You missed some :

The stupid-cons: Corrupt pro-Bush hacks who insist that things are hunky-dory and the problems are due to either media bias - instapundit - or John Kerry - Mickey Kaus.

Somebody need to take a chill pill. I simply do not think the infighting between conservatives is all that important. We are doing quite well in Iraq. The coalition merely must not lose its nerve. To be blunt: we might be our own worst enemies! The normal state of affairs is to get overly excited about every bit of bad news instead of looking at the larger picture. By all rights, Americans should be astonished on what we have accomplished in so little time. This gloom and doom rhetoric is getting ridiculous. Apparently some people haven’t studied much history. Thank God they weren’t around during the Civil War and WWII.

One of the things I can't help noticing about history is that there's a lot more to it than the American Civil War and WWII.

There are a few who didn't buy the WMD claims as well as "democratization":

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail296.html#Cochran

I used to think they were nuts, but their stock has definitely gone way up with me.

“One of the things I can't help noticing about history is that there's a lot more to it than the American Civil War and WWII.”

OK, you can inform us of even one war that was prosecuted perfectly. Just one? You can do that, can’t you? I read a large number of publications and view hours of TV news and talking heads. Why is it that I’m reaching the exact opposite conclusion than the “the world is coming to an end” crowd? The reason may be that I simply do not consider the major media as my primary news sources. Also, I tell myself to wait another week to see how things look at that time. The vastly exaggerated Iraqi prison scandal is an excellent example of what I’m talking about. We now find out that this was the exception, and not the norm. This story deserves to be placed on the back pages. It is not worthy of front page coverage. And yet, a number of folks are still freaking out.

DT,

Are you really that blind? Is the cool-aid really taht strong? Almost 95% of the things that have gone wrong in Iraq were predicted well before the war, and by very qualified people in the GOVERNMENT. Qualified people were ignored and unexperienced idealogical hacks ran the show. And surprise, surprise we have a mess! Its one thing if Rummy and Co, listened to these people, planned for what they said, and still stuff went bad. But thats not what happened. The arrogant bastards ignored everything to the contrary and did things their way, and screwed up royally.

Anyway,b ack to the good nnews from Iraq!

The dust does seem to be settling. Rasmussen’s daily tracking polls indicate that President Bush is starting to put the bad news behind him:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Presidential_Tracking_Poll.htm

Oh well, we should have a clearer picture by next week. I still predict that John Kerry will look like a very weak candidate before the Democrat convention. The most recent Fox poll, even after all this bad news, still has President Bush winning the election with 290 electoral votes.

“And surprise, surprise we have a mess!”

I reject your premise. We have problems, but they are manageable. Iraq is overall a far better place than a year ago. The various religious leaders seem to want to go along with the program to establish democracy. The economy is growing by leaps and bounds.

By the way, speaking of liberal bias in the news. What is happening with the peculiar statements by Senator Ernest Hollings concerning Israel? Why the overall silence? Can I get a witness? Why aren’t the media asking John Kerry for a response?

I have to agree with DT on this one - there were many predictions by many people, both in and out of government, as to what would happen, both during and after the war. Cherry-picking which ones turned out to be accurate after the fact (and ignoring the ones that weren't) may be a gratifying, but seems pretty useless going forward. What's more important is that we show the flexibility to adjust our operations and goals, both militarily and politically, to meet these changing situations. Militarily, it seems we're doing just that - Fallujah and the way we are handling Sadr strike me as quite sophisticated attempts to deflate the two respective uprisings. Politically, I'm not so sure yet. It seems that we're looking for an easy way out when there really is none...

I flummoxed by those who think that the solution was more troops. First, if reports are to be believed, a significant problem is that there are too many troops from the Iraqi perspective. Second, even if we ignore that, more troops from where? We've been told since the beginning (and certainly not by the administration) that the army has been stretched too thin to conduct this campaign and maintain its other commitments, particularly the kind of troops (MP's and others who operate in a civilian context) that are most needed. I had to laugh when I read that some guy who had worked for the CPA was disenchanted with the way things were going, saying we needed at least double the number of troops. Unless he was thinking of the UN (good for another laugh), he was smoking something.

I want the people who are having second thoughts about invading Iraq on the belief that it is being "managed" badly to at least think through, and I mean really think through, the alternatives on how it could be managed well.

Judging by the categories and the comments I have read here, David Thomson is in a class by himself.

David. Let's admit there is some decent reconstruction work being done. That said, how are any of today's policies leading to a better tomorrow in Iraq? Something, please, beyond, buck up and don't freak out...

(C'mon. Even Brian Lamb doesn't ask easier questions than this...)

I think we have evidence here of where the streams of thought will eventually converge: "It was all the liberals' fault."

David,

Your analogies with other wars would be more apt if we had a president who was willing to do the right things to make our Iraq efforts work - ie to make the hard sacrifices that must be made to achieve our stated goals. Unfortunately, Bush is not willing to adjust his strategies, as that could hamper his electability, so we're leaving Iraq in a mess. And perhaps more importantly, we've absolutely murdered our future influence re nation building. The world has watched us fall flat on our faces - an opinion shared by a great many of our current and former military leaders. This bodes very poorly indeed for future endeavours.

I mean, come on, it's barely six weeks 'til June 30, and we don't even know who we're handing the country over to.

We rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein several years after we foisted him on the same nation. Both actions will be our only real accomplishments. Next year, Iraq will be divided into three separate entities, Kurd, Sunni, Shiite, with each made secure by it's own militia groups. Democracy will prevail in each area according to the dictates of the particular gun barrels. Hopefully, the money we leave behind will provide some relief.

Zakaria a paleo? That's news to me. I thought he was more of a "classical" liberal hawk/neocon.

What am I missing?

...quite sophisticated attempts to deflate the two respective uprisings.

Besides deciding to call our enemies "friends", I don't see much insurrection deflation.

Okay, where do _we_ fit? I mean, those of us who see Iraq as the warm-up for picking off the next domino ... maybe Syria, maybe Iran. Eventually, and regardless -- Saudia Arabia.

re: Cherry picking predictions

While it is true that hindsight is 20/20, I fail to see *any* correct predictions that were adopted by the Bush administration and sold to the American people. It's not that Bush's critics are selectively admonishing him. It's that the president is paid to pick the best strategy out of a grab-bag of possible ones, and has consistently failed to do so. By any measure (except for hacks, I suppose), the Iraq war has been a monumental failure of leadership on the part of the Bush administration.

“Your analogies with other wars would be more apt if we had a president who was willing to do the right things to make our Iraq efforts work...”

A hypothetically perfect candidate is not available. The choice is between President Bush and wishy-washy John Kerry. A Democrat candidate has to be a dishonest pacifist. The liberal wing will not permit anything else. Kerry is trying to be all things to all people. George W. Bush doesn’t do this. There is a line that he will not cross. Senator Kerry, on the other hand, will flip-flop on a dime. The man has no core values. I will tell you one thing that really impressed me about the President. Turkey would not allow us to invade from the north. Everyone knew that this was very bad news. Still, President Bush did not hesitate. What would Kerry have done?

show me a country that enjoys being occupied. The Iraqis hate us, for good reason. Being not-Saddam isn't nearly enough.

David Thomson must be a caricature.

Pouncer - that is, and always was, purest fantasy

Okay, where do _we_ fit? I mean, those of us who see Iraq as the warm-up for picking off the next domino ... maybe Syria, maybe Iran. Eventually, and regardless -- Saudia Arabia.

You should fit your ass into a pair of combat boots.

What about the "stab-in-the-back" faction (and sorry I can't translate that into German)? That is the one that actually worries me - they seem to be working on setting up their story line over the last few weeks.

Cranky

I seriously doubt we'll see an Iraq partitioned into 3 countries.

What we'll likely see is Kurds ceding from the North, and a very nervous Turkey putting serious pressure on the US for assistance in curbing the Kurds, lest Kurdistan extend all the way to the ocean (otherwise, the Kurds are screwed, like the Afghans, because their homeland is LandLocked, which consigns them to pretty much eternal economic servitude).

Then the Shiites will end up in a shooting war with the Sunnis over the remainder of Iraq. They will no doubt turn to Iran for assistance, and thus, Iran will extend across the Shatt Al Arab, and encompass Baghdad, forcing the Sunnis, if they survive, into the central and western Iraqi desert, also LandLocked. Perhaps the Sunnis will end up the victims of genocide?

In any case - an Iraqi civil war is a dang scary thought.

The two alternatives:
- put Saddam back in power - he's the man for the job of brutally supressing and controlling these three independent ethic groups.
- Try to force-feed them a democratic coalition government. Yeah, right. Dream on.

I'm with David on this one.
Dan, you missed me in there. As close as you come is this:

"The Standard Neocons: Dude, Where's My Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy?" Cared more about democracy-building than WMD but are flummoxed by the Bush/Rumsfeld insistence on insufficient troops strength, suspecting that this is due to an aversion to casualties that impairs the mission (William Kristol, Robert Kagan, David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan, and yes, Daniel Drezner

So apparently, you and I are fairly close. Where I differ is the number of boots on the ground needed for the task.

I figure the need for greater numbers is only true if you take as gospel the reports coming to us from the mainstream press as regards the successes being had over there. Now what reason would the press have to mislead us on this point, particularly in an election year, when the current officeholder isn't a liberal?

David,
It's perfectly simple. "Democrat" is a noun. "Democratic" is an adjective. When the word modifies a noun, you use "Democratic", as in "Democratic party" or "Democratic candidate".

Notice how Thomson switched from Iraq to Bush's polls? I'm far from non-partisan, but to me what's happening in Iraq is worthy of independent discussion in and of itself.

"Why is it that I’m reaching the exact opposite conclusion than the “the world is coming to an end” crowd? The reason may be that I simply do not consider the major media as my primary news sources.":

My guess is that he's guided by voices.

If Christ returned to earth, David would immediately explain why Bush should get the credit for it.

I go nut's when people say Kerry Flip-Flops:

Bush is against a Homeland Security Department; then he's for it.
Bush is against a 9/11 commission; then he's for it.
Bush is against nation building; then he's for it.
Bush is for free trade; then he's for tariffs on steel; then he's against
them again. Bush first says he'll provide money for first responders
(fire, police, emergency), then he doesn't. Bush first says the U.S. won't
negotiate with North Korea. Now he will Bush said the "mission
accomplished" banner was put up by the sailors. Bush later admits it was
his advance team. etc etc etc....

I think DT has made some valid points. There is an old saying about baseball that also applies to war and politics-- "You're never as bad as you look on your worst day, and you're never as good as you look on your best day."

I never really understood the infatuation with Chalabi, but I know enough about GWB and his inner circle to know that the first time he said something critical about U. S. policy in Iraq, somebody (probably with the initials KR) got out the grease and headed for the skids. The fact that it took a few months for anything overt to happen is simply going to be shown to be a reflection of how thorough the planning has been-- a Frist aide (I live in Tennessee) told me over Easter that Chalabi was toast.

Aside from the fact that I thought David Thomson just yesterday was endorsing the idea that it is hard to tell how things are going in Iraq in the big picture, yet today asserting that things are going well, I have a few comments for him:

1. You evidently do not know what the word "pacifist" means.

2. For someone so attuned to the idea of a liberal media bias, it is simply stunning to see you rotely repeat what are nothing more than RNC-Fox News talking points on John Kerry.

3.You say these things take time. You miss the fact that we do not have that much time. June 30 is soon. And in light of that fast-approaching deadline, decisions continue to be made that are manifestly bad decisions promising harder times, such as Bremer's decision to not attempt to disarm the militias.

4. It remains difficult to know how things are going overall. But it is a mistake to simply dismiss any attention to the troubles as exceptional news being trumped up out of proportion by the liberal media. Quite frankly, this is the same attitude that led the DoD to pay no attention to the recommendations before the war of anyone who was not fully ideologically on board. Hindsight may be 20-20, but it remains the fact that there were people emphasizing the need for various kinds of post-war planning that the neocons simply dismissed as actors in bad faith.

Cranky Observer,

The German word you're looking for is
dolchstoss

General Abizaid just told the Senate committee yesterday that he thinks we'll need more troops, especially after the June 30th "transition." Clearly Abizaid is neither liberal nor a member of the press. His interest lies in providing safe transit along the major trade routes from Kuwait and Jordon. Our troops are running out of everything.

I think this move against Chalabi is evidence of more pushback by the uniformed military against their civilian masters.

First we had the pullback in Fallujah with the Wolfowitz gang running around not knowing what was going on. This decision was made on the ground in Iraq, by the Marines, not the political CPA.

Second, we saw the Abu Ghraib photos, and all the leaks to Sy Hersh from within the military. Yes, it will end some military careers and do some short-term damage to the uniformed military. But it also further undermined the Rummy crowd, who are doing long term institutional damage to the military.

Now we have the uniformed military going after the Rummy crowd's "silver bullet" in Iraq: Chalabi.

We are witnessing factional war within our own government as the regime starts to implode.

OK, you can inform us of even one war that was prosecuted perfectly. Just one?

The request makes no sense. Just because every war prosecution is imperfect doesn't mean every imperfect war prosecution represents success. Actually, about half of all imperfect war prosecutions represent failure. That's what happens when you have two sides.

Alan S:

Everything I saw suggested the marines wanted to reduce Fallujah to rubble,and it was Washington that set up the Fallujah arrangement.

Most of Sy's sources were "former" military and intelligence. he said only about 5 or 6 were current. And those probably were people in Washington,not the work-a-day soldier in Iraq.

Chalabi has been double-crossing his sponsors sice he returned to Iraq. The Bush types prize loyalty above all else. So my thought on he Chalabi search was "what took so long?"

In other words, the "regime" may be crumbling, as you say, but these aren't the signs.

"I have to agree with DT on this one - there were many predictions by many people, both in and out of government, as to what would happen, both during and after the war. Cherry-picking which ones turned out to be accurate after the fact (and ignoring the ones that weren't) may be a gratifying, but seems pretty useless going forward. What's more important is that we show the flexibility to adjust our operations and goals, both militarily and politically, to meet these changing situations."

Whether you're fighting a war, or building a bridge, it's a good idea to have some idea of what might go wrong, and figure out ahead of time what you might do about it.

The State Department did exactly that sort of contingency planning for the occupation stage of this little adventure. Needless to say, some of the contingencies they had plans for didn't come up. Is that somehow a strike against their planning? Hell, no; just as a certain number of things are going to go wrong, no matter how superb your planning and execution, a certain number of things will go right, no matter how bad you are. (Even the 1962 Mets won 40 games.) But they did plan for many contingencies that indeed have come up, that the CPA seemed to mostly try to wing its way through.

Hell, there's never been a clear plan to get from the toppling of Saddam's statue to a democratic Iraq that took into account the fundamental problem of Iraq's division into Sunni Arabs, Shiites, and Kurds. One Iraq? Three? Loose federation? (And in the last two cases, whose part of Iraq is Baghdad in?) "We wouldn't dream of telling the Iraqis how to deal with that," was the White House line. (But we'd tell them to privatize, have a flat tax, have no barriers to foreign investment, etc., etc.) "And anyone who believes THEY can't solve that problem, even though WE won't even propose possible ways to deal with it, is a racist."

The closest we came to a plan was a process, but process can't create solutions out of thin air.

Appalled,

I don't know where you got your news on Fallujah, but it was clear to the rest of the world that the CPA and Washington didn't know what the hell was going on. Even as the pullback was taking place, and being reported on by reporters on the ground, Washington was denying it.

Yeah, Dougy! I don't know how any honest individual can call Kerry a flip-flopper (which he very well may be) without applying the same to Bush. Here's the point, they are politicians, they are supposed to represent us. If our priorities change, theirs should change to match.

Stories like this, Alan (excuse my borrowing the freeper site...)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1126946/posts

DT,

I'd be very interested to know specifically what you think is going so well in Iraq?

This is from testimony to the Senate yesterday about the Most Important War Ever.

"I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss," General Joseph Hoar, a former commander in chief of US central command, told the Senate foreign relations committee.

...

Larry Diamond, an analyst at the conservative Hoover Institution, said: "I think it's clear that the United States now faces a perilous situation in Iraq.

General Hoar was equally scathing about the calibre of the Bush administration.

"The policy people in both Washington and Baghdad," he said, "have demonstrated their inability to do a job on a day-to-day basis this past year."

No hurry, figure out how to discredit another top official.

And how is the administrations failure to gain international support (Turkey)an asset to your man GW?

> "Almost 95% of the things that have gone wrong in Iraq were predicted well before the war, and by very qualified people in the GOVERNMENT."

Yawn. It reminds me of a comment made once about the Washinton Post's economic reporter (Lawrence Tribe?) -- that he successfully predicted twelve out of the last two recessions.

I can assure you that, if a Republican is in charge, there are going to be thousands of predictions of catastrophe, and they'll be all over the spectrum. The left-wing methodology is to wait until after the fact, pick out the ones that came true, and then TURN THE VOLUME UP TO ELEVEN!!!!!!!!

You begin to get a feel for these things as you notice that the criteria for success begin with having a Democrat in office. Clinton was president for eight years prior to 9/11, but the issue became whether Bush had done enough in eight months to avert 9/11. Clinton's the guy who bombed an aspirin plant for allegedly manufacturing WMD, but Bush is the one faulted for listening to bogus intel reports.

That makes it easy. Democrat -- good. Republican -- bad. It's nice to finally have foreign relations figured out.

Is David Thompson a fox news "reporter"?

thelrd in TEXAS

Thanks to BG above, who posted what exactly what I was thinking.

Well, Mr. Thompson, why didn't the "liberal" media report that testimony to the Senate? Go to the NY Times webpage and search for the Hoar or Diamond testimony -- nothing, zip, nada. You have to go overseas, where, strangely, they think it's worth reporting.

I've never before so clearly seen a case of "shoot the messenger." For more than a year, Bush's poll numbers were buoyed by a media that can only be described as fawning. Gosh, yes, Mr. Bush, sure we'll embed reporters. And, yes, when you tell us you found a weapons truck, we'll report that straight (Judith Miller, anyone?)

When, suddenly, the media starts reporting negative news, bursting the bubble they helped create, there is a great wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The sense of entitlement to positive coverage is just stunning.

"I can assure you that, if a Republican is in charge ...

Seems to me that especially for partisan Republicans, Bush's ineptness should be a grave concern.

Maybe it's better that a rabid base keep him so completely out of touch that he lose a crucial 5% of swing voters by his incalcitrance.

David Thomson:

If and when, God forbid, any American POWs are forced to wear women's underwear on their heads, forced to stick their fingers into their anuses and then smell it, masturbate with hoods on their heads in front of cameras, and be raped or even murdered by their interrogators, will you continue to assert that such actions are really not a big deal?

Shorter David Thomson: "Even as bad as things may be getting in Iraq, the only thing that really matters is that Dubya gets re-elected."

Thank you, David Thomson, for putting the "tunnel" into "tunnel vision."

Dan Drezner asked:
Who will be the last neo-neocon standing?

Why, David Thompson of course. You should be proud to have him hanginig around your blog as the one true believer who won't be shaken no matter how big the mountain of evidence to the contrary gets.

"The stupid-cons: Corrupt pro-Bush hacks who insist that things are hunky-dory and the problems are due to either media bias - instapundit - or John Kerry - Mickey Kaus."

Count me stupid. I think the worst has passed and that the Belmont Club has been very insightful. We'll see. It is obvious that Bush may have to get jettisoned to right this media nightmare. Fine, Kerry's position on Iraq differs mostly in style versus substance.

I'm not worried about adding troups. Can we sustain the levels we have?

By the Order of Euloga, we shall succeed. :)

Comical Ali has nothing on David Thomson. I bet he even has a natty beret, too.

The most significant breakage here, I think, is Kristol and his ilk. They may be ideologues, but they know a clusterfuck when they see it. That they're crowbarring themselves away from the Bush camp right now shows that they don't want to be remembered as the 'intellectual' originators of that policy.

Which means that to retain a degree of 'ideological consistency', the White House is now left dealing with the neo-neos. And I do think that it's right to say that if the neo-neos pick Chalabi over Bush, the White House will be left looking rather threadbare in support.

Colin Powell appears to be exacting some sweet, sweet revenge behind the scenes, too.

As someone who opposed the war from the start for pracitical reasons and a lack of faith in Bush's leadership, very little that has occurred has surprised me (except the prison stuff, that really surprised me). The vast majority of actual experts on the region and/or military affairs knew this would be a much bigger commitment than Bush was ready to make, and they told us (including generals Zinni and Shinseki).

Liberals like me made all these practical arguments, we didn't effect policy at all, and no liberals have actually had power to effect the actions of this administration.

However, I fully expect conservatives at the end of all this to SOMEHOW point out that this was OUR fault.

Thanks guys, in advance.

As for predictions David Thomson was predicting a few weeks back that Bush would be up by 8 now.

Oh well.

About as accurate as Wolfowitz on Iraq.

MDtoMN: you still see OP/ED pieces blaming Vietnam on the peaceniks, so there's nothing too surprising about it.

I'm with you about the lead-up to the war, but democracy and other moralistic issues aside, the reason for staying in Iraq has to do with survival. Unlike the Viet Cong, al Qaeda doesn't stay within faraway borders.

If Bush wins and calls for a draft, the country will go nuts, but Kerry might be able to do only if he can line up a serious coalition of European troops.

"’I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss,’ General Joseph Hoar, a former commander in chief of US central command, told the Senate foreign relations committee.”

General Joseph Hoar has always been against invading Iraq. He idiotically believes that the problem of nihilistic Islamism is greatly due to the belief that “the U.S. has unjustly supported Israel over the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.”

DT,

Even Dubya admits you can succeed with success, not failure. Why can't you?

"I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure."

—Dubya Interview with the Associated Press, Jan. 18, 2001

“As for predictions David Thomson was predicting a few weeks back that Bush would be up by 8 now.”

Oh gosh darn it, I guess I will merely have to settle for the excellent news in the just released poll by the Fox News sponsored Opinion Dynamics polling organization:

http://www.foxnews.com/polls/

President Bush is up by six percentage points over Senator Kerry in the crucial seventeen battleground states! In other words, even with all the recent bad press, the President would easily win the required electoral college votes.

"The left-wing methodology is to wait until after the fact, pick out the ones that came true, and then TURN THE VOLUME UP TO ELEVEN!!!!!!!!"

It seems you have a case of selective amnesia.

I recall we were being called traitors and America haters early last year when we did speak up.

Jor,

Are you really that blind? ... Almost 95% of the things that have gone wrong in Iraq were predicted well before the war,

My problem isn't with that, it's with your implication that, if only we had done something differently, all these problems would have been avoided and no other problems would have arisen in their place. It's regarding that latter, laughable assertion that I would gladly join David Thompson in asking, "Can you inform us of even one war that was prosecuted perfectly?"

So by all means, let's have an intellectually honest discussion about what we should be doing, and how we are doing. But sorry, saying "They aren't doing anything right" about folks who (mirabile dictu!) just happen to be your political opponents isn't credible.

> My problem isn't with that, it's with
> your implication that, if only we had
> done something differently, all these
> problems would have been avoided and no
> other problems would have arisen in
> their place.

First, the Bush Administration didn't just ignore single pieces of analysis about the postwar situation in Iraq: it ignored entire contingency plans from the Army and State Department, including the decision trees which showed Path C5 to be taken if B7 fails, etc.

Second, it really doesn't matter. The Bush Administration is totally and without exception responsible for the outcome of the invasion of Iraq.

Cranky

"A Democrat candidate has to be a dishonest pacifist."

I think Mr. Thomson's bias is more than clear enough. No objective opinion will be forthcoming from him.

I don't care what one's political background is. It's more than clear even to the neocons that things are a mess in Iraq. "Wait and see and it will get better" with no answers as to *how* that will happen is a pipe dream. The US has lost all moral authority, has become a sad shadow of itself to most of the world, and you stand there telling me wait and see how it gets better?

Get a frickin' clue.

DT and associated wingnuts, You want us to "wait and see" and "trust" the people who are in charge right now. Did you bother reading what Dan wrote? At one point in time the idiots in charge wanted Chalabi in power. They wanted to hand Iraq to him. This is a guy that is on the verge of being arrested. He openly admits he lied to the idiots at OSP about Iraqi WMD (read a damn newspaper sometime). He with-held info on a major terrorist attack. And there's much much more.

Dan Drezner, even if standard neo-cons & the neo-imperialists merge in the academic/media worlds, its clear that its goignt o have no effect electorally. Wingnuts like DT will preach the Bush gospel no matter what. Thats because you know, as well as everyone else, It would have been way harder to sell a war to democratize Iraq. What would it have polled @ 10%? The people in America who support this war think its some how related to terrorism (75% of war supporters think there is an Al Queda link 50% think stock piles of WMD have been found). So much for "liberal media bias".

What about us truly crusty paleocons and realcons?

1. We always favored disposing of Saddam Hussein on the grounds of expediency
2. We never believed Iraq had WMD and probably only had residual WMD labs
3. We always or relatively quickly opposed the war on the grounds that Bush and co. would screw it up

As classical paleoconservatives and realcons we also believe in absolute standards and personal accountibility.

As such we refuse to accept the line that well a Democrat might do it worse, well he might. But this level of incompetency is unacceptable from a Republican.

As for our "liberal" news sources that tell us things are getting worse - it's POTUS GWB himself. On a legislative meeting on the hill, he told them to expect things to get worse.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5022906/

"Several GOP lawmakers who attended the meeting said Bush told his audience to brace for more violence after June 30, and he predicted insurgents would try to disrupt subsequent elections."

e.g. the security situation is deteriorating and not improving.

This doesn't mean that we can't get through this, but imagining that things are getting better isn't even a line that the POTUS is spreading anymore.

Ok, after all the jabbering, sit back and let me give you the absolute truth.

;-)

I'm a big Bush-man, currently gritting my teeth and suckin' it in.

But look, the Republican convention is 8 weeks after the turnover. The election is five months after. For that entire time, the Iraqis will know that it IS their government, and they may really have only once real chance to have a better future than the one they have had for 30 years. Much of Mr. Bush's octane runs on faith, not just in God, but in America AND in free people.

So IF, yes IF.... Iraq changes for the better after the turnover, Bush will be seen as more visionary, courageous, and stoic (God help us all, the USA needs "stoic" more than any other trait there is... all of us.) than even CONSERVATIVE intellectuals and pundits, not to mention the ones that hate him. (Meanwhile, economy continues rising as it is.)

Will it happen? If not, Bush will probably lose. That's that. If so, he not only will have heroic stature, he will have earned it.

Damn it

Last sentence -

Will it happen? If not, Bush will probably lose. That's that.

BBut if it Does Happen that way, he not only will have heroic stature, he will have earned it.

DT,

You are beginning to sound desperate.

I suggest you look at the polls more carefully.

Oldman writes As for our "liberal" news sources that tell us things are getting worse - it's POTUS GWB himself. On a legislative meeting on the hill, he told them to expect things to get worse.

And I respond, with tongue firmly in cheek...

Why does George Bush Hate America? Doesn't he know that speaking the truth about this war will only further the aims of our enemy? Is he hoping that we shall fail?

It's bad enough we're following the same stupid policies that led us into Vietnam, what I find patently intolerable is that we're also seeing the same stupid rhetoric. Perhaps that is the side effect of electing Presidents from Texas.

Obviously, yes, the neocons stick with Chalabi. How else can they claim a knife in the back (a la Weimar Germany) if they don't maintain a critical point of contradistinction with the botch the Bush Administration has made of things in Iraq? "If only we had been listened to," etc., etc. (Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol are writing the script right now as we speak. They are preparing their intellectual defense now to maintain viability for the next war.)

The neocons (especially Chalabi neocons) are the most ignorant, mulish, belligerent, conniving, cowardly, unpatriotic shams imaginable. Think Duke and Dauphin from Huckleberry Finn and you've got a pretty good idea of what we're dealing with here. And the worst of it is, they gull idealists like David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan and Thomas Friedman with their half-baked slurry of wishful thinking.

Below is a letter I sent to David Brooks not too long past that goes to the heart of the matter on how the "neocon idealism" has gone awry not by the botch the president has made of things, but by its own fallacious premise:

"Mr. Brooks, you have shame sitting on one shoulder and guilt is weighing down the other. I do not envy your position.

"Leave it to the arrogant intellectuals to finally learn through horror what was obvious to anyone who wasn't a fatuous narrow-minded ass to begin with. Leave it to the intellectuals to fail not because they lack boldness but judgment.

"This has been a disgusting and eminently avoidable disaster in Iraq. And sadly, you sir, have played a significant role in it all. Unipolar rubes like yourself and others in the punditocracy have emboldened and abetted and trafficked in the radical theories of our latter-day "best and brightest" neoconservatives (more rightly labeled neoradicals, I should think; oh, but to hear Charles Krauthammer lecture us all just once more about the *uniqueness* of our unrivaled power, and not just now but ever! oh, the unconditional joy that brought to a neocon's faith-based heart, do you remember how it was, David? how we all smiled knowingly at one another, especially when Charles sneared into the microphone in that snarky supercilious way of his; oh, just think, the tragi-comic irony to hear it all again).

"The only truly beneficial outcome of all of this incompetence and waste and horror that we are seeing on display in Iraq now is this: with unlimited power and influence at their disposal, the neoradical agenda has been utterly repudiated, and not by precious arguments and fey opposition, mind, but by the cold clear logic of its ruthless and diligent application in the real world. (As though the Iraqis would not object to an expatriot -- and a duplicitious bastard at that -- absent for 40 years from Iraq suddenly "coming home" triumphantly and running the country at the behest of the invading army; oh yes, that is a stellar bit of thinking there, guys, and just think: it only took a squander year to mulishly prove the obvious.)

"Iraq was your test lab, and you boys and girls got everything you asked for. So congratulations. In your vainglorious attempts to disprove Gen. George C. Marshall and 50 years of sane and successful foreign policy, you have now lit a fire under the smoldering ammunition dump of Islamist fascism. Nice work, guys. The counterproductive stupidity of neoconservatism seemingly knows no bounds. But hey, it sounded like a good idea at the time, right?

"And in so doing, you have proved a point (though not the one you were hoping to establish): Neoconservativism may now join communism on the ignoble ash-heap of history.

"And just think: you got to sing in the chorus line, too."

How about the right-from-the-start conservatives at The American Conservative?

Andrew, I'll take those odds.

If the Iraqis forge, out of a nebulous sovereignty in a tri-partite state rife with suicidal brigands and three weapons for every man, woman & child amid conveys of American troops, while we do little else but hope for the best & blame the press, hell, I'll vote for George W. Bush. Because he's either the luckiest man on the face of the earth (and that never hurts in a leader) or he is an instrument of God. What I'd be looking for, then, is during the inaugural of the new administration his rising to the heavens. Between the election & the inaugural I'd have had time to get my spiritual house in order, of course.

I'm curious all you hard core bashers of the war in Iraq,

What is YOUR plan to prevent islamic terrorists from nuking NYC and DC?

To elaborate -- the neocons propose to drain the swamp.

What is *YOUR* plan? I lost friends during 9/11 so I'd really like to know your proposal.

I consider myself an old-time conservative (voted for Reagan in 1980, active in local Republican politics ever since) who falls somewhere between Oldman and the Jerry Pournelle/Cochran crowd. I'm the sort who thinks that the greatest threat to our country right now is not the large cache of hidden Iraqi WMD's that Al Queda operatives are about to unleash upon the US (as my neo-con friends keep trying to convince me), but rather the fact that our budget deficit is spiraling farther out of control than it ever did during the Carter-Reagan-Bush years. I don't understand why we're better off spending $87 billion for this little adventure, or how we're safer by pulling troops out of South Korea now that Kim Jong Il either has the bomb or the fixin's for it.

I notice there's a category for those who think Colin Powell is the devil incarnate; well, what of those of us who feel he has more wisdom about all this in his little finger than the rest of Bush's inner circle put together? Rumor says that Powell councilled about Iraq: "You break it, you bought it." Well, even if that statement is apocryphal, it does sum up my thoughts about this. It is a mess, we broke it, but since we also bought it, we'd be fools not to spend the trouble, dollars, and yes, American lives to fix it. But that doesn't mean we have to like it, or think that it was all a great idea in the first place.

Regarding Norman Pfyster's challenge, I'm not having second thoughts since I thought this was a bad idea from the start. But he does ask a good question...what should we have done differently? Admittedly, this is with 20/20 hindsight, but surely someone should have realized that in a one-party country run by a thug like Saddam, pretty much anyone who had a government job down to the schoolteachers and the buck privates in the army had to be Baathists in name if not in conviction. Sure, purge the political appointees from the government and the military, but why throw thousands of poor schmucks who don't care who is in power as long as they have a job out of work? Especially when thousands of them are young men with weapons and military training...is it any wonder there are plenty of fools for the leaders of the insurgency to recuit?

I don't think Bush is a bad man, and believe me, I don't see Kerry as a better alternative, but for the sake of both America and Iraq, a large portion of Bush's inner circle just has to go.

The person responsible for this mess is easy to find: former President Jimmy Carter.
Wasn't it him that was responsible for the Iranian takeover of the embassy and the capture of the hostages?
Didn't that force the US into bed with Saddam Hussein?
And that resulted in the creation of a monster who hubristically believed that he could lead the US by the nose.
So....Pres. George H.W. Bush had no choice but to clean up the Carter mess and now, young Telemachus must finish the job!
That damn Carter!

Politically, Matthew Cromer asks the key question. Plenty of Americans disappointed in how Bush's administration has run the war in Iraq are still not willing to turn the government over to people who don't think seriously about national security policy.

There are a few Democrats who do, but they are a minority and have been for years. Most of them would give to Cromer's question the same answer if he asked it on any subject related to national security: "well, not that." They would not do what Bush has done. They would not lie; they would not exaggerate; they would be respectful of our allies and follow the rule of law and everything would be OK, just the way it was when Bill Clinton was President.

I'm not arguing here that this is the wrong response, only that not enough American voters will believe it to elect John Kerry President. It's not just that Clinton was President while the terrorist threat we are dealing with now grew while he obsessed and agonized and did nothing, though that is part of it. It's that the "let's do what Clinton did" crowd have no objectives, no goals beyond not doing what Bush is. It's no accident that most of the constructive criticism of administration policies -- again, I note the odd exceptions -- are coming from Republicans, and conservative Republicans at that.

Look, everyone pretty much recognizes that almost everyone in the American government was to one degree or another asleep at the switch on terrorism before 9/11. The public knows how Bush changed his views after that, and knows nothing about how John Kerry or other prominent Democrats changed theirs. If they did -- in their public statements Democrats seem persuaded that everything was just fine as long as they held office and everything will be fine again as soon as they return, on terrorism and the economy and everything else. Now that the primaries are behind them they will have to do better if they expect to win in November.

Matthew Cromer writes: "What is YOUR plan to prevent islamic terrorists from nuking NYC and DC?"

Well, if they do, they probably got their nuke from Pakistan, not Iraq.

to whoever said the kurds' landlocked location condemns them to economic servitude:
1 word: switzerland.

Matthew: I'm sorry for your losses, but if you think that the current situation in Iraq is anywhere close to 'draining the swamp', then you're mistaken.

Zathras: I think you're loading your argument by trying to talk both of 'constructive' criticism and a supposed lack of clarity on behalf of the Dems. Say what you like about Joe Biden, for instance, but he's not being vague or complacent. I can only assume that you dismiss, a priori, policies that aren't explicitly military.

And EJ makes a big point: Iraq has actually damaged both the perceived ability and the actual ability of the US to respond to failed states, should a threat from those arise.

Finally, those who remember David Thomson before he fled from Brad DeLong's comments boards should perhaps also remember the following statements, among the highlights of 2003:

"The war costs will soon be considered a bargain. We are now much safer after invading Iraq. This should result in an economic boom. America with the help of her allies have proven itself capable of deterring terrorism and overcoming our military foes. The stock market should go up considerably, and oil prices are rapidly dropping."

"Trust me on this, the polls throughout the world will soon show that America will be loved and respected far more than before. This will be especially true in Iraq!"

"Moderate Muslims are becoming more willing to confront their more radical cohorts."

And, of course, who can forget his prediction that large caches of chemical and biological weapons would be found within weeks of the invasion.

He truly does put Miss Cleo to shame.

“Finally, those who remember David Thomson before he fled from Brad DeLong's comments boards should perhaps also remember the following statements, among the highlights of 2003:

"The war costs will soon be considered a bargain. We are now much safer after invading Iraq. This should result in an economic boom. America with the help of her allies have proven itself capable of deterring terrorism and overcoming our military foes. The stock market should go up considerably, and oil prices are rapidly dropping."

We are much safer after invading Iraq. Has there been a terrorist attack on American soil? Oil prices are unfortunately up, but we are experiencing an economic boom. The stock market is also up considerably. America’s economy is doing very well.

"Trust me on this, the polls throughout the world will soon show that America will be loved and respected far more than before. This will be especially true in Iraq!"

There is only one reason why this prediction on “love” hasn’t come to pass: the liberal anti-American media. These scum bags are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. As for respect, the Arab countries have grown increasingly hesitant in confronting us. Military success is always rewarded by a growing respect for the victor. I would rather that America be respected than love.

"Moderate Muslims are becoming more willing to confront their more radical cohorts."

This is definitely occurring. As matter of fact, the Iraq situation is a splendid example of moderate Muslims wrestling control from the nihilists.

"And, of course, who can forget his prediction that large caches of chemical and biological weapons would be found within weeks of the invasion.”

Yup, I was wrong about this prediction. There’s no way that I can say otherwise. But so was Bill Clinton and everyone else.

“The person responsible for this mess is easy to find: former President Jimmy Carter. Wasn't it him that was responsible for the Iranian takeover of the embassy and the capture of the hostages?”

Let’s not forget Ronald Reagan. Perhaps the greatest mistake he made during his presidency was removing our troops from Beirut after the bombing. This greatly encouraged our enemies.

> I recall we were being called traitors and America haters early last year when we did speak up.

Well, you know, not every accusation of giving aid and comfort to the enemy is false. If someone goes around acting like they want the U.S. to lose, like they want Bush to fail, that they believe, as one poster put it, "we have lost all moral authority", etc., then if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, we can't rule out the possibility that it's Donald himself. When I try to picture a patriot in my mind, Michael Moore is as unlikely to appear in that context as he would be during a sexual fantasy (and whether you're gay or straight is irrelevant).

Put me in this camp: I'm hopeful that the presdident's policies will make this a better world. I think he's trying to do the right and honorable thing. I think there have been obvious abuses of authority in the prison scandal, but we're doing what honorable nations do and prosecuting our own people over them. He's probably made mistakes, but one mistake he hasn't made is to not fight at all.

And I think that if Bush's policies had a chance of succeeding, they are now in grave danger from the nattering in the press. I hope it isn't going to take another 9/11 to force us to deal with reality, but the reality of this situation is that a large and potent faction in the Islamic world wants us dead. They don't want you alive, and me dead, because you're anti-Bush and I'm not. They want us both dead. They want the entire Western civilization dead. That's the same Western civilization, by the way, that has raised entire generations of Western intellectuals who also want it dead -- that's right, they want the very thing that enabled their existence to die like a salted snail.

One of these days, one of our cities is going to go up in a mushroom cloud. Will that be enough to get the news media off the prison scandal? Maybe, for a day or two.

For the record, I'm one of those conservatives who thinks Bush is wrong about democracy-building. I think democracy is an accident, formed by an alignment of Western culture, Anglo tradition, and Christian religious beliefs. If democracy is planted, it needs these other things as a soil. Iraq doesn't have any of these things, and so cannot have an enduring democracy of any sort. Institutions are not easy to build. What I'm hoping to get out of his policies is a world that's safer because we took down two major sources of trouble in the Islamic world, with more to come.

For the record, I believe the right policy is to smack down any country that aids or abets Islamic terrorist. We don't need to threaten the terrorists, we only need to threaten the heads of state. They will take care of the terrorists themselves once they see we're serious, and they won't be reading Miranda rights when they do it. Iraq was all about showing them we're serious. You can argue there were more deserving targets, and you might be right. If Bush made a mistake, it was in trying to go for the low-hanging fruit first, but who knew there would be so much opposition? It should have been a slam dunk that we need to take out a bloody dictator who has broken a gazillion U.N. injunctions and gasses his own people. Who knew that the Left would discover its fondness for fascist dictators? As best as I can tell, Tojo, Hitler, and Mussolini are owed an apology.

One thing is for certain: You can't have responsibility without authority. For years, the U.S. has been lectured that whenever there is something wrong in the world, we have to right it. That means we're responsible. But we're always told as well that we shouldn't impose our will on other people. That means a lack of authority. You can't have both; one must yield. Bush is taking responsibility and grabbing the necessary authority. He's making mistakes? Sure, just like every other wartime president -- or when FDR allowed the exposed German Bulge to exist without being cut off and annihilated actually part of some grand plan to make the world a better place by allowing thousands of U.S. troops to freeze to death?

The Bush camp probably needs to re-adjust its sights, but we need the liberals, desperately, to regain some perspective.

"What is YOUR plan to prevent islamic terrorists from nuking NYC and DC?"

Easy: stop meddling in Middle Eastern politics.

Islam has always been there - and the Wahhabi movement has been there since the 19th century - but it never tangled with the U.S. until we went over there and started screwing around.

D.T.,

There never has been a "perfectly fought" war. All have had some flaw. However, I would offer the U.S. counteroffensive across the Pacific during WW II as one of the finest combat operations in history. Not quite perfect, but pretty close, unlike the idiocy we have seen in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad.

"’What is YOUR plan to prevent islamic terrorists from nuking NYC and DC?’

Easy: stop meddling in Middle Eastern politics.

Islam has always been there - and the Wahhabi movement has been there since the 19th century - but it never tangled with the U.S. until we went over there and started screwing around.”

You have stated your absurd position very clearly---and you represent the thinking of many, if not even most, John Kerry and Ralph Nader supporters. When push comes to shove---a very high number of them agree with Noam Chomsky.

> ...unlike the idiocy we have seen in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad.

Not terribly helpful. A little specification would help.

IMO, this is one of those areas where, actually, Bush is not conservative enough. As in so many other policy areas, he wants things both ways. He wants to make American safe, and he also wants to be seen as the "good guy". Ultimately, he or some future president is going to have to make a choice: one, or the other. It's impossible to exert the kind of military force it takes to subdue an opponent, and still be perceived as the "good guys".

At least the Left understands this. They would choose to maintain the "good guy" stance, at the expense of America's safety. We can't be bad guys if we refuse to fight. The goal of all leftist politics is to allow leftists to feel morally superior to everyone else on the planet. If a few thousand Americans have to die each year in horrible terrorist incidents, why, that's a price we must all be willing to pay so that Noam Chomsky can feel safe, smug, and secure.

As self-appointed spokesman for at least a portion of the fragmented Right, I say we fight. We fight long, we fight hard, and we make it hurt just as bad as we can. Innocents will be killed, yes, but innocents will also be killed if we do nothing. When something like 9/11 happens, you show the heads of state in the world of Islam that a horrible fate awaits any regime that so much as winks and shows a little leg to any terrorist organization.

Is that an arrogant attitude? Well, that's an interesting question. We'll talk about it in a couple of years, if we're still alive to do so.

Bush wants to save America but he also wants to appease the Left. He has to choose; he can't do both. Kerry and the Democrats at least have an intellectually viable position: be the good guys first, and don't worry about little things like surviving.

DT,

You know, confronted with a long list erroneous predictions it's not a good counterargument to simply ignore reality.

Matthew,

What does the Iraq war have to do with stopping Islamist terrorists from nuking the US? If that ever happens it will probably be Saudi financed and provided by Pakistan. What does Iraq have to do with any of that?

GT,

Simple. Iraq is just a stepping-stone to regional change. Until the Middle East becomes civilized, we are at a grave risk from terrorists with Nukes.

Pep, we "intervene" in the rest of the world simply by existing, engaging in trade, and having our media spread throughout the globe. In any event, it's a little late now to avoid pissing off the Islamo-fascists.

Lee:

When you conflate the War on Terror with the situation in Iraq, you end up on dangerous ground. Your average Sadr City punk is not the same kind of opponent (and does not have the same mass murdering objectives) as your average Osama groupie. Plowing Falluja in the dirt victimizes a lot of innocents, in a way that the reduction of Tora Bora does not.

Bush had an insight -- to fight the war on terror, you have to provide a beacon of Democracy in the Middle East -- to drain the swamps of poverty etc etc. It's a new spin on the famous root cause argument (which was based on poverty rather than governmental system.) And, had we a more intellectual governing elite, the debate on whether you need a certain economic conditions to generate democracy, or certain democratic institutions to generate a prosperous economy would have been fascinating. (I'm undecided, myself. But I'm just a pension consultant -- I don't have to have an opinion.)

Our administration never had a good idea, and never implemented. Kevin Drum has had a series of fascinating postings on our president as a failed CEO. He'd sure like to achieve those favorable results, and he's sincere about achieving them, but he is utterly unwilling to take a single hard step to make them possible. To me, this isn't the President trying to be "a nice guy". You read David Frum's book, you hear about the language he will use on suboirdinates, you realize that niceness is not one of his objectives. To the extent that Bush is using softer tactics in Iraq than you'd like, he's either doing it because (i) he does not want to totally inflame the people of Iraq against us or (ii) he does not want a big bloody situation in Iraq rather close to the election.

Oops, I meant "Our president had a good idea, and never implemented."

"You have stated your absurd position very clearly---and you represent the thinking of many, if not even most, John Kerry and Ralph Nader supporters. When push comes to shove---a very high number of them agree with Noam Chomsky."

David,

That comment is utter nonsense. You have absolutely no basis for that comment. This is your normal trick-whenever someone to the left of you criticizes Bush, compare them to Noam Chomsky. I hate Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore and Ralph Nader with a passion, but I am up to here with the dissimulation and arrogance of this administration. And I'm equally fed up with the demonization of everyone that disagrees with you. this sort of Nixonian love it or leave it mentality. You seem to have this right-wing fantasy view of democrats where they are all pot-smoking long-hairs carrying Viet Cong flags. This is just idiotic. maybe you don't see any Democrats in Houston so you assume that's what they like. (not to mention that not all Kerry supporters are that liberal.)

“David,

That comment is utter nonsense. You have absolutely no basis for that comment. This is your normal trick-whenever someone to the left of you criticizes Bush, compare them to Noam Chomsky. I hate Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore and Ralph Nader with a passion.”

What part of my carefully worded “and you represent the thinking of many, if not even most, John Kerry and Ralph Nader supporters” did you not read.

“Simple. Iraq is just a stepping-stone to regional change. Until the Middle East becomes civilized, we are at a grave risk from terrorists with Nukes.”

Yup, it comes down to whether you agree with Bernard Lewis that the Arabs must join the modern world if we are ever to achieve peace. Iraq is one of the first dominoes that needs to fall. If you don’t buy into this theory, then vote for John Kerry. The Massachusetts senator is basically the anti-Bernard Lewis candidate.

Who killed decorum? Can't we just call the President "the President"? Must we call him "Dubya"? This isn't Democratic Underground and it's not Free Republic. Play hard, but apply good form.

Dougy G: The President has shifted on some positions. You pointed out the handful of majors. However, what separates the President from John Kerry is not that he flip flops[they both have], but that the President doesn't deny that he flip flops. John Kerry presents his P.O.V. as if he held that position all along.

The President did shift on Homeland Security. As to why remains unanswered, although I suspect it was one opportunity the President had to work on a bi-partisan bill that would be very popular with the American people.

Jeffrey: President Carter did make mistakes with Near Eastern policy. Pulling the rug out from under the Shah probably hurt us more than it helped us. Then when he wasn't supporting the Shah, neither was he willing to work with the new theocrats in Iran. The anti-Shah Iran wanted military supplies. The US had military supplies. Yet the US under President Carter had no approach to deal with Iran that was minus the Shah. We needed some way to work with Iran once we realized the Shah wasn't coming back because the United States wasn't supporting him except on his asylum search.

Maybe our Near Eastern policy would have been different had we just supported the new Iranian government softly. Maybe if our Near Eastern policy wasn't suddenly supportive of Iraq after the fall of the Shah things would have been different. But certainly Near Eastern affairs have spiraled out of control since the Iranian revolution. Israel has gone from arms trading partner of Iran to primo target of Iranian arms.

pep west: Yes, Islam has always "been there". No, the Salafist Islam of Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab has not always "been there". Islam and its followers are not monolithic. Lets not treat them as if they were.

Disputes between tribes had "been there" before North America was even colonized. The "Great Satan" existed well before the first british ships ever landed in the Islamic world.

Dan Drezner: Is this the mass email you received from Laurie Mylroie?

If so then you would have Laurie's opinion assumed as the editorial page of the New York Sun. Nonetheless the Taming of Ahmad Chalabi is a prequisite to the future of Iraq. An explosion of wealth in Iraq is inevitable, but the ends cannot stand to justify the means. If Chalabi is to acquire wealth may he do so through the just means of equal opportunity for all Iraqis. The last thing the United States needs is for the INC to become the Capital Barons of a newly Democratic Iraq. That would NOT be in our interests considering the historical context that the so called Islamist Democrats maintain towards the United States[shah, Hashemites, House of Saud, Zayad Monarchy, Nassercons].

In light of the positions that INC members now maintain in key ministries the CPA should take a devil's advocate position on some decisions. Perhaps the Abu Ghraib prisioners were detained on leads obtained from the INC and other incorporated partners. The US Military didn't have any comment on the raid of Chalabi's office. The CPA directed comments and questions to the Iraqi civilian police and couts. Thus I'm inclined to believe that Chalabi may not be playing nice and his get out of jail free cards may have run out with L. Paul Bremer.

Chalabi doesn't have much to worry about. His banking friends in London, Dubai, Zurich and New York still want in on Iraqi business. As President Bush sticks to his guns on the June 30th handover it is clear that the DoD is losing an inter White House debate for authority with the State Department.

On the election side there's few worries for President Bush to fall any lower in the polls. The Bush supporters are not moving anywhere except further against John Kerry. Despite all the bad news in the last two months the poll numbers show that people are sticking with Bush and that is likely to do with the ineffective and unconvincing John Kerry. Just listening to Kerry's foreign affairs advisers like Richard Holbrooke establish that John Kerry has little plan if any to address Iraq. Or, maybe Holbrooke has a plan but winning the election in November is more important than speeding the transition in Iraq today.

I'm expecting the Democrats to use Iraq to defeat President Bush as they viewed the Republicans using Iranian hostages to defeat President Carter. The only obstacle is the steamrolling economy. Kerry's not talking about that anymore and the "3 million jobs lost" is officially a dead argument.

Matthew Cromer writes:
"I'm curious all you hard core bashers of the war in Iraq,
What is YOUR plan to prevent islamic terrorists from nuking NYC and DC?
To elaborate -- the neocons propose to drain the swamp.
What is *YOUR* plan? I lost friends during 9/11 so I'd really like to know your proposal."

My plan? It's what I thought Bush's plan was, until he started beating the drums for a war in Iraq that had zilch to do with the War on Terror:

1) Through diplomacy and moral suasion, isolate the terrorists from the bulk of the Islamic world, by establishing common ground with rational Muslims.

2) Attack the terrorists through whatever combination of military, intel, special ops, etc. is most effective.

Unfortunately, our war in Iraq has completely undone step 1, making step 2 a much greater challenge than it should have ever been.

I saw this question posted and the serious lack of responses forces me to state the obvious...

’What is YOUR plan to prevent islamic terrorists from nuking NYC and DC?’

First of all, I wouldn't be wasting billions over in Iraq that could be spent shoring up the home defense. The Administration has woefully underfunded any effort to tighten up our borders and ports. There have been some recent measures (Bioshield being one), but millions of transport containers continue to be brought into this country with only cursory inspections. I may lean left on social issues, but even sensible conservatives must acknowledge that we've got holes in our homeland security that could use some serious attention. In the meantime, we are wasting precious funding on irrational, unproven measures like ballistic missile defense (classic USA vs. foreign state action) when we should really be shoring our defenses up for assymetrical attacks (the lone bomber with chem, bio, or rad). This is but one example of mismanagement that is not making us safer in the short run.

> When you conflate the War on Terror with the situation in Iraq, you end up on dangerous ground.

I do indeed conflate them, and it has to do with American credibility. We had been triple-dog-daring Saddam and putting him on double top-secret probation for years. Even Bill Clinton is on record as saying that military action against him was probably inevitable; he was just unwilling to do it himself. There was no way Saddam could stay in power and the U.S. retain any credibility.

> Your average Sadr City punk is not the same kind of opponent (and does not have the same mass murdering objectives) as your average Osama groupie. Plowing Falluja in the dirt victimizes a lot of innocents, in a way that the reduction of Tora Bora does not.

Not "plowing Falluja in the dirt" also tells terrorists that all they have to do, in order to beat us, is to hide behind civilians and put up a stiff fight. If I were Osama or his people, I'd be taking notes. Do we mean what we say, or not? You can argue about whether we should be there, but you cannot convince me that, given that we are there and that our goal is to establish a democracy in Iraq, that it doesn't require rooting out and killing the thugs.

> Our administration never had a good idea, and never implemented.

Maybe. But it acted. Clinton was chock full of ideas, but he never acted. Thousands of people died because we didn't act before it was too late. If we don't act, thousands more are certain to die. There is only one way to get someone who hates you enough to kill you, to keep from killing you: You kill him first, or you make the consequences of his actions intolerable to him or to someone in his general vicinity who does not want to find himself in the crosshairs. If we don't start showing the Islamic world that there are terrible costs to be paid for attacking Americans, you can expect them to keep attacking Americans.

> Kevin Drum has had a series of fascinating postings on our president as a failed CEO.

Yawn. Truman was a failed haberdasher. That fact couldn't possibly be more irrelevant than it already is toward judging the decisions he made as president.

> To the extent that Bush is using softer tactics in Iraq than you'd like, he's either doing it because (i) he does not want to totally inflame the people of Iraq against us or (ii) he does not want a big bloody situation in Iraq rather close to the election.

I don't think it has anything to do with "nice", either. It has everything to do with trying to establish and shore up a base with liberals. He thinks its the key to good press. It's a vain and futile endeavor. No Republican president can ever please liberals. Liberals will not allow any Republican president to enjoy a success. The same policies that would earn a Democrat kudos and worship words will earn a Republican nothing but contempt. Since it's a vain effort, you might as well give up and do what you know is right, if you're a Republican.

The first thing to do to fight terrorism is to stop taking actions that produce more terrorists. This means not putting our troops in positions where killing civilians is likely to happen. Having the US occupy a Muslim nation was probably Osama Bin Ladin's wildest fantasy in 2001. And he got it.

I really think if you want to be serious about fighting terror you should look for guidance from the person that did more to fight terror over the last decade than anyone else. That is Richard Clarke. If you right wingnuts could get over smearing him at every turn you might realize that what he has to say about fighting terrorism is very valid, and highly informed. And if you read what Clarke has to say you would know that invading Iraq was doomed to undermine our fight against terrorism.

But even more than an effective strategy on dealing with terrorism you need effective organizations. Anyone who has worked in a variety of settings knows that stability in an organization is a precursor to effectiveness. Take a look at the history of leadership in counter-terrorism under President Bush. I think we are on Counter-Terrorism advisor number four at this point, with each one leaving in various states of disgust at the importance placed on counter-terrorism by this adminstration.

The core of the problem gets down to the fact that you can't fight a war against a tactic. You have to fight a war against an enemy. Are we at war against Al Qaeda? I would say yes. And fighting a war in Iraq is a huge distraction to fighting our real enemy. My alternative is to focus resources on fighting Al Qaeda. This would be a combination of covert actions, political pressure, law enforcement, spying, etc. It would not involve infantry divisions and tanks except in situations where our enemy chooses to fight us in a traditional field of battle. They chose Afganistan for that fight in 2002, and we did not dedicate ourselves to defeating them, instead pulling out resources, and holding back others in order to be able to fight a war against a different enemy in Iraq.

Really, I wish I was making all this up, but it is tragic how badly our War against Al Qaeda has been fought.

We are doing quite well in Iraq... The normal state of affairs is to get overly excited about every bit of bad news instead of looking at the larger picture.

I agree: calm down, people.

We're making progress. You have to ask yourself what is the reason we are in Iraq. Well, there are lots of reasons, but two -- that haven't been mentioned much -- are the sheer excitement of war, and the sheer joy of holding other human beings in your utter and complete control (and what comes after!).

Yes, only only a few have gotten to experience that feeling of utter, total control, but we can all share in it vicariously.

I remember the moon landings in 1969. Yes, only a handful of people have actually experience the awe, wonder, excitement, and adventure of actually travelling to and standing on the moon, but we all shared it, we all felt it.

And yes, and so far we've seen only tame stuff -- but there's more to come. The PC inhibitions are coming down. I saw a report yesterday where we tortured a guy's son to make him break down (to get him to "talk", supposedly -- the PC Police make them say that). Here's one I want: how about making a mom choose which of her daughters is to be raped to death in front of her? Man that gives me woodie right there.

And there's going to be rape pix, and snuff pix, and REAL torture pix. And it's all free.

So, as I say, we're making progess. The only downside is that the granny PC Police are going to make us leave Iraq eventually. And I guess we're gonna run out money sooner or later. Man, I wish it could go on forever.

We're making progress in other ways, too, not just in the prisons. The other day we shot up -- no, not just shot up, but like totally demolished -- a wedding party. We got 40+ men, women, and children. Like a video game, but 1000 times better because IT WAS REAL! Image you getting to do that! No, not the PC stuff you have to say to grandma, but the real feeling of getting that bride in your sights and just letting go. Man, if that doesn't excite you -- yeah, I know you won't admit it, but you know it does -- you're just not human.

And some guys really DID get to do that. Lucky duckies!

It is mentioned above that terrorists are likely to hide behind civillians based on our actions (or lack thereof) in Fallujah.

This just points to the need for us to be better at other aspects of fighting terrorists than dropping bombs and firing artillery. Good strategy dictates moves and counter-moves. If your enemy is in open ground, use open ground tactics.

If your enemy is hiding behind civillians, then infiltrate those civilians and fight them through intelligence. For a terrorist to succeed they need secrecy. That is much harder in a crowded city than in a hidden camp.

We can find the hidden camps with satellite. But we can only find them in the city through informants and spys. For those to work we need the people on our side in this fight. Yet we are driving them away by killing their friends and relatives and torturing their countrymen.

I am astounded by the strategic blindness at work here by the US. It is so simple, yet mental and tactical flexibility is so alien to this President that we are missing our chances to win this war against Al Qaeda.

’What is YOUR plan to prevent islamic terrorists from nuking NYC and DC?’

If BushCo had been honest from the start about the rationale and costs for the war, many people would have asked how we might better spend $300 billion and our troops lives.

1. Shore up home security
2. Fix the palestine problem
3. Fund anti-terrorism efforts in Islamic countries
4. Push for democratic reform in the real sources of terrorism - Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran
5. Stop the North Korean arms trade

Sure, the flypaper effect may have kept terrorism off our shore, but I'm convinced it will have made the problem worse in the long term.

Oops, forgot -

6. Finish cleaning up the mess we left in Afghanistan

> The first thing to do to fight terrorism is to stop taking actions that produce more terrorists. This means not putting our troops in positions where killing civilians is likely to happen.

That's the same as saying, don't use troops. Sorry. The way to fight terrorism is to kill terrorists. Kill them now, kill them tomorrow, kill them in as many ways as you can, and make it plain that to become a terrorist is to wish for a violent death.

Since Clarke tried to smear Bush, I don't shed any tears that Bush is trying to smear him back. Clarke is not a complete idiot, but it seems to me Clinton didn't follow his advice either. See, anything Clinton did, or failed to do, is right by definition, and anything Bush does is wrong b definition. You can't win with this crowd, if you're a Republican.

> Having the US occupy a Muslim nation was probably Osama Bin Ladin's wildest fantasy in 2001. And he got it.

The logic of Bush's "democracy building" idea demands an occupation, because it requires that we care about the Iraqi people enough to want to establish order. As for myself, this right-wing nut cares about people everywhere, but feels duty-bound to care *more* about American soldiers than the Iraqi citizenry. I espouse a much simpler, harder, direct, and accomplishable set of policy aims. We did Iraq and the world a favor by getting rid of Saddam. We did our duty. Now, it's the next Iraqi strongman's turn. We shouldn't care who he is, but whoever he is, he needs to pay close attention to make sure he avoids Saddam's fate.

In short, like any capitalist, I believe in clear, simple, straightforward incentive structures. Wars tend to happen when people misunderstand and misinterpret. Let there be no misunderstanding.

Bush's mistake is that he listens to liberals, and so tries to find a middle ground that isn't there.

*Dougy G: The President has shifted on some positions.*

Brennan: Sure, they all do on some issues at some point. My additional observation to Dougy's claim would be that every Bush position shift on that list came late, and after falling polls. Fair or not, that's something Bush's critics feed on.

Rich said "I really think if you want to be serious about fighting terror you should look for guidance from the person that did more to fight terror over the last decade than anyone else. That is Richard Clarke. If you right wingnuts could get over smearing him at every turn you might realize that what he has to say about fighting terrorism is very valid, and highly informed. And if you read what Clarke has to say you would know that invading Iraq was doomed to undermine our fight against terrorism."

I seem to forget. Who was it that quit? Oh, that's right. Clarke left the government. What a fighting spirit the man retains.

Get over it. Clarke has moved on. And my advice to you is to place this ridiculous metaphor suggesting incomptence to the end of your opinions. It colors everything thereafter.

Then Rich said "The core of the problem gets down to the fact that you can't fight a war against a tactic. You have to fight a war against an enemy. Are we at war against Al Qaeda? I would say yes. And fighting a war in Iraq is a huge distraction to fighting our real enemy. My alternative is to focus resources on fighting Al Qaeda. This would be a combination of covert actions, political pressure, law enforcement, spying, etc. It would not involve infantry divisions and tanks except in situations where our enemy chooses to fight us in a traditional field of battle."

I don't want to say your stupid, but 35 years of Near Eastern policy made up of the very suggestions you offer should be revived? On what grounds do you hold that such policy was effective in acheiving long term success? The point the Bush Administration makes is that that policy was a failed policy for a number of reasons. Specifically the defeats sufferred when the United States was unwilling to use its military power effectively to crush a gathering storm.

Iran was a defeat.
Afghanistan was a defeat.
Iraq was a defeat.
Lebanon was a defeat.

How many times should the United States lose on diplomacy before it decides to win militarily?

No, I don't think that the Military option is the only effective means the United States can employ, but it is the reason "they hate us". I could scan the pages of "The Nation" or "Harpers" or "The Progressive" to learn why "they hate us", but that would be redundant. We know why they hate us. Not because of our freedom, not because of our sin, but because of our Military. The anti-war coalition constantly reminds us that the US military is why they hate us, but the US military isn't just ours. It's Europe's, Japan's, South Korea's, Australia's, Singapore's, Turkey's, Africa's. Nearly half our military expenditures are destined for beyond American shores. We spend so they don't have to, nor do they want to, and because of that it grants the Germanys, the Frances and the Japans of the world an ideal position to channel hatred towards the United States.

While the world may be a tree with many branches, the United States is the trunk and the values we defend are the roots. Is there any question who's holding the axe?

> If BushCo had been honest from the start about the rationale and costs for the war...

Already starting with a presumption of dishonesty. Tch tch. But don't dare question a liberal's patriotism. Consideration only flows in one direction.

> 1. Shore up home security

That's not a specific, that's a goal. The specifics are important, if we are to evaluate what you say.

> 2. Fix the palestine problem

Sure. Just bring in Ernest Angley: "HEAL this problem!" It's because people disagree about what constitutes a fix that we have issues. A Palestinian might say, "It's easy. Just kill all the Jews." Whatever else you might say, that would be one way to "fix" the problem. Only problem is, it isn't the way any decent, humane individual would want it fixed.

> 3. Fund anti-terrorism efforts in Islamic countries

Absolutely! Give money to the Islamic leaders who are also funding, aiding, and abetting terrorists. Great solution! But I have a counter-proposal: Remove any Islamic leader that aids or abets terrorism or tolerates terrorist on his soil. This will make him do the worrying about getting the funding.

> 4. Push for democratic reform in the real sources of terrorism - Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran

Sure. Pushing for democratic reform always works with dictators and strongmen who have a vested interest in keeping things as undemocratic as possible. We should have tried that approach in World War II, imagine how much money and how many lives could have been saved by talking Tojo into an election.

> 5. Stop the North Korean arms trade

A crossing guard's stop sign should be sufficient. Stop! Sorry, too late for that. While Bill Clinton was paying them not to develop nukes, they did a funny thing: they developed nukes. Sorry, I forgot, Clinton's a Democrat, so this somehow has to have a positive spin. How's this: "President Clinton gave humanitarian aid to the poor and starving citizens of North Korea, which also enabled its leaders to come to a better understanding of how the world works, particularly the world of nuclear physics."

> Sure, the flypaper effect may have kept terrorism off our shore, but I'm convinced it will have made the problem worse in the long term.

There has to be a long term to worry about, first.

It's funny how some people think it's possible to bring democracy on the cheap to Iraq, but think the Palestinian problem is hopeless.

Is there any question who's holding the axe?

An incompetent POTUS is helping with the swing.

Here's Rich Lowry on Chalabi and his conservative supporters (From The Corner):

"CHALABI HYPOCRISY [Rich Lowry]
Whatever the merits of that raid yesterday, it seems to me some conservatives take their loyalty to Chalabi too far. Here is the beginning of the Wall Street Journal editorial on the matter: “Someday we hope U.S. officials will explain to us how in scarcely a year they managed to turn one of our closest allies in ousting Saddam Hussein into an opponent of American purposes.” Uh, isn’t it at least possible that Chalabi has been in the wrong? Also, people who are usually hawks on Iran and oppose all Iranian influence in Iraq sing a different tune when it comes to Chalabi. The New York Sun in its editorial today says of the Bush administration’s case against Chalabi: “If it involves Iran, the administration will have to explain why Mr. Chalabi’s dealings with Iran are worse than their own negotiations in Geneva or worse than those of other Iraqi faction with which America regularly does business.” But wait a minute. If Chalabi’s really our guy, shouldn’t he be purer on Iran than other players in Iraq? And if the New York Sun criticizes others for being entangled with Iran, why doesn’t Chalabi come in for that criticism too?"

http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp

There's another post on Chalabi by Lowry just underneath the one I posted (from The Corner).

Lee Dise: "If I were Osama or his people, I'd be taking notes. Do we mean what we say, or not?"

My goodness, can't you right-wingers at least present a consistent position anymore?

Yes, they may well be taking notes - compiling a longer and longer list of our weaknesses.

You right-wingers are always emphasizing that the terrorists cannot be reasoned with. I actually agree with that in principle - brainwashed religious fanatics are a lost cause.

But now you are saying that our (purely) military success in Iraq (combined with our utter failure to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqis) will somehow make a deep impression on them and scare them? What should they be scared of? They are not afraid to die, they are looking forward to the virgins in paradise and all that other crap they have been indoctrinated with in the Wahabist schools in Saudi Arabia. They will use the fact that the "unbelievers" (i.e. us) "desecrated" yet another Muslim country as further evidence that theirs is a just cause and that all of us must be killed.

What I'm reading out of some of the other posts in this thread is that the true long-term right-wing plan is to "nuke'em all". Some have come close to saying that explicitly.

So I'm asking for clarification - Lee Dise, David Thomson, Matthew Cromer and whoever else feels addressed by this question: Are you saying that sooner or later we will have to attack the remaining countries in the Middle East with nuclear weapons and eradicate all Arabs/Muslims that don't voluntarily surrender to us by forming a tightly controlled state whose main objective is to ensure that no terrorists will sneak out and attack us?

Is that or something to that effect what you are really talking about?

Is that the Grand Operating Plan for Bush's second term?

“I'm asking for clarification - Lee Dise, David Thomson, Matthew Cromer and whoever else feels addressed by this question: Are you saying that sooner or later we will have to attack the remaining countries in the Middle East with nuclear weapons and eradicate all Arabs/Muslims that don't voluntarily surrender to us by forming a tightly controlled state whose main objective is to ensure that no terrorists will sneak out and attack us?”

Nope, the exact opposite is true. Already the other Arab countries are increasingly hesitant in confronting us. Earlier this morning, for instance, OPEC has chosen to release more oil. The Dow Jones is currently up 88 points. The Iraq domino will push the others to go along with the program. Are there any exceptions? Unfortunately, we may have to take military action against Iran. Other than that, even Syria will conclude that it’s best to behave itself. We must first kick some ass---and then be nice as hell. That works most of the time.

Matthew Comer: If what's going on in Iraq is your idea of "draining the swamp" of terrorists, then I guess I think you have an odd definition of the phrase "draining the swamp." To me and many others, it looks like what we've actually done is helped fill the swamp with even more terrorists.

Well, GW, you only have two choices. Continue to engage in limited war, and all the good and bad that comes with it, or abandon the effort and wait for total war. But, of course, we all know that the left abhors all conflict - so there's no ppint in asking them anymore. They don't want us to fight a limited war, what makes you think that they'll happily accept total war?

You can scream at fence-posts all you like, everything is about resources at the macro-level. Securing them, trading them with others, and consuming them. It doesn't get any simpler than that.

No Kidding. Rushbush - you say it's actually *drawing* terrorists? Boy, oh, boy - we hadn't thought of that. Thanks for the astute detective work.
It's called fly-paper, genius. And if you're upset now, just wait until the President is re-elected.

Continue to engage in limited war, and all the good and bad that comes with it, or abandon the effort and wait for total war.

What GW seems to be responding to is the gung-ho thought that Iraq is a stepping stone to Iran and Saudi Arabia, instead of being something more like marching on Moscow in 1812.

David Thomson: You answered, thank you, but to me it appears, sorry, that you didn't address my question at all.

Even if we accept your domino theory for a moment - what bearing does that have on the threat from Al Qaeda? Are you not aware of the fact that one of the stated goals of bin Laden and the Qaeda terrorists is to overthrow the repressive Middle East governments and turn every single country into an Islamic theocracy?

We actually helped them accomplish the first part of their goal in Iraq. Now we should also help them in Iran and Syria?

Please elaborate: Exactly how is our helping the terrorists achieve their goals going to help us be safe from the terrorists?

Oh, and all the quibbling you see about post-war Iraq and Abu Ghraib, that's about preventing the terrorists from achieving the second part of their goal. We won the war - not against the terrorist, but against a regime the terrorists hated just as much as they hated us. Now if we lose the peace, then the terrorists will have achieved a full victory in Iraq.

No he's not, Dave. He's trolling - as evidenced by his obnoxious non-question:

"So I'm asking for clarification ... Are you saying that sooner or later we will have to attack the remaining countries in the Middle East with nuclear weapons..."

Sell your pious "seems to be" tripe somwhere else.

Thomson - notice Gw's sniveling post-moves. Again with the redefining.

This time it's "who's a terrorist" and who isn't. Yet all agree that terrorism is the *systematic* use of violence and intimidation to achieve an end.

And what else is a tyrant, than the ultimate, anti-democratic governmental system?

Oh, well - have fun.

Art Wellesley: "Well, GW, you only have two choices. Continue to engage in limited war, and all the good and bad that comes with it, or abandon the effort and wait for total war."

But the main question is not whether we should engage in some kind of "limited war", but which war - where, when and how?

The majority of moderates and liberals supported the Afghanistan war because it had a clearly defined target - eliminate or apprehend Osama bin Laden and as many members of Al Qaeda as possible. Rather than focus completely on this sensible goal we stopped just short of the finish line and instead got distracted by the administration's obsession with Iraq. Osama is still on the run, the Taliban are still trying to make a comeback, Afghanistan is still in turmoil, the war lords are back in charge in the provinces, the drug trade is booming.

Are you saying it doesn't matter which war we are fighting so long as we are fighting some war somewhere?

He's trolling - as evidenced by his obnoxious non-question:

"So I'm asking for clarification ... Are you saying that sooner or later we will have to attack the remaining countries in the Middle East with nuclear weapons..."

Well, what if Syria and Iran call our ass-kicking bluff? Do we transfer hundreds of thousands of troops from Korea and Europe to show them we mean it?

Unconventional arms would be the logical end, and unfortunately, the noises about bunker-busting nukes aren't reassuring about how far-fetched such a plan is.

GW-

No one front of the Global War on Terrorism is a distraction, that's not how these things are planned and executed. As someone else adroitly pointed out yesterday - no Sicilians were involved in the planning or execution of the IJN's Combined Fleet Operations Order No. 2.

That a percentage of the very people that can seldom be counted on for the hard work of long-range goals were on-board during the initial "Lee Greenwood" phase of this Operation is of no consequence to your logic chain. Try again.

Lee:

Ok. I just don't buy that we had to attack Iraq to retain our credibility. Afghanistan was sufficient proof that, if you nakedly harbor terrorists, we will overthrow you.

As for your attitude about Iraqi insurgents -- most of them are not the people who feel like giving their life so that they can murder hundreds or thousands of Americans in their offices. If you kill too many of their relatives, however,they may change their minds about that. In Iraq, we're not there to kill terrorists at this point. We're there to create a civil society. (You know, a government of laws,not of men.) Violence and coeercion has its place in that kind of operation, but "making an example of Fallujah" has the bad old feel of a revenge operation, not law enforcement. You'd think we could do a little better running Iraq than the Babylonians...

I'm not going to answer your other points, because it looks like you misread what I said.

Dave,

Q1 The already are calling our bluff - this is where all of the fighters that rushbush is so concerned about are coming from. ANd hey, no
hard feelings - if Caliphites were attempting to turn Mexico into MeccaWest, I'd expect that we'd be doing the same thing. Completely rational of them.

Q2. No need. The left confuses the amount of western troops needed for "ass-kicking" as oppossed to "asking". The Holy Muslim Monarchies do not.

But hey - someone else said it better:

(Navigator) "Many machines on Ix. New machines.

(Emperor) Oh? Yes.

(Navigator) Better than those on Richese."

“Even if we accept your domino theory for a moment - what bearing does that have on the threat from Al Qaeda? Are you not aware of the fact that one of the stated goals of bin Laden and the Qaeda terrorists is to overthrow the repressive Middle East governments and turn every single country into an Islamic theocracy?

We actually helped them accomplish the first part of their goal in Iraq.”

What in heaven’s name are you talking about? Iraq is not an Islamic theocracy. The Iraqis strongly indicate that they prefer a secular government. Bin Ladin indeed does wish to overthrow the Arab governments---but it is one of the main reasons why they are starting to cooperate more fully with the United states. This may especially be true of Saudi Arabia.

Flip-flop Kerry?--just maybe this guy might be fibing. Re-call Mr. Dean,who had concerns about Palestine and the Zionist media hung him to dry.
If Kerry stated--"The Iraq war will be over and our troops are out"----what are the chances he would loss the election?Kerry is very pro-Israel--his grand father was Jewish and his wife is jewish.So our boys in uniform are fighting for zionists.Kerry could go either way,BIG BUT!
Democrats always wanted Iraq for Israel.What a golden opportunity came---the village idiot from texas was allowed to be President.All the real neo-cons(jewish)are democrats---Bush became the trojan jack-ass .Kerry says last week--we are not leaving Iraq.Is it just vote gettig or pleasing the money handlers?
Cure for the Mess--limit pro-Israel media ownership and Jewish enfluence in government.
NIXON said in his tapes released last year--"I'm surrounded by Jews".
I wonder how Americans would feel if Chinese took over in the same capacities.

For David the Obscure:

Just what exactly is Iran doing, and who is Iran? It seems clear to me that a small majority in the country want little or nothing to do with the mullahs, with hating the west, with living a pious lifestyle as defined by men would would remove a woman's lipstick with a razor blade. It also seems clear to me that these people aren't in power, and that the people who are love supporting groups like Hezbollah (NOT Hamas!), squashing any serious attempt at democracy in their own land, and flouting the NPT.

Did I say flouting the NPT? Well, why else would they be building a 40MW heavy water-moderated reactor? Their declared intention is to "conduct research and produce isotopes". But, if you were starting from scratch to build a bomb, that's exactly what you would do! Most US nuclear weapons were made from plutonium 239 -- a manufactured isotope -- created in one of the 5 Savannah River heavy water-moderated reactors in Georgia. Why smuggle in centrifuge parts to make uranium 235, the "poor man's" fissionable isotope, when you can roll your own weapons-grade plutonium?

Right now, Iran calling our ass-kicking bluff would strain us to our very knees...we'd have to pull more troops from Korea and Iraq, stretching support in those areas even thinner. Let's not forget that Iran damn near won the Iran-Iraq war (after years of fighting in Iran, Iraq finally agreed to a peace settlement when it appeared that there was a real danger that the Iranian army would roll all the way to Baghdad), Iran didn't have most of its army destroyed in the Persian Gulf War, and Iran hasn't been saddled with 10 years of UN sanctions.

And, seriously, just how do you propose to tackle an Iran that DOES have the bomb? Give them say, two years to bring the Arak reactor online, and from that point on they'll be producing enough plutonium each year to build another bomb. So, say, 4 years until they have their first bomb, at which point they can withdraw from the NPT with impunity (if they don't do so by then, I've already seen rumors and rumblings that they may do so within a year). At that point, there would be no reason why they couldn't build additional production reactors to step up their bomb production. Then what'ya gonna do, Bubba?

No wonder people are interested in getting out of Iraq as quickly as possible...we're going to need those troops elsewhere!

The already are calling our bluff - this is where all of the fighters that rushbush is so concerned about are coming from.

Are we helping to recruit more, both inside and out of Iraq? Bombing weddings aside, by simply not getting electricity and fuel production to pre-war levels at this late date? But your point is true enough: they are supporting armed resitance in Iraq and we are letting them.

Q2. No need. The left confuses the amount of western troops needed for "ass-kicking" as oppossed to "asking". The Holy Muslim Monarchies do not.

You've lost me. "Asking" isn't putting a stop to Iran's nuclear ambitions (nor keeping Pakistan from exporting nukes). However, my suggestion isn't a nuclear first-strike, so much as the broad international sanctions that got Libya cooperative.

Sanctions are certainly not the best answer in all situations (Hussein's Iraq), but there are limits to our power as we're painfully finding out.

Sanctions are certainly not the best answer in all situations (Hussein's Iraq)

By that I mean from a humanitarian/regime-change standpoint. As it turns out, they worked pretty well on containing WMDs.

Lee -

With respect to two of the points...

1. Start by providing financial relief to the thousands of local police departments whose budgets are strapped because of homeland security alerts and other unfunded war on terror mandates.

5. We could have started here

Tommy G: "This time it's "who's a terrorist" and who isn't."

That's right - the fact that you want to distract from even asking that question speaks volumes.

Are we randomly going after every terrorist anywhere in the World? No, we picked Saddam. Why? Was he planning to launch a terrorist attack on us? No evidence has been produced. But we pretty damn sure know that others are planning such attacks, and yet we redirected our resources to go after Saddam. Why?

Your approach: Let's stick our head in the sand and pretend we know what we are doing.

Not good.

"Rushbush - you say it's actually *drawing* terrorists? Boy, oh, boy - we hadn't thought of that. Thanks for the astute detective work.
It's called fly-paper, genius."

The "fixed number of terrorists" fallacy again that we talked about yesterday. Seems to be a popular fallacy among right-wingers.

As Seymour Hersh is writing in the New Yorker:

"By the fall, a military analyst told me, the extent of the Pentagon’s political and military misjudgments was clear. Donald Rumsfeld’s “dead-enders” now included not only Baathists but many marginal figures as well—thugs and criminals who were among the tens of thousands of prisoners freed the previous fall by Saddam as part of a prewar general amnesty. Their desperation was not driving the insurgency; it simply made them easy recruits for those who were. The analyst said, “We’d killed and captured guys who had been given two or three hundred dollars to ‘pray and spray’”—that is, shoot randomly and hope for the best. “They weren’t really insurgents but down-and-outers who were paid by wealthy individuals sympathetic to the insurgency.” In many cases, the paymasters were Sunnis who had been members of the Baath Party. The analyst said that the insurgents “spent three or four months figuring out how we operated and developing their own countermeasures. If that meant putting up a hapless guy to go and attack a convoy and see how the American troops responded, they’d do it.” Then, the analyst said, “the clever ones began to get in on the action.”"

(http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040524fa_fact)

So, no, we are not so much "drawing" terrorists as we are creating them.

You and your President are creating people that want to destroy us. Steve4Clark got it quite right: Why do you and your President hate America so much that you are creating terrorists that want to destroy us?

Not to be too conspiratorial, but that raid is the best thing that ever happened to Chalabi. I doubt somebody thought that far ahead or was willing to take the chance of a mishap but it seems that Chalabi can now be believed when he states that he is not an American lackey. So, for better or for worst - and most likely it wasn't intended, Chalabi has been well served by the raid.

EJ, I agree with many of your points about Iran, but I'm not completely sure what you are getting at.

Nicholas Kristof just had a series of very interesting op-ed columns on Iran in the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/15/opinion/15KRIS.html?ex=1085284800&en=94635880b5884497&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/opinion/19KRIS.html?ex=1085544000&en=cd763fa471814068&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

The latter one starts with one very telling sentence:

"There is one force that could rescue Iran's hard-line ayatollahs from the dustbin of history: us."

And Kristof ends with:

"The bottom line is that we could soon have a pro-American Islamic democracy as a beacon for hope in the Middle East — in Tehran, not Baghdad. The risk is that we'll blow it."

Streaming file now available:

Neo-Cons in Doubt about the War in Iraq

> If BushCo had been honest from the start about the rationale and costs for the war...

Already starting with a presumption of dishonesty. Tch tch. But don't dare question a liberal's patriotism. Consideration only flows in one direction.

Sorry, but the Bush Administration's dishonesty is a matter of factual record. What one chooses to regard as patriotism (their own or someone else's) is a judgment call, but to question someone else's patriotism simply on the grounds that they disagree with you on how to deal with the world's problems is nothing but personal insult.

Let's make that clearer...

> If BushCo had been honest from the start about the rationale and costs for the war...

Already starting with a presumption of dishonesty. Tch tch. But don't dare question a liberal's patriotism. Consideration only flows in one direction.

Sorry, but the Bush Administration's dishonesty is a matter of factual record. What one chooses to regard as patriotism (their own or someone else's) is a judgment call, but to question someone else's patriotism simply on the grounds that they disagree with you on how to deal with the world's problems is nothing but personal insult.

Sorry for the repetitions...shoulda previewed.

>If BushCo had been honest from the start about the rationale and costs for the war...

Already starting with a presumption of dishonesty. Tch tch. But don't dare question a liberal's patriotism. Consideration only flows in one direction.

Sorry, but the Bush Administration's dishonesty is a matter of factual record. What one chooses to regard as patriotism (their own or someone else's) is a judgment call, but to question someone else's patriotism simply on the grounds that they disagree with you on how to deal with the world's problems is nothing but personal insult.

If there is one line of argument from the Left I'm really tired of hearing, it is that we are somehow making people in that part of the world hate us even more.

They already hated us enough to fly jumbo jets into our buildings. They already hated us enough to cheer in the streets when this happened. This was before we retaliated militarily.

If 9/11 is what happens before they really, truly hate you, how much worse can all-out hatred be?

I think the incremental cost of accumulating even more hatred from them is rapidly approaching the infinitesimal.

Their hatred for us is already a personal problem. We need to make it a practical problem.

> Sorry, but the Bush Administration's dishonesty is a matter of factual record.

Sorry, I disagree. If dishonesty in an administration is a problem for you, allow me to direct your attention to one William Jefferson Clinton.

> What one chooses to regard as patriotism (their own or someone else's) is a judgment call....

Just like calling someone dishonest.

> ...but to question someone else's patriotism simply on the grounds that they disagree with you on how to deal with the world's problems is nothing but personal insult.

I just can't get worked up over that, sorry. The Left has no problem with insult politics, except when Republicans try to infringe on their patent.

David Thomson: "What in heaven’s name are you talking about? Iraq is not an Islamic theocracy."

Where did I say it was?

"The Iraqis strongly indicate that they prefer a secular government."

I am happy that they do (if indeed they do - wasn't it you who told us yesterday that polls from Iraq are unreliable?).

The Iraqis also didn't favor being run by a cruel dictator for 24 years. It took our intervention to end that. What makes you think that without our help they will be able to keep the minority of fundamentalists and radicals at bay? What makes you think the terrorists won't step up their efforts to take over Iraq after June 30th and help the local fundamentalists and radicals TURN IT into a theocracy?

"Bin Ladin indeed does wish to overthrow the Arab governments---but it is one of the main reasons why they are starting to cooperate more fully with the United states."

"Cooperate more fully" is an interesting expression. What's it based on? Anything but wishful thinking?

And you are making another fundamental mistake here. You think that we can win this by "cooperating" with the Arab dictators. We already made that mistake with Saddam once - do you seriously want to risk repeating it?

I think another assumption you right-wingers are making is that the people in the Middle East are all stupid. You think they don't see that we don't truly care about their freedom, but only about ours. We'll make deals with any dictator as long as we get assurances that they will be "on our side".

They see this. They are fed up with it. Even those who haven't been brainwashed can legitimately make the point that America is in favor of their oppression. Because, for all intents and purposes, we are.

It's a shame to see conservatives going wobbly already. We all knew going into this that we would be in for the long haul (probably many years). I cannot understand why a little bad news has everybody believing that the sky is falling, especially given that most of the information we are getting comes from an unreliable media.

I asked what solution the left had to offer to prevent a nuclear attack here from islamic extremists.

Kis wrote:

"1. Shore up home security
2. Fix the palestine problem
3. Fund anti-terrorism efforts in Islamic countries
4. Push for democratic reform in the real sources of terrorism - Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran
5. Stop the North Korean arms trade"

Kis, with all due respect, 2 4 and 5 are a wish list. How do you propose to accomplish them?

1) is almost impossible to accomplish -- it's easy to smuggle a nuclear device into America, stick it in a tractor trailer, and roll it (somewhat) close to the target.

3) Seems to suggest that Islamic countries even WANT to fight terrorists. A few do, like Turkey, but many of the ME countries are SPONSORS of terror.

gw --

You have a lot of criticisms. Given that we are where we are, and without commenting at all on whose fault anything is, what do you propose that we DO?

Lee Dise: "If there is one line of argument from the Left I'm really tired of hearing, it is that we are somehow making people in that part of the world hate us even more."

The argument is: More people hate us.

And not: The same people hate us more.

You guys really have some problem understanding the "fixed number of terrorists fallacy", don't you?

Lee Dise, you wanted examples of the Administration's dishonesty? Here are just a few:

White House Is Trumpeting Programs It Tried to Cut
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/politics/campaign/19GRAN.html?ex=1085544000&en=313d151b48e75216&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

The trifecta lie
http://www.spinsanity.org/post.html?2002_06_16_archive.html

Lots more examples
http://www.bushlies.net

Their hatred for us is already a personal problem. We need to make it a practical problem.

Even Sharon is finding that you bulldoze your way into security.

Their hatred for us is already a personal problem. We need to make it a practical problem.

Even Sharon is finding that you can't bulldoze your way into security.

Locus,

With all due respect, trying to secure America from a single or a small handful of nuclear devices that could arrive anywhere on the North American continent (not just the United States!) by airplane, balloon, boat, helicopter or submarine and then be trucked somewhat near the target is, frankly, a fools errand. Who cares about port security when you can bypass the port with ease? Consider the impossible task of keeping drugs out of this country -- now consider trying to keep out just a couple of illicit packages from entering. It's totally unfeasible.

RT,

Your proposal had nothing to address the root cause of the problem, which is the abhominable regimes of the Middle East. You also stated something manifestly untrue -- Saddam did in fact have a LOT to do with terrorism -- unless you think paying suicide bombers to blow up Israelis and Americans in Haifa is not terrorism. You are also ignoring a vast body of other evidence connecting Saddam and various terror groups.

GW, I'd already read both of those articles, and I did find them interesting.

I suppose my point was more that we really aren't in a good position to seek a military solution against Iran right now, thanks to our little adventure in Iraq. I think that emboldens the Ayatollahs and their authoritarian lackeys. Kristof's articles argue that a military solution against Iran right now would be unwise even if it was easily accomplished. I don't think I dispute that, but I do prefer to conserve my options. Tying up troops in Iraq for what would have been (had we not invaded) a needless exercise doesn't exactly do that.

Iran does bear watching, and I think Kristof's first article just highlights what has been a growing divide between the hardliners and the silent majority. Although I am hopeful that a relatively bloodless coup (a la the transformation of the Soviet Union into the CIS) can occur, I wouldn't be shocked to see a rerun of Tienamen Square somewhere in Tehran. We live in interesting times.

As for what to do about Iran's progress toward getting the bomb, the one woman's comments are telling. She seems to be for democracy and freedom, but also quite willing to thumb her nose at the rest of the world should they be displeased with Iran's violation of the NPT. The extrapolation is that even if the hardliners fall and democracy is established in Iran, the electorate may well decide that the NPT is immoral and that any ostracism and sanctions that they have to endure will eventually fade away, just like they did for Pakistan. Perhaps you really can't put the genie back in the bottle.

And to bring this back to the original topic, the long term future of Iran may not be greatly affected by the situation in Iraq today, but the hardliners can accomplish much mischief as long as we really are tied down in Iraq.

I also just saw a statistical analysis that shows, based on the ratio of the number of insurgents (estimated at between 5,000 and 30,000) to coalition and Iraqi provisional forces, the proper model for this thing might be Cyprus or Northern Ireland. Eventually, the good guys win, but it takes a long time and is moderately bloody. The key variable seems to be the state's (that's us and the Iraqi government) willingness to prosecute the thing to its conclusion, which is more difficult for a pluralistic, open society like ours (with media coverage of the war feeding political campaign soundbites) than it is for an authoritarian regime. Although, historically, the open, "democratic" societies have had a better track record in putting these things down than the generalissimos, at least since WWII. I suppose it's a matter of motivation and national will.

I still think, "You broke it, you bought it" pretty much sums up Iraq.

I am sick and tired of hearing about threats like suitcase nukes coming into the US.

If we really had the world united in fighting terrorist threats it would not be too hard to track nuclear material and make sure that it did not get into the wrong hands.

It is quite worrying that we get this crap wrong so often. The answer is not to have a US soldier on every corner of the world though. The answer is better intelligence. If less people hate us there are less places for terrorists to hide.

We got hints about threats before 9/11. We dropped the ball and missed the big picture. Being diligent and having better intelligence will make this less likely in the future. Making more enemies will make it more likely.

I fail to understand how the actions of 19 people indicate that we need to wage war against an entire religion. We are putting ourselves in a Catch-22. We will not negotiate with terrorists, yet we pursue policies that create more terrorists, we will not change those policies because we will not negotiate. (BTW: The policy I am talking about is invading Iraq). The logic is so flawed that I cannot believe this is what our national policy really amounts to. And yet that is what we are stuck with. Stupid...and sad.

Rich,

It's totally irrelevant whether or not you are "sick and tired" of "hearing about threats". The threats are there, they are deadly real, and deadly serious.

Your conversation about "19 people" is totally off base -- Islamic extremists have been slaughtering Americans for many years, just as they have been slaughtering Jews, Muslims with the "wrong" beliefs, Christians, Spaniards, and any other group unfortunate enough to be the target of their insanity. September was not an odd anomaly brought into being by a small cabal of 19.

It really bothers me to hear you talk about how we "dropped the ball" on September 11. September 11 happened because there are homicidal maniac Islamists who carried out a plan to slaughter vast numbers of people. Sometimes we are lucky enough to catch these folks and sometimes not.

I do agree with you that we need to send vast numbers of intelligence agents to infiltrate these organizations. But the ultimate solution is to make these organizations unattractive by providing a real alternative for the young men growing up in the middle east -- which means political and economic regime change for many of the governments there and liberalization of the others.

“I fail to understand how the actions of 19 people indicate that we need to wage war against an entire religion”

Wage war against an entire religion? When did this occur? We are at war with a nihilistic version of a particular religion, Islam. I suspect that these adherents barely represent 10% of this entire religion.

RT,

Your proposal had nothing to address the root cause of the problem, which is the abhominable regimes of the Middle East. You also stated something manifestly untrue -- Saddam did in fact have a LOT to do with terrorism -- unless you think paying suicide bombers to blow up Israelis and Americans in Haifa is not terrorism. You are also ignoring a vast body of other evidence connecting Saddam and various terror groups.

Well, it's good to see conservatives finally admit that "root causes" are worth dealing with. Better late than never!

Saddam's donations to the survivors of suicide bombers, while worthy of disapproval, did not make the bombings any more possible. If that's the best you can do, that's not gonna fly in a serious conversation.

And the collected works of Laurie Mylroie don't count as evidence, nor does the presence of Zarqawi in the Kurd-controlled portion of Iraq in the years preceding our invasion.

As far as the "abhominable regimes of the Middle East" (yes, I've read Prince Caspian too) being the 'root cause' of terrorism directed at the U.S., that's a theory you'll have to justify from the ground up, AFAIAC. A bunch of Saudis flew planes into the WTC on account of their disgust with a corrupt Saudi regime? Great communicators, they ain't.

> Sorry, but the Bush Administration's dishonesty is a matter of factual record.

Sorry, I disagree. If dishonesty in an administration is a problem for you, allow me to direct your attention to one William Jefferson Clinton.

That's an interesting approach: Bush isn't a liar because Clinton was.

You could equivalently say Bush isn't President because Clinton was, thereby exposing the fallacy.

I just can't get worked up over that, sorry. The Left has no problem with insult politics, except when Republicans try to infringe on their patent.

Moral relativism, huh?

Nah, let's not go there.

Here on this blog, we are who we are, and we do what we do; we're responsible for the words that issue from our fingertips. Whatever the truth may be of who plays the smear game better at the national level (and I'm sure we see that differently, too), it doesn't justify my insulting you, or vice versa. (I'm not claiming you insulted me, btw; just using us as for-instances.)

Bits & pieces...

>> If there is one line of argument from the Left I'm really tired of hearing, it is that we are somehow making people in that part of the world hate us even more.

> The argument is: More people hate us.
> And not: The same people hate us more.

I think we should be willing to risk it. I don't know how many more skyscrapers we need to lose before some people think we need to do something, and to heck with who hates us.

> You guys really have some problem understanding the "fixed number of terrorists fallacy", don't you?

You guys really have some problem understanding the "we'd better defend ourselves or be resigned to dying" thing, don't you?

> Lee Dise, you wanted examples of the Administration's dishonesty? Here are just a few:

Ho hum. Why not summarize it for us? Or are we going to have a discussion that consists of dueling links?

> I am sick and tired of hearing about threats like suitcase nukes coming into the US.

You're sick and tired? Oh, good, I guess it will never happen then. I can't tell you how much safer I feel.

> If we really had the world united in fighting terrorist threats it would not be too hard to track nuclear material and make sure that it did not get into the wrong hands.

Abracadabra, presto! The world is united! The lions are now lying down with the lambs, Kim Sumg Il is hosting the next National Review banquet, and everything is beautiful in its own way. I'm really happy to know that happy thoughts make the world go around, and it's George Bush who's the simple-minded one. Oh, wait, my incantation didn't work? I know why. It's because a Democrat didn't say it.

> It is quite worrying that we get this crap wrong so often. The answer is not to have a US soldier on every corner of the world though. The answer is better intelligence. If less people hate us there are less places for terrorists to hide.

That's right. The intelligence community always gets its information from the internet and the public library. They never have to kill or intimidate to get their way.

> We are putting ourselves in a Catch-22. We will not negotiate with terrorists, yet we pursue policies that create more terrorists...

Rack 'em and stack 'em.

> That's an interesting approach: Bush isn't a liar because Clinton was.

Just wanted to see if it was presidential lying that bothers you, or only some presidential lying. I was thinking that the party affiliation just might be the governing factor.

>> I just can't get worked up over that, sorry. The Left has no problem with insult politics, except when Republicans try to infringe on their patent.

> Moral relativism, huh?

Just call it frustration. I get tired of name-calling, but I seem to get tired of it especially when its practiced by people who are so sensitive to being called names.

Ben: "Given that we are where we are, and without commenting at all on whose fault anything is, what do you propose that we DO?"

Sorry, but this isn't possible without commenting on whose fault it is. At least not in the case of my number one proposal:

1. An immediate change of leadership at the highest level - Bush and Rumsfeld have to go now, not in November. This is critical not just because the current leadership is incompetent and will just make matters worse the longer they stay in charge, but also to show the Iraqis that we recognize our mistakes and are serious about making amends.

2. The Abu Ghraib prison should be shut down immediately. Thomas Friedman had some good ideas what to do with it. (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/opinion/13FRIE.html; still available for free here: http://www.iht.com/articles/519795.html)

3. Clarify legally that we won the war and Iraq lost. This means that we can enforce some conditions via a peace agreement and insert certain constraints into the Iraqi constitution - at least for some period of time like five or ten years. Such as: No secession of any Iraqi provinces (this is directed mostly at the Kurds who could seriously get us into trouble, if they tried to leave Iraq); strong minority protections (for Kurds, Shiites, women, other religions); restrictions on what kind of political parties are allowed (easy: no parties that don't agree with the constitution); the right to maintain a well-defined US military presence in Iraq.

4. Put in place a strong, large peace enforcement and civil war prevention force that is mostly comprised of Arabs/Muslims. Get some Egyptians, some Saudis, maybe some Pakistanis. We'll pay and retain oversight. Reduce the number of our troops significantly, but keep a significant presence.

5. Speed up the pace of reconstruction. Kick out Halliburton and Bechtel. Iraq must not be treated like a public works project that these companies can use to extract money from our government as they regularly do at home. Keep out the French and the Russians, but assign reconstruction projects to countries that know something about reconstruction, such as Germany and some of the Eastern European countries. Get the Chinese involved, the Koreans, the Japanese.

6. Hold elections. Local elections could be held sooner (in some places now), but nationwide elections should only be held after the previous steps have been successfully implemented.

7. Gradually reduce the number of our troops according to a timetable that we set, not the Iraqis.

Lee Dise: "You guys really have some problem understanding the "we'd better defend ourselves or be resigned to dying" thing, don't you?"

Sigh. We didn't defend ourselves against Saddam. He wasn't attacking us. Al Qaeda was.

It was YOU who wrote in what seems to me like resignation: "One of these days, one of our cities is going to go up in a mushroom cloud."

The argument is over whether taking out Saddam got us any closer to preventing this from happening.

And it was Matthew Cromer (a conservative) who wrote that protecting America from dirty bombs is impossible. It was Rich (a liberal) who wants to do something to protect America against them.

Who is resigned here?

I'm upset precisely because I don't see anything happen that makes it less likely for the terrorists to launch a nuclear attack on us.

"Why not summarize it for us? Or are we going to have a discussion that consists of dueling links?"

From the Times article, just one of many similar examples:

"Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, announced recently that the administration was awarding $11.7 million in grants to help 30 states plan and provide coverage for people without health insurance. Mr. Bush had proposed ending the program in each of the last three years."

If this isn't dishonesty, what is?

The "trifecta lie" is Bush's claim that he "hit the trifecta" of war, national emergency and recession, which he claims he said during a campaign stop in Chicago would exempt him from keeping his promise never to run deficits.

There is no record of Bush saying this during any Chicago campaign stop. Yet he used this repeatedly during fund raising events.

When Tim Russert finally called his budget director on it... - Bush still kept using it. Only later was it finally dropped when his handlers seemed to start fearing the toothless liberal media would actually wake up and stop reporting that Bush was so prescient in predicting the trifecta and instead expose it for what it was - a blatant lie.

I actually wonder if Bush had a conversation with his father about that "Read my lips" thing that went something like this. "But Dad, you should have just told them that you made an exception for war." - "But I didn't say that, son." - "But Dad, you could have just claimed you said it, the media wouldn't have figured it out."

> Sigh. We didn't defend ourselves against Saddam. He wasn't attacking us. Al Qaeda was.

For the sake of argument, I'm going to ignore any and all evidence that Saddam trafficked in WMD, trafficked in terrorists and terrorist money, was not involved in plotting or funding the first attack on the WTC, and also the plot to assassinate the elder Bush.

But even the Clinton administration thought Saddam needed to go. Like I said earlier, he was the low-hanging fruit. Japan attacked us, and Germany was the greater threat to us in Europe. Why did we attack Italy first? It made sense strategically.

Given there was a fascist dictator in Iraq who was already the subject of world opprobrium, it should have been the next easiest thing to do. We had made all these threats over the last ten years about what we would do if Saddam blew it yet again, our threats would quit having any meaning if we didn't follow through. Who would have known Saddam would have so many people in our own country defending him?

You know, Milosovic never attacked the U.S. either. It's that Democrat/Republican thing again, isn't it?

> The argument is over whether taking out Saddam got us any closer to preventing this from happening

I think it's a policy that would succeed, if we could somehow interest the Left in defending our nation and get them to quit carping from the sidelines. What the Islamic world sees right now is that the loyal opposition won't support a bipartisan foreign policy. Remember that phrase? It's the one Clinton used right after bombing a Sudanese aspiring plant.

> I'm upset precisely because I don't see anything happen that makes it less likely for the terrorists to launch a nuclear attack on us.

I'm beginning to think that our only hope is to somehow sneak a Democratic presidential candidate past his own party, somehow, who really is a patriot and deeply committed to defending our country. That we, we conservatives could get behind him, and the liberals would finally shut the hell up and let him do his job.

> "Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, announced recently that the administration was awarding $11.7 million in grants to help 30 states plan and provide coverage for people without health insurance. Mr. Bush had proposed ending the program in each of the last three years."

If you're going to go around characterizing changes in policy as liew, I guess I'd better sit back in my chair and grab a shot of whiskey. This is going to take some time.

> There is no record of Bush saying this during any Chicago campaign stop. Yet he used this repeatedly during fund raising events.

Has anyone ever showed you the difficulties involved with proving a negative?

> ...the toothless liberal media would actually wake up....

"Toothless"? Oh, you must mean those guys that have been trying to gum Bush to death with the prison scandal, the WMD issue, getting Rumsfeld to resign, badgering him during press conferences with demands that he "admit a mistake" and thus hand his opponents a nice talking point, and in general running any story that could possibly make an Arab hate Americans more, and ignoring any story that could possibly make Americans hate Arabs more.

*That* toothless media.

Lee Dise, regarding:

"For the sake of argument, I'm going to ignore any and all evidence that Saddam trafficked in WMD, trafficked in terrorists and terrorist money, was not involved in plotting or funding the first attack on the WTC, and also the plot to assassinate the elder Bush.

But even the Clinton administration thought Saddam needed to go. Like I said earlier, he was the low-hanging fruit. Japan attacked us, and Germany was the greater threat to us in Europe. Why did we attack Italy first? It made sense strategically.

Given there was a fascist dictator in Iraq who was already the subject of world opprobrium, it should have been the next easiest thing to do. We had made all these threats over the last ten years about what we would do if Saddam blew it yet again, our threats would quit having any meaning if we didn't follow through. Who would have known Saddam would have so many people in our own country defending him?

You know, Milosovic never attacked the U.S. either. It's that Democrat/Republican thing again, isn't it?"

I'll take you on your word that we can ignore evidence of various Saddam misdeeds for the sake of argument.

But given that, why is it of strategic advantage to prosecute the war on terror by invading Iraq? Afghanistan surely showed the world that we were serious about ending any credible terrorist threat to the US. I reject the notion that we had to take Saddam out just to show the world that we meant business. We could remove the Taliban without compunction because it was demonstrable that they were a state (of sorts) that was clearly aiding and abetting the very terrorists who had attacked us. Moreover, we told the world that was why we were going into Afghanistan, and for the most part, the world did not take offense at this. But the situation was very different in Iraq.

Much as many supporters of the current policy in Iraq would wish it, there simply isn't a strong connection between Saddam's Baathist party and Al Queda. Nor is one likely to be found. At the surface level, the one that gets new recruits for Al Queda, the ideologies of Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were diametrically opposed. About all they had in common was that they were both Sunni Moslems. That is about like claiming that Bill Clinton supported David Koresh because they are both Christians, the ideological gulf is that large!

At the deepest level, cooperation between Saddam and Bin Laden was impossible because they both saw themselves as the Promised Arab Strong Man, the new Saladin. Saddam wished to build a "modern" Iraqi state along Stalinst lines, conquer (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia) or co-opt (Syria) his neighbors, rid the middle east of the Israeli pox, and go down in history as the uniter and ruler of all Arabs.

Bin Laden wants essentially the same thing, but his path is to claim the Saudi throne as his own, spark uprisings by fundamentalist Sunnis all over the Middle East, and then rid the world of Israel. Notice how the endgame leaves absolutely no role for Saddam, except with his head on a pike carried by fundamentalist Iraqis who have finally tired of the "iniquity" of Baathist rule. And both Saddam and Bin Laden were smart enough to know this and act accordingly! If there was ANY cooperation between the two, it was all aimed at setting one or both of them up for a doublecross somewhere down the line.

The old saying is, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Perhaps so, but in this case, that friendship extended about as far as dancing a jig when the twin towers fell. I find it hard to believe that other leaders in that part of the world did not feel the same way he did about us, but at least were restrained enough to feign indignation and condemn the hijackers the next day. I ask you, was Saddam's crudeness sufficient reason for us to take on the massive obligation that we have? For I do not see any other justification for our actions.

Finally, regarding Milosevic: I regard him as the same sort of thug that Saddam was, just on a smaller scale. But even so, I was opposed to intervention in Kosovo. So, where is the evidence of the mass killings in Kosovo? Seems to me that we have about as much evidence of systematic, large scale killings of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo (not counting the colum of refugees that was strafed by US pilots) as we do for the existance of significant caches of WMD in Iraq...precious little in both cases.

It's probably inevitable that in a country as large and diverse as the United States every discussion about foreign policy will sooner or later devolve into a discussion about ourselves.

That's what I gather from scanning this thread, certainly. What's at issue is not what is happening in Iraq, or even how American policy now being implemented is affecting what is happening in Iraq; instead, it's how Americans (or at least the respective posters on this board) react to the news they hear, and what this says about them.

That observation is not intended to be dismissive. I admit can think of better things to do with my time than read one poster compare another to Noam Chomsky and get replies accusing him of being guided by voices. But it probably might be a good idea to ask ourselves, say, why President Bush's stated objective of establishing democracy in an Arab country like Iraq is not only the policy of his administration, but is hardly ever criticized even by his fiercest detractors (some of whom, in a nice twist, insist that the problem with Bush's commitment to establish democracy in a culture that has never known any such thing is that he cannot really be sincere!).

Of course the election overshadows everything; it isn't just the candidates and their campaign consultants who are far more engaged in what happens next November here than they are with anything happening in Iraq. But the fact is that we are deeply engaged in Iraq, the vital next steps there will not wait for our election, and it matters what those steps are and whether they succeed or not. Media reporting and commentary, let alone posters in this small corner of the blogosphere, will not be decisive in how this all turns out, so it makes sense to me to devote a little less attention to such things than some posters do.

If someone "cannot envision" Saddam and Al-Qaida working together against the United States then that person is suffering from a severe poverty of vision. History is full of tactical and even strategic alliances between entirely different individuals and groups. I'm not going to bother to name them -- every one of you can name some of them off the top of your head with a moment's thought.

Lee Dise writes: "The lions are now lying down with the lambs, Kim Sumg Il is hosting the next National Review banquet, and everything is beautiful in its own way."

Well, maybe not Kim, but Sun Myung Moon might...

(Granted, he's just a wanna-be tyrant.)

> But given that, why is it of strategic advantage to prosecute the war on terror by invading Iraq?

Confining this argument to strategic reasons, the desire to plant a democratic republic in the midst of all these Islamic fascist governments was intended, I believe, to strike fear in the hearts of the other dictators in the short term, and plant the seeds for economic betterment of that part of the world in the long term. (I only buy into some of this argument, frankly, but that's the argument.) These dictators grab onto power ruthlessly and keep it by holding Israel and the U.S. up as bogeymen. They've been unable to prevail against either of us militarily, and so they take the path of surreptitiously funding terrorism and shrugging when they're called on it as if they're powerless to do anything about it. I think the idea was to make them a lot more cooperative about helping us root the terrorists out. Either help us, or we'll stand by and watch you lose your fiefdome.

Iraq was the perfect choice in terms of grand strategy in all respects except one. It was the largest and probably the most powerful Arab/Islamic state. It was centrally located. We were already fairly well-poised militarily, and should also have been diplomatically, to end it for Saddam. And Saddam's stack of crimes and misdemeanors, if not as specific to 9/11 as some people might like, looked close enough to a casus belli to get even Al Gore to admit that there probably needed to be a military solution. Of course, that was back in 1998.

The prospect of a democratic Iraq in the midst of squalid dictatorships would have sent chills down the spines of the neighboring despots.

I said, all respects except one. That one is the opportunity for treachery. Liberals at home, and Europeans abroad, are very, very suspicious and upset whenever the U.S. uses its power, with two exceptions. Liberals are unhappy when it is used to further American national interests, Europeans are unhappy, not to say enraged, when it is used for anything but to save European butts from the fire.

And liberals are doubly suspicious when that power is used by a Republican. It's the flip side of the accusation that Bush is using the war for his political objectives. They don't want to lose, and they don't want Bush to win. Minority status sucks. Do I think the Democrats would sacrifice the national interest for the sake of political gains? Let's just be charitable and call them institutionally hard to convince. This is nothing new. It's just hard to get a liberal excited about national defense. They sucked the toes of communist dictators for over sixty years, and I think they just like the taste.

> Much as many supporters of the current policy in Iraq would wish it, there simply isn't a strong connection between Saddam's Baathist party and Al Queda.

Proof by assertion. Humbug. I view all the terrorist organizations as one and the same. Birds of a feather. If we don't take them all out, if we leave one standing because we can't directly implicate them, and then they go on to destroy a city, then the round of recriminations will start up again... assuming, of course, a Republican is in charge. If it's a Democrat, tch tch, and gee who knew?

> But even so, I was opposed to intervention in Kosovo.

Fine, but Democrats weren't. Clinton bombed in eastern Europe without so much as a nod toward the UN. Let Bush try that. Many liberal commentators gushed with pride that the difference in *this* intervention was that it could not possibly be construed as being in America's national interest. For some reason, that's a plus with liberals. And then they rage when you challenge their patriotism.

> It's probably inevitable that in a country as large and diverse as the United States every discussion about foreign policy will sooner or later devolve into a discussion about ourselves. That's what I gather from scanning this thread, certainly. That observation is not intended to be dismissive.

It sure sounds dismissive. Never mind that it's exactly what you're doing, too.

> But it probably might be a good idea to ask ourselves, say, why President Bush's stated objective of establishing democracy in an Arab country like Iraq is not only the policy of his administration, but is hardly ever criticized even by his fiercest detractors (some of whom, in a nice twist, insist that the problem with Bush's commitment to establish democracy in a culture that has never known any such thing is that he cannot really be sincere!).

Then apparently you haven't read the thread that you're trying so hard to dismiss. I'm not what you'd call a Bush fan, but I sure look like one to the Bush detractors. And I posted much earlier in the thread my own thoughts, that democracy works in the U.S. and Britain because of Western civilization, Anglo tradition, and Christian values, and that these traits are scarce in the Middle East.

> ...so it makes sense to me to devote a little less attention to such things than some posters do.

Hey, it's your post, buddy. Devote whatever attention you like, to whatever is gnawing at your gimbals.

Lee Dise: "But even the Clinton administration thought Saddam needed to go."

You realize that that was before 9/11? You realize that, according to Richard Clarke, the Clinton administration shifted its focus to Afghanistan and Al Qaeda in 2000, because more serious threats appeared to be coming from that direction?

"Like I said earlier, he was the low-hanging fruit."

Except it wasn't, as we now know.

"Japan attacked us, and Germany was the greater threat to us in Europe. Why did we attack Italy first? It made sense strategically."

What a comparison! Germany and Italy declared war on the US four days after Pearl Harbor. The US returned the favor the very same day. Japan, Germany and Italy were in an alliance called the Axis. They were fighting a war against the rest of the World, remember?

But why should I be surprised at such a silly comparison? In an abhorrent demonstration of his poor grasp of history, President Bush used the word "Axis" (this time "of evil") to refer to three countries that weren't and aren't part of any alliance.

"Who would have known Saddam would have so many people in our own country defending him?"

Not Bush or Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz, of course. Not the neo-cons. And we wouldn't ask anybody with actual knowledge of Iraq before invading it, would we? Besides, the insurgency isn't so much about defending Saddam or Sunni power in general, but about fighting against us, the common enemy.

"You know, Milosovic never attacked the U.S. either."

And Bush promptly criticized Clinton's "nation-building" adventures and promised not to repeat such mistakes.

"It's that Democrat/Republican thing again, isn't it?"

I'm not a Democrat.

"I think it's a policy that would succeed, if we could somehow interest the Left in defending our nation"

I don't really count myself as part of "the Left", so I guess I shouldn't be offended by this.

But, please, who on "the Left", apart from Noam Chomsky perhaps, is not interested in defending our nation?

It was the Democrats who proposed the Department of Homeland Security and the Republicans who were initially against it. Then they hijacked the idea, stuffed it with partisan politics and pointed to the fact that one of the initial proponents of the idea voted against the deeply partisan bill they finally passed. Thus war hero Max Cleland was ousted from the Senate and replaced by yet another Republican chicken-hawk - Saxby Chambliss.

Kerry fought in Vietnam, Bush used his connections to get into the National Guard instead. Cheney had "other priorities".

But we know all this, don't we, we just keep ignoring it.

Who is kidding whom here?

"and get them to quit carping from the sidelines."

That's what got us into this mess in the first place. Besides, it's not just liberals "carping from the sidelines" now, it's a whole bunch of conservative commentators as well. And it's only now that a few honest conservatives are starting to turn that the media is beginning to catch up on this whole disaster as well.

"What the Islamic world sees right now is that the loyal opposition won't support a bipartisan foreign policy. Remember that phrase? It's the one Clinton used right after bombing a Sudanese aspiring plant."

The arrogance, inconsistency, and unreliability of the administration’s diplomacy have undermined American alliances, alienated friends, and emboldened our adversaries.

Remember that phrase? Republican 2000 platform.

But now they have declared our alliances irrelevant, offended our friends and, yes indeed, emboldened our enemies and helped them win new recruits for terror attacks against us. Brilliant!

"I'm beginning to think that our only hope is to somehow sneak a Democratic presidential candidate past his own party, somehow, who really is a patriot and deeply committed to defending our country."

Um, you seem to have missed that Kerry won the primaries and that Dean lost.

"That we, we conservatives could get behind him, and the liberals would finally shut the hell up and let him do his job."

Good idea, let Kerry do his job. Your guys did your best not to let Clinton do his.

"If you're going to go around characterizing changes in policy as liew, I guess I'd better sit back in my chair and grab a shot of whiskey. This is going to take some time."

I said "dishonesty". You can't tell people they should vote for you because you are giving them money when you are at the same time trying to get out of giving them that money.

"Has anyone ever showed you the difficulties involved with proving a negative?"

You mean the logical fallacy that a negative can never be proven?

This is about a campaign promise that Bush made publicly to the American people. If he went ahead and qualified it without their being any record of this, then this could be interpreted as an intent to deceive the American public. If he did not publicly qualify the promise, which is the same as saying there is no record of his doing so, then he didn't do it. "Gee, I told my dog about the trifecta exemption, so it's ok to run deficits." No, not like that!

You are seriously willing to let Bush get away with this and still call him honest?

""Toothless"? Oh, you must mean those guys that have been trying to gum Bush to death with the prison scandal, the WMD issue"

The Bush administration lied about the WMD evidence - this should have been front-page news and on all the TV stations until they admit it.

The administration tried to cover up the prison scandal instead of actually addressing it - until it became public. Again, this deserves to be front-page news and on all the TV stations until they finally do something about it that goes beyond cover-up attempts and damage control.

The media has, if anything, been too soft on both accounts. An incredibly large number of Americans believed in June 2003 that WMDs had already been found in Iraq. Before the war, half of Americans thought there had been Iraqis among the 9/11 hijackers. The media didn't do much to set the record straight.

"badgering him during press conferences with demands that he "admit a mistake""

Funny, I wanted to mention that, too. Brennan Stout wrote earlier in this thread that "the President doesn't deny that he flip flops". Oh, yeah? When did he ever admit a prior mistake?

"in general running any story that could possibly make an Arab hate Americans more"

Yeah, let's just lull the American public and let them believe that the World loves us (a large number of Americans actually believed before the war that worldwide public opinion was on our side!).

Unfortunately, Al Jazeera will still show the Arabs horrendous images of dead and abused Iraqis. Are you seriously suggesting we should allow Al Jazeera to become a fuller representation of the truth than our own media?

There was an article in the New York Times yesterday about the documentary movie "Control Room", which is about Al Jazeera. An interesting comment came from an American press officer:

"Lieutenant Rushing says that "no American connects the Palestinian issue" with the war in Iraq, but that everyone he has met in the Arab world sees them as "the exact same thing" — an eye-opening observation for most people."

Indeed. Why doesn't our "liberal" media point this out? Well, I guess now they did - in the Arts section of the NY Times! Surely this wisdom will spread to the local TV news stations like a wild fire. No, wait, they just got another report of a traffic accident to cover. More interesting for their viewers, sorry. No room for the sad truth about Iraq left.

"and ignoring any story that could possibly make Americans hate Arabs more."

Gee, what a telling comment. I'm not sure it's even true (didn't the Berg beheading story temporarily push back the prison abuse scandal?), but even if it were, shouldn't we be grateful that our media is careful not to incite people? What good could that possibly do?

"*That* toothless media."

Exactly. If Kerry doesn't win by a landslide in November, the only explanation would be that the "liberal" media let the Bush campaign get away with distortions, dishonesty and blatant lies.

Just checked out the latest Fox News polls that came warmly recommended by David Thomson.

Question: Which of the following news stories upset you more?

1. The abuse of Iraqi prisoners
by U.S. soldiers 8%
2. The beheading of an American
civilian by Muslim terrorists 60%
3. (Both equal) 29%
4. (Not sure) 3%

Right, Lee Dise, the evil "liberal" media isn't showing anything that might upset the American people. Right...

Of course, you could argue there are flaws with this poll. David Thomson pointed out that the poll shows Bush leading Kerry by 6 points in the "Battleground States". I assume this means that a poll was conducted in each of those states?

Um, no. Actually, they just asked "900 registered voters nationwide". So I guess that means they asked about 5 people from New Hampshire (900*0.86/156.4) and 43 from Ohio.

Is it really news to the pollsters at Fox News that one cannot conclude anything from such small samples? Even though the nationwide sample has a margin of error of +/- 3.3, this margin doesn't translate to any subsets of the survey. A poll of 43 people from Ohio has a margin of error of +/-15; a poll of 5 people from New Hampshire has a margin of error of +/- 44. For all the battleground states combined the margin of error is still +/- 5.6, assuming that the polled voters were evenly distributed across the country.

If they asked a disproportionately high number of people in the "Battleground States", then they should have stated that. Besides, it would render their poll results for the "Red States" and "Blue States" completely useless.

> That's an interesting approach: Bush isn't a liar because Clinton was.

Just wanted to see if it was presidential lying that bothers you, or only some presidential lying. I was thinking that the party affiliation just might be the governing factor.

For me, consequences are high on the list of governing factors. Nixon lied to cover up a campaign of dirty tricks, including two known burglaries, whose principal object was to sabotage the other party's nominating process. Clinton lied to cover up a sexual liaison. Bush & Co. lied to get us into a war.

> Moral relativism, huh?

Just call it frustration. I get tired of name-calling, but I seem to get tired of it especially when its practiced by people who are so sensitive to being called names.

I'm not sensitive at all about being called names, at least online; what it means in places like this is that whoever I'm debating with has run out of bullets, and is having to throw mud instead.

It's one thing for politicians operating on a much larger stage than this one to sling mud. They're doing it because they're trying to influence public opinion. It's still wrong, because the ends don't justify the means, but at least one can understand their motivation.

However, when we debate in a small space like this, with few spectators to be influenced, it's absolutely silly, because there isn't even any gain to be achieved by such methods.

Nixon obstructed justice to hide information about a break-in. We have no knowledge that he knew about the break-in when it happened, but the cover-up is good enough; it's a felony. The break-in was a trivial crime; the cover-up was not.

Clinton obstructed justice and perjured himself to hide a sexual liaison. Like the break-in, the sexual liaison -- in a public office -- was a minor crime. But perjury and obstruction of justice are not minor crimes.

The "consequences", in both cases, are having presidents who run around as if the law doesn't apply to them. They also include a sort of defining down moral standards; if the president does these things, why can't anyone else?

Democrats can always manage to come up with some reason to believe Clinton's felonies were less serious than Nixon's. Ultimately, I think it just comes down to the fact that they like Clinton better than Nixon. There's moral relativism for you.

> You realize that that was before 9/11? You realize that, according to Richard Clarke, the Clinton administration shifted its focus to Afghanistan and Al Qaeda in 2000, because more serious threats appeared to be coming from that direction?

What I realize is that Clinton didn't do much of anything against Saddam, against Al Qaida, or any other terrorist group. "Focus" is one of those words that's used when further specification isn't really possible. Clinton had the chance to get Osama from Sudan, and didn't. He fired a couple of cruise missiles, and that was that.

I also realize that Clarke falls into that category known as "disgruntled employee" and is busily spinning his story to make it look like Clinton was doing something and Bush wasn't. P.S. Bush brought the Taliban down, not Clinton.

>> "Like I said earlier, he was the low-hanging fruit."

> Except it wasn't, as we now know.

This is self-fulfilling prophecy. The Democrats could tell Saddam wasn't low-hanging fruit just by knowing they were going to go all out to oppose Bush's policies, and still are.

> What a comparison! Germany and Italy declared war on the US four days after Pearl Harbor.

Did Italy ever attack us? Were we under any threat from the Italians?

> But, please, who on "the Left", apart from Noam Chomsky perhaps, is not interested in defending our nation?

I prefer to answer that in a positive manner. I think Scoop Jackson was. I think John Kennedy was. Maybe Truman was, I don't really know. I think we need a bipartisan foreign policy, and we're not getting one. In general, I'm not impressed by the Democrats' commitment to defend the U.S., and this is a decades-old observation.

> It was the Democrats who proposed the Department of Homeland Security and the Republicans who were initially against it.

I'm sorry, but I'm not really impressed that we added another bureaucracy. This doesn't put a star on Bush's report card, in my opinion. We don't need new bureaucracies; we need to older ones to do their jobs right.

> Kerry fought in Vietnam, Bush used his connections to get into the National Guard instead. Cheney had "other priorities".

Kerry fought in Vietnam, got out of fighting due to a third, self-nominated Purple Heart with a dubious claim of having been wounded by enemy fire (the examining doctor said he fixed the problem with a tweezers), and then came back to the U.S. and went on to slander his thousands of Vietnam vet brethren as war criminals. Great patriots like this are hard to come by, I'm sure.

> And it's only now that a few honest conservatives are starting to turn that the media is beginning to catch up on this whole disaster as well.

The only honest conservative is one who agrees with liberals.

> The arrogance, inconsistency, and unreliability of the administration’s diplomacy have undermined American alliances, alienated friends, and emboldened our adversaries.

What has undermined our alliances and alienated our friends is that we went from being a terrorist target to targeting terrorists. They like us better when we're punching bags.

>> "I'm beginning to think that our only hope is to somehow sneak a Democratic presidential candidate past his own party, somehow, who really is a patriot and deeply committed to defending our country."

> Um, you seem to have missed that Kerry won the primaries and that Dean lost.

Not yet I haven't. Kerry is a pacifist, or has been up until now. All I know about Kerry is that whatever he does -- whether he cuts and runs, whether he continues Bush's policies, whether he fights even harder -- it will be right by definition, even as Bush is wrong by definition. The things that are now Bush's fault, will just metamorphose into things that are "outside any president's control." If cities start sprouting giant mushrooms, it will be Bush's fault, not Kerry's, even if it doesn't happen for three or four years into Kerry's presidency. Bush is a liar, but Kerry will have spoken what he thought was true and just relying on his best intelligence. That sort of thing. I don't have that much experience with Kerry per se, but I know how the media treat Republicans and I know how they treat Democrats.

> Good idea, let Kerry do his job. Your guys did your best not to let Clinton do his.

Don't blame Clinton's moral bankruptcy on us. He did that all on his own. All we did was notice.

> The Bush administration lied about the WMD evidence - this should have been front-page news and on all the TV stations until they admit it.

For something to be a lie, it has to be false, and known to be false by the person who uttered it. At this point, we don't even know if the WMD claims were false, let alone whether Bush knew them to be false.

>> "and ignoring any story that could possibly make Americans hate Arabs more."

> Gee, what a telling comment. I'm not sure it's even true (didn't the Berg beheading story temporarily push back the prison abuse scandal?), but even if it were, shouldn't we be grateful that our media is careful not to incite people? What good could that possibly do?

How about this possible good: A reminder of the kind of people we're up against, and therefore something with which to put the prison scandal into perspective?

> Right, Lee Dise, the evil "liberal" media isn't showing anything that might upset the American people. Right...

That's interesting. You use an example from Fox News to show that the media are not quite so liberal. I concede that Fox News is not liberally biased. Now, only ABCCBSNBCCNNPBSNPRNYTWashingtonPostBostonGlobeLATimesTimeNewsweek to go.

"OK, you can inform us of even one war that was prosecuted perfectly. Just one?"

The Spanish-American War. Hearst & even the President got everything they wanted. Spain didn't even end up with an eye for revenge because they were so completely outclassed.

However even then the victory wasn't entirley useful. The US ended up running the Philipines. They had to fight for years against moslem freedom fighters/terrorists/suicidal fanatics & later US occupation of the Philipines was one of the causes of Pearl Harbour.

On the other hand they got Guantanamo Bay.

On the third hand the US earned the admiration of the world for how easily they beat the Spanish. I seriously doubt if such admiration is on the cards over Iraq.

After re-reading, I think further elaboration is due on one of the side issues. I had written that the news media seemed insistent about running any story that could make Arabs hate Americans more, and downplaying any story that could make Americans hate Arabs more. I misspoke at least this much: America-hating Islamists are not strictly an Arab phenomenon. Obviously, it includes Afghans and Iranians as well as probably others, including some Black Muslims even here in our own country. As I said, this is obvious and I misspoke.

I got thess response:

> "Gee, what a telling comment. I'm not sure it's even true (didn't the Berg beheading story temporarily push back the prison abuse scandal?), but even if it were, shouldn't we be grateful that our media is careful not to incite people? What good could that possibly do?"

I think you can make a very good case that the media ought to be careful not to incite people. On the other hand, I also think you can make a very good case that the media ought to just tell the facts as they are, and let people make up their own minds.

However, the media are doing both. They are careful not to incite people, whenever the facts might tend to anger Americans at Islamic folk; and they are presenting all the facts, whenever the facts might tend to anger Islamic folk at Americans. It's two different philosophies of news, being executed tendentiously and in such a way that alway presents us as being the bad guys.

If the media doesn't want to incite people, that would include not inciting Islamic folk against Americans. Mr. Berg might still have his head today if some of those photos hadn't been broadcast. But they'll never miss an opportunity to make a Republican administration look bad.

As far as the newsworthiness of the Berg story is concerned, it was the most highly sought thing on Google for over a week. It barely blipped two days in the mainstream media, though. They were too busy talking about how it's all Rumsfeld's fault that some of his troops had misbehaved.

Like I said: If it makes Americans look bad, it's news. If it makes the enemy look bad, let's not go overboard and incite people. As I think one blogger put it (I seem to remember seeing the quote on Instapundit, just don't want to take credit for it), all news ultimately is opinion. It comes down to what some editor thinks is you ought to know about. Our news media doesn't want us to know the nature of our enemy. They're too busy trying to elect Kerry. I had a feeling they were going to pull out all the stops this year and lose any semblance or pretense of objectivity. I wasn't wrong, not by a long shot.

Like the break-in, the sexual liaison -- in a public office -- was a minor crime.

Getting a hummer in the Oval Office is a crime?

I mean, burglary, yeah. With the conspiracy that made it possible, you're pretty much looking at a felony rap there. But getting a blowjob?

> But getting a b----?

I think that would depend on the local laws. Certainly, it would be a firing offense at every place I've ever worked, and that includes public buildings and offices, which I think the Oval Office qualifies as.

The break-in was probably a greater crime, but it wasn't that great. And Nixon did not participate in it. We still don't know if he ordered it. All we know is he tried to cover it up, and to use the C.I.A. to interfere with the F.B.I.'s investigation. Now, that's a felony.

And so is perjury.

"And Saddam's stack of crimes and misdemeanors, if not as specific to 9/11 as some people might like, looked close enough to a casus belli to get even Al Gore to admit that there probably needed to be a military solution."

In 2000, another Republican tried to convince me that it was MORE important that year to elect a Republican to the White House than in any other year in recent memory, solely on the basis that the foriegn policy of a Gore administration would be an unmitigated disaster for the US. At the time, with Clinton's track record, that seemed obvious to me. Now, in 2004, I have to ask myself, would we be that much worse off if Gore had been running our overseas response to 9/11? And it doesn't seem like the slam dunk it was 4 years ago, or even 2 years ago.

If there was such consensus that there was a causus belli against Iraq in 2002, why did we have such a hard time building a coalition to go in at that time?

"That one is the opportunity for treachery. Liberals at home, and Europeans abroad, are very, very suspicious and upset whenever the U.S. uses its power, with two exceptions. Liberals are unhappy when it is used to further American national interests, Europeans are unhappy, not to say enraged, when it is used for anything but to save European butts from the fire."

Could you please explain our intervention in Kosovo in those terms? For I do not see how this was in American interests, yet Clinton's liberals supported it. I see that you mentioned that they claimed it was not in American's interests, but that makes their support even more puzzling. As for Europe, I suppose you could make a case that Italy would get saturated with Kosovar refugees, but I believe that's more a matter of perception than of fact (as a percentage of the Italian population, there just weren't that many ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo -- not enough to "saturate" them).

I would say that if you're looking to "blame this on the liberals", about the best you can do is to point out that liberals have a double standard when it comes to war...apparently it's "OK" if a Democrat deems military force is necessary, but "an act of agression" if a Republican orders the troops in. To find a counterexample, you have to go all the way back to Vietnam under the Johnson administration.

"Proof by assertion. Humbug."

There is a very long list of reasons why Saddam and Bin Laden aren't in bed, weren't in bed in 2001 or 2002, and likely never would be in bed together. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is about as far as it would ever go, and aside from Saddam's cheering when the twin towers fell, about as far as it ever went.

Proof by assertion? Surely you have evidence to the contrary, right? Documents authorizing covert aid to Bin Laden, authorizing training to his followers, authorizing shipments of goods or money to Al Queda? There is no shortage of such stuff regarding payouts to Hamas, why should Al Queda be any different? How about intercepted conversations between Saddam or his minions and Bin Laden or his minions? We know that on a few occasions that some of Bin Laden's lieutenants traveled to Iraq, surely they must have had some sort of meeting, right? Of course, they traveled much more extensively to Saudi Arabia and to Egypt, so I guess we'll have to invade those countries as soon as we've settled things down in Iraq/Syria/Iran, right? Bin Laden's flunkies also had a network of safehouses in Germany, so perhaps by the same logic Germany was providing covert aid to Bin Laden?

You've put me in the position of trying to prove a negative. Generally, the absence of proof of the converse is enough for reasonable men to conclude the matter is closed, although I'll quickly admit this doesn't constitute a formal proof of the negative.

"If we don't take them all out, if we leave one standing because we can't directly implicate them, and then they go on to destroy a city, then the round of recriminations will start up again... assuming, of course, a Republican is in charge."

My first thought is that this is suspiciously close to "let's just kill them all and let God sort them out". Granted, the eradication of terrorism wouldwide is a worthy goal, but so is, for example, the eradication of international trafficking in illegal narcotics. Just when will the "War on Terrorism" be over? When the "War on Drugs" is over? That's not a recipe for a Hundred Year's War, that's a recipe for a Thousand Year's War...although I have grave doubts that any nation could prosecute such a thing and remain a republic for long.

And that is where my concern lies. As our experience in "post-war" Iraq shows, our track record of separating guilty terrorists from innocent terrorist suspects is none too good (MI estimates that perhaps as much as 70% of all detainees in Iraq were innocent of any insurgent/terrorist activity). This precisely mirrors the Israeli experience with eradicating terrorism in Lebanon...witness the recent destruction of houses in Gaza, where the Israeli's claimed there were "about 40" tunnels used to smuggle weapons across the Egyptian border. After killing 42 people (some of whom were doing laundry, not shooting at Israeli troops) and leaving hundreds homeless, what did they find? One tunnel. One Israeli legislator outraged parliment by saying that watching an elderly Palestinan searching for her medicine in the ruins of her home on her hands and knees reminded him of his own grandmother (who was in a similar situation during the Holocaust). Well, I'm sorry, an elderly woman searching for medicine in the ruined remains of her home is an elderly woman searching for medicing in the ruined remains of her home, regardless of whether she's Palestinian, Israeli, American, Iraqi, German, Sudanese, or Bolivian. Tearing down her house doesn't somehow become "more right" or "justifiable" if she's American or Israeli than if she's Palestinian or Iraqi. Tearing down a house is tearing down a house. Now, I don't mind tearing down the houses of terrorists, they buy into that when they start killing people. Nor am I blind to the fact that collateral damage is sometimes unavoidable when acting against terrorists. But when you have more people in prison who are not terrorists than who are, when you pull down hundreds of homes to find one tunnel, you have very effectively lowered yourself to the level of the terrorists. Your actions are the same, save that you kill people with helicopters and tanks instead of with suicide bombers and backpack bombs, and that you rationalize your actions as making the world safe from terrorists instead of as making the world safe from decadent imperialists.

It should be apparent by now that Israel isn't going to solve the problem of Palestinian terrorism by practicing apartheid any more than South African whites solved the problem of black soveriegnity by practicing apartheid. I would just hope that the US is smart enough to avoid falling into that trap. And my challenge to you is, if we are not falling into that trap, why is it that the majority of Iraqis (who are very much NOT terrorists or insurgents, thank you very much) support democracy in Iraq, but want the US to leave as soon as possible? Why is it that they see internal security as the number one problem to be addressed in their society, but wish that the only organization who is now providing that security leave promptly as of July 1? The real test of the current administration's policies in Iraq will come after July 1, not before.

> If there was such consensus that there was a causus belli against Iraq in 2002, why did we have such a hard time building a coalition to go in at that time?

France was making good money selling arms to Iraq. If memory serves, so was Russia. France is resentful of any use of American power that does not involve bailing out the French.

> Could you please explain our intervention in Kosovo in those terms?

I thought I did. Bombing Kosovo, in no way, shape, or form, could ever be thought to have been in pursuit of our national interests.

> I would say that if you're looking to "blame this on the liberals", about the best you can do is to point out that liberals have a double standard when it comes to war...apparently it's "OK" if a Democrat deems military force is necessary, but "an act of agression" if a Republican orders the troops in. To find a counterexample, you have to go all the way back to Vietnam under the Johnson administration.

It's that, and more, actually. Liberals agree with conservatives that American foreign policy needs to be bipartisan, but it only occurs to them when Carter is sending doomed rescue teams into the Iranian desert, or Clinton is bombing aspirin plants. But they're right: we do need a bipartisan foreign policy. When your nation's enemies can defeat you simply by turning the news media and the opposition party in their favor, they no longer need to win on the battlefield. That's how North Vietnam won, and that's how the terrorists may yet win.

> For I do not see how [Kosovo] was in American interests, yet Clinton's liberals supported it. I see that you mentioned that they claimed it was not in American's interests, but that makes their support even more puzzling.

I agree it's puzzling, but that's hardly my fault. For many liberals, the case for bombing Kosovo was humanitarian. It was a sign, in fact, of purity that there was nothing involved that affected U.S. national interests. They were more interested in "doing good" than helping American vital interests.

On the subject of whether Saddam was helping al Qaida, specifically, that isn't an issue with me. You admit he funded terrorists; that's good enough for me. And no, it's silly to insist that if we attacked Saddam then we ought as well to have attacked all countries that met with or did business with him. Switzerland did business with der Fuehrer, yet we didn't attack the Swiss. There is a limit to what you can do at one time. Again, it's the concept of low-hanging fruit. Show the world that you're serious about obliterating the terrorism up to and including destruction of regimes that traffick with terrorists, and with any luck the other countries will eventual figure out what they need to do.

> My first thought is that this is suspiciously close to "let's just kill them all and let God sort them out".

Yes, I'll admit that when it comes to terrorists, I don't draw too many distinctions. Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaida, they're all the same to me. These are organizations that exist and have power only to the extent that they are aided, abetted, and succored by heads of state. These are all organizations that kill innocent people on a regular basis, and I believe to a one they would cause grave and irreparable damage to the U.S. if they had the power to do so. Terrorists are a real threat, but the deeper, implied threat is the fact that heads of state prop them up to pursue their own agenda and then shrug their shoulders with a who farted? look when they're called on it. This has to end. Countries who traffic with terrorists have to come to realize they're ultimately going to be held to the fire for it.

> Granted, the eradication of terrorism wouldwide is a worthy goal, but so is, for example, the eradication of international trafficking in illegal narcotics. Just when will the "War on Terrorism" be over? When the "War on Drugs" is over? That's not a recipe for a Hundred Year's War, that's a recipe for a Thousand Year's War...although I have grave doubts that any nation could prosecute such a thing and remain a republic for long.

Maybe. I think we could win the war on drugs next week if we really wanted to. We don't, however, because the costs would simply be too high, and it would involve as well severe restrictions of civil rights even here in the U.S. I think we need to win the war on terrorism, though, that we don't have a choice in the matter. If we choose not to fight this war, we're going to have to get used to having folks in our own country blown up at the local Walmart every week, and eventually even watch our cities go up in radioactive smoke. That may happen even if we do fight, but I think averting such a future is worth a try.

> And my challenge to you is, if we are not falling into that trap, why is it that the majority of Iraqis (who are very much NOT terrorists or insurgents, thank you very much) support democracy in Iraq, but want the US to leave as soon as possible?

I don't blame the Iraqis for wanting us out of their country, and fully support that goal. I hope we're successful in establishing an enduring democracy there, though I'm on record in this thread as saying I don't think it's possible. I won't mind being proven wrong on that score. I wish them the greatest success.

But they're probably going to wind up with another anti-American strongman in charge, if history is any indication. I can live with that, so long as he doesn't fund or harbor terrorists.

I'm just wondering how all this is going to play out. I see the current struggles as the aftermath of colonialism. Say what you want about colonialism, but the British in general left their colonies better off than they were before their subjugation. The British understood that there is no responsibility without authority. To say that one is responsible for what happens is to say implicitly that one has the authority to do what it takes to affect the outcome. Much of the U.S.'s current muddle is that we want to take responsibility but are squeamish about asserting our authority. Liberals seem to understand this contradiction, which is why they desperately cling to the idea of the United Nations as a granter of moral authority -- as an alternative to what amounts to re-colonialism. That, in fact, may be their implicit objection to the Bush Doctrine: it amounts to de facto colonialism. Conservatives, as usual, do not speak as a cohesive group on this subject. Mostly, they don't want colonialism, and they don't want the U.N.'s approval, but they want to take the responsibility nevertheless. Don't know how this is going to end or where this is going to lead, frankly. The ancient Romans never agonized over whether they had the moral authority to crucify their conquered people. That's not good, but too they never apologized for doing what it took to survive, which is the position we're in.

Lee Dise: "I think we need a bipartisan foreign policy, and we're not getting one."

We had one right after 9/11. Virtually the whole country was in favor of going to war against the terrorists and their supporters in Afghanistan. And that hasn't changed.

"Kerry fought in Vietnam, got out of fighting due to a third, self-nominated Purple Heart with a dubious claim of having been wounded by enemy fire"

I can't believe you are bringing this up. Actually, I can. You are desperate, and the Bush smear campaign is in full attack mode. They smeared John McCain; they smeared Max Cleland; now they are doing it with John Kerry.

Perhaps we should make a rule that only chicken-hawks that have been arrested at least once for drunk driving are suitable for the office of President or Vice President?

But only the one who lies about it gets to be President? (http://www.mblog.com/georgewbush/005235.html) Note this link even includes a perjury accusation. You think that sort of stuff is serious, don't you? So how about it?

"If cities start sprouting giant mushrooms, it will be Bush's fault, not Kerry's, even if it doesn't happen for three or four years into Kerry's presidency."

Whereas if anything happens under Bush, it will either be nobody's fault because it was unpreventable, or it will still be Clinton's fault, right?

"You use an example from Fox News to show that the media are not quite so liberal."

Excuse me, what?? I used a POLL from Fox News to show that public opinion (not among Fox News viewers, but nationwide!) is that the Berg beheading was more upsetting than the Abu Ghraib pictures.

Which invalidates your whole argument of how the "liberal" American media doesn't show stuff that might upset Americans and bring them up against Arabs/Muslims.

"If the media doesn't want to incite people, that would include not inciting Islamic folk against Americans."

The American media's task is to keep Americans informed of what's happening. Are you saying that because media reports might be picked up by news outlets in other countries, we should keep quiet about stuff that goes wrong?

If you do that, you'll have a big scandal on your hands in no time. Once this comes out, the rest of the World would conclude, as they got close to during the Iraq war anyway, that America's media simply spreads government propaganda and does not engage in critical reporting anymore.

> I can't believe you are bringing this up. Actually, I can. You are desperate, and the Bush smear campaign is in full attack mode. They smeared John McCain; they smeared Max Cleland; now they are doing it with John Kerry.

That's right, I'm the issue, not John Kerry. You said everything conceivable that's bad about my motives and general character, except for one little thing: That I was factually in error.

And I also note you do not deny Kerry's slander of his fellow Vietnam Vets as being war criminals.

> Excuse me, what?? I used a POLL from Fox News to show that public opinion (not among Fox News viewers, but nationwide!) is that the Berg beheading was more upsetting than the Abu Ghraib pictures.

Now you're not making sense. Are you claiming that the news media are not liberally biased because the public at large seems immune to their ministrations on some issues?

> Which invalidates your whole argument of how the "liberal" American media doesn't show stuff that might upset Americans and bring them up against Arabs/Muslims.

Hardly. It only shows that the media has less influence than perhaps they'd like. They devoted about two days to the story. Compared to, what, how many *weeks* on the prison scandal?

>> "If the media doesn't want to incite people, that would include not inciting Islamic folk against Americans."

> The American media's task is to keep Americans informed of what's happening. Are you saying that because media reports might be picked up by news outlets in other countries, we should keep quiet about stuff that goes wrong?

Please follow the argument: this isn't hard. Of course, the media's job is to keep us informed; I'm not saying it isn't. I *am* saying that if lurid pictures shown of American torture incidents at the prison were appropriate to show as being newsworthy, then you cannot say that the slaughter of Mr. Berg is inappropriate. Even if they edited out the actual carving, it's an image that, even to invoke your own standards, would keep Americans "informed of what's happening."

Let's try another explanation, in hopes that at least one will get through: If the media's standard should be to report on that which is newsworthy -- as you are *now* suggesting --regardless of whom it portrays badly, then both the prison abuse and the beheading are news and ought to be shown on the telly. (Editing of the graphic scenes are not objectionable, in my opinion, but you have to admit it cuts down on the information content.) If the media's standard is to report on that which doesn't incite or inflame -- as you *previously* suggested -- then neither the prison abuse nor the beheading should have been given a lot of airplay, because both have the power to incite (but different groups of people). But when you choose one standard to cover one event, and another standard to cover another event, that's tendentiousness. It starts to look like you want to incite only one group, and leave the other group in a calmer state of mind.

As always, please let me know what I can try to clarify for you.

"That's right, I'm the issue, not John Kerry."

No, Bush is the issue.

"You said everything conceivable that's bad about my motives and general character"

Huh? Where?

"except for one little thing: That I was factually in error."

I thought the word "smear" implied factual error.

"And I also note you do not deny Kerry's slander of his fellow Vietnam Vets as being war criminals."

Actually, I do deny that, but I didn't think it was worth addressing since it was so obviously ridiculous.

(May I conversely assume that you do not deny that Bush was arrested for drunk driving and lied about it? Hard to deny indeed, since it's a fact.)

You are the one who is engaging in slander here. You are retroactively questioning the decision of his superiors to award him a Purple Heart.

You said he slandered his fellow Vietnam veterans when in fact he just reported the results of an investigation (the "Winter Soldier Investigation") and the statements made by other veterans.

Are you saying the patriotic thing would have been to hear about war crimes and then try to cover them up? You mean like Rumsfeld did with Abu Ghraib?

Let's review for a second how we got to this point.

It was YOU who repeatedly questioned the patriotism of "liberals" and "the Left".

I provided examples to refute this accusation.

Then it was YOU who engaged in a character assassination attempt on Kerry, taken straight from the Bush campaign.

And then it was YOU who whined about my calling you, gasp!, "desperate" for that.

"Now you're not making sense. Are you claiming that the news media are not liberally biased because the public at large seems immune to their ministrations on some issues?"

So then you are, after all, agreeing that the liberal media is toothless, aren't you? :-)

"Hardly. It only shows that the media has less influence than perhaps they'd like."

Then stop whining about the "liberal" media.

"They devoted about two days to the story."

That's not even true. Go to Google News and search for "Berg beheading", sorting by date. There have been several reports every single day since it happened. In fact, comparing the total number of hits, it's 9,350 for that and 21,300 for "Abu Ghraib". You don't think a 2:1 ratio is appropriate given that the Abu Ghraib abuses went on for months?

"If the media's standard should be to report on that which is newsworthy -- as you are *now* suggesting --regardless of whom it portrays badly, then both the prison abuse and the beheading are news and ought to be shown on the telly. (Editing of the graphic scenes are not objectionable, in my opinion, but you have to admit it cuts down on the information content.)"

And they showed both, didn't they? According to the Fox News poll, at least 89 % of registered voters were upset by it - 60 % were more upset by the beheading than by the prison scandal, 29 % were equally upset.

"If the media's standard is to report on that which doesn't incite or inflame -- as you *previously* suggested -- then neither the prison abuse nor the beheading should have been given a lot of airplay, because both have the power to incite (but different groups of people)."

This is pretty amazing how you twist and turn things I supposedly said.

It was YOU who said the media were "ignoring any story that could possibly make Americans hate Arabs more".

I stated that I doubted that and gave you the Berg beheading story as a counter-example to disprove your claim. I then added that I thought it would be good if the media did not incite Americans against Arabs. Maybe I wasn't clear enough then. I didn't mean to suggest that the media should actively suppress news on the chance that it might incite Americans against Arabs.

Tendentious? Exactly right, Lee

"What someone doesn't want you to publish is journalism, all else is publicity."
- Carlton Meyer, USMC (Ret) @g2mil.com

And the actions of the news editors screams louder than even the most shrill of their apologists here.

Welcome back - hope you've got plenty of free time.

"And the actions of the news editors screams louder than even the most shrill of their apologists here."

All I see is Bush apologists making shrill, factually incorrect accusations against the allegedly "liberal" media.

First the media is liberal because they don't report on the Berg beheading. Except they did. Actually, they still do.

Oh, and the reporting actually caused most Americans to be more upset about the beheading of one American by terrorists than about the torture, rape and possible murder committed by several American soldiers against numerous Iraqis. One can certainly argue over whether it should or shouldn't, but the poll shows it did.

Ah, that's because the public is "immune" to the "ministrations" of the "liberal" media.

Excuse me, how can the public be immune against the media showing something they'd rather not be showing - or what exactly is the argument here again? "Ministrations" - what ministrations? Did they somehow play down the beheading?

None of this makes even the slightest sense, and yet you congratulate Lee on getting this "exactly right"?

Surprisingly, Art, Considering that it was just on, our intrepid 'Gw' isn't citing Fox news Poll stories today. I wonder why?

Maybe because it refutes his post of 6:24? Gosh, if only he'd waited 15 more minutes - he'd have saved himeself an awful lot of embarrassment.

Unsurprisingly - He's taking shots at you for comments to other posters - while ignoring your direct response to his question. I wonder why?

Because despite Lee's contention - he is smart: smart enough to know when to ignore, and when to spin.

Happy Trolling, G-Man. Enjoy the re-election.

Gosh, the right-wingers are rolling out their final attack dog, Tommy "I know an obnoxious troll when I see one, and I look in the mirror often" G, who promptly joins in the collective whining:

"He's taking shots at you for comments to other posters - while ignoring your direct response to his question."

Oh, boo-hoo. Something you would never do, right Mr G?

Funny thing is - I don't see any response to any question I posed in Art's post. I also don't really see myself taking "shots" (plural, no less!) at Art. I was actually talking about Lee's posts, which Art found so endearing. I found that odd and expressed my bewilderment.

"Happy Trolling, G-Man."

And it doesn't strike you as the least bit funny, ironic, bizarre - take your pick - that you call me "G-Man", Tommy "G"?

So, after we are done with all the usual pleasantries that tend to surround your posts, would you now enlighten us and tell us how a Fox News broadcast from 6:40 pm this evening "refuted" my previous post? Did they actually explain on Fox News how Lee's posts do, after all, make sense?

Slow down , cowboy... You apparently have nothing but time - so let's try this topic by topic.

Item 1:
"Funny thing is - I don't see any response to any question I posed in Art's post."

Happy to enlighten...

You responded to Art's answer of your question

" The majority of moderates and liberals supported the Afghanistan war because it had a clearly defined target - eliminate or apprehend Osama bin Laden and as many members of Al Qaeda as possible. Rather than focus completely on this sensible goal we stopped just short of the finish line and instead got distracted by the administration's obsession with Iraq. "

Are we tracking yet? Good.

Art Responded:
"GW-
No one front of the Global War on Terrorism is a distraction, that's not how these things are planned and executed. As someone else adroitly pointed out yesterday - no Sicilians were involved in the planning or execution of the IJN's Combined Fleet Operations Order No. 2.

That a percentage of the very people that can seldom be counted on for the hard work of long-range goals were on-board during the initial "Lee Greenwood" phase of this Operation is of no consequence to your logic chain. Try again."

So I'm curious - Why no answer? Consension?

> You are the one who is engaging in slander here. You are retroactively questioning the decision of his superiors to award him a Purple Heart.

It isn't a "smear" or a "slander" if it's true, sorry. A group of Vietnam vets who served with Kerry, including commanding officers, signed an affidavit saying he is unfir to be the commander in chief. When Kerry accused them of doing the Republican's, their response was, nope: this had nothing to do with the Democratic Party, that if the Democrats field someone else, they'd consider voting for him.

Somehow, you must have missed CSPAN's broadcast of a confrontation between Kerry and John O'Neal back in the early 1970s on the Dick Cavett show, where O'Neal carved Kerry a new butthole for accusing his fellow vets of being war criminals. Kerry had testified in Congress, essentially, that American war crimes were a commonplace thing, and that the command structure looked the other way. O'Neal, having served on the same boat as Kerry, took unbrage with this characterization.

Believe what you want, but this is all pretty well documented. Start with Mackubin Thomas Owens' articles in National Review.

> It was YOU who repeatedly questioned the patriotism of "liberals" and "the Left".

Yep, I did, and I do.

> And then it was YOU who whined about my calling you, gasp!, "desperate" for that.

You misunderstand, kind sir. Call me anything you like. The point was, and is, calling me *anything* doesn't affect the truth of what I said about Kerry.

> So then you are, after all, agreeing that the liberal media is toothless, aren't you? :-)

Welllll, on that issue, maybe they're trying to gum it to death. :-) The power of the media isn't always direct, I see it as kind of a national subconscious. The media are relentless and will keep hammering something until it becomes a sort of underlaid substrata comprising truth, myth, and spin. An example would be the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Ultimately, Anita Hill's accusations amounted to her word against his word. At the time of the hearings, polls said that most people believed Thomas. After about a year, most people responded that they believed Hill. There wasn't any new corroborative evidence or anything like that, just the slow, relentless drumbeat of liberal spin, as they would not drop the issue.

> That's not even true. Go to Google News and search for "Berg beheading"...

Definitions. I don't include the Web in my definition of "liberal media", and I don't know any conservative who complains about the inability to find the story on the web. I mean the major outlets: CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS, NPR, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Constitution, the Baltimore Sun, Time magazine, Newsweek magazine, the Associated Press, Reuters. Liberals complain about Rush, about the Washington Times, about the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, and about Fox News. I'd trade all of that for what the liberals have.

And we haven't even touched academia.

> It was YOU who said the media were "ignoring any story that could possibly make Americans hate Arabs more".

Definitions. Maybe I should have made it clear that I mean "downplay" rather than ignore, but I did after all admit that they played the story for a couple of days, so that shouldn't have been hard to figure out from the context.

> I stated that I doubted that and gave you the Berg beheading story as a counter-example to disprove your claim. I then added that I thought it would be good if the media did not incite Americans against Arabs. Maybe I wasn't clear enough then. I didn't mean to suggest that the media should actively suppress news on the chance that it might incite Americans against Arabs.

You whine nicely too, when you're caught red-handed in a contradiction. I didn't have to twist and turn anything you said to smoke out that double-standard, all I had to do was pay a little attention to what you were saying. On the one hand, we shouldn't run a story too much or too strongly if it incites the American people against the enemy; on the other hand, if the story has the power to incite Islamic folk against Americans, why, all of a sudden it's the job of the news media to keep America informed!

I have no doubt this was an unconcious double-standard. It's just the way liberals think, is all. But don't question their patriotism.

> All I see is Bush apologists making shrill, factually incorrect accusations against the allegedly "liberal" media.

This is one comment that just makes me smile all over. Believe it or not, I don't like Mr. Bush very much, and only a liberal could turn me into a "Bush apologist." As a matter of record in this thread, I have questioned the wisdom of democracy-building. In other threads, I have essentially said that if the Democrats could field someone who is not so obviously anti-American as Kerry, I'd sit on my hands and not vote for Bush, or I'd write in Alan Keyes -- same thing.

On this war thing, I just think we're better served by a muddled policy than no policy at all, and that it's an important enough issue that I might have to hold my nose and vote for Junior after all.

No response, eh 'gw?
Just what I thought - I'll take that as consession.

Suddenly you're too busy to find the time to post. What - were you grounded?

Tommy G: "Why no answer?"

Lots of stuff I wrote here received no answer. Why not? Concession?

Nobody bothered replying to the plan I outlined on Iraq - does that mean everybody agrees with it? (I just reposted it in the newest thread because somebody requested it yet again. If you feel like replying, please reply there.)

Or maybe we don't all have unlimited time on our hands to pursue this hobby?

I didn't even realize that you were referring to Art's post from four days ago. So there was something worth replying in there? He just repeated the assertion that Italy was first attacked by the US in WWII, not Japan. EJ had already replied to that point, and quite well.

The second paragraph in his reply was based on essentially the same fallacious assumption - that Iraq is the second phase in the war on terror. Again, this has been discussed by me and others in this thread already.

So what do you want? Just be obnoxious? Of course, that must be it.

Oh, and why did you evade my question regarding what was shown on Fox News last night? I thought they told us how to make sense of Lee's posts. Now, did they or didn't they, Mr G?

"A group of Vietnam vets who served with Kerry, including commanding officers, signed an affidavit saying he is unfir to be the commander in chief."

That's not true. It was an "open letter", and it doesn't say that he is unfit to be CIC, it just talks about "concerns". It calls upon Kerry to release more military and medical records.

It also makes me wonder what the same soldiers might think of President Bush's ability to be CIC based on his Vietnam war record.

"Kerry had testified in Congress, essentially, that American war crimes were a commonplace thing, and that the command structure looked the other way."

You mean just like Abu Ghraib?

"> That's not even true. Go to Google News and search for "Berg beheading"...

Definitions. I don't include the Web in my definition of "liberal media", and I don't know any conservative who complains about the inability to find the story on the web. I mean the major outlets: CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS, NPR, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Constitution, the Baltimore Sun, Time magazine, Newsweek magazine, the Associated Press, Reuters."

Ok, so you apparently have no clue about Google News. It's a search function for the aggregate of the online editions of all the print, TV and radio media you cite. You can even specify the source - such as "Berg beheading source:new_york_times". That gives you 39 hits, including several on 5/23, 5/21, 5/20, 5/17, 5/15, 5/14, 5/13, 5/12 and 5/11. Of course, many of those hits are duplicates or stories that just mention it in passing. But the same goes for the Abu Ghraib search. So the story has been in the Times on most days since it happened. Your claim that it was only covered for two days is simply wrong.

"Definitions. Maybe I should have made it clear that I mean "downplay" rather than ignore, but I did after all admit that they played the story for a couple of days, so that shouldn't have been hard to figure out from the context."

They covered it for far more than a couple of days. They didn't downplay anything.

Look, are you just assuming this because you "know" that the "liberal" media would do this, whereas you are really only watching Fox News and reading the Washington Times? (Incidentally, only 28 hits for "Berg beheading source:washington_times"!)

"I have no doubt this was an unconcious double-standard. It's just the way liberals think, is all. But don't question their patriotism."

So now you are analyzing my unconscious. Excuse me, but this is getting ridiculous. Would you be interested in some thoughts I've had on the unconscious double-standards of right-wingers? I didn't think so.

"This is one comment that just makes me smile all over. Believe it or not, I don't like Mr. Bush very much, and only a liberal could turn me into a "Bush apologist.""

Oh, right - people who excuse his lies by bringing up the utterly lame "can't prove a negative" fallacy aren't Bush apologists. People who brush over the administration's taking credit for programs it's been trying to cut by calling them "changes in policy", aren't apologists for them, no. An apologist is someone who makes up excuses for things that can't be excused. That's what you did.

"As a matter of record in this thread, I have questioned the wisdom of democracy-building. In other threads, I have essentially said that if the Democrats could field someone who is not so obviously anti-American as Kerry, I'd sit on my hands and not vote for Bush, or I'd write in Alan Keyes -- same thing."

Kerry is "anti-American"? And Keyes - you mean this guy? http://www.realchange.org/keyes.htm Gee, that would be an improvement over Bush, for sure...

"On this war thing, I just think we're better served by a muddled policy than no policy at all, and that it's an important enough issue that I might have to hold my nose and vote for Junior after all."

I wonder whether there will come a time when people will really be held responsible for what's happening right now...

I told you to slow down, cowboy - you've got way to many brands in the fire, and, apparently not enough time all of a sudden.

Now that we've moved forward to the point where you contend that you have nothing to reply to, due to the 'fallacious assumption' (as you contend) let's start here...

You write:
"The majority of moderates and liberals supported the Afghanistan war because it had a clearly defined target - eliminate or apprehend Osama bin Laden and as many members of Al Qaeda as possible. Rather than focus completely on this sensible goal we stopped just short of the finish line and instead got distracted by the administration's obsession with Iraq."

Well, for starters, your whole logic chain fails to to be a legitimate construction – or, to use the vernacular of the left – “it’s a lie”.

There was no liberal support of the “Afghanistan war” because there was never any such thing. SE Asia was, and still is, the opening front of the global “war on terror”

To wit...

[President Bush, in a speech September 20 to a joint session of
Congress, announced the start of a "war on terror," and demanded of
the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan that it turn over all the
leaders of the al-Qaida terrorist group based in that country, close
every terrorist training camp there, hand over all terrorists to
appropriate authorities, and give the United States full access to
terrorist training camps.

"These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion," the
president said. "The Taliban must act and act immediately. They will
hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate."]

But even more telling is your assertion – charge, smear, what-have you – of “distraction”. When, in fact, *your* President clearly stated:

[Bush said "Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end
there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has
been found, stopped, and defeated."]

“ “Oh dear”, said God, “I hadn’t thought of that”, and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.”
- D. Adams

Your turn.

>> "A group of Vietnam vets who served with Kerry, including commanding officers, signed an affidavit saying he is unfir to be the commander in chief."

> That's not true. It was an "open letter", and it doesn't say that he is unfit to be CIC, it just talks about "concerns". It calls upon Kerry to release more military and medical records.

Technically, sir, you are correct. It was John O'Neal, one of the organizers of the letter, who called Kerry "unfit for office" in an article for the Wall Street Journal.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005036

So it must be with pride that you've proven me wrong, and you should be bursting at the seams with it at the characterization of Kerry in the actual letter, which in part reads:

> "It is our collective judgment that, upon your return from Vietnam, you grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen of that war (including a betrayal of many of us, without regard for the danger your actions caused us). Further, we believe that you have withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war."

Somehow, you missed this statement in your thumbnail sketch of the letter's contents.

I reproduce these sentiments as a slap in the face to all right-wingers who would knowingly distort this obvious endorsement of Mr. Kerry into something that is negative and demeaning.

> It also makes me wonder what the same soldiers might think of President Bush's ability to be CIC based on his Vietnam war record.

Only a liberal could turn a letter obviously intended to demean Mr. Kerry's record into something that could reflect poorly on Bush.

>> "Kerry had testified in Congress, essentially, that American war crimes were a commonplace thing, and that the command structure looked the other way."

> You mean just like Abu Ghraib?

I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but the abuses at the Iraqi prison did not involve most of our troops, and the Army was already investigating this incident, on our own. I think it's significant that the perps are being court-martialed and imprisoned. A liberal, though, will proceed to assume the worst about the entire military and the entire command structure, and hold it of little import that we actually punish such perps. Like you did here. But. Don't. Question. Their. Patriotism.

> So now you are analyzing my unconscious?

Not really, just trying to extend the benefit of the doubt. I'll retract the benefit of the doubt, if you like.

> Ok, so you apparently have no clue about Google News. It's a search function for the aggregate of the online editions of all the print, TV and radio media you cite. You can even specify the source - such as "Berg beheading source:new_york_times". That gives you 39 hits...

Google News is great, isn't it? You got 39 hits for the Berg beheading. Congratulations. I got 433 for "abu ghraib source:new_york_times". But whatever you do, don't construe this as a sign that the New York Times considers stories that embarass the U.S. as more newsworthy than stories that ought to embarass Islamic folk. So the story that, by your own admission, the U.S. public considers more important than the prison abuses gets less than 10% of the coverage.

Don't bother thanking me for pointing this fact out to you. The reward is in doing the favor, not in having it gratefully acknowledged.

Hey Lee,

I doubt the little troll is coming back, he's got about three other running gun-battles up spin at the POTUS thread -And they're nailing him on his "Secret Plan to Win the War in South(west) Asia (g)

Nice job, btw... Catch you later.

> Look, are you just assuming this because you "know" that the "liberal" media would do this, whereas you are really only watching Fox News and reading the Washington Times? (Incidentally, only 28 hits for "Berg beheading source:washington_times"!)

Actually, it's even worse than that. I only read editorials, at least on a systematic basis. That means newpaper editorials, editorials on the web, and National Review (can't help it, been addicted since 1968). I used to read the Washington Times when I lived in Northern VA, and I seldom watch TV news of any kind. Once in a long while, I will watch Fox News, but we're talking once every six months, usually when my brother, an avid Fox News fan, visits. This means I'm usually a couple of days late in getting the news. I don't listen to Rush at all anymore, and never listened to him very much; I'm probably one of the few conservatives he's ever tossed off the air, but that's a different story.

In short: I like to read editorials that are labeled as such. I dislike intensely reading editorials that are labeled as news articles. It just drives me crazy. I don't mind reading liberal editorials so long as they're correctly labeled.

An example: Late last year, the New York Times busted Russia's nuggets because they were getting ready to scratch the Kyoto Treaty. You could tell precisely how the NYT reporter felt about that. He referred to the Russian News Agency as a "government propaganda arm", but without the scare quotes. Stealth liberal editorial alert! I wrote to the Ombudsman of the NYT and issued a challenge: Find me once, in any NYT news article before 1991, in which Tass or Pravda were described as Soviet "government propaganda arms", without the scare quotes. Nope. He didn't take my challenge. They were way too busy defending the Pulitzer Prize of one Walter "Nobody's Being Starved in the Ukraine" Duranty, which was earned by years of fearless sucking-up and bootlicking to one Josef Stalin, Soviet leader and all-around nice guy, and managing to close his eyes and look the other way when stumbling across the dead bodies... oops, I'm sorry, I mean years of dedicated devotion to the hallowed ideals of journalism.

Tell you what: Find me that citation -- any news article in the NYT, before 1991, that describes Tass or Pravda as a Soviet "government propaganda arm", without the scare quotes. First one to present me with a verifiable citation gets a Twinkie.

>> "This is one comment that just makes me smile all over. Believe it or not, I don't like Mr. Bush very much, and only a liberal could turn me into a "Bush apologist.""

> Oh, right - people who excuse his lies by bringing up the utterly lame "can't prove a negative" fallacy aren't Bush apologists. People who brush over the administration's taking credit for programs it's been trying to cut by calling them "changes in policy", aren't apologists for them, no. An apologist is someone who makes up excuses for things that can't be excused. That's what you did.

To be quite honest, Bush lost my warm appreciation back when he signed the so-called campaign finance "reform" act. As he signed it, he said, "You know, this is probably unconstitutional." Then he signed it. Thanks, George, thanks a whole bunch. So much for your oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.

If liberals can make me defend someone like that, then, golly, liberals must somehow manage to irritate me even more.

> Kerry is "anti-American"? And Keyes - you mean this guy? http://www.realchange.org/keyes.htm Gee, that would be an improvement over Bush, for sure...

I looked at the anti-Keyes link. Wow! And I thought you didn't like smear tactics. Sorry to have gotten you totally wrong on that score! My apologies. How could I have so misunderstood?

> I wonder whether there will come a time when people will really be held responsible for what's happening right now...

Probably not. No one ever held Roosevelt accountable for allowing communists to run loose through the State Dept, or for consigning millions of eastern Europeans to decades of being ruled by the Soviet Union. Nobody ever held Carter responsible for making the U.S. look like the world's largest flaccid appendage. We could even yet hold Clinton accountable for a mere eight years of doing nothing to predict and avert 9/11, but why do that when George W. Bush had an entire eight months?

In short, life is poor, solitary, nasty, brutish, and short. Owen Lattimore is a hero, and people still spit on Joe McCarthy's grave. Bruno Hauptmann is still dead, Josef Stalin and Pol Pot died in bed, and I'm not feeling too good myself. There is no justice in this world.

"Only a liberal could turn a letter obviously intended to demean Mr. Kerry's record into something that could reflect poorly on Bush."

Only the Bush campaign could turn Kerry's service in Vietnam into an issue that reflects poorly on Kerry and does not reflect poorly on draft-dodger Bush who may well have been AWOL during part of his National Guard service.

Note I didn't say "a conservative". I actually thought that conservatives are decent people who would never engage in smear campaigns. I will continue to believe that the label "conservative" simply has been hijacked by the far-right, but only for a little while longer, because I haven't been finding too many conservatives who distance themselves from the smear campaigns (and I'm not just talking about Kerry here!).

"A liberal, though, will proceed to assume the worst about the entire military and the entire command structure, and hold it of little import that we actually punish such perps. Like you did here."

Like I did where?

I do not assume that the abuses were wide-spread. I have never said that - you simply assumed I would because you classified me as a liberal (which I don't really do myself, but sure, from your far-right Alan Keyes point of view there is certainly little difference between me and a liberal).

I did read, however, the Hersh article in the New Yorker which produces evidence that what happened at Abu Ghraib can't just be blamed on a few misguided individuals, but goes all the way up to the top. This cannot simply be ignored - precisely because we must not blame our soldiers for something their superiors cooked up.

And, FYI, I was in the military, too. I'm literally sick and tired of your assumptions.

Then you must not have been very good at your enlistment - or you'd know that the UCMJ says that the "working-enders" may very well be some of the only people that the blame lays with, especially because their superiors "cooked something up"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/politics/26ABUS.html?hp

"Abuse of Captives More Widespread, Says Army Survey

An Army summary of deaths and mistreatment involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan shows a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.

[...]

The Army summary is consistent with recent public statements by senior military officials, who have said the Army is actively investigating nine suspected homicides of prisoners held by Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan in late 2002.

But the details paint a broad picture of misconduct, and show that in many cases among the 37 prisoners who have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army did not conduct autopsies and says it cannot determine the causes of the deaths.

In his speech on Monday night, President Bush portrayed the abuse of prisoners by American soldiers in narrow terms. He described incidents at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which were the first and most serious to come to light, as involving actions "by a few American troops who disregarded our country and disregarded our values.""

This was on the front page of the Times this morning. Right above an article about Nicholas Berg.

But never mind. Keep believing the lies our eminently qualified CIC tells you. Keep the faith in the Pentagon's cover-up wizards. Don't let go of that warm and fuzzy feeling that it's all the big, bad "liberal" media's fault. We are "winning", after all, and if something bad happens, you'll just blame it on someone else or call it unavoidable.

> Only the Bush campaign could turn Kerry's service in Vietnam into an issue that reflects poorly on Kerry and does not reflect poorly on draft-dodger Bush....

Kerry doesn't need anyone's help for that, sad to say. He's the one who came back from Vietnam, slandered his fellow Viet vets as war criminals, and would like us all just to forget that fact. Unfortunately for Kerry, it's just too well documented.

And according to the letter that, in your words, only "expressed concerns" and wanted to see medical records, most of the vets who actually served with Kerry agree with me. But no, I suppose the evil Bush orchestrated the whole thing.

> ...who may well have been AWOL during part of his National Guard service.

Yawn. You mean, you guys haven't managed to prove that yet? Doesn't that amount to... a smear?

> I actually thought that conservatives are decent people who would never engage in smear campaigns.

You might have missed it the last couple of times I posited the notion, but it isn't a smear if it's true. C'mon, guy, admit it, you don't mind smearing, per se, one bit. You only object to my choice of targets. You seem quite comfortable in saying that Bush "may well have been AWOL". Without proof.

> I will continue to believe that the label "conservative" simply has been hijacked by the far-right, but only for a little while longer, because I haven't been finding too many conservatives who distance themselves from the smear campaigns (and I'm not just talking about Kerry here!).

The Left can dish it out but they can't take it. But I'll help you out this much: If you think Bush is a *conservative*, no wonder you have this reaction when you meet the real stuff.

>> "A liberal, though, will proceed to assume the worst about the entire military and the entire command structure, and hold it of little import that we actually punish such perps. Like you did here."

> Like I did where?

How short memory is! When I said:

>> "Kerry had testified in Congress, essentially, that American war crimes were a commonplace thing, and that the command structure looked the other way."

Then, without missing a beat, you responded:

> "You mean just like Abu Ghraib?"

If that isn't an insinuation that you think Kerry is correct that American war crimes are/were commonplace and that the command structure looks the other way, exactly what is it?

> I do not assume that the abuses were wide-spread.

Fine, I believe you, but then why the quick rejoinder to the contrary?

> (which I don't really do myself, but sure, from your far-right Alan Keyes point of view there is certainly little difference between me and a liberal).

That Alan Keyes thing is interesting, as well. Now, I don't know if some, or all, or most, or none, of the terrible things said about Keyes at that link you provided are true. But they certainly said some horrible things about him. You act like questioning Kerry's patriotism is a smear and amounts to peeing on the Holy Grail, the flag, and Mother Teresa all at the same time. But then, just as you have me believing you might be right, I'm the ogre here, you hand me a link like that. Kind sir, you don't have any objections to political hardball. You just don't like my target.

I, too, always prefer it when my opponent is bound by the Marquis of Queensbury Rules, while I get to kick, knee, elbow, gouge, and spit.

> I did read, however, the Hersh article in the New Yorker which produces evidence that what happened at Abu Ghraib can't just be blamed on a few misguided individuals, but goes all the way up to the top.

Hersh has been wrong before, he'll be wrong again. Here's two quotes to consider. The first is from Martin Peretz, a liberal who was editor in chief of the New Republic magazine, on the subject of Hersh's book on Kissinger. He wrote: "There is hardly anything [in the book] that shouldn't be suspect."

Then, in response to an attack from Hersh, Gen. Barry McCaffrey: "Hersh and his article lack integrity. That's the bottom line. He maligns the characters of 26,000 great young soldiers who conducted a 400 kilometer attack successfully, where thank god we only lost eight killed and 36 wounded... What he's doing is recycling charges that were investigated in 1991." This was in response to Hersh's charge that McCaffrey's troops fired on penned-up prisoners and Iraqi civilians who had raised a white flag during the first Gulf War.

But we sure don't like those smear artists, do we?

> I'm literally sick and tired of your assumptions.

C'mon, you can tell me: How close am I to winning you over?

Hey, Tommy, he's got you now. That's a quote he's got there from an article by the New York Times! Excuse me, I mean the unbiased, impartial, objective, unimpeachable, and absolutely chock full of integrity New York Times. But then I repeat myself. I don't know how they had the time to write so well on those prison abuses, what with all the time they spent detailing the Berg atrocity. And it's all true! Jayson Blair didn't have to make one single thing up.

Yeah Lee - I'm speechless. Stunned by the logic of "gw"? No - Can't catch my breath after hearing Mr. Gore's speech. My sides are still hurting from the laughter. He's my new favorite lefty wacko.

BTW - 'gw' Neither Lee or I have missed that when you get refuted, you simply stop responding and move on to a different topic. Wait a piece of work you are.
Busy today Lee - enjoy your punching bag.

You are a great tag team, you two. Keep cheering each other on, if that's what you need.

I got refuted - right. You mean like on that Fox News show that you don't seem to be able to remember anymore, Mr G? That must have been it, right.

I think this thread is way too long already, but let me recap for just a second.

I did make two mistakes in the discussion, I'll admit that. After easily refuting Lee's claim that the "liberal" media had only covered the Berg story for two days I cited a Google News run that produced results for Abu Ghraib vs. Berg in the ratio of 2:1. But the ratio is entirely beside the point - there is no question that the prison story warrants many more articles than the Berg story given that new material has been coming out at a constant rate in the prison story, but not the Berg story. Yet this gave Lee the opportunity to counter that in the New York Times, at least according to Google News, the ratio was more like 10:1. Boo-hoo, the "liberal" New York Times didn't cover the Berg story as much as it should have.

He also turned the Fox News poll around - several times even. First there was the rather silly misunderstanding (?) that I was using a Fox News source as an example to refute the claim the media was liberal. Then he turned the fact that the public was more upset by the Berg story than by the prisoner abuse into an argument that the liberal media does not succeed with its "ministrations" because the public at large is "immune" to them. This was patently absurd, but never mind. Then he switched words and turned "is more upset about" into "considers more important" and accused the NY Times of under-reporting this important story compared to the less important (?) Abu Ghraib story.

The second mistake was the Alan Keyes reference. I actually just looked up a relatively random link on Google - the fifth hit for "Alan Keyes" (I tried the first one first, but it doesn't work). I remember reading more about Keyes when he was running for President in 1996 (?), but I really didn't remember him well, so I mostly just wanted to refresh my memory.

But this gave Lee an excellent opportunity to whine about my smearing his favorite candidate, so therefore he should be allowed to do the same with Kerry, even though his smear campaign isn't really one since it's based on the truth. Yeah, right.

So, Mr G, how about one more snide comment from you, one more proclamation of victory, and then all is well and we can all go and celebrate our great nation-building success in Iraq?

Besides all of these conservatives, there are the freemarketers. People like Steve Hanke with his hard money solutions and Hernando de Soto with his property rights solutions and Steve Forbes with his flat tax solutions, and Jack Kemp with a mix of all these, plus dew-eyed compassion. No one in the current administration thinks he has anything to learn from these great people, who could actually help them if they were just listened to.