Reporters Don't Like Howard Dean.
Holger Dansk
Dean's got the mo and the dough. That was the common wisdom. But it has
changed. There's a story now. The new common wisdom is that Mr. Dean is
no longer the lead car in the race, that he's hit an oil spot and is
spinning, maybe losing control.
I am a conservative and do not hope for a Democratic victory, but I do
hope for a Democratic fight, and I think Mr. Dean would lose in a rout.
He seems too odd, too politically immature and too essentially
ungrounded to be president. So the new storyline is in my view good
news...
...it's hard to avoid the thought that reporters don't really like Mr.
Dean...
...This is not a shock. He seems as unlovable (unless you're a Deaniac)
as he is improbable. But I suspect there's something else at work. I
wonder if mainstream media aren't trying to save the Democratic Party
from Mr. Dean. They know he's not a likely winner down the road. Boomer
reporters who've been through the Clinton experience have sharp eyes. I
suspect they're put off by Mr. Dean's Clintonian aspects, such as his
tendency to dissemble. They're pushing Gephardt and Edwards and even
Kerry. They may push Wesley Clark. But they're not pushing Dean...
...Someone said of Mr. Gephardt recently that he always looks like he
has a fever. I laughed when I heard this because it's true. But he also
looks like a man who's calm, stable, mature and experienced. Mr. Kerry
continues to look like a sad tree, which is a challenge because his face
and demeanor are at odds with his message and determination. But he too
is mature and experienced. They've both been through a life in
major-league politics--they've been through the shakedown cruise,
they've been frisked and fisked. As for Mr. Edwards, he is distinguished
by a certain cheerful cool and discipline, He's positive, he doesn't get
down in the muck, and somehow in pictures he's always looking up, unlike
Mr. Dean, who somehow is always looking down from a stage. True, no
one's tried to kill Mr. Edwards yet, which would account for some of his
cheeriness, but he does seem to have the right happy-warrior
disposition. Any of these three could give George W. Bush a run for his
money. (Mr. Clark, I'm afraid, seems even stranger than Mr. Dean. We'll
talk about him soon.)...
...This is a real generational fight within the Democratic Party, those
with years versus those with youth. The old versus the young. Every time
I've seen a political war between old and young--between the liberal
mandarins of the Republican party and the young conservatives, and then
between the old right and the new right--I've been with the young. But
this time I see wisdom in the older, middle-class and blue-collar
Democrats who are wiping the mud off their boots before walking into the
Gephardt fundraiser...
...Mr. Dean's people are proudly antiestablishment. For them it's the
Pussyfooting Party Powers versus an Unformed But Rising Mass. If the
Democratic establishment reasserts itself in Iowa, many
pundits--including me--will have to eat the words they've been speaking
the past few months. Dean was not inevitable. In my case, never will
words be eaten so happily...
Excerpts from Peggy Noonan's column in The Wall Street Journal.
Thursday, January 15, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
Holger
Marty Feldman
> ...Just a month ago it was easy for pundits: Howard Dean's in the lead,
> Dean's got the mo and the dough. That was the common wisdom. But it has
> changed. There's a story now. The new common wisdom is that Mr. Dean is
> no longer the lead car in the race, that he's hit an oil spot and is
> spinning, maybe losing control.
> I am a conservative and do not hope for a Democratic victory, but I do
> hope for a Democratic fight, and I think Mr. Dean would lose in a rout.
what bullshit. republicans will always want to knock out the best
candidate early...because they want bush to win reelection. another
thing about these dean hating pundits and journalists: not a single
one could've accomplished what dean accomplished, to go from nowhere
to frontrunner with the most money and most supporters. every one of
them would've ended up like ariana huffington in the california race,
because so many of them are just chattering mouths with very little
practical experience or responsibilities in the real world, and have
no concept of what dean had to risk, and overcome. what dean has
managed to achieve, before they felled him with trivial criticisms
picked up by a trivial minded audience, is extremely unusual. you
don't just fall out of bed and become frontrunner; not one man in a
million has the leadership skills to pull off something like that.
out of thousands, dean picked out trippi; out of thousands of options
trippi recommended the internet; out of thousands of recommendations
dean went ahead with it, and so on. you can't just explain away what
dean achieved with...oh yeah, anti-war + internet = voila...success in
any field of endeavor is the ACCUMULATION of hundreds of decisions
every day, day after day. media types like noonan are too shallow to
ever understand that.
as for the others like kerry and edwards? it's not that they have
hope and optimisim, and dean and gephardt didn't. anyone who's
followed the campaign knows the reason -- it's the media (the pro-war
segment in particular) that was visciously negative about dean's
negativity (they kept focusing about dean's "anger"). so is the
message that optimism works? bullshit again. the message is that the
media's negativity, even if about superficiality, works like a charm.
the thing is, they don't even realize it themselves, because like
their audience, they rarely self-reflect and develop their skills. do
they realize they were too shallow in their analysis about bush and
failed to spot 1) bush's ignorance and vulnerability to 2) cheney and
rumsfeld's deep rooted radicalism during the 2000 race? no way. they
were too busy bitching about the re-invention of al gore or some other
nonsense. similarily, it's just as shallow to think the fight against
bush will be about optimism. karl rove will try to rip out the dem
nominee's throat and when that happens, the candidate's hope and
optimism message will go out the window. the only way to win against
bush is to go after his political jugular, like dean has done. if
dems run on hope and optimism, like every other campaign in the past,
dems will not win. this is why tom delay and noonan are so dead set
against a dean nomination.
in a way, i'm not so sure having bush win will be all that bad. i
sincerely think bush's deficit policies and foreign policies are
insane down to the bone. iraq is a quagmire that's inching closer to
civil war every day. i truly believe it, and it will be impossible to
turn it around in the near future. iowans don't have a clue about
that, but perhaps they will in 2008.
Mike Walton
$40 million, and the average donation, it is frequently pointed out,
is well under $100. The zeal to create the impression that everybody
except Howard Dean is influenced by special interests, is absolutely
preposterous. Special interest groups are not morons, they use the
Internet to direct money to the candidate of their choice, and they
are better at it than anybody else because they let their money do all
the talking. The claim that the people who are funding Dean's campaign
do not expect anything in return, is an obscene fraud. Howard Dean's
entire campaign is based on well orchestrated lies, distortions and
deceptions and they are clearly too deliberate to fail to betray the
pattern and the conduct of lobbyists who spend millions of dollars, to
distort the truth. The claim that Howard Dean's campaign is driven by
grass-root supporters is clearly a desperate fraud, and the
exhuberant enthusiasm of those who have taken the bait, is based on
the failure to recognize the real Howard Dean.
According to popular misconception, Howard Dean has used the Internet
to prove that the Republican and Democratic parties are no longer the
most effective ways to organize like-minded people to achieve
political ends. Clearly, the suggestion that Howard Dean has
singlehandedly upstaged the Democratic Party is the wet dream of
crafty political operatives who have generated the perception that
Howard Dean is essentially a third-party candidate who has used
Internet technology to achieve a takeover of the Democratic Party. But
perception is not reality. Like Richard Nixon, who collected million
dollar, cash donations in brown paper bags to bribe eyewitnesses who
were in a position to expose corruption, Howard Dean should not brag
about the size of his war chest, because if all of his fans are
corect, then the Internet has the power to take away that which it has
so generously granted --the false perception that Howard Dean is John
Kerry and John Edwards, rolled into a single candidate. Howard Dean
claims that he is the only distinct candidate when John Edwards is the
only Democratic candidate who has not spend his entire adult life in
politics and John Kerry is the Democrat with the progressive record
that Howard Dean is trying to hijack, through his so called ability to
upstage the Democratic party.
The media loves to promote the wonderful delusion that Howard Dean has
used the Internet to create his own party, his own hierarchy, his own
lists, his own money, and his own organization, but that does not make
any sense at all, Indeed, if that were true, Howard Dean would not
even need the Democratic Party, he could simply use all his so called
Internet resources to run as an Independent.
Howard Dean is on his way out because he has used the resume of
Senator John Kerry to create the false perception that he deserves to
be the Democratic front-runner, and that is clearly counterrproductive
because a hostile takeover demands more complicity than Howard Dean
has managed to secure. Gore and Bradley are not enough.
Make no mistake about it, the Internet is not Dr. Frankenstein. The
Republican and the Democratic parties still dominate and the Internet
is merely the docile recipient of Republican and Democratic resources.
If the Republicans, who are always obsessed by the effort to control
the media, think that Dean's hostile takeover of the Democratic party
will enhance George Bush's re-election prospects, they are correct. If
they have filled Dean's head with the fantasy that he can use the
Internet to subvert the will of the entire Democratic party, the
arrogance is understood. But a democracy is not about creating your
own party, it's about joining or leading the party, and Howard Dean is
not even a player, in either capacity.
While governor of Vermont, Howard Dean accepted personal pay from
special interests at least five times for speeches and also received
at least $60,000 in checks and pledges from insurers who benefited
from a state tax break,
In 1993, the two insurers sent the governor a gift, described only as
a "package" after Dean met with them to discuss a bill that would
provide new tax breaks and Dean signed the bill into law later that
year. Is this the guy who uses the Internet, to by-pass special
interest groups, or are special interest groups financing dean's
campaign?
Holger Dansk
wrote:
>in a way, i'm not so sure having bush win will be all that bad. i
>sincerely think bush's deficit policies and foreign policies are
>insane down to the bone.
What about the stock market and the economy? Wow! What a turnaround!
So you don't like it because we decided to get rid of Saddam? Thank God
we had a president who did believe in getting rid of him. People like
Dean and Gore would still be sitting on their ass waiting for the UN (a
barbaric organization with members who still stone people to death and
cut off their hands if they steal) to approve of it. In fact, we may
have already have been nuked by now.
>iraq is a quagmire that's inching closer to
>civil war every day.
The dictionary defines a quagmire as, "a difficult situation from which
it is hard to escape". Bush never thought that getting Iraq fixed would
be easy.
If we succeed in Iraq, and that nation is a Democratic republic, it will
be one of the noblest things we have ever done in the history of the
United States.
Theodore Roosevelt put it best when he said:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the
strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them
better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly;
who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great
enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and
who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so
that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither
victory or defeat."
...Late polls show a bottleneck among top Democratic candidates, with
Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt and Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and
John Edwards of North Carolina gaining rapidly while Mr. Dean has been
flat.
In the campaign's final days, Mr. Dean has been returning to the fierce
rhetoric that first propelled his underdog bid last year, loudly hitting
antiwar, anti-Bush and anti-Washington themes and attacking by name his
main rivals who voted with the president on the Iraq war, big tax cuts
and education mandates...
Wall Street Journal 1/19/04
You don't ever accomplish anything by just criticizing everything. Dean
must stop that and make some positive proposals about what he wants to
do. What does he like? What does he believe in and what are his hopes?
I don't think he knows. If he does then, by God, it's time he told the
people about them.
Holger
Marty Feldman
> On 18 Jan 2004 19:56:54 -0800, n2the...@aol.com (Marty Feldman)
> wrote:
>
> >in a way, i'm not so sure having bush win will be all that bad. i
> >sincerely think bush's deficit policies and foreign policies are
> >insane down to the bone.
>
> What about the stock market and the economy? Wow! What a turnaround!
jobless recovery, but looming problem is the deficit and its effect on
interest rates, including the dollar.
>
> So you don't like it because we decided to get rid of Saddam?
getting saddam under false WMD justifications made america more hated,
and undermined getting bin laden and al qaeda as shown by the 3 week
orange threat level recently.
Thank God
> we had a president who did believe in getting rid of him. People like
> Dean and Gore would still be sitting on their ass waiting for the UN (a
> barbaric organization with members who still stone people to death and
> cut off their hands if they steal) to approve of it. In fact, we may
> have already have been nuked by now.
there are no WMDs in iraq. endless UN inspections for WMDs that do
not exist is preferrable to 500 dead and $150 billion with no end in
sight.
>
> >iraq is a quagmire that's inching closer to
> >civil war every day.
>
> The dictionary defines a quagmire as, "a difficult situation from which
> it is hard to escape". Bush never thought that getting Iraq fixed would
> be easy.
no, he did, which is why we had the "mission accomplished"
extravaganza. the gloating on the carrier proves the bush admin was
very optimistic about post-war iraq. later on, when saddam was
captured, there was no carrier in sight and that event was much more
subdued. by that time, their optimism had nearly vaporized.
>
> If we succeed in Iraq, and that nation is a Democratic republic, it will
> be one of the noblest things we have ever done in the history of the
> United States.
great. i would've preferred we invaded afghanistan and saudi arabia
at the same time, since 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were from saudi
arabia, and really nail the al qaeda threat before moving on to
nation-building the middle east.
>
> Theodore Roosevelt put it best when he said:
>
> "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the
> strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them
> better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
> whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly;
> who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great
> enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;
> who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and
> who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so
> that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither
> victory or defeat."
>
> ...Late polls show a bottleneck among top Democratic candidates, with
> Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt and Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and
> John Edwards of North Carolina gaining rapidly while Mr. Dean has been
> flat.
>
> In the campaign's final days, Mr. Dean has been returning to the fierce
> rhetoric that first propelled his underdog bid last year, loudly hitting
> antiwar, anti-Bush and anti-Washington themes and attacking by name his
> main rivals who voted with the president on the Iraq war, big tax cuts
> and education mandates...
>
> Wall Street Journal 1/19/04
>
> You don't ever accomplish anything by just criticizing everything. Dean
> must stop that and make some positive proposals about what he wants to
> do. What does he like? What does he believe in and what are his hopes?
fox news and rush became no. 1 by constantly, and i mean constantly,
bashing dems day after day.
Holger Dansk
wrote:
>Holger Dansk <hol...@mindspring.com> wrote in message news:<aoen00tq5so987nkr...@4ax.com>...
>> On 18 Jan 2004 19:56:54 -0800, n2the...@aol.com (Marty Feldman)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >in a way, i'm not so sure having bush win will be all that bad. i
>> >sincerely think bush's deficit policies and foreign policies are
>> >insane down to the bone.
>>
>> What about the stock market and the economy? Wow! What a turnaround!
>
>jobless recovery, but looming problem is the deficit and its effect on
>interest rates, including the dollar.
>
Jobs have improved some. Jobs are always the last things to come back
in a recession.
>> So you don't like it because we decided to get rid of Saddam?
>
>getting saddam under false WMD justifications made america more hated,
>and undermined getting bin laden and al qaeda as shown by the 3 week
>orange threat level recently.
The WMD thing is laughable. Who gives a damn about that? There's no
doubt that Iraq had them. He even gased his own people, the Kurds. It
was just going to be a matter of time before they got a nuclear bomb.
>
> Thank God
>> we had a president who did believe in getting rid of him. People like
>> Dean and Gore would still be sitting on their ass waiting for the UN (a
>> barbaric organization with members who still stone people to death and
>> cut off their hands if they steal) to approve of it. In fact, we may
>> have already have been nuked by now.
>
>there are no WMDs in iraq. endless UN inspections for WMDs that do
>not exist is preferrable to 500 dead and $150 billion with no end in
>sight.
>
Oh, come on. We have about 150,000 soldiers over there. Lots of them
have died because of just accidents. There were 267 people murdered in
New York City last year and 217 people murdered in Phoenix, AZ, not
counting the people in the rest of those states. You think we should
pull out of Phoenix and New York?
>>
>> >iraq is a quagmire that's inching closer to
>> >civil war every day.
>>
>> The dictionary defines a quagmire as, "a difficult situation from which
>> it is hard to escape". Bush never thought that getting Iraq fixed would
>> be easy.
>
>no, he did, which is why we had the "mission accomplished"
>extravaganza. the gloating on the carrier proves the bush admin was
>very optimistic about post-war iraq. later on, when saddam was
>captured, there was no carrier in sight and that event was much more
>subdued. by that time, their optimism had nearly vaporized.
The "mission accomplished" on the carrier meant that we had taken over
in Iraq and Saddam's regime no longer existed. We are still optimistic
about Iraq.
>
>> If we succeed in Iraq, and that nation is a Democratic republic, it will
>> be one of the noblest things we have ever done in the history of the
>> United States.
>
>great. i would've preferred we invaded afghanistan and saudi arabia
>at the same time, since 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were from saudi
>arabia, and really nail the al qaeda threat before moving on to
>nation-building the middle east.
Iran and Syria are next, and, hopefully, we will not have to use any
force in either country. We want to find out exactly what's going on
down south of Tehran.
>
We will get some answers from Saudi Arabia and you better believe, they
know it.
They are some of the only ones who tell the truth about the Democrats.
Marty Feldman
> On 19 Jan 2004 13:10:46 -0800, n2the...@aol.com (Marty Feldman)
> wrote:
>
> >Holger Dansk <hol...@mindspring.com> wrote in message news:<aoen00tq5so987nkr...@4ax.com>...
> >> On 18 Jan 2004 19:56:54 -0800, n2the...@aol.com (Marty Feldman)
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >in a way, i'm not so sure having bush win will be all that bad. i
> >> >sincerely think bush's deficit policies and foreign policies are
> >> >insane down to the bone.
> >>
> >> What about the stock market and the economy? Wow! What a turnaround!
> >
> >jobless recovery, but looming problem is the deficit and its effect on
> >interest rates, including the dollar.
> >
> Jobs have improved some.
that's right, and there's a difference between, "jobs have improved
some." and "wow! what a turnaround!".
Jobs are always the last things to come back
> in a recession.
>
> >> So you don't like it because we decided to get rid of Saddam?
> >
> >getting saddam under false WMD justifications made america more hated,
> >and undermined getting bin laden and al qaeda as shown by the 3 week
> >orange threat level recently.
>
> The WMD thing is laughable. Who gives a damn about that?
china for one, as it relates to the ongoing crisis in the koreas. the
preemptive doctrine is now laughable:
Arms Issue Seen as Hurting U.S. Credibility Abroad
Mon Jan 19, 1:51 PM ET Add Top Stories - washingtonpost.com to My
Yahoo!
The Washington Post
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer
The Bush administration's inability to find weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq (news - web sites) -- after public statements
declaring an imminent threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
(news - web sites) -- has begun to harm the credibility abroad of the
United States and of American intelligence, according to foreign
policy experts in both parties.
In last year's State of the Union address, President Bush (news - web
sites) used stark imagery to make the case that military action was
necessary. Among other claims, Bush said that Hussein had enough
anthrax to "kill several million people," enough botulinum toxin to
"subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure" and
enough chemical agents to "kill untold thousands."
Now, as the president prepares for this State of the Union address
Tuesday, those frightening images of death and destruction have been
replaced by a different reality: Few of the many claims made by the
administration have been confirmed after months of searching by
weapons inspectors.
Within the United States, Bush does not appear to have suffered much
political damage from the failure to find weapons, with polls showing
high ratings for his handling of the war and little concern that he
misrepresented the threat.
But a range of foreign policy experts, including supporters of the
war, said the long-term consequences of the administration's rhetoric
could be severe overseas -- especially because the war was waged
without the backing of the United Nations (news - web sites) and was
opposed by large majorities, even in countries run by leaders that
supported the invasion.
"The foreign policy blow-back is pretty serious," said Kenneth
Adelman, a member of the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s Defense
Advisory Board and a supporter of the war. He said the gaps between
the administration's rhetoric and the postwar findings threaten Bush's
doctrine of "preemption," which envisions attacking a nation because
it is an imminent threat.
The doctrine "rests not just on solid intelligence," Adelman said, but
"also on the credibility that the intelligence is solid."
Already, in the crisis over North Korea (news - web sites)'s nuclear
ambitions, China has rejected U.S. intelligence that North Korea has a
secret program to enrich uranium for use in weapons. China is a key
player in resolving the North Korean standoff, but its refusal to
embrace the U.S. intelligence has disappointed U.S. officials and
could complicate negotiations to eliminate North Korea's weapons
programs.
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the
same problem could occur if the United States presses for action
against alleged weapons programs in Iran and Syria. The solution, he
said, is to let international organizations such as the International
Atomic Energy Agency take the lead in making the case, as has happened
thus far in Iran, and also to be willing to share more of the
intelligence with other countries.
The inability to find suspected weapons "has to make it more difficult
on some future occasion if the United States argues the intelligence
warrants something controversial, like a preventive attack," said
Haass, a Republican who was head of policy planning for Secretary of
State Colin L. Powell when the war started. "The result is we've made
the bar higher for ourselves and we have to expect greater skepticism
in the future."
James Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton
administration who believed there were legitimate concerns about
Iraq's weapons programs, said the failure of the prewar claims to
match the postwar reality "add to the general sense of criticism about
the U.S., that we will do anything, say anything" to prevail.
Indeed, whenever Powell grants interviews to foreign news
organizations, he is often hit with a question about the search for
weapons of mass destruction. Last Friday, a British TV reporter asked
whether in retirement he would "admit that you had concerns about
invading Iraq," and a Dutch reporter asked whether he ever had doubts
about the Iraq policy.
"There's no doubt in my mind that he had the intention, he had the
capability," Powell responded. "How many weapons he had or didn't
have, that will be determined."
Some on Capitol Hill believe the issue is so important that they are
pressing the president to address the apparent intelligence failure in
the State of the Union address and propose ways to fix it.
"I believe that unanswered questions regarding the accuracy and
reliability of U.S. intelligence have created a credibility gap and
left the nation in a precarious position," Rep. Jane Harman (news,
bio, voting record) (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a speech last week. "The
intelligence community seems to be in a state of denial, and the
administration seems to have moved on."
Since last year's State of the Union, the White House has established
procedures for handling intelligence in presidential speeches by
including a CIA (news - web sites) officer in the speechwriting
process. The CIA is also conducting an internal review, comparing
prewar estimates with postwar findings, and the final report will be
finished after inspectors in Iraq complete their work.
But Bush and his aides have largely sought to divert attention from
the issue. White House aides have said they expect this year's State
of the Union speech to look ahead -- to the democracy the
administration hopes to establish in Iraq -- rather than look back.
Officials also have turned the focus to celebrating Hussein's capture
last month and repeatedly drawing attention to Hussein's mistreatment
of his people. Officials have argued that if Iraq's stocks of weapons
are still unclear, Hussein's intentions to again possess such weapons
are not. Thirteen years ago, when the United States was a backer of
Hussein, Iraq used chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war.
The administration "rid the Iraqi people of a murderous dictator, and
rid the world of a menace to our future peace and security," Vice
President Cheney said in a speech last week. Cheney -- and other U.S.
officials -- increasingly point to Libya's decision last month to give
up its weapons of mass destruction as a direct consequence of
challenging Iraq.
Bush, when asked by ABC's Diane Sawyer why he said Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction when intelligence pointed more to the possibility
Hussein would obtain such weapons, dismissed the question: "So, what's
the difference?"
The U.S. team searching for Iraq's weapons has not issued a report
since October, but in recent weeks the gap between administration
claims and Iraq's actual weapons holdings has become increasingly
clear. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that U.S.
investigators have found no evidence that Iraq had a hidden cache of
old chemical or biological weapons, and that its nuclear program had
been shattered after the 1991 Persian Gulf War (news - web sites). A
lengthy study issued by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
also concluded the administration shifted the intelligence consensus
on Iraq's weapons in 2002 as officials prepared for war, making it
appear more imminent and threatening than was warranted by the
evidence.
The report further said that the administration "systematically
misrepresented the threat" posed by Iraq, often on purpose, in four
ways: one, treating nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as a
single threat, although each posed different dangers and evidence was
particularly thin on Iraq's nuclear and chemical programs; two,
insisting without evidence that Hussein would give his weapons to
terrorists; three, often dropping caveats and uncertainties contained
in the intelligence assessments when making public statements; and
four, misrepresenting inspectors' findings so that minor threats were
depicted as emergencies.
Jessica T. Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment and co-author
of the report, pointed to one example in a speech delivered by Bush in
Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002. U.N. inspectors had noted that Iraq had
failed to account for bacterial growth media that, if used, "could
have produced about three times as much" anthrax as Iraq had admitted.
But Bush, in his speech, turned a theoretical possibility into a fact.
"The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely produced two
to four times that amount," Bush said. "This is a massive stockpile of
biological weapons that has never been accounted for and is capable of
killing millions."
Mathews said her research showed the administration repeatedly and
frequently took such liberties with the intelligence and inspectors'
findings to bolster its cases for immediate action. In the Cincinnati
example, "in 35 words, you go from probably to a likelihood to a
fact," she said. "With a few little changes in wording, you turn an
'if' into a dire biological weapons stockpile. Anyone hearing that
must be thinking, 'My God, this is an imminent threat.' "
Steinberg, who was privy to the intelligence before President Bill
Clinton (news - web sites) left office, said that while at the
National Security Council he saw no evidence Iraq had reconstituted
its nuclear weapons program, but that there were unresolved questions
about Hussein's chemical and biological weapons programs. "Given his
reluctance to address these questions, you had to conclude he was
hiding something," he said, adding that given the intelligence he saw,
"I certainly expected something would have turned up."
"I think there are [diplomatic] consequences as a result of the
president asking these questions [about Iraq's weapons holdings] and
the answer being no" weapons, said Danielle Pletka, vice president for
foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise
Institute, who believes the ouster of Hussein justified the war. "The
intelligence could have been better."
Richard Perle, another member of the Defense Advisory Board, said the
criticism of the Bush administration is unfair. "Intelligence is not
an audit," he said. "It's the best information you can get in
circumstances of uncertainty, and you use it to make the best prudent
judgment you can."
He added that presidents in particular tend not to place qualifiers on
their statements, especially when they are advocating a particular
policy. "Public officials tend to avoid hedging," he said.
Given the stakes involved -- going to war -- Mathews said the
standards must be higher for such statements. "The most important call
a president can make by a mile is whether to take a country to war,"
she argued, making the consequences of unwise decisions or misleading
statements even greater.
Indeed, she said, the reverberations are still being felt, even as the
administration tries to put the problem behind it. A recent CBS poll
found that only 16 percent of those surveyed believed the
administration lied about Iraq's weapons. But she said there is
intense interest in the report's findings, with 35,000 copies
downloaded from the think tank's Web site in just five days. "It is
too soon to say there was no cost" to the failure to find weapons, she
said. "I think there is a huge appetite for learning about this."
There's no
> doubt that Iraq had them. He even gased his own people, the Kurds. It
> was just going to be a matter of time before they got a nuclear bomb.
> >
> > Thank God
> >> we had a president who did believe in getting rid of him. People like
> >> Dean and Gore would still be sitting on their ass waiting for the UN (a
> >> barbaric organization with members who still stone people to death and
> >> cut off their hands if they steal) to approve of it. In fact, we may
> >> have already have been nuked by now.
> >
> >there are no WMDs in iraq. endless UN inspections for WMDs that do
> >not exist is preferrable to 500 dead and $150 billion with no end in
> >sight.
> >
> Oh, come on. We have about 150,000 soldiers over there. Lots of them
> have died because of just accidents. There were 267 people murdered in
> New York City last year and 217 people murdered in Phoenix, AZ, not
> counting the people in the rest of those states. You think we should
> pull out of Phoenix and New York?
yeah, but notice how the subject has changed from "in fact, we may
have already been nuked by now.", to my reply about lack of WMDs, to
your reply about everyday deaths here in the US. very bush like.
very republican.
> >>
> >> >iraq is a quagmire that's inching closer to
> >> >civil war every day.
> >>
> >> The dictionary defines a quagmire as, "a difficult situation from which
> >> it is hard to escape". Bush never thought that getting Iraq fixed would
> >> be easy.
> >
> >no, he did, which is why we had the "mission accomplished"
> >extravaganza. the gloating on the carrier proves the bush admin was
> >very optimistic about post-war iraq. later on, when saddam was
> >captured, there was no carrier in sight and that event was much more
> >subdued. by that time, their optimism had nearly vaporized.
>
> The "mission accomplished" on the carrier meant that we had taken over
> in Iraq and Saddam's regime no longer existed. We are still optimistic
> about Iraq.
like i said, no carrier in sight after saddam's capture. those two
responses should've been reversed: no MISSION ACCOMPLISHED carrier on
may 1, but they should've had one after saddam's capture. we may yet
see MISSION ACCOMPLISHED 2.0 in the state of the union speech,
however.
but they did become no. 1 by doing that, not by telling the truth, but
by bashing dems.
Holger Dansk
wrote:
>But a range of foreign policy experts, including supporters of the
>war, said the long-term consequences of the administration's rhetoric
>could be severe overseas -- especially because the war was waged
>without the backing of the United Nations (news - web sites) and was
>opposed by large majorities, even in countries run by leaders that
>supported the invasion.
Although it would be nice to have world approval, we were not trying to
get the permission of the world to attack Iraq. We did not require the
permission of the American people. However, it would be nice if the
people approved.
You mentioned evidence of those silly WMD. We have plenty of evidence.
Thousands of Kurds killed with poison gas, and a great many pictures of
other weapons, many of which were shown on national network TV.
Now, get this straight please. We do not and probably will never
require the permission of the UN to go to war against any country. Not
as long as we have a President like Bush who will take any necessary
action which he deems necessary to protect our people from the
terrorists. Of course, there are Democrats who would prefer to hide
under the bed until the UN and all of the rest of the world approves of
what we do, and in the meantime we would probably get blown to
smithereens.
It was not at all necessary to find WMD and display them in some museum
for all to see in order to go to war with Iraq. There were 17
resolutions that were breached by Iraq over a period of 12 years.
Saddam just ignored them. Twelve years was too damn long to wait. We
should have attacked long ago.
We are not worried about China. Among other things, they are making
lots of furniture and clothing now, and they sell it to the people of
America, and they love our money that they receive for it. China and
the United States can take care of Korea.
Don't misunderstand me. We want to be liked by other countries. But,
Buddyroe, don't mess with the safety of our people. Let's just hope we
can keep people like Gore and Hildebeast and other Democrats under the
bed where they belong.
Holger
Gary James
<hol...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>...Just a month ago it was easy for pundits: Howard Dean's in the lead,
>Dean's got the mo and the dough. That was the common wisdom. But it has
>changed. There's a story now. The new common wisdom is that Mr. Dean is
>no longer the lead car in the race, that he's hit an oil spot and is
>spinning, maybe losing control.
>I am a conservative and do not hope for a Democratic victory, but I do
>hope for a Democratic fight, and I think Mr. Dean would lose in a rout.
>He seems too odd, too politically immature and too essentially
>ungrounded to be president. So the new storyline is in my view good
>news...
>
>...it's hard to avoid the thought that reporters don't really like Mr.
>Dean...
I really don't think they care. But if Dean were to sew the
nomination up in a couple of weeks like it looked as though he might
do, then the goof balls and talking heads on Cable TV would have to
hustle and get another story to cover for the next five months. And
most other stories would cost more money and require more intelligence
and hard work to cover and produce than the Democrat primaries. This
is their main concern.
Marty Feldman
> On 20 Jan 2004 05:43:06 -0800, n2the...@aol.com (Marty Feldman)
> wrote:
>
> >But a range of foreign policy experts, including supporters of the
> >war, said the long-term consequences of the administration's rhetoric
> >could be severe overseas -- especially because the war was waged
> >without the backing of the United Nations (news - web sites) and was
> >opposed by large majorities, even in countries run by leaders that
> >supported the invasion.
>
> Although it would be nice to have world approval, we were not trying to
> get the permission of the world to attack Iraq. We did not require the
> permission of the American people. However, it would be nice if the
> people approved.
>
> You mentioned evidence of those silly WMD. We have plenty of evidence.
> Thousands of Kurds killed with poison gas, and a great many pictures of
> other weapons, many of which were shown on national network TV.
>
> Now, get this straight please. We do not and probably will never
> require the permission of the UN to go to war against any country.
now, get this straight: i didn't write what you just quoted up there.
lol. the washington post did.
alright, i'll play make-believe along with you and let's say i did
write the piece. it's not about permission, it's about sharing
responsibility in order to get others to share the burdens -- far less
drain on US blood and treasure. also, it provides legitimacy that
allows for far more effective control during the transition (eg.
iraqis far more accepting of UN rule as opposed to humiliating US
rule). lastly, it's a moderating influence, which means it's very
restrictive if the bush admin had been extremely talented (haha), or
it has important safeguards (like all committees inherently do) which
helps prevent breathtakingly stupid mistakes. and that concludes my
wapo channeling.
you may now resume your regularly scheduled programming. take care,
holger!
Holger Dansk
wrote:
>Dean is supposed to be so popular that he has allegedly raised over
>$40 million, and the average donation, it is frequently pointed out,
>is well under $100. The zeal to create the impression that everybody
>except Howard Dean is influenced by special interests, is absolutely
>preposterous.
The humorous thing to me is how, every day, Kerry says he has not
accepted any money from special interests. There is a Bush campaign ad
saying that he has accepted $640,000.00 in special interests funds.
The ignorant and dumb Democrats point out that Bush has received several
times that amount, and, therefore, is a hypocrite. That is so dumb.
Bush has not denied receiving the funds and, evidently, does not think
it's bad to do so, and therefore is not a hypocrite. He is merely
pointing out that Kerry is lying about it every day.
The liberal media should point that out, but they simply say that
somebody said that made Bush a hypocrite and leave it at that, and all
the Seregeti/Americans swallow it hook, line and sinker, and run around
saying Bush is a hypocrite.
Of course, they are Clitoonistas, and will vote for Kerry or whoever the
Democratic nominee is. It doesn't matter how bad their candidate is.
They just want to vote against Bush. They would vote for the
antichrist.
Holger