Politics: Onward from New Hampshire

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
So as you continue to listen to the outpouring of hindsight, just remember that people protested when Bill Clinton tried to stop bin Laden early, and remember that many of the same people today defending the invasion of Iraq roundly criticized prior action against the same country.

Someone showed me their USA Today copy, which says that the panel has criticised Bush and Clinton for sticking too long to "failed diplomacy", and not moving to "more effective military solutions".

If this is a fair reading of what the panel said, it sounds . . . naive and off-base. As your quote shows, Clinton got roundly jumped every time he tried the military option, and, well, can you imagine now that the criticism of Bush has moved to, he wasn't unilateral and warlike enough?

Hindsight is fairly useless, but so much fun.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
A "good" blog probably does that. However, "good" seems to be in the eyes of the beholder, as is "context", and "distill". I can have a lot of respect for various bloggers who come down on both sides of the political spectrum at times, but the ones who always spin and contextualize to benefit one side just don't seem valuable to me.

On your view, having a non-centrist point of view seems to equate with always spinning and contextualizing to benefit one side. There is a third alternative -- that you come by heartfelt and reasoned views leading you to stand on one side or the other of the political spectrum, but not the middle.

eta: And then's there the fourth alternative, the Broders and Gergens of the world who always to find great virtue in bipartisanship, regardless of its substance. The fact that something is centrist doesn't make it immune from spin.

And no one dissects what Rush says? Uh huh. And, he does state his sources of info, from what I've heard. But, point is, he, and they, are completely predictable - you already know which side of an argument they will come down on before they do it.

If they dissect Rush, I don't know about it, because I don't listen to him and it seems like a silly project. No one takes him seriously, right?

I have seen both Drum and Yglesias say things that I wouldn't have expected. I think they were both pro-war at the time, though maybe I have that wrong, so your demonizing of them as leftist toadies seems a little misguided.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
Someone showed me their USA Today copy, which says that the panel has criticised Bush and Clinton for sticking too long to "failed diplomacy", and not moving to "more effective military solutions".

If this is a fair reading of what the panel said, it sounds . . . naive and off-base. As your quote shows, Clinton got roundly jumped every time he tried the military option, and, well, can you imagine now that the criticism of Bush has moved to, he wasn't unilateral and warlike enough?

Hindsight is fairly useless, but so much fun.

Yeah, I don't recall anyone agitating to invade Afghanistan before mid-September of 2001. And we needed Pakistan's cooperation to get there, and couldn't have gotten that until 9/11 changed things.

[The Larry Davis Experience]

As I run out the clock on the workday I was flipping through Clarke's transcript and I thought his response to the questions about the background briefing was worth sharing:

THOMPSON: Mr. Clarke, in this background briefing, as Senator Kerrey has now described it, for the press in August of 2002, you intended to mislead the press, did you not?

THOMPSON: Why was that, Mr. Clarke? You finally resigned because you were frustrated.

CLARKE: I was, at that time, at the request of the president, preparing a national strategy to defend America's cyberspace, something which I thought then and think now is vitally important. I thought that completing that strategy was a lot more important than whether or not I had to provide emphasis in one place or other while discussing the facts on this particular news story.

The second choice one has, Governor, is whether or not to say things that are untruthful. And no one in the Bush White House asked me to say things that were untruthful, and I would not have said them.

In any event, the third choice that one has is to put the best face you can for the administration on the facts as they were, and that is what I did.

I think that is what most people in the White House in any administration do when they're asked to explain something that is embarrassing to the administration.

THOMPSON: But you will admit that what you said in August of 2002 is inconsistent with what you say in your book?

CLARKE: No, I don't think it's inconsistent at all. I think, as I said in your last round of questioning, Governor, that it's really a matter here of emphasis and tone. I mean, what you're suggesting, perhaps, is that as special assistant to the president of the United States when asked to give a press backgrounder I should spend my time in that press backgrounder criticizing him. I think that's somewhat of an unrealistic thing to expect.

THOMPSON: Well, what it suggests to me is that there is one standard of candor and morality for White House special assistants and another standard of candor and morality for the rest of America.

CLARKE: I don't think it's a question of morality at all. I think it's a question of politics.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
As I run out the clock on the workday I was flipping through Clarke's transcript and I thought his response to the questions about the background briefing was worth sharing:

Who is Thompson, and was he born yesterday or does he just think everyone else is intellectually deficient?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Yeah, I don't recall anyone agitating to invade Afghanistan before mid-September of 2001. And we needed Pakistan's cooperation to get there, and couldn't have gotten that until 9/11 changed things.

so bush couldn't have done anything?

Fact is, the President knows more than we do. Clinton should have explained why we needed to help over run Afghanistan. He explained why we had to bomb Bosnia.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
so bush couldn't have done anything?

You weren't born yesterday, so you must think we're intellectually deficient.

Fact is, the President knows more than we do.

I hope so, but I fear that he has surrounded himself with people who are not serving him well.

Clinton should have explained why we needed to help over run Afghanistan. He explained why we had to bomb Bosnia.

See the Easterbrook thing above about the flak Clinton got for lobbing cruise missiles at OBL and bombing Iraq's WMD in Operation Desert Fox. I'm sure you guys would have been jumping right on board if during that impeachment thing he'd said, time out, we need to invade Afghanistan.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
See the Easterbrook thing above about the flak Clinton got for lobbing cruise missiles at OBL and bombing Iraq's WMD in Operation Desert Fox. I'm sure you guys would have been jumping right on board if during that impeachment thing he'd said, time out, we need to invade Afghanistan.

Exactly. We had a president who made decisions based upon public opinion polls, to the extent he even voted for a welfare reform package he found repugnant.
Now we have a President who takes his case to the people to explain why we should do things. This is not a Dem/Rep. thing. Plenty of Democratic Presidents were actual leaders, its just that clinton/Gore weren't.

By the way, are any of you concerned that nfh's posts are now prior PB posts? That is not a positive reflection on our unique style.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
You weren't born yesterday, so you must think we're intellectually deficient.

well why couldn't Clinton do something when the embassies were bombed, but Bush could years later?

I hope so, but I fear that he has surrounded himself with people who are not serving him well.

I was speaking of "president" generically, you mean bush. For the sake of the United States lets hope that for the next 4 years there is no distinction.

[/QUOTE]

[Skeks in the city]

Originally posted by bilmore

The strategy of invasion finally takes the fight to the peole who promise to bring the fight to us. We should wait until their time? That's stupid. Take the damn jungle first, especially when they claim the jungle first. You want to run a reactive war? You lose. We've done that. We can just wait for the medivacs, I suppose, and claim bodycounts . . . .

Invading Iraq doesn't take the fight to the Islamists. A muscular policy of scouring Afganistan and Pakistan would have.

As for Iraq v assassinations. An aggressive policy of assassinations isn't reactive. I mean serious assassinations, equivalent to killing terrorist leaders where we find them, even if they hide among women, children and old people.

As for invading Iraq v invading Iran. You can't creditbly claim Iraq had closer ties to ANY terrorists than Iran does to Hezbollah. You also can't credibly claim Iraq was closer to nuclear weapons than Iran. Invading Iraq was stupid. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should be fired for recommending than nonsense.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by bilmore
No, I indicated that his credibility has been called into question through factual assertions from others that contradict his. For that reason, the credibility of all involved is an issue. Even his. I continue to believe that, when trying to discern who is telling the truth in these situations, you need to know the motivations behind the statements.

I was thinking about this last night.

What do you think of the credibility of Vice-President Cheney on these matters given his reported statements about Clarke and his possible motivation for making those statements?

I ask particularly regarding Cheney's statements on Rush(?) that Clarke was "out of the loop" regarding the Administration's counter-terrorism efforts prior to 9/11 and his statement that they "moved [Clarke] out of there at some point" [implicitly early enough so that Clarke had no idea what was really going on]. Those statements seem to be inconsistent with the established facts.

S_A_M

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
As I wrote in my post, I don't think he's saying that they didn't do much. He's saying they didn't do enough.

Exactly, which is consistent with Armitage's comment about Clarke before the Commission. Discussing Clarke's participation in the planning process in the first eight months of the Administration, Armitage said [slight paraphrase]:

"He was in the deputy meetings. He was impatient, and helping to move the process along well."

My point is that this chracterization of Clarke pre-9/11 is consistent with a man holding the same opinions expressed in this book and his testimony today: that the Admin. did not consider the issue _important enough_ or do as much as they could have done as early as they could have done it and as Clarke would have liked.

This is also consistent with Clarke's criticism of the relative lack of principal's meetings on al Qaeda during that period. The scheduling is a fact. Clarke says meetings at the highest level could have communicated more urgency downward and possibly gotten things done quicker and better (esp. re information sharing). Powell, et al. disagree -- say working it at deputy meetings was fine and principal meetings would have made no difference. Who can say, but this doesn't suggest that Clarke has changed his tune.

S_A_M

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

I must say that the attempt to point fingers on the blame for 9/11 strikes me as a very unproductive thing for anyone to be doing right now. I'm happy to trash Bush for what I view as mismanaging and misdirecting the war on terror in the wake of 9/11, but the blame for 9/11 must rest first with the terrorists. Yes, we didn't get them before, but we should not have any illusions that government can in all instances protect us from random violence.

This panel is striking me as heartily partisan, with the R's in particular focused on trashing anyone who criticizes the current administration. Kerrey has struck me as reasonable in those of his examinations I have seen, but most of the folks on this panel seem to be playing political games. It is a poorly composed panel.

This examination of what led to 9/11 really makes sense is to inform us on what we should be doing differently now; let's see an examination into how Bush led us into Iraq rather than who gets blamed for 9/11. That was a decision under our control.

Not the party line, I know. But just some thoughts.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
What do you think of the credibility of Vice-President Cheney on these matters given his reported statements about Clarke and his possible motivation for making those statements?

I don't know.

Rice rather resoundingly contradicted that particular assertion, and I give her a lot of credence. If Cheney has some explanation of this conflict that shows how he was speaking in some other context that leaves his statement not at odds with Rice, he should give it, but if his contribution to the debate is merely to make angry, baseless slurs, he should sit this one out.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Fact is, the President knows more than we do. Clinton should have explained why we needed to help over run Afghanistan. He explained why we had to bomb Bosnia.

Ok. Do you think that he would have had the slightest chance of pushing those policies though the Republican Congress between 1998-2000. How would Lott, Delay, Hastert, et al. have responded? Maybe Clinton should havea launched a retailiatory strike aftter the election but before the inauguration?

Instead, he stuck to trying to kill bin Laden quietly, and without the benefit of the significant technological advancement in weaponry in the past 4-6 years. That excerpt from Clarke points out -- counter to the stuff we hear from the rabid right (or event he center right nowadays) -- that the Clinton administration did more than a little against terrorism, and foiled many plots.

S_A_M