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BushCheney2004
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
We've got less than 12 hours until the third quarter fundraising deadline! Let's all follow BushBlog's lead in rounding up blogger contributions for the Bush-Cheney campaign.
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Presidency Hatred: The Sport of the Decade (David Brooks, 9/30/03, New York Times)
Have you noticed that we've moved from the age of the culture wars to the age of the presidency wars? Have you noticed that the furious arguments we used to have about cultural and social issues have been displaced by furious arguments about the current occupant of the Oval Office?
...
The quintessential new warrior scans the Web for confirmation of the president's villainy. He avoids facts that might complicate his hatred. He doesn't weigh the sins of his friends against the sins of his enemies. But about the president he will believe anything. He believes Ted Kennedy when he says the Iraq war was a fraud cooked up in Texas to benefit the Republicans politically. It feels so delicious to believe it, and even if somewhere in his mind he knows it doesn't quite square with the evidence, it's important to believe it because the other side is vicious, so he must be too.
Monday, September 29, 2003
Reversals in Today's Politics -- the Zigs and Zags (Michael Barone, 9/29/03, USNews.com)
Old media reported George W. Bush's speech to the United Nations as a reversal, a concession by Bush that he must seek support from those who opposed an 18th Security Council resolution on Iraq. But it was not Bush who changed course. He stoutly defended the action of the United States, Britain, Australia, and Poland to enforce one resolution Iraq defied (1441) on the authority of another (678) justifying action against Iraq to enforce "all subsequent relevant resolutions." The nations that changed course at the United Nations last week were France and Germany. France announced it would not veto a resolution sought by the United States to open the door to more U.N. aid. Germany announced that it would cooperate with the United States on Iraq. And U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said that the U.N. should consider changing its rules to authorize pre-emptive military action against nations that support terrorism. These three are all moving Bush's way, not the other way around. Those reversals seem likely to be significant.
The reversal at the United Nations. Old media reported George W. Bush's speech to the United Nations as a reversal, a concession by Bush that he must seek support from those who opposed an 18th Security Council resolution on Iraq. But it was not Bush who changed course. He stoutly defended the action of the United States, Britain, Australia, and Poland to enforce one resolution Iraq defied (1441) on the authority of another (678) justifying action against Iraq to enforce "all subsequent relevant resolutions." The nations that changed course at the United Nations last week were France and Germany. France announced it would not veto a resolution sought by the United States to open the door to more U.N. aid. Germany announced that it would cooperate with the United States on Iraq. And U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said that the U.N. should consider changing its rules to authorize pre-emptive military action against nations that support terrorism. These three are all moving Bush's way, not the other way around. Those reversals seem likely to be significant.
First Lady Laura Bush Promotes Literacy Internationally (Wire Reports, 9/29/03, CNN.com)
U.S. first lady Laura Bush has paid a social call on French President Jacques Chirac -- a visit White House officials described as "gracious, friendly and charming." ...
Later Monday, the first lady plans to deliver the keynote address to a meeting of UNESCO, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which the United States has just rejoined after a 19-year absence.
Earlier this year, UNESCO named the first lady its honorary ambassador for the U.N. Decade of Literacy, which addresses the 860 million adults and 113 million children around the world who cannot read or write.
The first lady will then go on to Moscow and attend a book festival put on by President Vladimir Putin's wife, Lyudmila Putina. Putina joined Bush at last year's National Book Festival in Washington, the second annual festival launched by the U.S. first lady.
Literacy and education are key issues for Bush, a former teacher and school librarian. Her initiative, "Ready to Read, Ready to Learn," is intended to teach all children to read by the time they enter their first classroom and to prepare well-trained schoolteachers.
Several American authors plan to accompany the first lady to the Moscow book festival. Bush said she hopes people get to understand the United States through its literature.
"I think what you see in the Wes Clark candidacy is a somewhat of a desperation by inside-the-Beltway politicians. You've got a lot of establishment politicians now surrounding a general who was a Republican until 25 days ago"
-- Howard Dean ("Face the Nation").
"Welcome To Free Iraq" (Bernard B. Kerik, 9/29/03, OpinionJournal.com)
Bernard Kerik, a former chief of the New York City Police Department, has just returned from a four-month stint in Baghdad as senior policy adviser to Ambassador Bremer:
"Welcome to a free Iraq" is what Jerry Bremer, administrator for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said to me as he reached out to shake my hand when I arrived in Baghdad four months ago. I'm still moved by those words as I say them myself, "Welcome to a free Iraq," just as I was moved last week by President Bush--under pressure at home and abroad--standing firmly by our nation-building project in his U.N. speech.
As I toured Baghdad for the first time, I saw a city ravaged by war, looting and lawlessness. Or so I thought. What I didn't know then, and didn't learn until later, was that most of the damage to the infrastructure was caused by three decades of rule by a tyrant, who used his country's natural wealth not to enhance its power plants and sewage and water systems, but to aggrandize himself. These systems will now have to be built or rebuilt over the next several years and can't be fixed with a Band-Aid...
To those who claim that we're not doing enough, fast enough, it helps to put matters in perspective. We're doing a hard job to the best of our abilities, in postwar circumstances, with really scarce resources and a clock ticking above our heads. In my four months there, I oversaw the setting up of 35 police stations in Baghdad. Try setting up 35 stations in New York in four months!
New Yorkers will remember that it took the Giuliani administration eight years to create the safest large city in the world and that was with every resource under the sun. Five months ago in Iraq, we adopted a country of 24 million, with no electricity, water, technology, Internet, telephones or radio communications, etc. There was nothing, and yet the critics are saying that it's taking too long. One would think that they themselves have the answer, or the magic pill that will fix it all, but unfortunately, there isn't one! It's always easier to criticize--as some Congressional delegations in Iraq are prone to do--when you have no operational involvement, insight, authority or responsibility...
History has taught us that there's always a cost for freedom. On 9/11 we learned that we'll pay now or we'll pay later. As one who stood beneath the twin towers and watched people jump from the burning buildings, and also witnessed first-hand the fall of Saddam, I more than most have an understanding of the threat of radical Islam. Let's not forget that this is a war. So for now, the war should continue; and as Jerry Bremer would so proudly say, "Welcome to a free Iraq."
Sunday, September 28, 2003
Political Strategy: Bush-Cheney 2004 (Richard W. Stevenson & Adam Nagourney, 9/28/03, New York Times)
President Bush's political advisers have set in motion an aggressive re-election machine, building a national network of get-out-the-vote workers and amassing a pile of cash for a blanket advertising campaign expected to begin around the time Democrats settle on their candidate early next year, party officials said.
Mr. Bush's senior advisers, in interviews last week, repeatedly described the Democratic field as unusually weak and divided, providing an important if temporary cushion for Mr. Bush.
Still, they said the recent sharp drop in the president's approval ratings, the continued loss of jobs in the economy and the problems plaguing the American occupation of Iraq only made the political outlook more uncertain in an election that they have long thought could be as tightly contested as the one in 2000.
"We expect it to be a hard-fought, close election in a country narrowly divided," said Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior adviser. "When a Democratic nominee is finally selected, our expectation is that it could be a close and hard-fought race."
Saturday, September 27, 2003
20 Questions the Media Will Not Ask Concerning Iraq
1. Where is all the money from the UN’s Oil for Food Program?
2. How many people have now lived at least six months longer than they would have under Saddam?
3. How many civilians were really killed in the major combat portion of the war?
4. How many civilians have been killed since the end of major combat?
5. How unreliable is the Iraqi electric distribution system in comparison to, say, the Washington, D.C., area system?
6. How many people (estimates allowed) are crossing into Iraq from its neighbors each month?
7. How many people entering Iraq are Iraqis returning after escaping Saddam in the past?
8. How many Iraqis are suffering for lack of health care, lack of food, lack of potable water, etc.? (Not individual hard luck cases - good figures.)
9. How many Iraqis are directly involved in the “guerilla war” campaign against coalition forces?
10. How many non-Iraqis are directly involved in the “guerilla war” campaign against coalition forces?
11. What precisely has Bremer’s administration been spending billions of dollars on? (Show us the buildings, bridges, factories, power plants, oil fields, etc., assuming they exist.)
12. What was the average Iraqi’s income prior to the war, and what is it now?
13. What did Saddam do with his weapons of mass destruction and the component programs? (Don’t ask what “people” think; go find out!)
14. How many American and British service men and women in Iraq believe the cause of Iraqi democracy is hopeless?
15. Was the “looting” of the National Museum and Library an inside job?
16. How would international troops change the minds of the “guerilla” fighters?
17. How would additional American troops be useful in the 15 or so attacks and firefights per day now experienced by the 150,000 troops (10,000 per attack) in Iraq?
18. Is Saddam Hussein actually dead, and the tapes and such are all a hoax?
19. What is an average day in Iraq like for an America soldier? (Remember, the ratio of attacks to soldiers is 1:10,000, so a bloody firefight is clearly NOT average.)
20. What would Iraq be like if the coalition pulled out early and left things to the U.N. and Iraqi players? (Explore this with examples and a wide range of experts, please.)
Friday, September 26, 2003
It's "Letters To The Editor" Friday!
Get active in support of the President by writing letters to the editor TODAY!
We continue to see the grassroots effort on Letters to Editor Friday gain momentum so keep up the great work! The topic for your letter is completely up to you.
Simply type in your zip code below and find the news outlets in your areas!
If you're a blogger who wants to join this effort, just copy and paste the following ZIP-code lookup box so people can write letters directly from your site for Friday's festivities:
Let's show them what the Bush-blogosphere can do! If you support President Bush, write a letter to the editor today and every Friday!
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Hillary Clinton Backs President Bush on WMDs in Iraq (Dan Balz, 9/25/03, Washington Post)
Clinton, however, stood by her vote last November for the congressional resolution authorizing the war, and carefully distanced herself from recent charges by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that Bush and his advisers had concocted the war in August 2002 and foisted it upon the country. "Based on what we knew and believed [about the Iraqi threat], it was merited," she said of her vote.
She said she consulted widely before that vote and found that U.S. intelligence "from Bush I to Clinton to Bush II was consistent" in concluding that there was "a continuing presence of biological and chemical weapons programs" in Iraq and that the Iraqis were seeking to develop a nuclear capacity.
Blackout On Progress in Iraq? (Jack Kelly, 7/25/03, Washington Times)
Last week, I covered the return to Pittsburgh from Iraq of a Marine reserve military police company. These Marines made the march of Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division, and spent the bulk of the postwar period escorting convoys between Basra and Najaf. Each of the seven Marines I interviewed said that more than 90 percent of the Iraqis they encountered were friendly.
The accounts of these Marines square with those of most other servicemen returned from Iraq, and with my own experiences as a reporter embedded with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in western Iraq, and with the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad. But it's a story you hardly ever hear on the evening news.
Iraq is a dangerous place. Saddam Hussein is still at large, as are thousands of his diehard supporters. They've been joined by hundreds, perhaps thousands of foreign terrorists. Though these "insurgents" cannot challenge the U.S. military for control of any part of the country, they'll be able to conduct remote ambushes and terror bombings for months to come.
But viewed in historical perspective, things in Iraq are pretty good, and getting better. The insurgents are a tiny — and dwindling — minority. Most of the country is at peace. Nobody is starving. Signs of reviving economic activity are everywhere. In no country in the Arab world are Americans as popular as they are in Iraq.
Contrast this with Germany in November 1945: "Six months after VE Day, the New York Times reported that Germany was awash in unrest and lawlessness," Saunders wrote. "More than a million displaced persons roamed the country, many of them subsisting on criminal activities."
Iraq hasn't been transformed into Switzerland in less than six months. No reasonable person ever expected that it could be. But an unrealizable ideal should not obscure the significant progress that has been made.
Mainstream Media Picks Up on Anti-War Convert (Donald E. Walter, 9/25/03, New York Post)
I want to make it clear that, initially, I vehemently opposed the war. In fact, I only changed my mind after my trip...
I am now convinced that, whether we find any weapons of mass destruction or prove Saddam Hussein sheltered and financed terrorists, we absolutely should have overthrown the Ba'athists - indeed, we should have done it sooner.
What changed my mind?
When we left in mid June, 57 mass graves had been found, one with the bodies of 1,200 children. There have been credible reports of murder, brutality and torture of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iraqi citizens. There is poverty on a monumental scale and fear on a larger one. That fear is still palpable. I have seen the machines and places of torture.
Terrible things happened with the knowledge, indeed with the participation, of Saddam, his family and the Ba'athist regime. Thousands suffered while we were messing about with France and Russia and Germany and the United Nations. Every one of them knew what was going on there, but France and the United Nations were making millions administering the Food-for-Oil program.
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
We Must Fight Fire With Fire -- Literally (Samuel Sheridan, 9/24/03, Newsweek)
We need to bring 'good fire' back. Fire was a natural part of the landscape for millions of years, with widespread, less intense forest fires preventing much hotter ones later. A thousand years ago a ponderosa-pine forest would have looked stately and parklike, with a density of about 40 trees per acre. Natural wildfires would wash through every two to three years, consuming the understory but only scarring the mature trees. Now vast tracts of our forests--ones where man has kept fire out--are packed with more than 1,000 trees per acre. The lack of natural fire has left our forests loaded for bad fire.
Vast Majority of Iraqis Find Hardships Acceptable for Ouster of Saddam (Patrick E. Tyler, 9/24/03, New York Times)
After five months of foreign military occupation and the ouster of Saddam Hussein, nearly two-thirds of Baghdad residents believe that the removal of the Iraqi dictator has been worth the hardships they have been forced to endure, a new Gallup poll shows.
Despite the systemic collapse of government and civic institutions, a wave of looting and violence, and shortages of water and electricity, 67 percent of 1,178 Iraqis told a Gallup survey team that within five years, their lives would be better than before the American and British invasion.
Give Up a Beer or a Smoke to Rebuild Iraq? . . . OK (Larry Lindsay, 9/24/03, USA Today)
A year ago, while I was serving as President Bush's White House economic adviser, I caused quite a controversy when I said that our objective in Iraq would be well worth spending 1% to 2% of America's gross domestic product. At the time, the president had not made any decisions about war with Iraq, so putting any price tag on the mission — particularly one so steep — was considered premature.
It now seems that the cost of deposing Saddam Hussein and re-establishing civil government in Iraq will be in that range. Critics are using words like "massive" and "staggering" to describe the cost. But what we really should ask is: Compared with what? We cannot walk away. If we have no choice but to fight, it makes sense to spend what it takes to win. While any dollar amount in the billions is substantial, it's important to put it into perspective. The Vietnam War cost 12% of GDP at the time and World War II cost 130% of GDP.
The cost to defeat Saddam was less than half a percent of America's annual income (measured as gross domestic product). If spending continues at the current pace, our involvement could cost us 0.4% of our income for the rest of this year. If President Bush's request for $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan is approved, the cost of these two fronts will amount to about 0.8% of our income next year.
Put it in context
But what does that really mean? Each year American households spend about 1% of their income on alcoholic beverages and another 1% on tobacco products. We spend about 0.7% of our money on cosmetic products. In other words, our combined operations to combat terror in the Middle East cost a bit more than we spend on makeup and shampoo and a bit less than we spend on booze or tobacco.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Fun With Wesley Clark
Go to the site map at Clark's official campaign site at http://www.clark04.com/sitemap.php.
Click on "On the Issues."
...and you'll find this:
This feature is under construction
No kidding! hahaha
Update: Looks like they corrected it but it was damn funny...
History Repeats Itself: Humanitarian Aid to the Children and The Return of Uncle Wiggle Wings
Dean Esmay has a great post full of history lessons and stories on the reconstruction history of Germany and how humanitarian supplies had to be airlifted to West Berlin because of Stalin's oppressive tactics early in the process:
Berlin was about a hundred miles deep into Stalin's Germany, but the free world still had possession of half of that one city. Stalin's troops would often shoot at people who ran to what became known as the "American sector" of Berlin, although many took the risk and ran there anyway. Meanwhile, to keep the free part of Berlin supplied, the West used the railroads and the roads to keep people supplied with food, coal, and other supplies.To get food and essentails to the people of West Berlin a pilot named Lt. Gail Halverson would drop shipments as he flew into Berlin:
Stalin found this intolerable, and found excuses to cut off the railway and road access that had been negotiated after the war.
To make sure the treats wouldn't shatter and spatter on the ground, he fashioned little parachutes made from handkerchiefs and string to drop out of the plane. This was a double treat, because the handkerchiefs could be fashioned by the kids' families into rudimentary clothing and blankets and such, to help keep warm.Following Uncle Wiggle Wings efforts, Dean and his blogging buddies are promoting (coincidentally named) Chief Wiggles efforts to get toys to the children of Iraq during this generations reconstruction of the battered land. As Dean says, get on over there and help the newly dubbed "Uncle Wiggles"!
His flying mates helped him with this task, just as they shared their rations. And he would tell the children that they'd know him when he came flying in to drop treats on them: he would wiggle his plane's wings. As his plane would come in to drop off flour, powdered milk and eggs, and coal, he would wiggle his plane's wings and drop the treats as they came in for landing. The children always knew it would be him, for his plane's wings would wiggle just before the parachutes full of treasure began to drop from his airplane.
Do you know what the children started to call him? They started to call him Uncle Wiggle Wings.
President Bush Addresses the United Nations and Calls on World to Unite Against Terror, Tuesday, September 23, 2003
By the victims they choose, and by the means they use, the terrorists have clarified the struggle we are in. Those who target relief workers for death have set themselves against all humanity. Those who incite murder and celebrate suicide reveal their contempt for life itself. They have no place in any religious faith, they have no claim on the world's sympathy, and they should have no friend in this chamber. Events during the past two years have set before us the clearest of divides: Between those who seek order, and those who spread chaos; between those who work for peaceful change, and those who adopt the methods of gangsters; between those who honor the rights of man, and those who deliberately take the lives of men, and women, and children, without mercy or shame.
Between these alternatives there is no neutral ground. All governments that support terror are complicit in a war against civilization. No government should ignore the threat of terror -- because to look the other way gives terrorists the chance to regroup, and recruit, and prepare. And all nations that fight terror, as if the lives of their own people depend on it, will earn the favorable judgment of history.
The former regimes of Afghanistan and Iraq knew these alternatives, and made their choices. The Taliban was a sponsor and servant of terrorism. When confronted, that regime chose defiance -- and that regime is no more. Afghanistan's president, who is here today, now represents a free people who are building a decent and just society -- a nation fully joined in the war against terror.
The regime of Saddam Hussein cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction. It used those weapons in acts of mass murder, and refused to account for them when confronted by the world. The Security Council was right to be alarmed. The Security Council was right to demand that Iraq destroy its illegal weapons and prove that it had done so -- The Security Council was right to vow serious consequences if Iraq refused to comply. And because there were consequences -- because a coalition of nations acted to defend the peace, and the credibility of the United Nations -- Iraq is free, and today we are joined by representatives of a liberated country.
Saddam Hussein's monuments have been removed -- and not only his statues. The true monuments of his rule and his character -- the torture chambers, and the rape rooms, and the prison cells for innocent children -- are closed. And as we discover the killing fields and mass graves of Iraq, the true scale of Saddam's cruelty is being revealed.
The Iraqi people are meeting hardships and challenges, like every nation that has set out on the path of democracy. Yet their future promises lives of dignity and freedom -- and that is a world away from the squalid, vicious tyranny they have known. Across Iraq, life is being improved by liberty. Across the Middle East, people are safer because an unstable aggressor has been removed from power. Across the world, nations are more secure because an ally of terror has fallen.
Our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq were supported by many governments, and America is grateful to each one. I also recognize that some of the sovereign nations of this assembly disagreed with our actions. Yet there was, and there remains, unity among us on the fundamental principles and objectives of the United Nations. We are dedicated to the defense of our collective security, and to the advance of human rights. These permanent commitments call us to great work in the world -- work we must do together. So let us move forward.
First, we must stand with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq as they build free and stable countries. The terrorists and their allies fear and fight this progress above all, because free people embrace hope over resentment, and choose peace over violence.
Psychoanalysis of Democratic Anger . . . Robert Bartley Style (Robert Bartley, 9/22/03, Wall Street Journal)
To protect democracy, three judges of the far-left Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have just canceled elections in California. The last horselaugh, I'd hope, for the Democratic charge that Republicans are subverting democracy. As we saw in this space last week, the charge was already a pretty silly explanation of the patent anger surging through the Democratic primaries.Be sure to read the whole thing.
The anger must have deeper, perhaps subconscious roots. So let me put the Democratic base on the couch and offer my own speculation. The party's most ardent adherents are angry because they feel they've lost their birthright.
...
Beyond mere politics, the fading birthright becomes a matter of self-identity. It's possible, we've witnessed, to assert moral superiority while defending the Clinton perjury, sexual escapades, vanishing billing records and last-minute pardons. But politicians, pundits and intellectuals with this record shouldn't expect much moral deference from the rest of us. Indeed, inner doubts about their own moral position is one obvious path to anger.
Even without the Clinton problems, the Democratic Party has descended into a collection of interest groups not bound together by any ideals. So we see scions of inherited wealth berating the "rich," meaning those successful at earning their own money. We see supposed champions of civil rights standing in the schoolhouse door to prevent vouchers that might give a break to black children in the District of Columbia.
We see a highly qualified potential judge filibustered into withdrawal precisely because he's Hispanic, and therefore a threat in ethnic politics. We see that once a martyred president urged us to "share any burden," his brother now belittles the war that toppled Saddam Hussein throwing around reckless and irresponsible charges of "bribing" foreign leaders--his own personal past, by the way, having produced remarkably little reticence.
Mainstream Media Bias Story Picked-up by Mainstream Media (Peter Johnson, 9/23/03, USA Today)
What gets in the headlines is the American soldier getting shot, not the American soldiers rebuilding a school or digging a well.
-- Brian Bennett, Time MagazineWhen Bennett visited the USA a few weeks ago, he realized that, five months after the U.S. invasion, the Iraq he lives in doesn't mesh with the bleak picture that friends here are getting from the media.
''I'm not saying all is hunky-dory,'' Bennett says. ''But in the States, people have a misperception of what's going on.''
Which is why Bennett plans to pitch a story about the improving scene in Iraq, where electricity is being restored daily and people are getting back to work. ''There's been a lot of improvement that I and my colleagues noticed when we came back here. People in the States just don't see it.''
More Media Bias . . . Reported by Democrats (Hans Nichols, 9/22/03, The Hill)
Journalists are giving a slanted and unduly negative account of events in Iraq, a bipartisan congressional group that has just returned from a three-day House Armed Services Committee visit to assess stabilization efforts and the condition of U.S. troops said.
Lawmakers charged that reporters rarely stray from Baghdad and have a “police-blotter” mindset that results in terror attacks, deaths and injuries displacing accounts of progress in other areas.
Comparisons with Vietnam were farfetched, members said.
Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the committee’s ranking member, said, “The media stresses the wounds, the injuries, and the deaths, as they should, but for instance in Northern Iraq, Gen. [Dave] Petraeus has 3,100 projects — from soccer fields to schools to refineries — all good stuff and that isn’t being reported.”
Monday, September 22, 2003
Clark Never Called Karl (Matthew Continetti, 09/22/2003)
Wesley Clark says he would have been a Republican if Karl Rove had returned his phone calls. White House phone logs suggest otherwise
WHEN WILL Wesley Clark stop telling tall tales? In the current issue of Newsweek, Howard Fineman reports Clark told Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and University of Denver president Mark Holtzman that "I would have been a Republican if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls."
Unfortunately for Clark, the White House has logged every incoming phone call since the beginning of the Bush administration in January 2001. At the request of THE DAILY STANDARD, White House staffers went through the logs to check whether Clark had ever called White House political adviser Karl Rove. The general hadn't. What's more, Rove says he doesn't remember ever talking to Clark, either.
This isn't the general's first whopper. Last June, the latest Democratic candidate for president implied that he "got a call" on 9/11 from "people around the White House" asking the general to publicly link Saddam Hussein to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Last August, Clark told a Phoenix radio station that "The White House actually back in February apparently tried to get me knocked off CNN and they wanted to do this because they were afraid that I would raise issues with their conduct of the war."
Like his other two statements, Clark's latest tale bears little resemblance to reality. While it turns out Clark did receive a call "on either Sept. 12 or Sept. 13," the call wasn't from the White House. It was from Israeli-Canadian Middle East expert Thomas Hecht, who told the Toronto Star that he called to invite Clark to give a speech in Canada. As for Clark's accusation that the White House tried to have him fired from CNN--well, the general admits he has no proof. "I've only heard rumors about it," he said.
Skeptics of Clark's candidacy argue that the general's political inexperience makes him an unknown in the primary race. Was Clark's latest slip simply proof of his political naivete? Did he not recognize that his words would be taken seriously? And what does it say about Clark that he would have declared himself a Republican if only he had a chance to chat with Karl Rove? Clark may yet make a serious contender for the Democratic nomination. But if he keeps spinning yarns, he'll end up as the H. Ross Perot of the Democratic party.
Why 2004 is Bush's Election to Lose
"I don't know what will happen between now and the election, but one thing that WON'T happen is stasis. We're at war, and the tempo of enemy action will be a huge factor in the election. Hindrocket, take heart. This will be a wartime election. Look at the pattern of wartime elections in the US: 1864, 1916, 1944, 1968, 1972 (I include 1916 because of the intensity of WWI and the depth of debate on US involvement). In each case the election was a referendum on the war, and a referendum on the incumbent's war policy. In each case victory was awarded to the candidate with a deliberate, decisive, divisive plan of ACTION regarding the war. Lincoln won on a policy of non-negotiation, Wilson on absolute neutrality, FDR on unconditional surrender, Nixon in '68 by advocating total victory, in '72 by calling for negotiated 'peace with honor.' Only FDR won by what could be considered a landslide, and 1944 was his fourth victory. None of the other races could be considered to have united the country, and the unity in 1944 had more to do with Pearl Harbor than FDR himself.
...
"Bush, more than anyone since Lincoln, has identified his Administration with the war. He has successfully prosecuted it. The internal loyalty of the administration is better than LBJ's and certainly better than Lincoln's. He will not fail as LBJ failed. You seem to like creating hurdles for Bush to leap...WMDs are politically irrelevant. We won the war without finding them and failure to find them won't turn that triumph into a defeat. Finding them won't convince Democrats to abandon the campaign. The hatred of the establishment is a given for Republicans; it didn't stop W the first time. The liberal media are weaker than it was in 1992, and can't play as falsely as it did in that race without being called on it. Furthermore, the public is far less tolerant of libelling a President in war than in peace. For all those reasons I am confident that 2004 is Bush's to lose."
More on Big Media Lying to You . . . From a Democratic Congressman (Jim Marshall, 9/22/03, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.) of Macon, a Vietnam combat veteran, is a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
I'm afraid the news media are hurting our chances. They are dwelling upon the mistakes, the ambushes, the soldiers killed, the wounded, the Blumbergs. Fair enough. But it is not balancing this bad news with "the rest of the story," the progress made daily, the good news. The falsely bleak picture weakens our national resolve, discourages Iraqi cooperation and emboldens our enemy.Update: Andrew Sullivan points out the New York Times hasn't completely recovered from the Rains Reign that brought about the Jayson Blair Hangover:
During the conventional part of this conflict, embedded journalists reported the good, the bad and the ugly. Where are the embeds now that we are in the difficult part of the war, now that fair and balanced reporting is critically important to our chances of success? At the height of the conventional conflict, Fox News alone had 27 journalists embedded with U.S. troops (out of a total of 774 from all Western media). Today there are only 27 embedded journalists from all media combined.
Throughout Iraq, American soldiers with their typical "can do" attitude and ingenuity are engaging in thousands upon thousands of small reconstruction projects, working with Iraqi contractors and citizens. Through decentralized decision-making by unit commanders, the 101st Airborne Division alone has spent nearly $23 million in just the past few months. This sum goes a very long way in Iraq. Hundreds upon hundreds of schools are being renovated, repainted, replumbed and reroofed. Imagine the effect that has on children and their parents.
It's from Eric Schmitt's account of Paul Wolfowitz's appearance at the New School. Here's the passage:When pressed by Mr. Goldberg and audience members, some of these justifications seemed less certain. "Iraq did have contacts with Al Qaeda," Mr. Wolfowitz insisted, momentarily silencing the audience with an accusation even President Bush now says is unsubstantiated. He added, "We don't know how clear they were."
Notice the condescension. Now notice the inaccuracy. President Bush has never said that Saddam had no ties to al Qaeda. This is the new anti-war shibboleth, loyally parroted by Schmitt as if it were true. (It's the same as the notion that the president once claimed that the threat from Iraq was imminent. He didn't. But in the anti-war mind, he must have.) All the president conceded was that there was no hard evidence of Saddam's connection to 9/11. (There is, of course, much hard evidence that Saddam was involved in the first WTC attack.) Even the BBC has conceded as much. Nothing Wolfowitz is reported to have said conflicted with this. Now: an interesting test of Keller's New York Times. Will they run a correction of their reporter's egregious anti-war bias?
Asking the Bush Bloggers and Grassroots to Meet the Dean Challenge
Howard Dean's Campaign has been getting a lot of press about their recent efforts to raise $5 million in the next ten days to close out the 3rd Quarter Fundraising cycle. Now this Bush-Cheney 2004 site has been more content focused than fundraising focused, but today I will ask everyone to step up to the plate and take away Dean's 'Bat.'
At the end of the day, how will we know how we've done? It's simple. As the graphic says, we add $4 to each donation -- $4 for victory in '04 -- and that's the unique Blogs for Bush "solicitor tracking number." Unlike any other campaign, the Bush campaign provides full disclosure of donors on its website -- and we can measure the impact of our $204, $104, $54, or $24 donations that way.
Howard Bashman Has Everything You Want to Know About the California Recall
By tomorrow (Monday) evening, the eleven judges on the Ninth Circuit's en banc panel will have a very good idea of what their ruling will be, and several of them will then be hard at work writing the opinions that ultimately will issue explaining the result and expressing the basis for any dissents. It is impossible to predict how quickly the court will issue its ruling -- these judges rarely face time pressures this great, and while this case is not the most difficult case ever, it also is not the easiest -- but most people in-the-know expect that a ruling will issue by the end of the week.
Friday, September 19, 2003
Mainstream Media is Lying to You (Glenn Reynolds, 9/19/03, GlennReynolds.com)
Absolutely SCATHING indictment of big media by The Godfather:
Things just get worse for the British Broadcasting Corp., as the initial claim that Tony Blair's government "sexed up" an intelligence dossier about Iraq has exploded, and revealed a miserable tissue of lies and shoddiness at the BBC. The BBC correspondent, Andrew Gilligan, has been left out in the cold by the BBC, which initially defended him. Oxford blogger Joshua Chafetz is gloating that events have proved him right in his conjecture that the BBC had let its anti-war bias lure it into self-destruction.
Sadly, it's not just the BBC. New York Times Iraq correspondent John Burns reports that many journalists in Iraq were deliberately slanting their stories to curry favor with Saddam's regime...
Interestingly, non-Big Media reports from Iraq are a lot more positive than the steady rain of negativity that we get from the media. Here's what federal judge Don Walter wrote after visiting Iraq as part of a judicial assistance team:
Despite my initial opposition to the war, I am now convinced, whether we find any weapons of mass destruction or prove Saddam sheltered and financed terrorists, absolutely, we should have overthrown the Baathists, indeed, we should have done it sooner.This mismatch between what we're hearing from non-journalists in Iraq, and the unending lugubrious flow from Big Media, is shaping up to be the next blow to the credibility of Big Journalism. Why are the reports we're getting so lousy? You might argue that the situation is complex, and that these positive stories are only part of what's going on. But that doesn't explain why the coverage is so unrelentingly negative, and why stories like these get so little attention. I think it's a combination of factors:
What changed my mind?
When we left mid June, 57 mass graves had been found, one with the bodies of 1200 children. There have been credible reports of murder, brutality and torture of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iraqi citizens. There is poverty on a monumental scale and fear on a larger one. That fear is still palpable.
I have seen the machines and places of torture...
Bias: Everybody knows -- because it's true -- that a lot of people in the media don't like Bush, and would like to see him lose in 2004. That naturally produces a negative tone. Plus, the press has been generally anti-military since Vietnam. That's fading now, as out-of-date baby boomers are replaced, but it hasn't faded entirely by any means. James Lileks compares the favorable press treatment of Clinton's abortive 1998 Iraq invasion ("Operation Desert Fox") and nails it with this:
I've read enough editorials from various papers from this period to reinforce something I've long suspected: the reason many editorialists hate this war is because they don't feel it's theirs.
If Clinton had risen to the occasion, wiped out al-Qaida, sent Marines to kick down the statues and put bullets in those filthy sons' brainpans, this would be the most noble effort of our time. We would hear clear echoes of JFK's call to bear any burden. FDR, Truman, Marshall Plan, forbearance, patience -- the editorial pages of the land would absolutely brim with encouragement and optimism every damn day, because the good fight was being waged, and the right people were waging it.
Read the whole Lileks piece if you have time. It's devastating.
Butt-covering: As CNN's Eason Jordan admitted after the war, CNN slanted its coverage to make Saddam look good for years. That's how they maintained "access." (What good is "access" when all it produces are lies? Well, no good -- except to the journalists whose careers it enhances. We've seen journalists develop something akin to the "ticket punching"? mentality that the U.S. Army had in Vietnam, where being able to say you were there is more important than the quality of work you did.)
More butt-covering: Many media people predicted disaster before the war, based on their alleged expertise in the area. They were proved wrong again and again, and would like to turn the tables.
Laziness: A lot of Big Media types don't get out of Baghdad much to see the rest of the country where things are better. Plus, they're often still hanging around with their former "minders" from the Old Regime, who may know where to get cheap booze but who can't be expected to offer a fair picture of the regime that overthrew them.
Hysteria: The same thing that led them to overhype Hurricane Isabel -- bad but not terrible -- or for that matter shark attacks at the beach. They love bad news, because they think it sells. Funny that their viewership is shrinking, for the most part.
Euro-envy: Too many American journalists still think that their European counterparts know more. I don't know why -- it was European nations that made a mess of the Middle East to start with, and that have kept the pot boiling with their destructive support of tyrants. The BBC's anti-American bias is quite plain by now (see above). And as Tom Friedman notes in The New York Times, the French are essentially at war with us, trying to regain influence in the region. And as Sylvain Galineau observes, "France wants to get back to business as usual. For TotalFinaElf, Alcatel and the scores of French companies who coined money working for the Hussein regime for decades. As long as Paul Bremer is in charge, it won't happen. France needs someone it can bribe and sign dodgy deals with. The UN can deliver that. The US won't." Journalists are supposed to pride themselves in noticing the self-interest behind what people tell them. Why have they missed this? Because they're biased, butt-covering, lazy, hysterical, and Euro-envying. That's my guess, anyway.
All of these things reflect badly on the press. If the Jayson Blair affair was journalism's Enron, the kind of misconduct that John Burns reports is journalism's Nuremberg. With that in mind, I guess an after-the-fact cover-and-spin operation is no surprise. But they're crazy to think that people aren't noticing.
The Bush Boom (Brian S. Wesbury, 9/15/03, Wall Street Journal)
President Bush has sounded upbeat about the economy of late: and he should. His tax cuts and Fed rate cuts are proving naysayers wrong. Not only did the economy grow at a stronger than expected 3.1% rate during the wartime second quarter, but the third and fourth quarters are on track for what could be 6.0% real GDP growth.
Retail sales show a 12.1% annualized increase in the June-August period. Housing starts are at a 17-year high, new and existing home sales have set new records this year, and disposable personal income is up an annualized 9.4% in the past three months. Productivity growth in the non-farm business sector expanded at an astounding 6.8% in the second quarter, while spending on computers and peripheral equipment jumped 57.5% at an annualized rate. The future looks just as bright....
With the capital gains tax rate lower than at any time since 1941 and dividend tax rates cut by 60%, the 2003 Bush tax cuts have stimulated venture capital investment, mergers and acquisition activity, and the stock market. ... So while partisans will continue to produce pessimistic analyses, there should be no doubt that this economy is gathering momentum. The strength of economic activity will surprise many, just as it did in the early '80s following the Reagan tax cuts. George W. Bush should get the credit this time.
VDH on This Historic Moment in the War on Terror (Victor Davis Hanson, 9/19/03, National Review)
After the spectacular victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, public ardor for the conflict is temporarily cooling. Because of the past recession, the effects of 9/11, the tax cuts, and the cost of the war, we are running up billions in projected annual budget deficits. Our own McClellans and contemporary Copperheads deride the president as a miserable failure cheek by jowl with major newspapers.
Few stop to appreciate that 50 million are now liberated with the first chance of real democracy in the history of the Middle East. We almost take for granted that the Taliban and Saddam Hussein are gone and that 90 percent of Iraq is functioning under local democratic councils — in an irreversible process that is taking on a culture and logic of its own. We are angry not that the situation in the occupied countries is stabilizing — so far at a cost of less than 300 — not 300,000 — American dead, but that they are not yet normal societies. Few Americans ask why and how Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran are suddenly whining privately rather than shouting defiance.
So beneath the hysterical headlines of quagmire, Vietnam, and stalemate, we have sorely hurt our enemies. We have driven the remnants of the Taliban into the Pakistani coffeehouses, the terrorists into caves, Saddam Hussein into a low-rent apartment, his sons into the Inferno — and replaced them all not with dictators, but real opportunities for freedom and consensual government. Instead of more skyscrapers exploding in American cities, 7,000 miles away jihadists and Islamic terrorists are being hunted down in their own once sacred enclaves.
Like Sisyphus, we have pushed our terrible rock nearly to the top of the hill. We need only a few dramatic final and critically symbolic shoves — either the capture of Saddam Hussein, proof of bin Laden's demise, textual or material evidence of WMDs, or the finalization of a legitimate government in Baghdad — to go over the top, showing the discontented at home how far we have come. But just as Sisyphus was forever doomed to start pushing his rock anew — once it cascaded back just as he reached the apex — so shall we too have to start all over again should we lose our nerve with the summit now within sight. And such large boulders roll faster and in deadlier fashion downhill than during the slow and arduous push up.
Saddam and 9/11 (Mona Charen, 9/19/03, Townhall.com)
According to the Democrats’ bill of particulars, the Bush administration -- knowing full well that Saddam was not involved in 9/11 -- nonetheless encouraged Americans to believe he was in order to fulfill some Dr. Strangeloveish neocon battle plan for Iraq. The administration further lied when it offered the existence of weapons of mass destruction as a rationale for war. If what the Democrats say is true, we are dealing with one of the most dishonest and corrupt administrations in history.
But there are a few problems with their analysis. In the first place, no one in the administration ever claimed that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. The president pinned blame for that attack firmly on Al Qaeda. But the president and his administration also clearly stated that the war on terror was not limited to Al Qaeda, that it was a global war that would be fought on many fronts. The Axis of Evil included (in addition to Iraq) North Korea and Iran, neither of whom bears direct responsibility for 9/11 either. And the administration has dispatched troops to the Philippines as well as Afghanistan and Iraq.
Democrats point to polls showing that large numbers of Americans believe there was a link between Saddam and the attacks on 9/11. Now, how could people come to that belief? Perhaps because they’ve heard the uncontradicted reports that Saddam did have ties with Al Qaeda. Or perhaps they were thinking of the fact that he permitted Baghdad to become a haven for terrorists like Abu Nidal and others who lived out a comfortable retirement on his generosity. Or perhaps they were considering that Saddam Hussein paid the family of each suicide bomber who killed innocent Israelis the handsome sum of $25,000. Or maybe they had heard about the 707 Saddam maintained at Salman Pak for terrorists to practice hijackings on?
Cool Anecdote in Otherwise Dismal Aftermath of Hurricane Isabel
At Arlington National Cemetery, soldiers who guard the Tomb of the Unknowns were given — for the first time ever — permission to abandon their posts and seek shelter, Superintendent John Metzler said. But they stood guard anyhow.Via K. Lo at NRO's The Corner.
It's "Letters To The Editor" Friday!
Get active in support of the President by writing letters to the editor TODAY!
We continue to see the grassroots effort on Letters to Editor Friday gain momentum so keep up the great work! Remember, the topic for your letter is completely up to you, but if you would like a few suggestions check out the many posts below on Germany's decision to help rebuild Iraq, the continuing success in the War on Terror, the revelations and scandals involving baises in mainstream media, grassroots efforts in state's across the country to gear up for November 2004 and much much more!
Simply type in your zip code below and find the news outlets in your areas!
If you're a blogger who wants to join this effort, just copy and paste the following ZIP-code lookup box so people can write letters directly from your site for Friday's festivities:
Let's show them what the Bush-blogosphere can do! If you support President Bush, write a letter to the editor today and every Friday!
Winning the War on Terror: Former Iraqi Defense Minister Turns Himself In (Terence Neilan, 9/19/03, New York Times)
Iraq's former defense minister, No. 27 on the list of most wanted government officials, turned himself in to United States forces today in the far northern city of Mosul under unusually cordial circumstances.
The surrender of the ex-minister, Gen. Sultan Hashem Ahmed, was carried out "with great respect" and he was with his family at the time, Dawood Bagistani, a Kurdish mediator who arranged the handover, said at a news conference.
Germany Backs Bush on Rebuilding Iraq (Gerhard Schröder, Chancellor of Germany, 9/19/03, New York Times)
In addition to its current military involvement in Afghanistan, the Balkans and elsewhere, Germany is willing to provide humanitarian aid, to assist in the civilian and economic reconstruction of Iraq and to train Iraqi security forces.
When we gather in New York next week for the United Nations General Assembly, we will underline that Germany and the United States are linked by a profound friendship based on common experiences and values. For Germans, the 2003 general assembly is very special. It was exactly 30 years ago that Germany was admitted to the United Nations, a milestone in our postwar history. Back then, Germans were still forced to live in two states, divided by a wall and a dangerous border. Today, Germany is united.
We Germans will not forget how the United States helped and supported us in rebuilding and reuniting our country. That Germany is living today in a peaceful, prosperous and secure Europe is thanks in no small measure to America's friendship, farsightedness and political determination.
Beginning with President Harry S. Truman, all American presidents have supported and encouraged European integration. This remains a wise policy, for a strong and united Europe is also in the interest of the United States. With the adoption of a European constitution and the enlargement of the European Union, Europe is opening an important new chapter in unity. Germany, as a civilian power in the heart of Europe, knows from its own history that cooperation and integration are conditions for security and prosperity.
Not until after the fall of the wall and unification did Germany fully regain its sovereignty. Today we are a full member in the international community — with all the rights and obligations this entails. Germany's role in the world has changed and so has our foreign policy. My country is willing to shoulder more responsibility. This may entail using military force as a last resort in resolving conflicts.
However, we must not forget that security in today's world cannot be guaranteed by one country going it alone; it can be achieved only through international cooperation. Nor can security be limited to the activities of the police and the military. If we want to make our world freer and safer, we must fight the roots of insecurity, oppression, fanaticism and poverty — and we must do it together.
Michigan Republicans Meet to Plan Bush Strategy (Kathy Barks Hoffman, 9/19/03, MLive.com)
More than 1,500 Republican leaders and activists from a dozen Midwestern states began gathering in Michigan on Thursday to talk about re-electing President Bush and holding on to their congressional majorities in 2004.
Although most of the Republicans meeting on Mackinac Island will be from Michigan, 23 Republican National Committee members from 11 other states will attend, along with other party officials and activists from those states, said Michigan GOP Chairwoman Betsy DeVos.
"It traditionally kicks off a new election cycle, and it really begins energizing our grass-roots activists," she said of the conference. "It starts to get people focused on the fact that, in slightly over a year, we have another election."
...
The conference was to kick off Thursday evening with a reception featuring RNC Co-Chair Ann Wagner.
Friday's events include a Grassroots Project workshop conducted by, among others, former U.S. Education Secretary Bob Bennett and Georgia GOP Chairman Ralph Reed, former chairman of the Christian Coalition. Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, speaks Friday night.
On Saturday, Republicans will hear from reporters, campaign consultants, pollsters and GOP leaders about what they need to do to hold on to the White House and their majorities in the U.S. House and Senate.
The conference wraps up Sunday morning after speeches by Ken Mehlman, campaign manager for Bush-Cheney 2004, and David Horowitz, an author active in Ward Connerly's campaigns to ban racial preferences. Connerly is trying to collect enough signatures to put such a measure on Michigan's 2004 ballot.
Isabel Paralyzes Bloggers?
It seems that way on the East Coast. Despite NYC having fairly decent weather, it appears many bloggers are getting a late start on the morning so Josh over at BushBlog has a nice littany of politically speculative articles:
Fred Brown at the Denver Post analyzes Colorado Gov. Bill Owens shot at national office.
Richard Reeves, in his own hateful way, predicts that Bush will select Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, or someone like him, as his successor in 2008 if re-elected in 2004.
Dallas Morning News Columnist Carl Leubsdorf weighed in on several GOP 2008 contenders, including Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.
John LeBoutillier believes that former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani can beat Hillary in 2006 thus killing her shot at the 2008 race as well as boosting his already lofty status among conservatives and grab the 2008 spot.
The Weekly Standard talks of Bill Frist's self imposed term limit, political future and White House aspirations in 08.
Of course, NSA Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice already has an unofficial Condi in 2008 site up.
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Polipundit 'Outs' Wesley Clark
You know those kooky claims Wesley Clark made about the White House pressuring him to link 9/11 and Iraq? Clark claimed he got a phone call from the White House on 9/11/01 asking him to do so. He later had to retract the claim and was last heard babbling about a "friend" at a "Middle East think tank." Well, that "friend" has decided to go public:More on Wesley Clark:
As Clark kicked off his campaign yesterday in Little Rock, Ark., Thomas Hecht, founder of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, told the Star he placed the call to Clark and drew his attention to a potential link between Saddam and the Al Qaeda suicide hijackers.
But Hecht said he did not pressure the former army general, who became a CNN commentator after retiring from the military, to make the link and said the matter was raised in a phone call inviting Clark to come to Montreal for a speech.
Eugene Volokh on Clark's strange assertion that the U.S. was *founded* on the ideal of progressive taxation.
Clark's reluctance to answer questions put on display
Why Conservatives Don't Trust Mainstream Media -- BBC Version (Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor, 9/18/03, The Independant)
Here, The Independent judges Mr Gilligan's original claims against what we now know about the drafting of the Government's Iraq dossier in September last year, which was said to have been "sexed up".And here are a couple more examples of the BBC's despicable behavior.
"The Government knew that the 45-minute claim was wrong even before it decided to put it in"
Mr Gilligan has conceded that his statement in a live two-way discussion with John Humphrys at 6.07am was inaccurate. No politician knew of criticism of the claim by Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS). John Scarlett, the chairman of the JIC, was also unaware of complaints by DIS members.
Dr Kelly was an "intelligence service source"
Mr Gilligan admitted that he was wrong to have described Dr Kelly in such terms when he did a broadcast on Five Live on 29 May. We now know that Dr Kelly did have access to MI6 intelligence and interpreted intelligence on bioweapons for the agency. He met MI6 officers every few months but met DIS staff every two weeks.
Dr Kelly was "one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up the dossier"
Mr Gilligan claims that Dr Kelly had agreed to this description of his role at the end of their meeting on 22 May at the Charing Cross Hotel. There is no written record to back his claim. The inquiry has heard how Dr Kelly advised on the section on the history of UN weapons inspections in Iraq and some other sections. Mr Gilligan would have been better to describe Dr Kelly as having a key role in the drafting.
"A week before publication, Downing Street ordered the dossier to be sexed up"
Mr Gilligan has again admitted he was wrong to claim that Dr Kelly had said this.
And don't forget to read this.
Forgive Russia, Ignore Germany and Punish France (Thomas Friedman, 9/18/03, New York Times)
If France were serious, it would be using its influence within the European Union to assemble an army of 25,000 Eurotroops, and a $5 billion reconstruction package, and then saying to the Bush team: Here, we're sincere about helping to rebuild Iraq, but now we want a real seat at the management table. Instead, the French have put out an ill-conceived proposal, just to show that they can be different, without any promise that even if America said yes Paris would make a meaningful contribution.
But then France has never been interested in promoting democracy in the modern Arab world, which is why its pose as the new protector of Iraqi representative government — after being so content with Saddam's one-man rule — is so patently cynical.
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
An Official Bush Blog??? . . . Sounds That Way
As reported by K. Lo at the Corner:
A Beltway insider tells me a senior Bush reelection official announced in a private meeting this afternoon that the campaign will have an official blog to be launched next week. Details pending.Stay tuned for more developments.
The Corner's informant adds: " Note that Bush has, from this campaign and the last, about 6m registered 'E-leaders' (this number is cited publicly as well, I believe), people who have signed-up on his website to volunteer for the campaign in their areas. Dean's done some innovative things with blogging and online fundraising, but I think this number above gives some indication that Bush less innovative online services can be awfully effective, if less glamorous."
More Signs The Left is Just Losing It
At his Fed-Ex Field concert last weekend, Bruce Springsteen said Bush "ought to be impeached and started chanting, 'Impeach, impeach.' But the call was not picked up by the multitude, some of whom even began to boo"
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
How Facts Changed the Mind of One Anti-Invasion Judge
Judge Don Walters, a federal judge from Shreveport, LA., was asked to serve as part of a 12 man team in Iraq to evaluate their justice system. Here are excerpts of a speech he gave recently upon returning to the United States:
Despite my initial opposition to the war, I am now convinced, whether we find any weapons of mass destruction or prove Saddam sheltered and financed terrorists, absolutely, we should have overthrown the Baathists, indeed, we should have done it sooner.Via Instapundit.
What changed my mind?
When we left mid June, 57 mass graves had been found, one with the bodies of 1200 children. There have been credible reports of murder, brutality and torture of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iraqi citizens. There is poverty on a monumental scale and fear on a larger one. That fear is still palpable.
I have seen the machines and places of torture. I will tell you one story told to me by the Chief of Pediatrics at the Medical College in Basra. It was one of the most shocking to me, but I heard worse. One of Saddam's security agents was sent to question a Shiite in his home. The interrogation took place in the living room in the presence of the man's wife, who held their three month old child. A question was asked and the thug did not like the answer; he asked it again, same answer. He grabbed the baby from its mother and plucked its eye out. And then repeated his question. Worse things happened with the knowledge, indeed with the participation, of Saddam, his family and the Baathist regime.
Thousands suffered while we were messing about with France and Russia and Germany and the UN. Every one of them knew what was going on there, but France and the UN were making millions administering the food for oil program. We cannot, I know, remake the world, nor do I believe we should. We cannot stamp out evil, I know. But this time we were morally right and our economic and strategic interests were involved. I submit that just because we can't do everything doesn't mean that we should do nothing. . . .
We must have the moral courage to see this through, to do whatever it takes to secure responsible government for the Iraqi people. Having decided to topple Saddam, we cannot abandon those who trust us. I fear we will quit as the horrors of war come into our living rooms. Look at the stories you are getting from the media today. The steady drip, drip, drip of bad news may destroy our will to fulfill the obligations we have assumed. WE ARE NOT GETTING THE WHOLE TRUTH FROM THE NEWS MEDIA. The news you watch, listen to and read is highly selective. Good news doesn't sell.
What Iraqis Think of the American Presence (Mustafa Alrawi, 9/15/03, Iraq Today)
The truth is that most Iraqis would rather have an American dominated force here, than an Arab one.Via David Frum.
The grim reality, particularly hard to hear for all those Arabs that felt they were supporting their Iraqi brethren when demonstrating to stop the war, is that most people here don't want anything to do with them.
On the walls of Mosul University, one of Iraq's oldest, warning signs are clearly displayed; 'No Jordanians, No Palestinians.' Iraqis are clearly still upset that other Arabs were able to study in Iraq, effectively on Saddam's payroll. Iraqis have had enough of seeing their own lives compromised for the benefit of Arabs from neighbouring countries.
Saddam Hussein played the Palestinian card to the max. It's widely believed that the support, both vocal and financial, he gave to the suicide bombers, are the reason behind the wrath of the 'Zionists' in Tel Aviv and Washington. Whether that is true or not is beside the point - Iraqis saw other Arabs benefit from Saddam's regime while they were left to suffer.
In contrast, the US spilled the blood of its own people to liberate them from Saddam's tyranny. No matter how bad things are here right now, friends, colleagues and relatives assure me that with the pressure of living under the old regime gone, life is one hundred percent better.
The deal on oil between Saddam and countries like Syria and Jordan, affectionately known as memorandums of understanding, irked the population. Even now, in a country that has the world's second largest reserves of crude, Iraqis must go begging to Syria, Turkey and Jordan for fuel imports to meet consumption. It's not an easy pill for the average Iraqi to swallow.
Stories doing the rounds, tell of how even Kuwaitis profited from Saddam after 1991. Iraqis are incensed that people from a country supposed to be their enemy were treated better by their leader than they were.
'Foreigners had more rights in Iraq than Iraqis did under Saddam,' is not an uncommon complaint to be heard here. There is a lot of animosity towards those countries that managed to gain from Saddam's thirst for international recognition and popularity. In this light, the bombing of the Jordanian embassy in August is not difficult to comprehend. It was even more tragic and disgusting an act if you consider that it was mainly Iraqis that died in the blast.
Pan-Arab nationalists will find that their dreams have died in the dusty streets of Baghdad, and the narrow lanes of Fallujah. Iraqis just aren't interested. They have enough problems of their own and just want to get back on an even keel, to enjoy their country as they hoped they were always supposed to."
Why Conservatives Don't Trust Mainstream Media
The New York Times scandals are well documented (Jayson Blair, Howell Rains, Maureen Dowd, etc.), the BBC Scandals are currently unfolding and not to be out done, the Washington Post decided to throw its hat into the ring:
Herewith a new occasional award given to writers, columnists or pundits who deliberately distort, elide, truncate or garble quotes for ideological purposes. The first nominee for this prestigious award goes to Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus for a spectacular performance in the Washington Post yesterday:Cheney was less forthcoming when asked about Saudi Arabia's ties to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers. "I don't want to speculate," he said, adding that Sept. 11 is "over with now, it's done, it's history and we can put it behind us."
As Ramesh Ponnuru noticed, this is, er, misleading. The transcript of the show goes as follows. After Tim Russert asked Cheney about "reports that the investigation Congress did does show a link between the Saudi government and the hijackers but that it will not be released to the public," Cheney replied:I don't want to speculate on that, Tim, partly because I was involved in reviewing those pages. It was the judgment of our senior intelligence officials, both CIA and FBI that that material needed to remain classified. At some point, we may be able to declassify it, but there are ongoing investigations that might be affected by that release, and for that reason, we kept it classified. The committee knows what's in there. They helped to prepare it. So it hasn't been kept secret from the Congress, but from the standpoint of our ongoing investigations, we needed to do that.
One of the things this points out that’s important for us to understand—so there's this great temptation to look at these events as [discrete] events. We got hit on 9/11. So we can go and investigate it. It's over with now. It's done. It’s history and put it behind us.
From our perspective, trying to deal with this continuing campaign of terror, if you will, the war on terror that we’re engaged in, this is a continuing enterprise. The people that were involved in some of those activities before 9/11 are still out there. We learn more and more as we capture people, detain people, get access to records and so forth that this is a continuing enterprise and, therefore, we do need to be careful when we look at things like 9/11, the commission report from 9/11, not to jeopardize our capacity to deal with this threat going forward in the interest of putting that information that’s interesting that relates to the period of time before that. These are continuing requirements on our part, and we have to be sensitive to that.
At least the Washington Post ran a correction.
Monday, September 15, 2003
Passive Saboteurs in Iraq (Martin Peretz, 9/15/03, Opinion Journal)
"THEY DO NOT WANT THE WATER TO FLOW, IF THE TAP IS TURNED BY PAUL BREMER:" Martin Peretz writes on how the international relief agencies -- putting politics ahead of principle, again -- are bugging out of Iraq. He notes:Post via Instapundit.
One more telling irony: While the idealistic abandoners of Iraq move on to their safe-haven podiums in Kuwait City and Amman, the entrepreneurial corporations Bechtel and Fluor, drawn to the country by contract for massive construction and oil-field projects, have plans to evacuate no one.
Sunday, September 14, 2003
Iraq Reconstruction in Perspective (Doug Saunders, 9/13/03, The Globe and Mail)
Six months before, the world had cheered as the statues of the dictator came crashing down. The Americans had seemed heroic. But now things were going very badly. The occupation was chaotic, the American soldiers were hated and they were facing threats from the surviving supporters of the dictator, whose whereabouts were uncertain.Via Instapundit. Like Glen says, read the whole thing.
Washington seemed unwilling to pay the enormous bill for reconstruction, and the president didn't appear to have any kind of workable plan to manage the transition to democracy. European allies, distrustful of the arrogant American outlook, were wary of co-operating. To many, it looked like the victory had been betrayed, since the American values of democracy, equality and well-being seemed unlikely ever to emerge.
That's how it looked in Germany in November, 1945. In our memories, history tends to become compressed: There was V-E Day, then the American soldiers were cheered by the people of Berlin, then the president announced that hundreds of millions would be spent on the Marshall Plan, then Germany became the prosperous and democratic place it is today.
That is not how things unfolded. The United States has always been good at removing dictators from power, but the tedious, dirty work we now call "nation building" has never come naturally, or quickly. . . .
Meanwhile, the world was outraged by the scenes of suffering and disorder coming from Germany. The people were going hungry: A report conducted in November,1945, indicated that 60 per cent of them weren't getting the bare ration of 1,550 calories per day (2,000 calories is generally considered a healthy minimum). The world waited for the president of the United States to announce a plan.
...
It took two years for the United States to begin taking its nation-building responsibilities seriously. Those two years hadn't passed well. By 1947, Germans were dying of starvation. In some cities, the ration had dropped to 750 calories. And the aid may never have arrived had it not been for the threat of communism and the promise of profits: The Marshall Plan was sold to Americans as a trade and marketing opportunity for U.S. business, and as a firewall against the Soviets. But whatever the motives, it was the cornerstone of today's Europe, a stunning success.
History never really does fully repeat itself. An American president has just announced almost a Marshall Plan's worth of spending on a country far poorer than Germany, two years earlier than Harry Truman did. But Iraq is far less stable and far more menacing, and the world is less willing to help. This week, it looks as if the Americans have won the war and lost the peace -- but we ought to remember that it's looked that way before.
GOP Battleground: Michigan (George Weeks, 9/14/03, Detroit News)
The Michigan GOP goes to Mackinac Island's Grand Hotel for workshops in preparation to help President George W. Bush carry Michigan next year -- something that eluded Republican nominees the previous three seasons.
Betsy DeVos, who chairs the state GOP, says the three-day leadership conference that begins Thursday will help hone the "nuts and bolts of a winning strategy."
A key participant in strategy talks will be Bush Campaign Manager Ken Mehlman. Leading the GOP's Friday night pep rally will be Lynn Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney.
The conference follows Bush's scheduled Monday visit to Monroe -- his 11th to Michigan as president -- and comes as his approval rates are falling here as well as elsewhere.
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Says DeVos: "Michigan is almost a must-win state for both parties. Clearly it is for Democrats, but is almost as equally important for Republicans. ... When Michigan goes for Bush, we don't have to wait for Florida."
Pollster Ed Sarpolus of Lansing-based EPIC/MRA, says "Bush does not need Michigan to win" re-election. Executive Chair Mark Brewer of the state Democratic Party flatly asserts the party's nominee "has to win Michigan to be elected."
Changing Tactics in Iraq: Meeting the Needs of thye Battle (Patrick J. McDonnell, 9/14/03, Los Angeles Times)
"Tanks are great for destroying stuff, but you can't completely destroy a place you're supposed to rebuild and protect," Sassaman said.
In fact, tank guns and howitzers are seldom fired here and serve largely as barriers at the many U.S. Army checkpoints.
In another bow to concerns from Iraqis, the U.S. side has modified its controversial "dynamic entry" search tactics, which involved breaking down doors, screaming orders at terrified civilians and pointing weapons at everyone inside. Iraqis often spoke of the humiliation of soldiers placing their boots on suspects' heads.
Today, soldiers are instructed in "knock and talk" techniques, beginning with encircling targeted structures to ensure that no one escapes. Troops are instructed to request permission to enter, which is usually granted, commanders say. Metal-detecting wands are now used to check women for weapons; bags of money found in homes are placed in women's possession as the searches proceed, to counter widespread charges of theft by GIs.
War on Terror Snapshot: Is This a World War? (Brian Murphy, 9/14/03, Detroit News)
* In Iraq there are nearly 140,000 U.S. soldiers, 11,000 British and 9,500 others under Polish command from 21 countries. Speaking Thursday on the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, said Iraq is "the next battleground in the global war on terrorism."
* In Afghanistan, NATO leads 5,000 peacekeepers from 30 nations in the alliance's first operation outside Europe, while U.S. and Afghan forces hunt for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.
* About 2,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Qatar, the Persian Gulf emirate that hosted the command center for the Iraq war. The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet is based in Bahrain.
* Nearly 5,000 miles eastward, the Philippine military is getting U.S. training in counterterrorism and aid in fighting Muslim extremists whom officials say are loosely linked to al-Qaida.
* Some 1,100 miles southwest of the Persian Gulf, in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, more than 1,800 U.S. troops are attached to an anti-terrorism task force. Just across the Red Sea lie Saudi Arabia, oil giant and lately a target of al-Qaida type bombings, and Yemen, the staging ground for the USS Cole bombers in October 2000. Last year, a missile from a U.S. Predator drone killed a suspected top al-Qaida lieutenant in Yemen.
* To the south, the U.S. 5th Fleet has expanded patrols off East Africa, and 11 nations have joined a U.S.-led terrorism response force. In that region, Sudan, Kenya and Tanzania have all been drawn into the battle in one form or another.
* And in the Caucasus, the mainly Muslim mountain region between Russia and Asia, the Pentagon provides military aid to Azerbaijan and troops to train Georgia's military in anti-terrorist operations.
