In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Bush in Free Fall
This essay goes a little in the direction of what I've been thinking lately. Them Democrats should not go after Bush on the economy alone, it will improve and people will forget it was so bad for so long. Go after his true weakness: The War on Terror. This is his real weakness, when American realizes his war was so poorly pursued Bush will be in trouble. Here is where the arguement against Bush can be made:
Iraq war may help al-Qaida, MPs report
The overthrow of Saddam Hussein has not lessened the security threat to Britain from weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism, MPs warned today.
The Commons foreign affairs committee said that the war in Iraq may actually have "impeded" efforts to combat Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terror network.
Okay, it is a report from the British, and we know they are not very reliable these days: what with Bush's 16 words from them "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" (Bush's infamous state of the union address - which had a lot more than 16 words wrong with it).
But others are saying it too: THE SEARCH FOR OSAMA
To the frustration of many of the people involved in the fight against Al Qaeda, the Bush Administration is said to have been distracted by competing priorities—most notably, the war in Iraq. Rohan Gunaratna, a Sri Lankan terrorism expert who has analyzed thousands of Al Qaeda documents recovered by various governments, said, “I feel that if they had not gone to Iraq they would have found Osama by now. The best people were moved away from this operation. The best minds were moved to Iraq. It’s a great shame. It’s the biggest military failure in the war on terrorism so far. The Americans need more resources, and more high-level people exclusively assigned to this task.”
Supporters of the Iraq war suggest that this view overlooks longer-term benefits that have yet to be fully appreciated. Ambassador Oakley, for example, said, “I think the war in Iraq has made governments much more cautious about allowing terrorists into their countries—Iran and Syria, for instance—because they can see the consequences to themselves from the U.S.”
Many intelligence insiders, however, shared Gunaratna’s concerns. Cannistraro, the former C.I.A. official, said that the effort to find bin Laden had “lost at least half of its original strength.” He added, “Arabic speakers are in short supply. You still have some intelligence-collection assets in Afghanistan, but mostly it’s just small teams looking for signals. That’s because of Iraq.”
This war on Iraq is Bush's ultimate failure. And its an example of his ability to grasp defeat out of the jaws of victory. Just a couple of weeks before the war the threats from Bush had Saddam agree to almost everything save for stepping down. Bush could have declared victory there. Bush took down Saddam, a man no one liked, and yet he is managing to make it a bad move.
Even his own people are getting upset:
Administration officials hear bipartisan Senate criticism on Iraq
Even committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., told the officials that the administration should provide "at least some idea of what is likely to be required of the American taxpayer."
But it isn't the cost of the war that'll get Americans angry (a billion here a billion there is such an insanely high number you might as well be saying "this war is costing 3 blobtropts a month."). What will get them angry is that Iraq wasn't the vengence against 9/11 that was promised. Basically a day that is now sacred to Americans was used as a pitch, and used as honestly as your average door to door salesman.
Some lawmakers of both parties have criticized the administration's rationales for the war and its postwar policies.
Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee, among the Senate's most moderate Republicans, said "we just haven't seen the proof" of links the administration has claimed existed between Iraq and the terror network al-Qaida.
Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., accused the administration of "constantly trying to pretend that Sept. 11 and Iraq are the same issue."
And when you start getting editorials like this: Sidestepping on Iraq, from the NYTimes which, though historically liberal has been very easy on bush, especially since 9/11; you know things aren't good for Bush.
Throughout his political career, George Bush has been famous for sticking to a few issues, and repeating a few well-burnished talking points over and over. Wide-ranging news conferences do not play to his considerable strengths, and as president, he has generally avoided them. But having decided to make a rare exception yesterday, Mr. Bush should have been able to come up with better responses to two big and obvious questions: why he ordered the invasion of Iraq and why he pushed for tax cuts that have left the nation sinking into a hopeless quagmire of debt.
Mr. Bush's vague and sometimes nearly incoherent answers suggested that he was either bedazzled by his administration's own mythmaking or had decided that doubts about his foreign and domestic policies could best be parried by ignoring them.
Mr. Bush will simply not engage the issue of whether his administration exaggerated the Iraqi threat in the months leading up to the American invasion. When asked whether the United States had lost credibility with the rest of the world since neither weapons of mass destruction nor a strong Al Qaeda connection had been uncovered in Iraq, the president veered off into a tour through American history and the difficulty of coming up with an Iraqi version of Thomas Jefferson. He then skidded to a halt with the announcement that "I'm confident history will prove the decision we made to be the right decision."
Mr. Bush still hung onto his most well-worn buzzwords, however. Iraq was a "threat" — just as the tax cuts were "a job-creation program." The president and his advisers obviously still believe that the constant repetition of several simplistic points will hypnotize the American people into forgetting the original question.
"Tell us what you really think." Wow, I think they finally are.
- rob 4:12 PM - [PermaLink] -
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