Then what do you purport is their reason for not landing? NO was an ongoing widespread rescue and recovery operation. Iraq was not-- even NY post-9/11 was not. Different scenarios but your broad brush covers it all!
Rove indicated that the President was in San Diego or en route from San Diego when the decision neither to land nor to avoid New Orleans was made. I just don't know what to do with your mockery... Hope you feel better... Okay... Don't let anyone snap your picture... Photo ops are part of the job of the US President and the Shah or Iran and the Prime Minister of Britain. You're not in a political job...
9/11 most definitely was a rescue and recovery operation And Iraq still requires resources that would have to be siphoned for the President to attend. If a situation requires resources it requires resources. The reason for not landing? I have no idea, but incompetence most likely plays a part.
If you haven't noticed, both political parties appear to be experiencing a schizm. Perhaps this will become a 4 party system. That would be much better IMO.
I really don't think the complaint is that he didn't land and I don't think the debate in the WH was land/don't land. I think it was do/do not do a photo op. And the fact that do a photo op won, while no serious aid or rescue effort went to NO for days to follow, speaks to the most damning perception this admin faces and the most damning one represented in the book. This was, and has been, an administration that leads according to perception over actually leading. It's been an administration - no wait, a presidency - that has repeatedly favored politicking over actually dealing with problems that only a president can deal with. He didn't want to deal with Katrina. That's clear on so many levels. The WH apparently had a debate about the relative merits of photographing him in a flyover and Rove won it. This was never about flying over vs. being on the ground except where it came to make the best photo op. Refman: remember when we had our first blowup over who was trying to politicize 9/11? Seems kind of surreal now, doesn't it? This entire 8 year presidency has been guided by propaganda. Including the war. I've been saying this all along and I'm not even that smart. But I'm still waiting for a great lot of the smart ones among you to catch up. If you can't listen to a Bush insider like McClennan (after blowing off Richard Clarke and various others), if he doesn't give you any pause at all, I really am wasting my time here.
1. Re: NO... you missed the describer "widespread." Of course the Towers were a search and rescue; it just wasn't spread out over hundreds of square miles. 2. The Iraq War is a political thing; a natural disaster is not. That's a huge difference. 3. You know you're in Happyland when you simply call a decision that you disagree with "incompetence." I thought Rove had a very reasoned explanation of the decision made to not land. Somehow you've converted a photo into taking the day off. It's somebody's job to take pictures and part of the President's job is having (probably) dozens of pictures taken of him every day-- even on the tough ones.
1. So you are saying that 9/11 didn't have resources being used that were too valuable to be siphoned off? 2. The Iraq War is a military and political, and humanitarian thing. I understand that isn't the same as just a search and rescue. It may actually require more resources which would have to be siphoned off for a Presidential visit. Do you believe that the Iraq war doesn't need all the resources going into it, and could afford to have some siphoned off for a Presidential visit? 3. batman is right. It isn't just about the plane not landing. It's about the whitehouse doing too little too late, and doing even that poorly. That is incompetent leadership. I understand that the President is expected to have photos taken of him. It shouldn't be priority number 1 in a Hurricane disaster though. Again the questions I first asked remained. Why was it OK to siphon off resources from operations in Iraq as well as ground zero, but not OK to siphon them off of NO. Regardless of how you characterize the other two events, they still require resources to get the job done.
No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that a judgment is made that the siphoning is affordable. Katrina was an acute emergency over a vast area. Iraq is a war zone. They are managed differently. It doesn't matter what I believe; what matters is that they made a decision and are able to reasonably justify it. Some will agree; some will disagree; some will characterize it as indicating incompetence. Everyone involved seemed to do too little too late. The plan was in the air on return from San Diego when the photo was shot. So Rove says, "Lean toward the window and look dumbstruck..." SNAP! I don't see how that is characterized as Priority #1... I think I answered this above. It would seem that what you are trying to get me to commit to a position that would not allow discrimination. That doesn't make sense.
Yes they made a judgement. As you said, they looked at the different situations and made different judgements. That's the problem with their rationale. In their judgement for some reason it was OK to siphon off resources from other situations that were similar or would require even more resources. Yet it wasn't ok to siphon off resources on NO. That rationale makes no sense.
I think the analyses (yours and theirs) part ways here. Where you see similarity (maybe even identity?), they see distinctions that call for different responses. Some people are able to make a living citing these kinds of criticisms-- running both ways!
1. Doesn't virtually every administration have these kinds of critics? Doesn't every administration have "experts" whose advice they don't heed heartily enough? I guess it's just your turn to make hay... ... since Bush 43 is on his way out. Who were they for Clinton? for Bush 41? for Reagan? for Carter? for Ford? for Nixon? for LBJ? for JFK?... 2. You seem to be only willing to participate if we annoint you "winner;" is that how you mean that you are "wasting your time?" How do you know whether or not I (or anyone) has pause? Do you have "pause" that your fatal criticisms might be judged to have been overly harsh by history? Or you rushing headlong into political expediency with some of this? I'm happy to be pigeon-holed here as a "defender" of Bush because every Tom Robinson deserves an Atticus Finch sitting guard on the jailhouse steps under a light with a shotgun across his lap. Please don't get hung up on Tom Robinson's innocence in my analogy.
i thought that was sharon stone. the economy is surprisingly robust, iraq continues to improve- what hole are you referring to?
National debt wasn't all because of the Presidents. You forget it's CONGRESS that votes and approves the spending. But since you love graphs why don't you add these to this one. Let's add that it was a DEMOCRATIC CONTROLLED HOUSE of Representatives during the Reagan-GHB years. It was a REPUBLICAN CONTROLLED CONGRESS during Clinton's years that brought the National debt DOWN. It's a DEMOCRATIC CONTROLLED CONGRESS NOW since 2006 that has been spending way out of control. So don't just blame it on the Presidents.
