to 9/11 on missile defense (which would have been useless to defend the World Trade Center) and bureaucratic reform within the Pentagon (a dead letter since 9/11) to going after a terrorist organization that was well known to be bent on killing Americans.

Kissinger may be encouraged to follow this path by CIA director George Tenet, who for some time has been fighting a nasty turf war with the Pentagon. The two agencies bickered over who should run the war in Afghanistan, and the CIA largely won out. According to Bob Woodward's new book, Bush at War, Rumsfeld resented this. More recently, in assessing the military threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the Pentagon (or rather, Rumsfeld and his hawkish deputy Paul Wolfowitz) have won out. According to an article by Robert Dreyfuss in the Dec. 16 American Prospect, the CIA (which is more skeptical about the threat) resents this. Rumsfeld is currently preoccupied with creating an intelligence office at the Pentagon that could further displace the CIA. But if Kissinger can establish that Rumsfeld is already mismanaging the vast intelligence resources he presides over—the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, etc.—Rummy's chance to shove Tenet aside may disappear.

This is all absurdly speculative, of course, and it's far from clear that the public interest would really be served should Kissinger and Tenet gang up against Rumsfeld. (We don't want to whitewash the CIA's pre-9/11 failures.) Still, the revenge factor, and its possible benefits for the common weal, deserve consideration.


Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/?id=2074761