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| 5/16 |
| 2004/8/10 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:32801 Activity:high |
8/10 Bush: "My opponent hasn't answered the question of whether knowing
what we know now, he would have supported going into Iraq."
Kerry: "I'll answer it directly. Yes, I would have voted for the
authority. I believe it is the right authority for a president to
have but I would have used that authority effectively."
\_ Kerry challenged Bush to answer some questions of his own --
why he rushed to war without a plan for the peace, why he used
faulty intelligence, why he misled Americans about how he would
go to war and why he had not brought other countries to the table.
"There are four not hypothetical questions like the president's,
real questions that matter to Americans and I hope you'll get
the answers to those questions, because the American people
deserve them," he told reporters.
\_ Have you stopped beating your wife? The American people
deserve to know the answer to this real question.
\_ The charge that Bush had no plan to win the peace is legitimate
but the charge that Bush relied on intelligence agencies
implies that Bush should have become fluent in Arabic, Farsi,
and Pashto, handed the presidency to Cheney, and went off and
gathered his own intelligence.
\_ No, it just requires that he was willing to search out and
listen to people who disagreed with the *false* phoney
consensus presented by Wolfowitz and Tenant. He could
have found them with Google, or by talking to the numerous
CIA career agents who quit in protest to the hyping of
the intel. The fact that he either does not have people
in his inner circle willing to tell him what he doesn't
want to hear or that he ignores them speaks volumes about
his competence and ability to lead the nation.
\_ So when the President, who already suffers information
bombardment, gets info from the guys he is supposed to
rely on to give him info, he should dismiss them and
read blogs he found from google to create our foreign
policy? This is a joke, right? IHBT?
\_ He has surrounded himself with yesmen and ideologues
and doesn't even read a newspaper. Even after they
failed him, he has not shaken up his cabinet. He
demonstrates a fundamental inability to think
critically. Stop deleting this. If you can't reply,
just nuke the thread.
\_ What newspaper? According to the wall, the mass
media is all dog food and we should get our news
from blogs. If he shook up his cabinet like Tenet
getting the axe, you'd just be here saying like you
have before that he was blaming his subordinates for
what he is resonsible for and he should resign, not
leave the buck at his subordinate's desks. There is
just no making some people happy. You hate the guy
and that's ok but don't try to hide it behind that
sort of noise. Just be upfront about it. It's ok.
[and no i didn't delete anything, get over it. my
reply is there. you havent posted anything that
isnt trivial to reply to.]
\_ Nope, if he shook up his cabinet, I would have
some respect for him. At least he would have
admitted to himself that there was a problem.
As it is, he claims that he makes no mistakes.
He is an arrogant boob and should be trusted
with the kind of power he has. As for what
newspaper, how about the Christian Science
Monitor? How about the WSJ? How about
anything at all??? And what *I* said was that
Bush should fire Cheney, Wolfowitz and the
neocon cabal, apologize to the nation, apologize
to the UN and apologize to France and Germany.
Hell, if he did all that, I would probably
vote for him. But since I post anonymously,
you are to be forgiven for confusing me with
some other "Bush hater."
\_ So you think the WSJ, CSM, etc, have better
access to information than the FBI, CIA, and
other multi billion dollar funded intelligence
agencies?! Ooookeeey.... Why should anyone
apologise to anyone? For what exactly?
\_ For leading the nation to war under
false pretenses. It is okay to make
mistakes. It is not okay to make mistakes,
pretend like you never did it, and not
fix the problem that led to the mistake.
At least the CSM isn't a bubble filled
with people who all agree with each other.
Perhaps you didn't notice that a bunch
of CIA analysts quit in protest over the
poor handling of the intel, as well as
half the British cabinet. I suspect Bush
didn't notice. Here is a bunch of great
stuff from conservative commentators
agreeing with me, that Bush will never
see, because, sadly, he doesn't read
anything except from his bubble world:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/05/18/bush/index.html
\_ Which false pretenses? WMD was not the
only reason to go in. And has been
posted and censored many times before,
the intelligence agencies in this and
many other countries all believed Iraq
had large stock piles of WMD. Clinton,
Gore, Kerry, Albright, and many others
are on record as saying they believed
he has had WMD for years. Why did none
of them fire all their people and go
read a blog or the CSM? Robert Novak,
1 elected official and 1 random paper
is hardly "a bunch of great stuff from
conservative commentators". It's some
stuff from 3 sources. I don't consider
Novak a conservative, btw.
\_ "Iraq has ties to al Qaeda"
"Iraq can mobilize chemical and
biological weapons within 45 minutes"
"Saddam kicked out the UN inspectors"
And could this be considered a flip
flop? Then: " It costs a lot to
fight this war. We have spent more
than a billion dollars a month
-- over $30 million a day -- and
we must be prepared for future
operations." Now: they plan on
putting off their funding requests
until after the election, then have
to ask for $50B emergency
authorization...
\_ WMD was certainly one of the major,
if not the major justification given
to the American people. And they are
not there. No, your one 10 year old
sarin shell does not count. It does
not really matter that much who else
made the same error, since the
decision to go to war was with Mr.
Bush, but it mitigates it somewhat
He still needs to say mea culpa
somehow. Which he has not.
\_ But they had Weapons of Mass
Destruction-related program
activities!
\_ By "I would have voted for the authority", did Kerry mean he would
have voted for going into Iraq today knowing that there is no WMD
anyway?
\_ I believe he has said that he looked at voting for war powers
as giving the president a new tool for handling the situation,
but that he thought it would be used as a credible threat and
possibly a banner to rally allies behind rather than us diving
in with a pitiable coalition.
\_ Nuance! So really he meant to show the world (again) that the
US is a paper tiger that makes threats but never backs them up
in modern times. Good plan. That'll scare em! That and his
fighting a more 'sensitive war against terrorism' (his words)
will keep the world safe! I'm voting for Kerry this fall for
sure! --Osama
\_ That's not how I read it. I read it as: I would have fought
a war againt Iraq, but I would have listended to Shinsheki
and gotten 300k troops like he requested, not taunted him,
called him a coward and a traitor and run him out of
Washington.
\_ That's not what he said. Anyway, even if that *is* what
he said or meant, 300k troops would do what exactly for
us in Iraq right now and the last year? Make more
targets? Make the Iraqi people even more upset about
the even larger force sitting on their territory? We
have more than enough fire power to genocide the entire
country. Lack of troops is not the problem.
\_ Tell that to the generals who have said otherwise.
The big problem is our military is trained to go
in, destroy quickly, and leave. We are not trained
for peacekeeping missions, let alone nation building.
Bush's biggest failure in Iraq was not taking this
into account and alienating our allies who have a
better track record in this area.
\_ Shinseki was canned for saying we didn't have enough
troops. Now Bush says, "If the military asks for
more, I'll give it to them". The military doesn't
ask. Get it now? (just google for shinseki fired) |
| 5/16 |
|
| www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/05/18/bush/index.html Judy Woodruff CNN ON CNN TV Stay with CNN-USA for coverage of Wednesday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on the abuse at Abu Ghraib on Wednesday -- with Gen. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Despite another national poll showing President Bush's approval rating slipping to the lowest levels of his presidency, Republicans insist the slide is temporary and that Bush is on course to re-election in November. A Newsweek poll released Saturday was the latest of half a dozen national polls over the past month that showed approval figures in the low- to mid-forties. This is uncharted territory for the Bush-Cheney campaign. It may reflect a steady stream of headlines on the continued violence in Iraq and questions about accountability for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of US soldiers. But Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, was nonplused when I asked him about the recent downturn in the president's popularity. "As I've said on your show repeatedly, the fact is the president will be up. He will be down," Gillespie said on Monday's "Inside Politics." "This is an election year that's going to be very close and it's going to be fought between the 45-yard lines, and the fundamentals of the race haven't changed. We're preparing for a close contest in November," Gillespie said. Gillespie, visiting Southern California to register voters and deliver money to the state GOP, went on to make an optimistic prediction: Republicans would win the Golden State in November - a state Bush lost by 9 points to Al Gore in 2000. It's a unnoticeably upbeat forecast, considering the most recent California state poll shows Kerry leading Bush by 12 points in a head-to-head match-up (53 percent to 41 percent); In a recent major address at Kansas State University, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, offered some somber words of caution as he assessed the Bush administration's decision to pursue the war in Iraq ''In fighting the global war against terrorism, we need to restrain what are growing US messianic instincts -- a sort of global social engineering where the United States feels it is both entitled and obligated to promote democracy -- by force, if necessary,'' Roberts said. Conservative columnist Robert Novak -- who wrote about Roberts' speech -- went on to say Bush is guilty of that, as well as of a lack of accountability, with regard to the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq. Another well known conservative voice, George Will, wrote recently in The Washington Post of the president's insistence that Iraq will become a model democracy: "Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice" Sunday's edition of The Columbus Dispatch, a newspaper in Ohio -- one of 2004's hottest battleground states -- featured an editorial calling for accountability from the White House. In language surprisingly scolding for a newspaper that historically supports Republican candidates for president, it asserted: "Strong leaders must be able to accept unwelcome realities, admit mistakes and change course. So far, President Bush seems challenged in reconciling these truths with his self-image." The editorial summarized: "The United States has traveled far down the wrong road, ever since Bush diverted the nation from a war on terrorism to launch an attack on Saddam. The American people still await a full explanation for this detour." But it concluded, "President Bush still has a chance to demonstrate that he understands what strength of leadership is all about." Even in a month with such public grumblings from Republicans, the Bush-Cheney bandwagon shatters fund-raising records. The re-election campaign quietly surpassed the $203 million mark last week, more than double the amount it raised in 2000. And Kerry is drawing criticism from Democrats who wonder why he isn't taking greater advantage of Bush's political misfortune. Judy Woodruff is CNN's prime anchor and senior correspondent. She also anchors "Judy Woodruff's Inside Politics," weekdays at 3:30 pm ET. |