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| 7/16 |
| 2004/5/6 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:30039 Activity:insanely high |
5/6 Highly anti-BushAdmin opinion piece in today's Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5837-2004May5.html
(Actually, almost all the editorials and opinion pieces are like that
today.)
\_ Yep, one day of many. This will flush out of the news cycle in 48
hours like everything else.
\_ Except prisoner abuse is going to stick.
\_ Will it? I'll bet people who care about it are already
voting anti-Bush.
\_ The poll numbers from yesterday suggest that even
Republicans are losing faith.
\_ I'm a Republican living in an ultra leftist area of a
majority leftist state so I'm inundated with anti-Bush
noise constantly. Keep dreaming. --not losing anything
\_ Ah, I love a bunker mentality. Execute Wing Attack
Plan-R!
\_ Ain't nobody ever got the Go code yet. And old
Ripper wouldn't be giving us plan R unless them
Russkies had already clobbered Washington and a
lot of other towns with a sneak attack.
\_ 48 hours news cycle. You can set your clock to it. From the
moment the last new abuse photos hit the wires +48 hours =
story dead.
\_ So, when will the "last" photo come out?
\_ Depends on how many there are, doesn't it? Do you think
there will be a new photo every few days between now and
November?
\_ The British investigation is just starting. Who
knows how many CD-ROMs with photos are going to come
up? The Arab world is completely bonkers about this.
The problem is, now they have something which they
can clearly complain about, and every American knows
that.
\_ were you the one who think disbanding the Iraqi army
is a smart move? obviously you don't realize how
how detrimental the photos and other even more
serious allegations of abuse are. This thing won't
go away anytime soon. It's way beyond the silly
little US news media by now. It's going to come
back again and again for a very long time.
\_ No, he wasn't. My point was never that disbanding the
Iraqi army was a good idea -- you projected that
interpretation because it's want you wanted to see. My
point was always that you're a naive, unobjective,
ill-informed idiot. You've just seen what you wanted
to see and heard what you wanted to hear. Have a nice
life. Maybe you'll even grow up one day. And dammit.
I've been trolled.
\_ Nice try. I clearly explained why disbanding the
Iraqi army was bad when I stated it. These were the
very same reasons the US administration stated when
they realized it was a mistake and took step to try
to reverse the decision. It's a classic case of
overconfidence in the US military's ability to
defeat any opposition which led to blatant disregard
for alienating the most well-trained people in
Iraq, many of whom joined the Iraqi army for the same
reason people join the US army - serving one's country.
Your need for name-calling goes to show you are the
only one who has some growing up to do.
\_ You continue to misremember the details of the
first argument and project your point of view
onto my position. Reread the archives and try
thinking OBJECTIVELY. And learn how to post to
motd correctly.
\_ what does one have to do with the other??? I understand
perfectly how damaging they are. To Bush in the current
polls and election cycle. Around the world it means
nothing. Everyone who hates us will continue to do so.
No one needs any new excuses. When we're perfect they
simply fabricate reasons to hate us. Now they have a
reason and they'll hate us. I don't see a difference.
\_ What does one has to do with the other? They
both reflect a lack of knowledge with things
outside the US. Iraq is an international stage,
and it is also the focus of media all over the
world, and with our involvement there, the focus
of the US media. If you don't want
international events to have repercussions on
you, stay home.
\_ csuamotd/csuamotd does not work, what's the login? |
| 7/16 |
|
| www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5837-2004May5.html Page A35 This week the United States Army did the oddest thing in this Age of Bush: It reprimanded six soldiers in connection with the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal -- not for what they did but for not knowing what others were doing. An Army spokesman put it this way: "They should have known. Maybe first to get the accountability ax will be Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He certainly should have known that a scandal was brewing in Iraqi prisons, and he should have bothered to read the Pentagon report detailing what went wrong. Instead, the Pentagon tried to delay CBS's "60 Minutes II" from showing pictures of prisoner abuse and then, in an amazing public relations offensive, sent the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, on three Sunday talk shows to announce -- a little bugle call here -- that he had not read the report either. As is almost always the case, the Pentagon did not tell the State Department that a wee spot of trouble was coming its way because, as we know, the Pentagon doesn't tell the State Department anything. Who cares if a billion or so people in the Islamic world have a snit? At a certain level -- a very high one -- the Bush administration is as dysfunctional as it is cocky. But if accountability is going to be the new order of the day, there's no telling where things will wind up. What will happen to CIA chief George Tenet, who assured the president that Iraq was a virtual storehouse of weapons of mass destruction? Instead of a reprimand, Bush always expresses confidence in him and probably has given him a nickname, Slam Dunk George. Should she have known that Bush was blowing smoke when he told the nation that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger? There was no such nuclear program in Iraq, and it hadn't attempted to make that uranium purchase. Instead, she was rewarded with more sleepovers at Camp David. He was the leading hawk in the White House, so anxious to go to war with Iraq that Secretary of State Colin Powell characterized him as feverish. The vice president repeatedly insisted that Iraq had "reconstituted" its nuclear weapons program. Should Rumsfeld have known that stabilizing Iraq would require more troops than he allotted? Shinseki had said so, but the Army chief of staff was brushed aside and treated as an eccentric. Should they have known that Iraqi oil might not cover the cost of the occupation? Should they have had enough troops on the ground to prevent looting and a general breakdown of law and order? Well, some might think so -- but not, apparently, the president. You and I can argue the wisdom of going into Iraq some other time. What is not arguable, I think, is that the invasion and occupation were marked every step of the way by incompetence, smugness and repeated mistakes. Yet the only people to feel the opprobrium of the White House are those, such as Richard Clarke or Joseph Wilson, who had the nerve, the gall, the immense chutzpah to question administration policy. It comes a bit late in the game, maybe, and will almost surely be limited to expendable underlings, but a supine Congress just might get the idea and start asking some hard questions about how things went so bad in Iraq. It might begin with Rumsfeld and ask him a more pertinent version of that famous question -- not what did you know and when did you know itbut why, damn it, didn't you know it in the first place? |