Politics: J'accuse!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Brzezinski

That was posted by Coltrane, not by me.

But it's also unlike what I'm talking about here. What has Brzezinski done since the Carter Administration? No one really cares what Myroie did for Clinton -- the point is that she's been important to the neo-cons in the last couple of years.

[sgtclub]

No, the real reason is not to end the European relationship, but to save it. And thus we must not see the current problem merely in a context of money or troops or even ingratitude, hypocrisy, and perfidy — but rather in psychological terms of dependency and its associate pathologies of enablement and passive-aggressive angst.

Precisely because we protect Europe, Europe will need ever more protecting, and will grow ever more weak. And because it will need the United States to defend it, it will ever more resent the United States. Without a real menace like the Soviet Union on its borders, Europe will find ever more outlets to vent cheaply and without consequences — at precisely the time it is most threatened by terrorists and rogue states.

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson...0404020835.asp

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
That was posted by Coltrane, not by me.

But it's also unlike what I'm talking about here. What has Brzezinski done since the Carter Administration? No one really cares what Myroie did for Clinton -- the point is that she's been important to the neo-cons in the last couple of years.

So it was, but I'm just the interpreter.

Dude, I get it on Myroie. I didn't know her history. But to say that the fact that she was an advisor to Clinton is not at all relevant is wrong. It goes to her credibility as an objective critic of Clarke's. That objectivity is obviously mitigated by what she has done since, as you have pointed out.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by sgtclub
And you've been so able to pass up cheap shots in the past?

I'm always working to improve myself. So, hey, are you proud about the stuff being very very GOP but not at all conservative?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Here's a sign that the Commission is at least trying to rise above partisan hackery. Zelikow is a Republican, and has a background with Condi Rice.

• Last Monday morning 9/11 commission executive director Philip Zelikow faxed a photograph to the White House counsel's office with a note saying that if the White House didn't allow national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify in public before the commission, the photograph would"...be all over Washington in 24 hours," Newsweek has learned. The photo, from a Nov. 22, 1945, New York Times story, showed presidential chief of staff Adm. William D. Leahy, appearing before a special congressional panel investigating the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The point was clear: The White House could no longer get away with the claim that Rice's appearance would be a profound breach of precedent.

Newsday, via TPM

eta: This is intriguing too.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
But to say that the fact that she was an advisor to Clinton is not at all relevant is wrong. It goes to her credibility as an objective critic of Clarke's.

Only if you start with (misplaced) assumption that Clarke is a partisan or a Clintonista. In which case, why do you need objective criticism at all?

The way some people use the word, anyone who disagrees with the President is ipso facto a partisan, and therefore the disagreement can be dismissed. It's just a little too cute.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
I'm always working to improve myself. So, hey, are you proud about the stuff being very very GOP but not at all conservative?

I don't care. I only support the GOP because, of the 2 major parties, it comes closest to my views.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Only if you start with (misplaced) assumption that Clarke is a partisan or a Clintonista. In which case, why do you need objective criticism at all?

The way some people use the word, anyone who disagrees with the President is ipso facto a partisan, and therefore the disagreement can be dismissed. It's just a little too cute.

I think Clarke is in it for Clarke - not to sell books, but because he has an ego problem and was not happy with his reduced roll in this admin. This is not to say that some of his critism is not valid, but many discrepencies have been pointed out in the last week, and I suspect that Rice will point out more this week.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I think Clarke is in it for Clarke - not to sell books, but because he has an ego problem and was not happy with his reduced roll in this admin. This is not to say that some of his critism is not valid, but many discrepencies have been pointed out in the last week, and I suspect that Rice will point out more this week.

Please explain. When you refer to his reduced role, do you mean that Rice forced him to meet with deputies instead of principals? He's certainly pissed about that, but moreso because it kept counterterrorism on the back burner during 2001. Or do you mean that he moved to cyberterrorism? Because his book says that he requested that move, and points out that people cycled in and out of his former job after he left.

I have yet to see a "discrepancy" that stands up on examination. Why don't you post the most damning one you can think of.

eta: This article in today's Washington Post examines the attacks on Clarke and observes that his story stands up. Indeed, unnamed White House officials apparently agree:

• The most sweeping challenge to Clarke's account has come from two Bush allies, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Fred F. Fielding, a member of the investigative panel. They have suggested that sworn testimony Clarke gave in 2002 to a joint congressional committee that probed intelligence failures was at odds with his sworn testimony last month. Frist said Clarke may have "lied under oath to the United States Congress."
  
  But the broad outline of Clarke's criticism has been corroborated by a number of other former officials, congressional and commission investigators, and by Bush's admission in the 2003 Bob Woodward book "Bush at War" that he "didn't feel that sense of urgency" about Osama bin Laden before the attacks occurred.
  
  In addition, a review of dozens of declassified citations from Clarke's 2002 testimony provides no evidence of contradiction, and White House officials familiar with the testimony agree that any differences are matters of emphasis, not fact. Indeed, the declassified 838-page report of the 2002 congressional inquiry includes many passages that appear to bolster the arguments Clarke has made.

[Not Me]

Is Bilmore on vacation or is he, like GWB from his national guard duty , AWOL?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Barry Bonds' attorney says I was wrong when I said the BALCO investigation would not target baseball players.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Dude, I get it on Mylroie. I didn't know her history. But to say that the fact that she was an advisor to Clinton is not at all relevant is wrong. It goes to her credibility as an objective critic of Clarke's. That objectivity is obviously mitigated by what she has done since, as you have pointed out.

You would need an electron microscope to detect the shit I give about Mylroie, but wasn't the quotation you gave that she was an advisor on Iraq to the 1992 Clinton campaign? If that is the extent of her participation during the Clinton era, and I'm too lazy even to Google that, how on earth does that advance her credibility or objectivity w/r/t Clarke, who was already a government official at that time, and who I'm given to understand doesn't think Iraq was a lynchpin of world terrorism, then or now?

edited to fix spelling of "Mylroie"; unnecessarily pedantic for anyone's else post, I admit -- T.S.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
You would need an electron microscope to detect the shit I give about Mylroie, but wasn't the quotation you gave that she was an advisor on Iraq to the 1992 Clinton campaign? If that is the extent of her participation during the Clinton era, and I'm too lazy even to Google that, how on earth does that advance her credibility or objectivity w/r/t Clarke, who was already a government official at that time, and who I'm given to understand doesn't think Iraq was a lynchpin of world terrorism, then or now?

edited to fix spelling of "Mylroie"; unnecessarily pedantic for anyone's else post, I admit -- T.S.

In ConservativeLand, once you establish that someone has ties to a Clinton, preferably Hillary, you can ignore the substance of what they say because it is "partisan." The corollary is that if the person says something useful to a defense of the Administration, if becomes automatically true.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
In ConservativeLand, once you establish that someone has ties to a Clinton, preferably Hillary, you can ignore the substance of what they say because it is "partisan." The corollary is that if the person says something useful to a defense of the Administration, if becomes automatically true.

How are things different in Liberaland (except of course substituting "bush" or "cheney" or "reagan" for "clinton"?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

From an article today on plans for transition to Iraqi control:

"These organizations will give Iraqis the means to defend their country against terrorists and insurgents," L. Paul Bremer said at a press conference.

I had been thinking that in this new world everyone who was against us was a terrorist, and that we'd forgotten such terms as insurgents, rebels, guerillas, revolutionaries and the like. What is the word here: are we going to start calling some of these folks "insurgents" instead, bestowing some level of legitimacy on, for example, Shi'ites using violence to advance their political goal of an Islamic fundamentalist site? After all, our friends the Kurds were "insurgents" -- are we hoping the new polity will be able to handle them, now?