Intellectually Honest
 

Way. It didn't happen overnight, and it was a long time coming.

Maybe we're talking about different things when we talk about a war on terror. I don't care as much about terrorists who aren't focused on us. Hamas, the IRA, the Tamil Tigers, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Judea -- if they don't see us as the enemy, we shouldn't spend too much time worrying about them. It's taking our eye of the ball. We need to focus on Al Qaeda and the Islamists, and that means not only killing them, but using diplomacy and the other metaphorical weapons in our arsenal to deprive them of support.

No, but Hezbollah is not exactly our biggest enemy.

Syria is a secular state which has gone after the Islamists within its own borders, hard. As I said, they were helping us before the invasion of Iraq. They support terrorists fighting Israel, which is not good, but also not the same as supporting Al Qaeda against us.

I read it. It describes a mixed bag. Things are getting better in some ways, but then there's this:

• Afghanistan has a long way to go. The writ of the central government of interim President Hamid Karzai runs only so far. Opium growing — banned by the Taliban — has resurged, sending vast quantities of heroin to Europe by way of Iran and Central Asia and making an estimated profit of $2.3 billion last year for the country's warlords. The Taliban, in loose alliance with a militia loyal to warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has reestablished itself and is harassing the U.S. military and Western aid groups working in the south and east of the country.

If the central government doesn't have authority over the provinces, and the Taliban is still out there, we have a problem.

Militarily, perhaps, although it would be nice to have (e.g.) Arab faces on the ground in Iraq, not because they shoot better, but politically. Also, intel is an important part of this war, and so we need cooperation from all over. There is a lot more to this than who has special ops forces. And don't forget Poland.

Well, whatever. When you're in the Senate, that's the way it is. You could say the same of John McCain. And you could have said the same of George W. Bush four years ago.

Intellectually Honest
 

Now and then I do learn something from folks under fire. It's a question of listening.

In case it wasn't clear, if there ever is a shift in tactics, it most certainly should be a shift as selected and executed by the military.

Intellectually Honest
 

See, I'm not thinking that someone lower than Rummy made this decision. If so, then, yeah, it's his buck. I'm thinking it was someone either at his level, or higher.

Intellectually Honest
 

This point deserves more emphasis. Our overall Arabic language skills are pretty mediocre, and the decision to fight in Iraq as well as the way the Iraqi occupation has been handled leads the Arabic countries to keep their distance. We need strong, fully committed Arab allies in the war on terror - winning it without them is far more difficult. Note that in Afghanistan, we had troops from Central Asia, Pakistan, the Caucasian states, and the Middle East (I don't believe any from the Magrheb).

Oh, and
 

I've been to Beaumont. This is not an irrational evaluation by Poe's people. Not saying NTTAWWT.

Careless?
 

It strikes me that, when your editors don't even notice that the casual pic you're running three weeks pre-election might have some . . . issues . . . you might want to send the whole department some kind of wake-up memo.

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com...lt-380x245.jpg

(From http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...scw_photo0&e=5 )

Intellectually Honest
 

I concur, sort of. The shift of emphasis was, in theory, a good idea if incomplete. It doesn't work in Iraq, obviously. However, I don't think having more conventionally trained forces would help that much. Our current forces are trained to confront an organized conventional army, not act as an occupying force, which is what is needed. Adding more of them doesn't help them much in accomplishing that (certainly not as much as many people who say "more boots on the ground" seem to think). But neither does sending fewer special forces. See: the British in Basra, who are having much more success. Basra is, admittedly, much less hostile than the areas the US is patroling, but the British also have decades of experience dealing with N. Ireland. Just another example of "fighting the last war" - one is more outdated than the other, but neither is current.

BR(insert "very special forces" joke about armored short buses here in lieu of link to the Onion)C

Jesus Christ, is that a depressing article.

For the DEMs here, I'm sure that this article buttresses the feelings and anxieties already held about Bush.

For the GOPers, I'm curious.

* Do you believe the themes mentioned in the article to be accurate? If not, why?

* If you do, do you consider them unimportant? Of not, why?

* If you do, how do you hope to resolve the situation in the event of a Bush victory? Won't a victory simply tell the Bushies that they were right all along, and embolden them further on their domestic agenda?

If you favor the more moderate, fiscal-conservative wing of the GOP, how do you anticipate them "winning" the intraparty civil war that others are predicting? Accumulating evidence suggests that any appeals to the WH to listen to, or explain, inconvenient facts will be less than successful.

Intellectually Honest
 

Actually, I'd say our current forces are trained to confront either an organized conventional or an organized unconventional force, and your point is another reason for emphasizing an international approach. I think we are not fully trained for either occupying territory or confronting disorganized unconventional sources (as we see in Fallujah).

So, some help from (I know I'll get grief on this one) the French, Italians, or some less developed countries with more of this training would be useful. Ironically, this includes troops we have trained for this kind of work, using the limited numbers of troops we have trained as teachers.

From Geraghty:

Blogger Wizbang notes that John Kerry's latest attack on Bush, charging that the President has admitted he would "privatize" Social Security, is based on some shoddy New York Times reporting. (I can hear the jokes now — "is there any other kind?")

Suskind did not attend the event he got the quote from. Further, it was not televised, it was a private event and there were no transcripts available. Yet he reports the quote as fact.
Suskind does not explain how he got the controversial quote so accurate but does say about an earlier quote "According to notes provided to me, and according to several guests at the lunch who agreed to speak..."

So Suskind got "notes provided to him" and that was good enough to run such an important quote. I hope Bill Burkett was not the source. Is this what passes for reporting at the Times today?

The Kerry/Edwards/NYTimes campaign has decided they can't convince voters with ringing endorsements so they'll scare old people to death.

For their part, the Bush campaign is denying the quote and some even claimed Suskind made the quote up from whole cloth. In the end, it is of little use, the media is running wild with the story, facts be damned.

— Oh, and who is Ron Suskind that the New York Times is having write a 10 (web) page story on Bush just days before the election? He is the author of "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill.''"

What do you think the odds are that the NY Times would let John O'Neill write a piece on John Kerry next Sunday?

Update: Jim Kouri is working this story for Wizbang and he has been in contact with Fox News who has questioned the Kerry camp. So far, Kerry is saying "Hey, it was in the NY Times". (paraphrased of course)

Well, OK, but I'm not really focusing on the SocSec quote. That's a specific policy issue about which, I am sure, there will be vigorous debate before anything is done. (And, frankly, Bush has been quote upfront about his plans for SocSec reform, so I don't understand why this quote is supposedly so revealing).

I'm thinking more about the broader question of how this Administration governs

Suskind makes the point, in a variety of ways, that Bush's inner circle is among the smallest and tightest in recent history, and that it is particularly resistant to any departures from its orthodoxy.

Given that many here have expressed significant misgivings about people populating the inner circle, how would you be encouraged by a Bush re-election? We would get the benefit of Bush scratching his balls every morning and deciding how to kill more terrorists (and some have exclaimed that this is the sole but necessary benefit of a second GWB admin), but what are the prospects for changing ANYTHING else about Bush II redux?

My understanding is that the Bai article, "Kerry's Undeclared War" (11 web pages) from last week's magazine section was a companion piece to the Suskind article. Certainly the GOP (and GOP leaning members of this board) used a lot of quotes from the article as ammunition against Kerry.

ETA:

To wit,

Intellectually Honest
 

I'm not sure. I think the Brits are sort of unique in this. There aren't that many of our "allies" (or Atlantic allies, to translate Kerry-speak) who still have troops with significant experience in colonial occupation (which is, let's be frank, what we are talking about, though we may hope it is not as long term as that characterization would imply), though some have decent urban pacification experience from Bosnia, etc. This isn't some peace-keeping bullshit.

Now, if the Russians approve sending troops (as they have been freaking out the French by openly considering), that will be helpful. Until the US is considered responsible for their methods, at least. Turkey would also probably have some relevant experience, but their participation is politically impossible for the obvious reasons.

1). I think the themes are probably accurate to a point - W is clearly decisive, brusque, faith-and-gut-driven, secretive - but I suspect that Suskind has spun them far beyond where they stop. I can see a more sympathetic author spinning those same themes in a very appealing way.

2). I consider the bases of W's personality important, of course. As to Suskind's interpretations of those bases, I have to put them into context of who Suskind is, what he's written in the past, who he's quoting (and who he's NOT quoting - he's got an awful lot of unattributed comments in there that we're just supposed to accept, and the information I'm hearing is that some of them, at least, are VERY questionable), and how he's spun what people did say. (Bartlett has come out and said that Suskind has taken, not an interview situation, but three or four months of conversations, and left out all of the moderating things Bartlett said that accompanied the stuff Suskind chose to quote that should have left a much less harsh impression.)

So, I consider Suskind's conclusions to be more than a bit suspect.

3). I see little evidence that the main fears suggested by Suskind would be a problem. I think he simply builds a caricature out of themes and traits that we all know about already. Bush ain't the most introspective, coalition-building guy in the world. Surprise.

Well, no. Not "to death"; they want their votes!

Ba-dum-bum.