Wednesday, March 24, 2004
I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s in the news again and I just still have trouble wrapping my brain around it.
Tom Delay, a self professed evangelical Christian, is using money from a children’s charity to pay for lavish parties, a golf tournament, and concert tickets for him and his friends.
Something tells me WWJD is not part of his mantra.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Bill Clinton "authorized an intensive, ongoing campaign to destroy al-Qaida and seize or assassinate bin Laden by signing a secret National Security Decision Directive to that effect."
Bush's pre 9/11 plan (when they finally got around to it) was to open diplomatic negotiations as part of a 3 tiered program to try and get the taliban to expel bin Laden.
I'm finding a certain cruel entertainment in watching the Bush attack dogs attack when they have absolutly no ammunition. We've heard the Homer defense, and now we have Powell and Bush with the lowering the bar defense (Stole that from Josh Marshal, as A second rate blogger like me is wont to do)
Bush today:
"The facts are these: George Tenet briefed me on a regular basis about the terrorist threat to the United States of America, and had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on Sept. 11, we would have acted."
So if Bush knew the exact date and place of a terrorist attack before it happened, he wouldve done something dammit! SO everyone stop complaining!
Comforting isn't it?
I wonder what would happen If Clinton came before America and said if he knew the exact date and place of when the bombing of the USS Cole was going to happen he wouldve stopped it, how it would go over with all the right wingers who blame him for it?
And Powell:
at no time during the early months of our administration were we presented with a vetted, viable, operational proposal which would have led to an opportunity to kill, capture or otherwise neutralize Osama bin Laden; never received any targetable information. Let me return now to our diplomatic efforts.
Now the bar is set to not just a "plan", but it had to be a "vetted, viable, operational proposal."
Shameless.
One of the, admittedly numerous, idiotic attacks being leveled against Richard Clarke, or as I like to call him "disgruntled former Admisntration official whose only out to get the President #6" is the one Cheney pulled out in his hard hitting no holds bar interview with.... Rush Limbaugh. (The interview itself has to be read to be beleived. I half expected at one point to hear Rush say "is it in fact true, that you shit out gold bricks?")
Clarke doesn't know what he was talking about because he was "out of the loop". The Bush administrations head of counter terrorism was "out of the loop" on terrorism. And thats their defense.
This shall be dubbed, The Homer defense.
"Asleep at the switch! I wasn't asleep! I was drunk!"
Homer Simpson
Monday, March 22, 2004
The Clarke smear machine is out in force, just like it was for O'Neill. And the lies are in full swing as well. From Josh Marshall:
From today's NYT:
In an interview Sunday night, Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the
department, denied that Ridge was against the creation of the
department and said the department did not have to go through any
more clearance with the White House than other Cabinet departments.
CongressDaily May 30, 2002:
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said today he would advise
President Bush to veto any legislation creating a congressionally
authorized Office of Homeland Security if Congress approves a bill
this year. "I'd probably recommend he veto it," Ridge told a
National Journal Group editorial board meeting.
Lie Lie Lie.
Its all they know how to do.
Sunday, March 21, 2004
I'm a member of some Yahoo political groups. It helps pass the time. Most of it is dealing with right wing bushbots who will defend Bush at any cost no matter what, to the point of absolute absurdity. Its why I go, they entertain me. For instance, one guy defended bush as not being a liar about uranium because "the british have learned" is "technically" true, and then mocks CLintons definition of "is".
Thats entertainment.
But there are some people who are very intelligent. One, whose handle is "Captin Sarcastic" wrote this:
The invasion of Iraq lacked moral clarity.
There will always be some level of debate whenever military force is
brought to bear, always. There are some individuals and groups that
will oppose ANY military action, no matter how justified the action
appears to be. It is not possible to please everyone, and not likely
desirable either. Regardless of opposition, there are occasions when
the use of military force is appropriate, and sometimes inescapable.
On these occasions, there is a level of moral clarity that
overwhelms critics.
Iraq is not such an example.
As such, the greatest tragedy of this administrations policy is
simply that as a result of 9/11, they enjoyed unprecedented global
support in the global war on Islamist terrorists like those that
struck the world trade center.
America's action in Afghanistan is one example of virtually
unanimous domestic and global support for military action. Sure
there were opponents of any action, but they were the usual
suspects, what the right likes to call the peace-at-any-price crowd,
as well as groups that were inclined to oppose any action involving
Western forces brought to bear against a predominantly Muslim
nation. The fact is that there was no doubt that al Qaeda and the
Taliban were inextricably linked, and that al Qaeda was physically
centered in Afghanistan. Republicans, Democrats, liberals,
conservatives, libertarians, Russians, French, Germans, Italians,
even the Chinese were supportive of American's invasion of
Afghanistan. This action was supported by moral clarity.
The invasion of Iraq did was not an example of an action taken with
moral clarity. There were three elements at play when Iraq was being
discussed as a target:
1. Weapons of Mass Destruction
2. Complicity between Iraq and al Qaeda
3. The immense brutality of the manner in which Saddam Hussein
administrated Iraq.
The third element is irrelevant with respect to unilateral action,
or even multilateral action. It is impossible and counterproductive
to attempt to impose global accountability on a sovereign nation
without a global mandate. The third element is also irrelevant
within the context of the global war on terrorism.
The other two items taken separately or together could well have led
to global agreement on the moral clarity of taking action in Iraq,
but there was no consensus on moral clarity even in the U.S. much
less globally, and the reason for this is precisely that clear
evidence of the existence of either was never provided, even though
the administration claimed there was "no doubt" that huge
immediately available stockpiles of WMD's were at Saddam's disposal,
and on the second point, the administration never passed up an
opportunity to insinuate that a failure to remove Saddam and the
WMD's was tantamount to handing nuclear bombs to terrorists (also
false). As President Bush clearly promoted in his state of the Union
Address in 2003 by discussing Iraq's alleged nuclear programs
(false) and then discussed 9/11 and the threat of terror directly
against America, and then closed the loop by telling Americans that
we needed to disarm Iraq or the "smoking gun" could be in the form
of a mushroom cloud. (see relevant text below)
The action in Iraq was not an example of a failure of intelligence,
it was an example of the triumph of stupidity. America took it's eye
off the ball and wasted lives and resources and relationships across
the globe, and the best we can hope to accomplish is to improve the
lot of 25 million Iraqi's who were not even disposed to rebel
against their own government and who seem to have a desire to kill
Americans and each other.
To obtain the moral clarity needed to support an invasion of Iraq,
the al Qaeda links and WMD's would have had to have been
substantiated by unequivocal evidence. Considering the effort by the
administration to establish such evidence as well as the fact that
there is now universal agreement that neither the weapons nor the al
Qaeda links exist, it is clear that those who questioned the
administrations intention of taking military action have been proven
correct, and the current reality facing America is that a large
number of Americans as well as a significant majority of the global
population now believe that America invaded a nation based on either
a lie or mistake.
If there were moral clarity surrounding this action, the possibility
of this circumstance would have been reduced to nil.
As a result of these realities, the invasion of Iraq was the single
worst foreign policy decision in the history of this nation and
should global conflict ever occur in our future, the catalyst for
such a conflict will likely be traced back to this single, poorly
considered action.
Cap
