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What, precisely, do you mean by “international law”? It comes up very often, but nobody seems to be able to pinpoint what exactly it is.

Pre-emptive war was not a first option - it was the last. Saddam had been dodging UN resolutions (do those count as international law?) for well over a decade. After twelve years of diplomacy, “soft power” etc, you cannot rightly claim that all other options had not been tried.

I also take exception with sanctity of international law, which is implicit in your article.

International laws are not passed by elected representatives of people living in free democracies. They are not “fundamental” or “innate”.

You are very critical of the Bush doctrine, but do not really offer a practical alternative that would act as a _real_ deterrent to potential threats.

Back during the Cold War, nukes and the principle of MAD (mutually assured destruction), crazy as it sounds, kept the western world from crumbling before the shadow of totalitarian communism. In today’s age of asymmetric threats, think of the Bush doctrine as the modern version of the nuclear deterrent.

Posted by: Vivek at December 18, 2003 04:48 PM

“International law” is the collection of UN rules, multi-lateral treaties such as the Geneva Accord, etc. You are correct that the UN resolutions are international law, but they did not specify a deadline or attack. And if the UN decides that its resolutions have been violated, then it’s up to the UN to decide to enforce them. And while the “International laws are not passed by elected representatives of people living in free democracies” they are voted on by members of nations in the UN with the “free democracies” having veto power or are retified by each nation choosing to participate. It’s not like some 3rd world dictator can make a decree and it becomes “International Law.” And those representing the governments at the UN and at the conventions are just as closely selected as the U.S. President is—we don’t directly elect him, either, but instead vote for representatives who we entrust to make the right decision.

The real danger in the Bush docterine is that by changing the fundamental rules of engagement, we open the door for all nations to act in the same manner. What we did in Iraq (attack a soverign nation because of some questionable perceived threat) is exactly what Iraq did when it invaded Kuwait in 1990, and that led to the Gulf War.

But now the U.S.—the preeminent superpower—has justified attacks because of unproven threats. Who’s to say North Korea won’t start shooting scuds at Japan because Kim Jong Il perceives some threat from Japan? What if Pakistan decides it feels “threatened” by India and launched nuclear weapons?

The existing international system seems to work OK until Bush came along. The UN was working through the process to deal with Saddam Hussein. They sent in inspectors who found exactly what the U.S. military has found so far—nothing that constituted an imminent threat. When the global community sees a threat, they form coalitions and act, as they did in the first Gulf War.

And yet the North Koreans tell us they have nuclear capabilities, that they have missiles which could his U.S. coasts, the their leader is certifiably insane (he locked up all sets of twins because of a dream he had) and we don’t feel the need to invade there because of a threat?

Posted by: blipsman@mindspring.com at December 18, 2003 06:43 PM

The real danger in the Bush docterine is that by changing the fundamental rules of engagement, we open the door for all nations to act in the same manner.

That’s true — in a utopian world. The countries which you mention (NK, Pak) wouldn’t have respected international law in any case. Essentially, the west is being held hostage to its own notions of civilized conduct, which rogue nations do no share.

But more importantly, implicit in your argument is still on outdated assumption — that nations wage war, and when that happens a nation “attacks” another nation, and the two (or a group) slug it out. In that world (essentially pre 9/11) all that you’re saying would stand.

However, the modern terrorist threat is very different. It’s a low-intensity, prolonged war. When terrorists attack and then run, there is no conventional war you can wage on them. You must engage them pro-actively.

Posted by: Vivek at December 19, 2003 05:29 AM

Republican Policy; A Creep In The White House….

Posted by: Rob at December 19, 2003 09:31 AM

LOL @ Rob

Posted by: Stephen VanDyke at December 19, 2003 09:45 AM

That’s true — in a utopian world. The countries which you mention (NK, Pak) wouldn’t have respected international law in any case.

To some extent this is true—both North Korea and Pakistan have gone against the wishes of the UN/U.S., etc. by moving forward with nuclear programs in recent years. But while the rogue nations of the world test the west, very rarely have they actually taken things to the point of invasion or attack against another nation because their leaders realized that such a move would result in severe consequences. The Bush docterine begins to change things, though, becuase the threat no longer has to be real but instead only perceived.

China has been more bark than bite in regards to Taiwan since the island split from the mainland. However, now it would be a lot easier for China to perceive a threat to its stability from Taiwan and use this justification to attack.

It’s a slippery slope that international relations is sliding down if we continue to allow the Bush Docterine to control foreign policy.

Posted by: blipsman@mindspring.com at December 19, 2003 12:06 PM

Yes indeed, you must engage terrorists proactively, but this must be done in an intelligent and sometimes subtle fashion. Not by alienating your allies in order to tilt a windmills, or by increasing the support for your enemies by flailing in the wrong places and at the wrong people.

How has war in Iraq made Americans safer? There has to be a pretty concrete and varifiable answer to this question or the people who have died during the conflict have done so on the whim of this administration, and for whatever reasons they feel are politically expediant when challenged on the issue.

Democracy in Iraq will be great. But that was not reason for going to war. I can remember Cheney talking up Saddams link with 9/11, Powell’s speach at the UN on Iraq’s WMD and Blair proclaiming Iraq’s ability to deploy WMD in 45 minutes. Were these ALL lies?

I think it’s disgaceful that someone could order other people to fight and die in a war that was built on a foundation of deception.

Posted by: Bob Hope at December 19, 2003 12:28 PM

We’ve already seen the Bush Doctrine in action: Israel. And what good has it done them? All in all, the Bush Doctrine is one particularly susceptible to paranoia. In fact it’s paranoid by it’s very nature.

It says basically, if we even think you’re supporting terrorist, we can make a first strike on you just based on that feeling. Blech. No, I’d rather avoid reputation sinking incidents like telling people there are WMD and terrorist around that weren’t there to begin with. If we don’t stick to the truth in the war on terrorism, if we use excessive force, then the terrorist have won. Because terrorists feed on people’s hate, people’s distrust, and peoples motivation to reclaim their dignity.

We hand the terrorists a knife to stab in our backs every time we accuse without evidence, act without reflection, and speak without discretion. We hand them a weapon every time we marginalize an ally for disgreeing with us, or cozy up to another despite their hateful behavior. The lessons of the Cold War should be apparent in these matters.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 19, 2003 03:38 PM

Well said, Stephen. The potential of the U.S. becoming terrorist organization’s unwitting ally in their goals, is very real.

The greatest goal international terrorists could achieve is international disharmony, mistrust, and dissolution. We have already taken the first steps to assist them with their goals. We saw the disharmony at the beginning of the invasion, now we see the mistrust evident throughout the Arabic world as well as in the eyes of some of our allied leaders and their people (and all this was our own doing in response to our FEAR of terrorists). And at home we are ever more divided on the issues of police state powers, the war, and foreign policy. Appears the terrorists have much to celebrate.

Want to find terrorists, follow champagne sales. (grin!)

I forget whether the Koran contains the David and Goliath story in some form or not. We should hope it does not.

Posted by: David R. Remer at December 20, 2003 05:16 PM

The potential of the U.S. becoming terrorist organization’s unwitting ally in their goals, is very real.

Like I said before, this is another telling example of the West being held hostage to its notions of civilized conduct.

You forget that they’re going to hate us no matter what —- whether we fight back or not. There is a much more fundamental clash here, and it has nothing to do with day-to-day “inflamatory” actions. (Read this for a much better treatment of this idea)

Pre-911, we had eight years of no fighting back. We also had the WTC bombing, USS Cole, emabassies blown up and so much more. All followed by prolonged bouts of analysis, self-introspection, appeasement (“Surely, if we’re nicer to them they’ll stop blowing up our buildings”) and diplomacy, but sadly, almost no concrete action.

A lot of good that did.

Posted by: Vivek at December 20, 2003 06:57 PM

If we show ourselves to be imperialists in fact, if not in admission, then we’ve lost. The ends do not justify the means, especially to those societies that we disrupt in the process of fighting our unprovoked wars of security.

Bush couldn’t even argue his own doctrine to get us into this war. We had to do that whole WMD rigamarole to even get Tony Blair on board. We had to allege that there was a substantial threat from terrorist getting WMD, and that we wanted to attack before the mushroom clouds appeared over our cities.

Of course, now we’re saying the aim was to topple Saddam. Oh great, so we don’t like the leader, so we invade a sovereign country and topple the regime on account of information that we could have easily verified as false.

The problem with the Bush Doctrine is that it is too much of a hair trigger on too much military power, with too much of our reputation as honorable country on the line.

We had the advantage in Afghanistan of being sorely provoked. We, ourselves, with our own troops, could have made an example of the Taliban, and shown exactly what happens to those who sponsor and harbor terrorists.

There, we could have made the message clear: That we are above punishing civilians for their leader’s bad decisions, but that we are most decidedly not going to spare the leaders.

We could have brought another message in as well: those who welcome us, who we intervene for prosper. Order follows us, not chaos.

Above all, we could have demonstrated that even under the sorest of provocations, we keep our heads, and we keep our cool.

What you fail to understand is that the person who can defeat you even while following the rules, is much more terrifying than the person who has to lie and cheat and break the rules to get what they want.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 21, 2003 09:40 AM

Actually, my post was cut. It was supposed to read:

Henn Reynold claimed, >>it doesn’t matter if there are any weapons, weapons programs are equally valid as a cause of war? Now in my entire life of sixty years I have seldom seen quite as gratuitous and grating a lack of honor and honesty as is contained in that posture.

What “lack of honor and honesty?” Clinton made even stronger statements about Hussein’s weapons program. French, German and Russian intelligence services never disputed our claim, because they had come to the same conclusion. Are they all part of the same dishonest Right Wing Conspiracy? Even Clinton, who I assume Mr. Reynolds trusts, admitted he did not know if his bombing had destroyed any of Hussein’s EXISTING WMD programs. Can’t Mr. Reynolds discern the difference between the difficult interpretation of intelligence data, using a worst case scenario after 9/11, with lying?

Apparently not.

The fact that we haven’t found any WMD’s could mean, A: They’re still hidden in a country the size of California; B: Hussein secretly destroyed them without informing anyone, as he was required; C) he utilized a quick manufacturing process for possible use, or D: He was misinformed by his underlings for whatever reason; inability to produce, graft and corruption of funds, who knows?

And yes, having an extensive program to produce nuclear, chemical or biological weapons is just about as bad as having them. Had Bush waited 8 years as Clinton did, isn’t there a considerable chance that there would have been a catastrophic attack on the US, using Al Qaeda or some other cutout to deny Hussein’s culpability?

>>“I did not have sex with that woman”….pales in comparison”

Other than the fact that Clinton committed perjury by lying under oath, a violation of his oath of office, it’s obvious to anyone with eyes and a functioning brain that Clinton lied about just about everything, taxes, the economy, Reagan’s record, school lunches, Medicare reform, you name it, he lied about it.

Bush is relatively honorable for a politician. Not perfect, but pretty decent.

Richard Clement

Posted by: Richard Clement at December 23, 2003 05:56 PM

Richard, There is a difference between a weapons program which could potentially be a threat, if left alone for four or five years, and a functional stockpile of WMD which is what the Bush Administration was saying would be found.

Our international reputation was gambled on that, gambled on the assertion that we would find the Chemical and Biological weapons, the nuclear facilities too.

America has so far lost that wager. Now, I admit that Clinton lying under oath was a serious matter. Not serious enough for an impeachment, but still serious.

Bush has done something worse than a cowardly little lie under oath. Bush had us pre-emptive attack a sovereign nation with the justification that there were WMD that were an imminent danger to homeland security. Is that not the case? Was that not the reason we invaded Iraq?

Now, it turns out we carried out an invasion illegal under international law, alienated our allies and sacrificed the lives of hundreds of American Soldiers with no vindicating presence of WMDs to show for it. WMD in the hands of terrorists was the imminent threat that Bush justified the pre-emptive Gulf War II with, and to this day, no evidence of such an imminent threat has surfaced.

The weapons that should have justified hundreds of American dead and thousands of Iraqi’s killed, the weapons that would have vindicated us before the international community, the weapons that supposedly were going to be this war’s link to the war on terrorism, are not there. So say what you want about the regime change, a wonderful thing if we can manage it, Bush screwed up on this.

He listened only to those who told him what he wanted to hear, flouted international law, and alienated allies on a fools errand. The worst part is, he won’t even admit he made the mistake. In that he is no better than Clinton, parsing the meaning of the word “is” and the term “Sexual intercourse”. Only here, it’s “WMD in the hands of terrorists”

The worst part is, Al Quaeda has been given a year to regroup and resupply. It’s been given a year where international pressure was more on Iraq than on them. We’ve been distracted, we’ve been isolated, and we’ve humiliated, and we’ve gone and rashly stirred up sentiments against us, vindicating the terrorists for many people. We’ve sacrificed so much for so little, and I wish Bush to be held accountable for that on election day.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 24, 2003 09:07 AM

>>Richard, There is a difference between a weapons program which could potentially be a threat, if left alone for four or five years, and a functional stockpile of WMD which is what the Bush Administration was saying would be found. Our international reputation was gambled on that, gambled on the assertion that we would find the Chemical and Biological weapons, the nuclear facilities too

I didn’t meant it would take that long to make them, just that there might be a lag in using them against us. I”m referrring to having production lines that could have them for use in perhaps a couple week’s time. And again, do you dispute that what Bush claimed about WMD’s was no different than what Clinton did?

>>Now, I admit that Clinton lying under oath was a serious matter. Not serious enough for an impeachment, but still serious.

The point is, his lying under oath was simply the tip of the iceberg. Tack onto that the criminal conspiracy to raise illegal funds, including suitcases of cash from te Communist Chinese, sequential money orders to his legal defense fund and the clear obstruction of justice to cover it all up. Oh, and let’s not forget abuse of the IRS, one count against Nixon, illegal use of confidential FBI files, blackmail of political opponents, Read “Betrayal” by David Schippers, the courageous Democrat who was Impeachment manager. Believe me, had Clinton not blackmailed the Senate into foregoing a trial, much, MUCH more than Monica Lewinsky was going to be brought forward, including how Gore’s office was bullied the INS into not doing background checks on applicants for citizenship.

The result was that criminals, including rapists, child molesters and other dangerous people becamse citizens so that Clinton and Gore might win the ‘96 election.

There were so many serious scandals in the Clinton administration, I really cannot keep track of them all. Of course, most Democrats like yourself slept through it all. Or didn’t care.

>>Bush has done something worse than a cowardly little lie under oath. Bush had us pre-emptive attack a sovereign nation with the justification that there were WMD that were an imminent danger to homeland security. Is that not the case? Was that not the reason we invaded Iraq?

NO, Bush did not claim the threat was “imminent.” That’s a Democratic lie. He said specifically it would be too late to wait until the threat was imminent.

And again, Bush said nothing any different than what was commonly accepted by almost everyone, including Clinton, the Russian, French and German intelligence servicies and the UN Security Council. Do you recall any of them ever disputing Bush’s claims? No, because they agreed at the time. All the hoo-hah since then is simply disingenuous political posturing.

>>Now, it turns out we carried out an invasion illegal under international law, alienated our allies and sacrificed the lives of hundreds of American Soldiers with no vindicating presence of WMDs to show for it. WMD in the hands of terrorists was the imminent threat that Bush justified the pre-emptive Gulf War II with, and to this day, no evidence of such an imminent threat has surfaced.

We’re not bound by international law, especially not when it comes to self-defense. And our president, under our Constitution, judges what it takes to defend our country, not some corrupt international body like the UN.

Bush never said the threat was “imminent,” quite the opposite. He said specifically that it was not, but that we should not wait until it was. Was the 9/11 attack “imminent?” Only in 20:20 hindsight. Bush and Cheney believed quite rightly that when it comes to the development of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons being given to terrorists, we should not wait until there is absolute proof, because we’d likely be looking at the smoking ruins of LA or NY by the time we had it.

The point is, we are at a point in history when crazy groups like Al Qaeda can aquire weapons of mass destruction. The rules of self-defense no longer apply, unless you’re willing to endure more attacks like 9/11 or far worse. Are you willing to risk, say, a simultaneous genetically enhanced smallpox attack on 10 major US cities? With a stronger, more lethal bacteria? To lose tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Americans? To see our economy collapse as a result? And the world economy immediately after?

People like yourself don’t seem to have any idea what the real threat is.

>>The weapons that should have justified hundreds of American dead and thousands of Iraqi’s killed, the weapons that would have vindicated us before the international community, the weapons that supposedly were going to be this war’s link to the war on terrorism, are not there. So say what you want about the regime change, a wonderful thing if we can manage it, Bush screwed up on this.

Sorry, but our allies our quickly coming around to Bush’s side. Nothing succeeds like success. And witness Khaddafy’s sudden conversion on WMD’s. You don’t really think that would have happened had Bush not taken out both the Taliban and Hussein, do you? And now he’s urging North Korea and Iran to do the same. He reads the handwriting on the wall.

>>Bush…listened only to those who told him what he wanted to hear, flouted international law, and alienated allies on a fools errand. The worst part is, he won’t even admit he made the mistake. In that he is no better than Clinton, parsing the meaning of the word “is” and the term “Sexual intercourse”. Only here, it’s “WMD in the hands of terrorists”

>>The worst part is, Al Quaeda has been given a year to regroup and resupply. It’s been given a year where international pressure was more on Iraq than on them. We’ve been distracted, we’ve been isolated, and we’ve humiliated, and we’ve gone and rashly stirred up sentiments against us, vindicating the terrorists for many people.

Al Qaeda is being chased around the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan, desperately trying to survive. Their international network has been largely broken up. They haven’t had a successful attack in the US since the first one. You do realize we’ve successfully prevented many, many attacks since 9/11, don’t you?

We’re not isolated, France and Germany are. We had the support of most governments in Europe, representing the overwhelming majority of the people of Europe. We’re not humiliated at all. We’ve won. What the heck are you talking about? Perhaps in the eyes of the increasingly irrelevant political and media elite in Western Europe, but not in most people’s eyes.

>> We’ve sacrificed so much for so little, and I wish Bush to be held accountable for that on election day.

“So little?” Geez, we did in weeks in Afghanistan what the Soviets couldn’t do in years, we crushed Saddam’s dictatorship and pulled him out of his hole in weeks, we freed the Afghani and Iraqi people, and we’ve got other dangerous countries quaking in their boots.

Bush will be “held accountable” by winning in a landslide over whatever Democrat wins the nomination. Voters have much more common sense than you do, clearly.

Richard Clement

Posted by: Richard Clement at December 24, 2003 12:16 PM

Richard-
Bush implied that the weapons were ready for use, ready to be handed over to the terrorists, and that the next sign we would have of them was a Mushroom Cloud. Imminent threat was the case Bush made to the UN through Powell and to Americans in his addresses.

None of which Clinton was implying. Oh, sure Clinton believed Saddam was hiding WMD. He was burned once before, with that discover of that factory back in 1995, I think. But he was not allege Al Quaeda links, nor implying an imminent threat that deserved a pre-emptive response.

You said Clinton’s lying under oath was the tip of an iceberg. Well great, so why didn’t you go after the bigger target of the berg itself? The Democrats of the eighties at least had the decency to go after your guy for selling arms to Iran to buy off terrorists holding hostages. But what do you guys go after? Whitewater, Paula Jones, and Monica Lewinsky. Two issues that preceded his term in the White House, and one that most Americans could not see as being an impeachable offense. If he was so dirty, it’s your fault that you didn’t pin something serious to him.

As for this: “NO, Bush did not claim the threat was ‘imminent.’ That’s a Democratic lie. He said specifically it would be too late to wait until the threat was imminent.”

The Crux of your argument is that he never said a bomb is just about to explode in Washington or something like that. In effect he was implying that just as suddenly as the threat of airplanes crashing into buildings would come around, so too would be the threats of WMDs used by terrorists. So one would technically have to concede that point, if one were being real formal about it.

But effectively the result was no different. Bush still worked to alarm people by saying, if we don’t act now, we will not prevent the next 9/11. So even if the concrete threat of a WMD was not immanent, Bush made sure people believed that the use of them was, unless the war was fought. It’s Clinton style semantics to claim that Bush wasn’t trying to alarm people based on this.

As for this: “And again, Bush said nothing any different than what was commonly accepted by almost everyone, including Clinton, the Russian, French and German intelligence servicies and the UN Security Council.”

You make it almost sound like they sided with us. But the fact that they didn’t, the fact that they called for more inspections, means that in a nice diplomatic way, they were saying, we’ll find this out for ourselves.

I mean, if the French and the Germans weren’t disputing our claims, then what’s the deal with freedom fries?

You say we’re not bound by international laws. Yet the constitution allows our government to make treaties, to take part in international law. The question I want to ask you, is whether or not the world can take us at our word?

I sure hope it can, because the compliance of America with international law is directly related to whether others honor such agreements, or can be called to do so. We protect our citizens abroad by maintaining treaties that protect our interests and safety.

As I scan down the letter, I see you again claiming Bush never said the threat was immanent. Well. I think you protest too much. For good reason. Otherwise you have to admit this war depended on a impression of impending danger.

You can talk about not wanting things to be 20/20 hindsight, but you don’t realize that we were *that* close to having pre-empted the Al-Quaeda attack by investigative means. 9/11 could have been prevented. We didn’t even have to know that they were planning it. All we had to do was investigate the activities of Al-Quaeda thoroughly enough to encounter that information.

The intelligence failure of 9/11 wasn’t technical. It was human. We didn’t have enough investigators working the cases. We let political considerations get in the way of tracking down the people who committed the previous terrorist acts. We had few if any contacts in the Al-Quaeda sphere of activity, so we didn’t know what we were looking at in all the records and all the satellite photos until it was too late. 9/11 was not merely preventable in hindsight, it was preventable in fact.

We don’t need absolute proof. What we need is know what our enemy is doing, and how they’re doing it. What to look for, who to look for, what people to detain, what people to put the pressure on or take out of the game one way or another. We don’t need to be flailing in the dark with thousands of troops, if a few hundred investigators can do the job better. If you want to fight the terrorists, you have to take the fight directly to them.

“Sorry, but our allies our quickly coming around to Bush’s side. Nothing succeeds like success.”

Like I told the other guy on this site, don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched.

Gaddafi still has plenty of time to break the promises he’s now making, to hide, to obfuscate, to scheme or whatever. Let’s not write our history before it occurs.

France, Germany, and Russia are still nowhere to be seen in Iraq. They have not backed down from their previous views, nor joined the coalition. It takes a flexible definition of “coming around to our side” to claim that Gaddafi’s apparent concession to our military might has made converts of them.

As for your claims about Al Quaeda’s weakness, when the bombs stop going off in Bali, in Iraq, in Arabia, and in Turkey, I’ll believe you. Right now, the casualties are being inflicted on our more vulnerable allies abroad.

You shouldn’t forget, either, that Al Quaeda only attacked us once within our borders before they did the 9/11 attacks, and that the attack before it was the much smaller scale attack of the Cole in Yemen. So treating the threat as contained at this point seem foolhardy.

As for Northern and Western Europe, I hardly think that they are irrelevent, economically inferior, or on the decline in comparsion to Eastern Europe. You can make your grandiose claims about our support abroad, but the reality is, the people closest to our culture, to our way of life are the people farthest from agreeing with what we have done, and so far, it seems like they have good reason not to.

As I said before, don’t count your chickens until they are hatched. Last I checked, we didn’t do what the soviets couldn’t, we merely had the Northern alliance warlords do it for us, with the admittedly effective assistance of our airpower.

But by doing things this way, we returned Afghanistan to the kind of conditions of lawlessness and warlord rule that inspired people to welcome the Taliban in the first place. The old phrase, “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself” comes to mind.

As for the Iraqi’s, they aren’t even electing a government yet, and we haven’t established full control of the place. When Iraq is stable, electing it’s own government, and out of our hands, then I’ll consider them free.

When they are free, when the terrorists are showing up in courts in handcuffs or in body bags, when all the promises made are fulfilled and the people in the middle east are talking with us as friends and equals, then we will have won. Right now, things are far more uncertain than you’d like to admit.

Your closing is another case of counting chickens before they’re hatched. In the year that follows, Bush must still serve the American people well. If the violence remains or escalates in Iraq, if Afghanistan destabilizes, if Gaddafi fails to live up to his word, then election will not be as kind to him as you hope.

Common sense is something this administration is short on, in my opinion. Common sense is that in times of trouble, you want the support of your allies. Common sense is that wars aren’t over until you can pull your army out without having things go to hell. Common sense is that one is better off attacking real threats than illusory ones. Common sense is that one doesn’t stir the hornets nest to avoid getting stung. Common sense is that you don’t get into another war, when your last one is incomplete. Common sense is that if you’re going to spend a great deal that you make sure you’ve got the cash to cover your expenses.

Need I go on? No. I think it’s good time I finished this off.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 24, 2003 08:05 PM

>>Richard- Bush implied that the weapons were ready for use, ready to be handed over to the terrorists, and that the next sign we would have of them was a Mushroom Cloud. Imminent threat was the case Bush made to the UN through Powell and to Americans in his addresses.

No, I believe that’s an incorrect inference on your part. They did dramatize it, but from what I recall, the point was made repeatedly that we CANNOT KNOW with any certainty when the threat is imminent. After 9/11, it makes sense to deal with threats early. Again, in Bush’s state of the Union speech, he specifically said the threat was not imminent.

>> None of which Clinton was implying

On the contrary, Clinton made repeated strong statements about Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and attempts to develop a nuclear bomb. If I recall, his statements were stronger than Bush’s. But Clinton lacked the political courage, or the interest, for that matter, to deal with it in an effective way. Even Dick Morris and his first CIA chief have said that Clinton had little interest in intelligence or defense matters. So he did little about them.

>>Oh, sure Clinton believed Saddam was hiding WMD.

Oh, so Clinton did believe Hussein had them. Then why are Democrats claiming that Bush “lied” about WMD’s?

>>[Clinton did] not allege Al Quaeda links, nor implying an imminent threat that deserved a pre-emptive response.

I have not said Clinton did so. Clinton was a coward who had little interest in getting embroiled in an issue that might burn him politically. Better to leave it for the next president. But a lot of evidence indicates that there was a link between Hussein and Al Qaeda, and the evidence grows almost daily.

>>You said Clinton’s lying under oath was the tip of an iceberg. Well great, so why didn’t you go after the bigger target of the berg itself?

Uh, did you forget that there was an Impeachment vote? Repub’s took what they could get, and it took great political courage. But again, David Schippers, a Democrat, has written that he had many, many charges he planned to bring up had there been an Impeachment trial, of which the Lewinsky affair was the most minor. Consider that, a FELONY committed by the Commander in Chief was the MOST MINOR of the charges to be considered.

Read his book. It’s an eye opener.

>>The Democrats of the eighties at least had the decency to go after your guy for selling arms to Iran to buy off terrorists holding hostages. But what do you guys go after? Whitewater, Paula Jones, and Monica Lewinsky. Two issues that preceded his term in the White House, and one that most Americans could not see as being an impeachable offense. If he was so dirty, it’s your fault that you didn’t pin something serious to him.

Geez, what did you sleep through the entire affair?

First of all, Clinton controlled the Justice Dept, so no prosecutions were going to occur. If you followed the entire Chinagate prosecution, it was carried out ina way to SILENCE potential witnesses against the adminstration, not to obtain their cooperation and testimony against higher-ups.

Second, Janet Reno ignored the Independent Counsel Law, her hand-picked investigator, the head of the FBI and of course all Republicans in refusing to appoint an IC for Chinagate.

That’s obvious obstruction of justice right there.

What did you think about the suitcases of cash being brought into the US from Communist China? What did you think about the head of Chinese military intelligence saying,”We like your president”? Did you really think the numerous confidential FBI files that were obtained by Clinton political operatives and left was really a “bureaucratic snafu?” Did you miss the angry testimony of FBI agents about how they watched Clinton buddy Charlie Trie’s secretary destroy evidence, while the Justice Dept. blocked their search warrant?

What about the political blackmail, including by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. What about the obvious abuse of the IRS, intimidating conservative groups into silence? What about the intimidation of various Clinton girlfriends or gropees, including the slashing of Kathleen Willey’s tires and the disappearance of her cat?

I mean, this goes on and on and on and on, but you apparently have no idea of it all.

>>As for this: “NO, Bush did not claim the threat was ‘imminent.’ That’s a Democratic lie. He said specifically it would be too late to wait until the threat was imminent.”

>>The Crux of your argument is that he never said a bomb is just about to explode in Washington or something like that. In effect he was implying that just as suddenly as the threat of airplanes crashing into buildings would come around, so too would be the threats of WMDs used by terrorists. So one would technically have to concede that point, if one were being real formal about it.

In other words, Bush told the truth. He simply dramatized his point, hardly something would make him deserve what Democrats have said about him.

>>But effectively the result was no different. Bush still worked to alarm people by saying, if we don’t act now, we will not prevent the next 9/11. So even if the concrete threat of a WMD was not immanent, Bush made sure people believed that the use of them was, unless the war was fought.

That’s EXACTLY what he was trying to do; to alarm people against the legitimate dangers towards Americans. Eight years were wasted during the Clinton presidency, and we have a lot of catch-up to do. Al Qaeda has repeatedly stated their intention to use whatever weapons they can obtain, nuclear, chemical, biological, against us.

That’s the big difference between Dem’s and Repub’s at this point. It’s a difference of opinion, not something with which to vilify Bush.

>>As for this: “And again, Bush said nothing any different than what was commonly accepted by almost everyone, including Clinton, the Russian, French and German intelligence servicies and the UN Security Council.”

>>You make it almost sound like they sided with us. But the fact that they didn’t, the fact that they called for more inspections, means that in a nice diplomatic way, they were saying, we’ll find this out for ourselves.

They didn’t “side with us,” but they agreed with us that Hussein had WMD’s. Which of course undermines Dem’s claims that he lied.

>>I mean, if the French and the Germans weren’t disputing our claims, then what’s the deal with freedom fries?

Because aside from arming our enemy to make a buck, violating UN agreements in the process, they undermined our effort to defend ourselves after 9/11. The French and German governments care little or nothing for our legitimate self defense.

>>You say we’re not bound by international laws. Yet the constitution allows our government to make treaties, to take part in international law. The question I want to ask you, is whether or not the world can take us at our word?

We never signed a treaty that would prevent us from attacking Iraq. Cite one if you believe there is. Quite the opposite, in fact; we have an explicit right to self-defense.

>>As I scan down the letter, I see you again claiming Bush never said the threat was immanent. Well. I think you protest too much. For good reason. Otherwise you have to admit this war depended on a impression of impending danger.

Democrats have accused Bush of explicitly saying the threat was imminent. He did not. His administratoin “Impressions” are only that. A knowledgable person would know what Bush was saying. Democrats are lying.

>>The intelligence failure of 9/11 wasn’t technical. It was human.

I’m not claiming the Bush administration is infallible; that mistakes were not made. They likely were, both by Bush and by Clinton. But Bush is dealing with the threat in a substantial and courageous way, at no little risk to his presidency. Clinton punted.

>>Like I told the other guy on this site, don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched.
Gaddafi still has plenty of time to break the promises he’s now making, to hide, to obfuscate, to scheme or whatever. Let’s not write our history before it occurs.

Khaddafy likely will break his promise, should Dean or some other Democrat be elected. Because they’ve already loudly advertised that they wouldn’t be as credible as Bush. They’d wait for the UN to “give us permission.” And wait, and wait, and wait….
>>France, Germany, and Russia are still nowhere to be seen in Iraq. They have not backed down from their previous views, nor joined the coalition. It takes a flexible definition of “coming around to our side” to claim that Gaddafi’s apparent concession to our military might has made converts of them.

All of France, Germany and Russia have become suddenly cooperative on debt forgiveness for Iraq. And they aren’t blind to Libya’s conversion. They’ll either come around or pay the price in the world community.

>>As for your claims about Al Quaeda’s weakness, when the bombs stop going off in Bali, in Iraq, in Arabia, and in Turkey, I’ll believe you. Right now, the casualties are being inflicted on our more vulnerable allies abroad.

Yes, they’ll continue to attack where they’re strong and where they’ve been coddled. But they’ve done nothing against us domestically, despite their many threats. They still are a threat, but we have dealt well with them.

>>As for Northern and Western Europe, I hardly think that they are irrelevent, economically inferior, or on the decline in comparsion to Eastern Europe. You can make your grandiose claims about our support abroad, but the reality is, the people closest to our culture, to our way of life are the people farthest from agreeing with what we have done, and so far, it seems like they have good reason not to.

The fact is, most governments representing the overwhelming majorities of people in Europe sided with us.

And until they reform and follow the Free Market model epitomized by the US, they’ll become more and more irrelevant as time passes. Politically, they are in decline, as the EU continues to fall apart.

>>we returned Afghanistan to the kind of conditions of lawlessness and warlord rule that inspired people to welcome the Taliban in the first place. The old phrase, “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself” comes to mind.

Some things are simply not doable. A semi-democratic country with aweak central government might be all we can achieve in Afghanistan. It is likely that it would be impossible to overcome centuries of tradition there.

>>As for the Iraqi’s, they aren’t even electing a government yet, and we haven’t established full control of the place. When Iraq is stable, electing it’s own government, and out of our hands, then I’ll consider them free.
When they are free, when the terrorists are showing up in courts in handcuffs or in body bags, when all the promises made are fulfilled and the people in the middle east are talking with us as friends and equals, then we will have won. Right now, things are far more uncertain than you’d like to admit.
Your closing is another case of counting chickens before they’re hatched. In the year that follows, Bush must still serve the American people well. If the violence remains or escalates in Iraq, if Afghanistan destabilizes, if Gaddafi fails to live up to his word, then election will not be as kind to him as you hope.

>>Common sense is something this administration is short on, in my opinion. Common sense is that in times of trouble, you want the support of your allies.

Common sense says that an “ally” would not demagogue anti-American sentiments to win an election, as Schroeder did. Common sense would cause someone to support an ally, like Blair did. It is France and Germany, not Bush, that lack common sense. Their countries are threatened by Islamic extremism, too.

>>Common sense is that one is better off attacking real threats than illusory ones.

Oh, and are you privy to secret reports linking Hussein and Al Qaeda? Did you read the report in the Weekly Standard documenting them? If not, don’t make claims about something being “illusory.”

Posted by: Richard Clement at December 26, 2003 03:45 PM

Richard, the president has the CIA, the NSA, the State Department, and any number of other resources at his disposal. to paraphrase Ed Harris’s character in Apollo 13, Bush should have been working the problem, not making things worse by guessing.

Now, if his intelligence tell us that a threat is not imminent, there is no justification for a pre-emptive war of self defense. But that’s not the impression Bush gave.

If you’re saying the next warning will be a Mushroom cloud, you’re saying events will move so quickly if immediate action is not taken that the use of the weapon will hit us before the signs of the terrorist’s possession of it.

But nothing the public’s seen on it’s own has backed that up. so pardon me for my skepticism.

As for Clinton, I remind you that he never raised the crucial point, that is, terrorist acquisition of the WMD. If he didn’t do that, there is no equivalence. Since you admit that Clinton did not make any such statements, I will consider the matter conceded.

As far as the Clinton thing goes, Aim small, miss small. You could have spent your time investigating serious charges whose consequence would register across the board. Because you picked the Monica Lewinsky affair, the impeachment reeked of desperation, especially after all that time wasted on Whitewater.

The Watergate investigation was not done under friendly conditions, but it got done. It took persistence, footwork, and a certain amount of adversarial fact-checking to work it out, but it got done. And in the end, it wasn’t merely some perjury charge, it was the president ordering people to commit felonies in the process of sabotaging a political opponent.

You could have done better than just some 12 year old land deal with Ambiguous finances. You could have done better than Clinton lying during some civil case, if you weren’t so concentrated on making an example out of him for his generation. Going after Impeachment for perjury was simply your most expedient option when the Starr report came out. Political courage would have been going after him for the serious stuff you talked about, if it were true.

“In other words, Bush told the truth. He simply dramatized his point, hardly something would make him deserve what Democrats have said about him.”

Richard, the paragraph you respond to concerns your argument, not his. I did concede a point, but I was conceding it with the understanding that I thought your point was correct in technicality, not in substance.

As for the dramatization, many people, myself included, would speak of him not letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Compelling rhetoric can and does cover up for a multitude of sins. But it cannot protect us from the consequences of our mistakes.

Preventing the next 9/11 will not be about heroic speeches, or confident attitudes. It will be about staying a step ahead of the terrorists.

Al Quaeda can talk all it wants to. But like everybody else, it has capabilities, methods, plans, and certain windows of opportunity to act. And, of course, the human element. The better we know all of these, the better we can bring them down.

Whether we can do this, whether we are doing this is not merely a matter of opinion, but a matter of how closely our understanding matches the reality of our situation. Bush’s understanding of Iraq was poor on many levels. I will not go into them, you know our complaints well.

“They didn’t “side with us,” but they agreed with us that Hussein had WMD’s. Which of course undermines Dem’s claims that he lied.”

That all depends on whose intelligence they believed the WMDs were present on.

Some Democrats call it lies. I call it bad intelligence. Or just plain incompetence. The lies which I would find fault with involve the sheer cascade of spin that has poured out of the White House since things started going against expectations.

We could forgive mistakes, miscalculations, misinterpretations- in short, we could forgive Bush for being human, but him and the rest of his people are just too proud or arrogant to admit to their errors, even when they are blindingly obvious. If there is anything more dangerous than incompetence, it’s the refusal to believe one’s self capable of it.

As for the UN, please be consistent. If you’re saying we don’t have to follow international law, please don’t turn on the French or the Germans for going against it.

I for one think they just caused themselves more trouble by doing that, but I wouldn’t suggest it as a good justification for breaking that law ourselves.

As for the French and Germans, please don’t patronize me with such broad indefensible statements like that. You don’t get unanimous NATO votes from unwilling participants. The Bush Administration, to the best of my knowledge refused their help on the grounds that they weren’t going to march in lockstep with us.

One’s list of allies will always grow thin as long as one requires absolute allegiance.

Of course your definition of self defense is much broader than that of the term “allies”.

Bush pushed the American people to support immediate action. He ran roughshod over all the processes meant to prevent hasty decisions like this, did so based on a theory, so far unproven.

Seeing as how it’s unproven so far, the Democrats are in a better position to claim lies on your part than the other way around. I will be convinced of the growing evidence you speak of when that evidence peeks it’s sprout above ground, and makes itself obvious.

Furthermore, we are bound by an international law that limits how belligerent we can get. It’s called the UN charter. Whatever you beliefs are about it, we expect things of other countries on it’s account, so we cannot toss it aside casually.

Bush doing so isn’t substance, nor courage, but just the foolish impression that we can force our agenda on the world without consequences.

You can make hypothetical declarations about what a Democrat would do with Gaddafi all you want, but you say nothing that convinces me that Gaddafi won’t pull the same stuff with Bush. I mean, now would be the perfect time.

We have most of our armed forces stuck in Iraq. We aren’t ready for a war with Libya. So Gaddafi has breathing room. He also has a much healthier economy, and probably a better armed and equipped army. If Bush pulls out to face Libya, he might be abandoning Iraq to the destabilizing forces of the reason. Perhaps Iran or Syria snap up territory- Now what?

A draft might avoid such a problem, but that would be rather problematic, wouldn’t it? A Democratic president, though, especially one with Dean’s leanings might just go up against Libya, but would have done so probably having left UN supported peacekeepers behind.

The upside of this, is being able to bring combat veterans into the field of battle. That is the benefit of a resolved war- better readiness. Don’t underestimate Democrats, Richard. We fought the good war, we dropped the bomb, we won the day in the Cuban Missile Crisis. We went into Korea and Vietnam. You couldn’t have gotten the first Gulf War without our cooperation. So don’t give me this bull about Democrats being soft. We just don’t paint ourselves into corners

As for debt forgiveness you should not underestimate the what the involvement of the world’s largest economy means in those circles for a developing nation. We’ll see about the additional prediction you make.

As for the question of where Al-Quaeda is strong, I’d like to know why Al-Quaeda is so strong in precisely the place they shouldn’t be: Iraq. What does it say that the place with the most substantial American presence is the one most vulnerable to their attack.?

I don’t know how to address your repetition of the claims about European support, except to say that preaching the standard Free Market stuff my way is unlikely to win me over. I think the Libertarian market policies of the last few administrations has crippled our economy’s ability to maintain a workforce of any integrity, and has rendered us vulnerable to market forces that years ago would have not made a dent. But hey, that’ my opinion, and the topic is so broad that fault could be found in both of our arguments

As for your excuse for the lack of progress in Afghanistan, it’s hardly acceptable. Bush had his opportunity, but no, he said, he wasn’t going to go in and nation-build. Well, la-de-da, of course a strong, centralized nation is not going to be doable if you do little to begin with. Just like everything else, Bush did things halfway.

As for dealing with countries that demagogue us, please tell me what Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia have been doing. The French get hung high for speaking ill of us, but the Saudi princes fund madrasas that slander us everyday, and we still maintain our relationships?

And in closing, no, I read some of it, but I looked further into it and found this at the Washington Post:

“W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of the DIA, said yesterday that the Standard article “is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?”

Another former senior intelligence official said the memo is not an intelligence product but rather “data points … among the millions of holdings of the intelligence agencies, many of which are simply not thought likely to be true.” “

It sounds like proof, but it’s not, in other words. Somebody leaked this, with your conclusion precisely in mind. They never told you that it might just be a listing of rumors, nor that it might have lacked the substantial analysis needed to indicate what might be between the lines- as in, a series of failed negotiations.

In other words, You confused a flood of raw information with useful intelligence.

For future reference, please moderate your length. It’s a pain in the neck to do this, however predictable the rhetoric is.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 27, 2003 03:18 AM

>>Richard, the president has the CIA, the NSA, the State Department, and any number of other resources at his disposal. to paraphrase Ed Harris’s character in Apollo 13, Bush should have been working the problem, not making things worse by guessing.

First, intelligence is very subjective, not factual. There is considerable interpretation involved. Both sides “guess.” After 9/11 Bush decided to take a worst case scenario in looking at it. Second, who says things are “worse?” Third, would you admit that Democrats falsely claimed Bush “lied?”

>>Now, if his intelligence tell us that a threat is not imminent, there is no justification for a pre-emptive war of self defense. But that’s not the impression Bush gave.

Baloney, we have every right to go to war if we see our enemies arming and conspiring against us. Where do you come up with your claims? The Pacificst’s Bible?

(Comment deleted by WatchBlog Manager — Richard, our policy at Watchblog is to Critique the Message, Not the Messenger. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. WatchBlog Manager )

And would you tell me what YOU would do about Al Qaeda’s intent to use nuclear, biological and chemical weapons to kill thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Americans?

The point is, it’s not just Iraq; that’s the starting point. The full intent is to intimidate other rogue regimes into cooperation over the short term, and either reform or overturn them in the long term. Given the near-certain spread to terrorist groups of advanced technology to make WMD’s, the Bush administration has determined it to be a near-certainty that we will be attacked with WMD’s unless we prevent rogue states from arming terrorists, who likely would be unable to develop them without the aid and protection of a country.

Libya is the first indirect fruit of Bush’s threat of force against terrorist states.

>>If you’re saying the next warning will be a Mushroom cloud, you’re saying events will move so quickly if immediate action is not taken that the use of the weapon will hit us before the signs of the terrorist’s possession of it.

Quickly? Not at all. We wasted 8 years of the Clinton administration. We can’t afford to waste 4 or 8 or 10 or 15 more, which is what Democrats would do. Getting permission of the full Security Council to disarm terrorist states is impossible. We’d never do anything except issue empty warnings.

>>As for Clinton, I remind you that he never raised the crucial point, that is, terrorist acquisition of the WMD. If he didn’t do that, there is no equivalence. Since you admit that Clinton did not make any such statements, I will consider the matter conceded.

He did make multiple statements about it. He did not claim that there was a relationship between Hussein and Iraq. I’m pretty sure he warned that there might be one day. He did specifically warn about terrorists in general aquiring WMD’s.

>>You could have spent your time investigating serious charges whose consequence would register across the board. Because you picked the Monica Lewinsky affair, the impeachment reeked of desperation

Look, just because you missed it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Enough evidence was uncovered about Chinagate and other scandals to show that Clinton committed multiple felonies. And Republicans didn’t have control of the Justice Dept. so scandals were COVERED UP. Justice was OBSTRUCTED.

(Comment deleted, WatchBlog Manager)

>>especially after all that time wasted on Whitewater.

It was not a waste of time because 1) it revealed a pattern of obstruction of justice in the Clinton administration, and 2) it showed what a money-grubbing, small time crook Bill and Hillary are.. All the hooey about “we’re not about money” has been shown to be a lie. Both the Clintons are ALL ABOUT MONEY.

Which is why they literally STOLE White House furniture when they left.

>>The Watergate investigation was not done under friendly conditions, but it got done. It took persistence, footwork, and a certain amount of adversarial fact-checking to work it out, but it got done. And in the end, it wasn’t merely some perjury charge, it was the president ordering people to commit felonies in the process of sabotaging a political opponent.

At least some Repub’s cooperated, so it did get done. The media spent a tremendous amount of time and space on it. Chinagate was essentially covered up, to the degree it could be ignored by the press. CNN, for example, had a habit ot burying important stories at the end of their newes, giving them 15 or 20 seconds, when it coverd them at all. The major news stations like CBS, etc. almost ignored the massive scandal.

I mean, it’s pretty clear that Clinton helped arm China in exchange for illegal campaign cash.

(Comment deleted by WatchBlog manager)

>>”In other words, Bush told the truth. He simply dramatized his point, hardly something would make him deserve what Democrats have said about him.”

>>Richard, the paragraph you respond to concerns your argument, not his. I did concede a point, but I was conceding it with the understanding that I thought your point was correct in technicality, not in substance.

(Comment deleted by WatchBlog manager)

Bush told the truth and corectly communicated to Americans that we were in grave danger, whether tomorrow or in 5 years; that we could not be sure when. He didn’t mislead, he didn’t deceive.

>>As for the dramatization, many people, myself included, would speak of him not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.

The facts are that Saddam was developing WMD’s, that he had or was interested in developing relations with Al Qaeda, that Al Qaeda would attack the US as soon as it could with the worst weapons it could obtain. That Bush is right.

((Comment deleted by WatchBlog Manager)

>>As for the UN, please be consistent. If you’re saying we don’t have to follow international law, please don’t turn on the French or the Germans for going against it

I did not do so. I condemned them for going against their ally’s interest of self-defense and violating an agreement which they SIGNED. We have signed no agreement not to attack a country like Iraq.

>>I wouldn’t suggest it as a good justification for breaking that law ourselves.

What law have we violated? Come on, quote it.

>>Bush pushed the American people to support immediate action. He ran roughshod over all the processes meant to prevent hasty decisions like this, did so based on a theory, so far unproven.

In matters of national security, we do not need “proof” in overturning a genocidal criminal like Hussein. Why doesn’t this sink in? Further, Hussein was in volation of multiple UN resolutions and he was a genocidal maniac.

Why are you so concerned with “processes,” and so little supportive that we removed someone like him? Really.

>>Seeing as how it’s unproven so far, the Democrats are in a better position to claim lies on your part than the other way around.

That’s such utter nonsense I don’t need to respond in detail. The Democrats have NO evidence that Bush lied. NONE.

>>Furthermore, we are bound by an international law that limits how belligerent we can get. It’s called the UN charter. Whatever you beliefs are about it, we expect things of other countries on it’s account, so we cannot toss it aside casually.

The resolution against Hussein warned of “grave consequences.” That’s diplo-speak for war. It was the the French and Germans who went against their own vote, not the US. Further, the UN Charter specifically gives us the right to defend ourselves to the point of making war. You really don’t know what the facts are, do you?

>>Bush doing so isn’t substance, nor courage, but just the foolish impression that we can force our agenda on the world without consequences.

These are simply empty words. Bush has displayed more political courage than Clinton ever did. Bush has never claimed there would be no consequences. We are not “forcing our agenda” on the world, simply defending ourselves against terrorist states who aid terrorists. And attempting to spread democracy to people who badly need it.

How low the liberal-left has sunk, geez.

>>You can make hypothetical declarations about what a Democrat would do with Gaddafi all you want

Should I not take Dean or Kerry or others at their word?

>>but you say nothing that convinces me that Gaddafi won’t pull the same stuff with Bush. I mean, now would be the perfect time.

Kaddafi is playing for time, likely, in the hope that someone like Dean is elected. If Bush is re-elected, he’ll likely do what he has promised. It is not “the perfect time” because Kaddafi doesn’t want to give them up. He’s only doing so under fear of being removed from power. He knows Bush is not likely to take action until Iraq is more stable.

Yes, Truman dropped the bomb, but JFK was determined by Kruschev to be weak, and the agreement JFK made to remove missiles from Turkey and promise not to invade Cuba was a complete cave, a sign of weakness. Cuba went on to participate in wars in South American and Africa and do terrible damage. The famine in Ethiopia, for example.

Bet you don’t have much of a clue about any of that, right?

For a few decades now, Democrats have been terribly weak on defense and national security. LBJ’s Viet Nam policy was a dishonest disaster, corrected by Nixon. From fighting the Cold War under Reagan, to keeping military spending high, Democrats have almost always VOTED THE WRONG WAY.

>>As for debt forgiveness you should not underestimate the what the involvement of the world’s largest economy means in those circles for a developing nation. We’ll see about the additional prediction you make.

It isn’t a prediction. The Germans, French and Russians have already agreed.

>>preaching the standard Free Market stuff my way is unlikely to win me over. I think the Libertarian market policies of the last few administrations has crippled our economy’s ability to maintain a workforce of any integrity, and has rendered us vulnerable to market forces that years ago would have not made a dent.

Clinton had a strong economy while he pursued Free Market policies like free trade and lower taxation. But over time, telecommuncations were re-regulated, the tax burden grew as people rose into higher rates, and the economy softened.

Pres. Bush Sr. went almost entirely against Free Market policies, as did Clinton his first couple years. The economy suffered both times.

>>As for dealing with countries that demagogue us, please tell me what Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia have been doing. The French get hung high for speaking ill of us, but the Saudi princes fund madrasas that slander us everyday, and we still maintain our relationships?

Saudia Arabia is very much mixed, but improving. Take away our long relationship and their oil reserves, and they’d be in deep doo-doo. Pakistan is doing the best it can under difficult circumstances. Which is why they’re trying to kill Musharif.

>>I read some of it, but I looked further into it and found this at the Washington Post:
“W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of the DIA, said yesterday that the Standard article “is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?”
Another former senior intelligence official said the memo is not an intelligence product but rather “data points … among the millions of holdings of the intelligence agencies, many of which are simply not thought likely to be true.” “
It sounds like proof, but it’s not, in other words.

I never said there was “proof,” just strong and growing evidence. Plus, the Post has a political agenda that prevents it from including a wide enough range of analysts that support the Al Qaeda/ Iraq connection. In other words, they’re leading readers in a politically correct direction. They hide stories all the time that would support Republicans like Bush or Reagan, or hurt someone like Clinton.

During Chinagate, they almost completely ignored breaking stories about the scandal until AFTER Clinton was re-elected. Then suddenly it was on the front pages. Don’t cite the Post as proof of anything.

>>They never told you that it might just be a listing of rumors, nor that it might have lacked the substantial analysis needed to indicate what might be between the lines- as in, a series of failed negotiations.
In other words, You confused a flood of raw information with useful intelligence.

On the contrary, informed and intelligent people like Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes have cited this CIA report and said, yes, it does come to conslusions based on strong and overlapping evidence. Clinton’s former CIA chief, Woolsey, accepts it, as do many of the experienced intelligence analysts and government officials who write for National Review, for example.

Again, at the very least, it proves that Hussein WANTED a relationship; that over time it might well have occurred, with all the scary implications against the US.

Bush prevented it from happening.

Posted by: Richard Clement at December 27, 2003 12:45 PM

Intelligence fundamentally depends on facts, both in how it’s generated, and how useful it is in practical circumstances. The subjectivity is what you want to refine out of it, pounding it away until the information you have at hand has the strength of steel in it’s reliability, and the edge to cut away all that is false and irrelevant in terms of what one already knows.

Things are at the very least worse than they were advertised to be. We were told we could get out in six months. Put up the title card: SIX MONTHS LATER. Six months after we got in, the area was still unstable, all the predicted things: enthusiastic public support and aid in defeating Saddam, the promised labor of the armies, the presence of WMDs, a link with Al-quaeda that somebody could at least present to the world without any ambiguity as to it’s truth.

None of these turned up as we were told they were turn up. Many of our intelligence agencies warned us about the low value of this stuff, but Bush’s people and policymakers overruled them. They wanted these things to be true, so they acted as if they were. Because they did, it is very likely that Americans died who didn’t have to, and that this war dragged, where it could have rolled on.

It would have been nice to go in there with proof of what Saddam was doing. It would have been nice to have him cross the line, not us. It would have been nice for us to honor the tradition going back centuries to the Treaty of Westphalia, of leaving other countries alone until they start messing with us.

Afganistan was a justified war because these people knowingly harbored Al-Quaeda, knowing what they were doing. We could prove that Al-Quaeda was there- I think they admitted it even! Because they had already crossed the line, we could interfere, we could go in there, destroy them, and nobody would get in our way.

Bush transparently showed contempt for the UN process, a process meant to prevent member states from going to war just because they felt like it. He made it clear that his mind was made up, and that he wasn’t going to wait for proof to act. Point of the process is you don’t have people invading sovereign countries without a good reason. Of course, you’ll say it’s a good reason, but we’re not trying to convince you! We’re trying to convince the rest of the world, which has varying opinions about our trustworthiness.

Instead of going through this process and building the political capital that would allow us to ask for help, we went in there on bad evidence, and have so far come out with barely any evidence at all. We followed chicken feed, and we came out with chicken feed. That may change for the better, but you need to admit to yourself that the possibility exists that despite all your convictions to the contrary, it may never change.

You keep on evading that main point, that plain fact: We don’t have the evidence to justify what we did. The whole point is that we were so obviously right that if we invaded, we’d find the evidence we were looking for.

We invaded NINE MONTHS AGO. Three quarters of a year to find something, anything, and we haven’t found squat. Perhaps your fortunes will turn. Perhaps we might find a few drums buried somewhere out in the desert. But if it takes years to find it, what good will it really do?

I’m no pacifist. If I were, would I be defending the ability of my fellow democrats to go to war? But I believe in just wars as opposed to expedient or paranoid wars. I believe we best serve our interests by not keeping a hair-trigger. That principle served us well in the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK didn’t cave in. If he had truly caved, we’d still have nukes parked 90 miles off our coast. Tell me, are they still there? Are we still here? As for those wars you listed, If my memory serves the Soviet Union was involved too, and dictated a great deal of terms to Cuba. But of course nothing would have pleased you so much as a full scale invasion and take-over of Cuba.

But of course you realize, the Russians would have invaded West Berlin, and we would have had to act on our NATO treaties and that would have been a declared war. A Nuclear War.

In the real world, an itchy trigger finger is a liability, a rarely useful trait.

I’m not going to respond to the rest of your commentary on the cold war because I don’t see the point of contradicting you on your ingrained rhetoric. You’ll just insist on it once more.

As for the economy, I recall your people claiming that the improvements in Clinton’s first term were due to the policies of the Elder Bush. I recall that the deregulation of the mid-90s included several items such as Accounting and Banking deregulation without which the abuses that came to light in the early part of this decade would not have been possible. I recall that preceding the economic recovery, Clinton actually raised taxes. But those are just inconvenient facts to supply-siders and deregulation supporters.

The evidence is so strong, growing so much, you feel the need to play the liberal media card? Don’t insult my intelligence. Find some real reason for me not to believe what they said. You might think that the source you cite are authoritative, but I hardly think a pair of pundits with little or no intelligence experience or a FORMER CIA chief, out of the loop can lend any authenticity to this memo as proof of a real, productive relationship between Saddam and Osama.

They might be able confirm the memo’s authenticity as a document, but the contents are another matter. If you aren’t in the loop, tied in to the sources themselves, then you can’t speak to the quality of the intelligence. If you aren’t even in the intelligence service, but are just familiar with eh area, you’re even farther removed than that.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 28, 2003 03:16 PM

>>Things are at the very least worse than they were advertised to be.

That doesn’t seem accurate to me. Some are, some aren’t. Some people were predicting a very tough war against Hussein’s army. Things went far better. Some people predicted a tough block to block fight in each city. Things went far better. You are right that the aftermath seems more difficult than was anticipated.

The point is, no one can reasonably be accurate in every circumstance. The Bush administration has handled each situation with reasonable competence and flexibility.

>>We were told we could get out in six months. Put up the title card: SIX MONTHS LATER.

I don’t EVER recall hearing this from the Bush administration. Quote them.

>>It would have been nice to go in there with proof of what Saddam was doing. It would have been nice to have him cross the line, not us. It would have been nice for us to honor the tradition going back centuries to the Treaty of Westphalia, of leaving other countries alone until they start messing with us.

That’s the point. There was considerable evidence that Hussein had helped those who attacked us.

Besides, that’s a recipe for waiting until we were attacked again. And where’s the “honor” in allowing GENOCIDAL DICTATORS to remain in power, to kill, torture and rape their cititizens?

(Comment deleted by WatchBlog Manager - Critique the message, not the Messenger, please. )

Do you really think it would be terrible if we knocked off people like Hussein one by one until citizens of each country were free? I thought liberals were compassionate. Instead all I hear is arguments for perpetual policy failure via the UN.

And let’s be frank; the US knocking off a Hussein-type is NOT the moral equivalent of, say, Syria attacking a neighbor.

>>Bush transparently showed contempt for the UN process, a process meant to prevent member states from going to war just because they felt like it. He made it clear that his mind was made up, and that he wasn’t going to wait for proof to act. Point of the process is you don’t have people invading sovereign countries without a good reason. Of course, you’ll say it’s a good reason, but we’re not trying to convince you! We’re trying to convince the rest of the world, which has varying opinions about our trustworthiness.

>>You keep on evading that main point, that plain fact: We don’t have the evidence to justify what we did.

We don’t have evidence?. I just cited a long quotation from Frank Gaffney, of which you haven’t disputed A SINGLE WORD. What, afraid to deal with the evidence? All you respond with are the same false generalizations. All you do is stonewall pathetically, like deny the importance of former CIA head James Woolsey’s opinion.

>>None of these turned up as we were told they were turn up. Many of our intelligence agencies warned us about the low value of this stuff, but Bush’s people and policymakers overruled them. They wanted these things to be true, so they acted as if they were. Because they did, it is very likely that Americans died who didn’t have to, and that this war dragged, where it could have rolled on.

The country is the size of California, so there’s still a considerable chance we’ll find them. Further, there are intelligence reports about WMD’s being shipped to Syria. The fat lady hasn’t sung, it’s barely been months, but liberals are jumping on Bush like he’s the bad guy.

(Comment deleted by WatchBlog Manager)

And again, what about the mistakes of those, particularly liberals like yourself, that there was no connection between Hussein and al Qaeda?

>>Bush transparently showed contempt for the UN process, a process meant to prevent member states from going to war just because they felt like it.

BALONEY, he got a vote from the UN warning Hussein of violent consequences if he didn’t turn over his WMD’s. But the French and Germans went back on their own vote the second time around. They refused to vote honestly. If France and Germany refuse to do what’s right, they’re showing why the UN DESERVES contempt.

We had the support of 26 of 30 European nations. Only France and Germany were opposed. Why are you so adamant that only two countries should prevent us from doing the right thing? Why do you put empty process above what is MORALLY RIGHT? The UN refused to lift a finger to stop the massacre in Bosnia; to prevent the genocide in Rwanda. SO WHAT we didn’t get the unanimous vote of the Security Council?

What you recommend is complete impotence in foreign affairs. No wonder liberals aren’t trusted on national security, geez.

>>That principle served us well in the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK didn’t cave in. If he had truly caved, we’d still have nukes parked 90 miles off our coast. Tell me, are they still there? Are we still here? As for those wars you listed, If my memory serves the Soviet Union was involved too, and dictated a great deal of terms to Cuba.

Sorry, but overall, we took a huge loss, thanks to JFK’s weakness. The Russians gave up nothing, except what they never should have had a chance to achieve; missiles 90 miles form our coast. We not only gave up missiles in Turkey, but promised to leave Castro in power. And let’s recall that Castro would have been long gone had Kennedy kept his commitment to provide air cover during the Bay of Pigs.

The Cuban missile crisis was a success only to clueless liberals.

>>But of course nothing would have pleased you so much as a full scale invasion and take-over of Cuba.

A lot of lives would have been saved in African, Central and South America. The Ethiopians might never have starved had Castro not propped up Mengistu. But you didn’t know that, did you.

>>But of course you realize, the Russians would have invaded West Berlin, and we would have had to act on our NATO treaties and that would have been a declared war. A Nuclear War.

Nonsense. The Russians were completely over matched on nuclear weaponry, to the point that Kennedy actually considered a first strike. The Russians had no chance if they had started a nuclear war, and that would have been completely against their nature. They’re chess players, not suicidal crazies like Osama.

>>In the real world, an itchy trigger finger is a liability, a rarely useful trait.

Bush went through due process during a period of months before he did what was right. Can’t you even get your basic facts right? “Itchy trigger finger/?” (Comment deleted by WatchBlog Manager).

>>As for the economy, I recall your people claiming that the improvements in Clinton’s first term were due to the policies of the Elder Bush.

Funny, I can’t remember anyone saying that, other than maybe those idiots Baker and Darman. They were wrong. Bush was incompetent on economics. Although it took hard work by Dem’s to bamboozle him into it.

>> I recall that preceding the economic recovery, Clinton actually raised taxes. But those are just inconvenient facts to supply-siders and deregulation supporters.

Not at all. Growth was approx. 3% and rising the year before Clinton entered office. By ‘94, it was FALLING FAST to the point that there were many media stories asking if there would be a recession. Growth fell in ‘95 to approx. 1 3/4%.

In other words, Supply-siders were right. It’s Economics 101 that raising taxes hurts economic growth. That was true under both Bush Sr. and Clinton.

>>You might think that the source you cite are authoritative, but I hardly think a pair of pundits with little or no intelligence experience or a FORMER CIA chief, out of the loop can lend any authenticity to this memo as proof of a real, productive relationship between Saddam and Osama.

Clinton’s head of the CIA carries no weight with you? Ha, ha, ha, you’re grasping at straws. Further, George Tenet is the present head of the CIA, and he testified to Congress that there were links between al Qaeda and Hussein. And the evidence has grown since then. So on my side we have two CIA chiefs, a defense expert and one of the sharpest journalists around, Fred Barnes.

And on your side we have who? Look, just admit to yourself that nothing I cite will convince you. You have chosen to believe what you do, and no evidence other than Osama confessing himself would convince you.

(Comment deleted by WatchBlog Manager)

Posted by: Richard Clement at December 28, 2003 09:10 PM

“Really, every word you write reminds people of why liberals are so untrustworthy on issues of national defense.”

I would think every word you write reminds people of why Conservatives get a bad reputation. Yes, Clinton’s head of the CIA doesn’t carry much weight with me. It’s not because he’s no expert in the matters at hand, it’s just that he’s not in the position to be informed of what he needs to be in order to properly judge the document.

As far as Tenet goes, he looks to be doing what his boss is telling him to. He took the blame on the 16 words which his own people told Bush’s people not to include. I mean, think about that for a moment- before we ever invaded, a major portion of your supposed proof was already judged questionable. That was almost a year ago, before we got into this mess.

Why those 16 words? Because they, more than any other, combined with Cheney’s Mushroom cloud warning brought the spectre of the WMD that American’s truly fear- the nuke. But for some reason, your people insisted on it’s inclusion. I think hardline politics was over-ruling reliable intelligence, and I think that’s a pattern that’s manifested many times in this administration.

Bush’s problem may not be that he intentionally lies, but that, almost as bad, he puts too much stock in his own ability to determine the truth, and doesn’t repent of his mistakes. I don’t think I’ve ever really heard the guy apologize for anything he’s said. To you, it might be admirable, but to many out there it’s a sign of either willful neglect of the truth or a profound insecurity about one’s own knowledge of things. Some among us liberals, if we wish to be kind would pose the latter. If we weren’t in such a mood, we would pose the former.

Such an inability to face the fallibility of one’s actions and words head on can be the cause of great frustration at the least, and great problems at the worst. I read your text, and I find a similar pattern, I’m sorry to say.

You talk about the Bay of Pigs, and the Cuban Missile Crisis as if things would not have gone haywire had things gone your way. You ignore significant facts.

First, in the Bay of Pigs, the popular support hoped for in the invasion failed to materialized (sounds familiar). Perhaps we could have won with aerial bombing, but the lack of popular support implies that we might have had some significant problems even if we managed to take over the islands. Sovereign governments survive at the mercy of the population. It is fundamentally more difficult to properly invade a country if the people do not actively wish to transfer their loyalties. We won the Cold War less through an outspending of our enemy, (though that did contribute) but more through a simple degradation of the fears and duties the system depended on. When the support of the Soviets was withdrawn, people simply expressed openly what had developed in them over the years of the easing of restrictions. In Iraq, there was no such withdrawal of that mechanism until, I think, about the time the statues got pulled down

Second, in the Cuban missile crisis you forget a number of things. To start out, I think you have an anachronistic view of the Russian commanders. Chess might have been a big pasttime, but you forget that you are most likely dealing with commanders and politicians whose last experience with open warfare was in places like Stalingrad. You do realize, don’t you, that the Soviets engaged in a scorched earth war there, don’t you? The Hardliners here would have had an experience of warfare which would allow them to believe that great sacrifices could be made in the name of patriotic warfare. So, like the suicide bomber, your true believer communist general would be willing to suffer nuclear strikes if only to strike back

Which brings me to another point. Remember Sputnik? Sputnik was a demonstration of the Russians being able to send things up into orbit on rocket boosters. Translation: They could drop nukes on us ballistically. No need to send a bomber into enemy territory. Just fire one up into the sky, and the warhead’s momentum and the Earth’s gravitational pull would do the rest. In other words, we weren’t safe from nuclear attack, even if we took out Cuba.

And that brings me to yet another point: There were tactical nukes in Cuba, Nukes designed to take out masses of invading soldiers.

And finally, Let me tell you what happened with the Cuban Missile Crisis. They put missiles in a position that would have allowed them to shoot at us with little warning. We faced them up on it getting diplomatic victories in both the Western Hemisphere organizations, and the UN, We successfully blockaded them, diplomatically calling it a quarantine to avoid using a term that constituted an act of war. They traded Their state of the art nuclear missiles for obselete missiles of ours in Turkey that would have been dismantled anyways.

And most of all we avoided a war that we’d likely still be recovering from, if we could have at all. Even if we had enjoyed a victory it might have been a victory at too great a cost to justify the war.

I think it was Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War who said the best victories were the ones that required no fighting at all. By that definition, The Cuban Missile Crisis was not only a victory, but a brilliant one.

You say Bush didn’t have an itchy trigger finger. Well, I think a president who repeatedly says that he’ll go to war no matter fits that description.

Now as to the taxes, I ask you one question: when was the tax policy changed after that? If it wasn’t, not for some time, then perhaps for whatever negative consequences there were, the positive results of having low deficits and next to no inflation that resulted from that tax increase went far to improving the economy.

I mean, can you tell me that gaining half a trillion dollars a year in debt is going to be good for interest rates or inflation? Part of what made the Vietnam war so harmful to the economy was that it was waged with deficit spending instead of direct revenues like WWII.

I mean lets face facts: your guys are not cutting spending. Whether it’s our two occupational wars, our newly christened Homeland Security Department, or all the pork your people saddled on the latest supplementary bill, you guys are writing quite a few more checks.

You guys have also cut revenues, to the tune of trillions of dollars. You say they stimulate the economy, but that’s simplistic. Analysts on both sides of the aisle are saying that high deficits will force either high interest rates or high inflation.

Which of those two, Mr. Clement, would you define as good for the economy? You have to understand that Supply side economics never came from empirical study, but instead from a political movement. In essence it is a experiment in motion, one, unfortunately, that can have severe economic effects. I mean, why else did the Elder Bush break his promise?

Richard, you fail to see both economics, diplomacy, and military affairs from a more complex point of view. If you did more independent research, relied less on party-affiliated sources, and went in with as much practical knowledge as you did platform positions, you might both have a finer understanding of these things, and a more persuavive point of view on them. Remember, I was actually convinced for a while of Bush’s claims, as Colin Powell and Tony Blair laid them out. But I learned things about them that brought me to legitimately doubt the Bush line and to be somewhat frustrated by their reliance on such evidence, especially when I learned that they had better resources than that on hand that they did not use for some reason. You have to look at me as a tough audience. I’m not easy, but I can be convinced.

The thing you have to understand is I have little respect for people who just quote partisan columnists and party platforms. I have little respect for people who wish me to convert to their side based on shoddy evidence, and ill-patterned logic. It doesn’t help, either when people get insulting about it.

I’m a difficult person to change the mind of. I admit that. But if you do your homework better, and track down your sources before I do, you might very well win more battles than you lose.

Do me a favor and try to be more concise. There are other things I’m trying to write, and responding to these long-winded posts is neither helping that, nor making me sympathetic to your sides of the argument.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 29, 2003 06:18 PM

>>I would think every word you write reminds people of why Conservatives get a bad reputation.

Oh, so that’s why the Majority Party in the US is Republicans; why roughly twice as many Americans describe themselves as conservatives as liberals; why liberal politicians deny the term about themselves.

Because conservatives are distrusted? Geez. how absurd.

>>Yes, Clinton’s head of the CIA doesn’t carry much weight with me. It’s not because he’s no expert in the matters at hand, it’s just that he’s not in the position to be informed of what he needs to be in order to properly judge the document.
As far as Tenet goes, he looks to be doing what his boss is telling him to.

So, so without ONE IOTA OF EVIDENCE from you, Woolsey is out of touch and Tenet lied to Congress because he was asked to by Bush? Oh, sure, Democrats would go along with that, hee, hee.

What, do you just make this up as you go along?

Seriously, cite something that would back up your claims about either Woolsey or Tenet.

>>[Tenet] took the blame on the 16 words which his own people told Bush’s people not to include. I mean, think about that for a moment- before we ever invaded, a major portion of your supposed proof was already judged questionable.

Geez, I never claimed those 16 words were “proof.” Try to get something right once in a while. Second, intelligence is ALWAYS “questionable.” It rarely comes any other way. Any president must look at the PREPONDERANCE of evidence and decide accordingly. Funny, you’re not looking at the sum of the evidence, just the few things that support your opinion.

Bush cited a report from British Intelligence, having NOTHING to do with the CIA’s unverified report, and which the British continue to stand by. Whether or not we should include British intelligence in a State of the Union speech can be debated, but the report has not been proven to be false, nor did Bush lie, as your politicians DISHONESTLY claimed.

Further, the UN verified a long list of WMD’s, the existence of which was cited repeatedly by Clinton, who I assume you trust. Even more comically, Hussein HIMSELF admitted he had them. Why do you pick out a single questionable piece of intelligence and ignore the obvious; that EVERYONE including Hussein himself acknowledged their existence before Bush was even elected?

>>Bush’s problem may not be that he intentionally lies but that, almost as bad, he puts too much stock in his own ability to determine the truth, and doesn’t repent of his mistakes.

You have yet to cite one of his mistakes. It is you who are in error. Don’t you get it? Geez, Louise!!

>>You talk about the Bay of Pigs, and the Cuban Missile Crisis as if things would not have gone haywire had things gone your way. You ignore significant facts.
First, in the Bay of Pigs, the popular support hoped for in the invasion failed to materialized (sounds familiar).

It is unreasonable to the point of absurdity to expect badly oppressed populaces to rise quickly against a dangerous and murderous regime. Castro’s regime was quite murderous in its early stages and very oppresssive. That people didn’t rise up is irrelevant.

The central point of the Bay of Pigs is that, if you’re going to instigate an attack against a despicable, totalitarian, genocidal dictator like Castro, DO IT RIGHT and do what it takes to remove him from power or don’t do it at all.

I have some respect for Kennedy, but he wilted and displayed a lack of political courage. He failed badly.

>>Sovereign governments survive at the mercy of the population. It is fundamentally more difficult to properly invade a country if the people do not actively wish to transfer their loyalties.

On the contrary, anyone who knows the slightest thing about Communism knows that they survived for decades by intimidating their citizens into submission. And anyone who doesn’t understand that both the Cuban and Iraqi people wanted their oppressive governments removed doesn’t have much of a clue.

>>We won the Cold War less through an outspending of our enemy, (though that did contribute) but more through a simple degradation of the fears and duties the system depended on. When the support of the Soviets was withdrawn, people simply expressed openly what had developed in them over the years of the easing of restrictions.

Oh, geez, you don’t even understand what the Soviets admitted after the fall. Had Reagan not outspent them, they NEVER would have attempted the dangerous reform that resulted in their collapse. Why did they permit gradual freedom, if not to spur economic growth, with the full intent of using the revenue to keep up with our military spending?

This is pretty basic stuff, but you don’t seem to be aware of it.

>>like the suicide bomber, your true believer communist general would be willing to suffer nuclear strikes if only to strike back.

This is a complete misunderstanding of the Russian character, as well as a complete rewriting of what the Russians themselves have said.

Look, you have to do something in a debate other than simply make things up off the top of your head.

>>They put missiles in a position that would have allowed them to shoot at us with little warning. We faced them up on it getting diplomatic victories in both the Western Hemisphere organizations, and the UN, We successfully blockaded them, diplomatically calling it a quarantine to avoid using a term that constituted an act of war. They traded Their state of the art nuclear missiles for obselete missiles of ours in Turkey that would have been dismantled anyways.

One, they were never strong enough to successfully put missiles in Cuba. Our nuclear weaponry was far, far stronger, both in numbers, accuracy and reliability. The Soviets could not bluff us, other than threatening suicide. We could have done whatever it took to take them out, and the Soviets would have had no recourse to stop us, other than launching a first attack against a vastly stronger power.

Had Kennedy been stronger, they would have admitted that via their actions and diplomacy.

Second, your characterization of the result as a “diplomatic victory” is a joke. Castro is still in power, to wreak destruction and mass murder in two continents because Kennedy caved to the Soviets. I’m sure you’re not aware, but Castro played a decisive role in the entry and attempted spread of Communism into our hemisphere, including Chile, Brazil, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Bolivia, Columbia, to cite just a few.

Not to mention what he did in Africa.

And you call this a “victory?” Ha, ha, ha, more “victories” like that, and we’d have lost the Cold War.

>>I think it was Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War who said the best victories were the ones that required no fighting at all. By that definition, The Cuban Missile Crisis was not only a victory, but a brilliant one.

Ha, ha, ha, Sun Tzu would have marvelled at how a weak military with few bargaining chips, interfered far from home and walked away with a victory without firing a shot, Heck, without even having working weapons in Cuba. Again, tell us where the “victory” was. You’ve got the whole thing backwards.

>>You say Bush didn’t have an itchy trigger finger. Well, I think a president who repeatedly says that he’ll go to war no matter fits that description.

Another obviously FALSE CLAIM on your part. Bush never said any such thing. Quote him, or admit you MADE UP another Whopper.

>>Now as to the taxes, I ask you one question: when was the tax policy changed after that?

I don’t know what “that” refers to. But again, it’s Economics 101, a subject almost all liberals flunk, that cutting taxes spurs economic growth, and vice versa. It doesn’t matter which party impliments the policy either.

>>I mean lets face facts: your guys are not cutting spending.

Conservatives have acknowledged that, and unless I get strong assurances otherwise, I might well not vote Republican in ‘04.

>>I mean lets face facts: your guys are not cutting spending…..You guys have also cut revenues, to the tune of trillions of dollars. You say they stimulate the economy, but that’s simplistic. Analysts on both sides of the aisle are saying that high deficits will force either high interest rates or high inflation.
Which of those two, Mr. Clement, would you define as good for the economy?

Oh, geez, where to begin. First, deficit spending arguably stimulates growth, at least over the short term. “Cutting” revenues, if you mean cutting tax rates, also stimulates growth. Which is why growth skyrocketed to 8% last quarter.

You’d have to have deficits for a long time to come before interest rates rose significantly. Which is why they’re still low, despite the predictions of liberal-left economics like Paul Krugman, who has entirely missed the boat on what’s supposed to be his field of expertise.

And inflation is caused by a country’s central bank increasing the money supply, not from over spending.

>>You have to understand that Supply side economics never came from empirical study, but instead from a political movement. In essence it is a experiment in motion, one, unfortunately, that can have severe economic effects.

You once again display your ignorance. Supply-side was a solid intellectual theory arrived upon by a number of economic theorists, including Robert Bartley, former editor of the Wall St. Journal. It was picked up by Reagan, against the advice of even many conservatives.

It turned out to work wonderfully. All of the last 6 or 7 Nobel Prize Winners in economics were either explicit or implicit Supply-sidres.

>>I mean, why else did the Elder Bush break his promise?

Uh, because he was clueless? Because he was hornswoggled by Democrats? Becaues Dem;’s refused to control spending?

He didn’t need to. To put it in perspective, the deficit when Reagan entered office was 2.3% of GDP. The deficit rose, fell and wsa back at 2.3% of GDP when he left. All Bush had to do was control Dems’ spending. Instead, he cut a deal and broke his promise.

>>Richard, you fail to see both economics, diplomacy, and military affairs from a more complex point of view. If you did more independent research, relied less on party-affiliated sources, and went in with as much practical knowledge as you did platform positions, you might both have a finer understanding of these things, and a more persuavive point of view on them.

I don’t adhere to party lines; I read widely. And when you advocate “complex views,” you ought to remember that the important truths in life are frequently simple.

>>The thing you have to understand is I have little respect for people who just quote partisan columnists and party platforms.

I have never cited a “party platform.” I despise political deceit, and I’d include in that the Bush administration’s claim that they’re controlling spending. But in general, they’re reasonably honest.

>>I have little respect for people who wish me to convert to their side based on shoddy evidence, and ill-patterned logic

Ha, ha, ha, that’s so hilarious. I cite CIA documents, the opinions of two CIA heads both of whom were appointed by Clinton, and you stonewall all of it, then accuse me of “shoddy evidence?” Come on, you’re kidding, right?

Every school of Economics with which I’m familiar postulates that cutting taxes spurs growth, and you stonewall that, then accuse me of “shoddy evidence, and ill-patterned logic?” Got a mirror handy?

>>It doesn’t help, either when people get insulting about it.

I dont’ suffer fools gladly, especially when they stonewall and refuse to acknowledge the obvious.

Posted by: Richard Clement at December 30, 2003 12:42 PM

“I dont’ suffer fools gladly, especially when they stonewall and refuse to acknowledge the obvious.”

Richard, obvious to who? You? If I thought your conclusions were obvious, if the truthes were so simple. I wouldn’t need to debate you. We’d just exchange statements, and that would be it. What you’re doing is trying to fight me on whether I should believe what I do.

Seeing as how I already have good reasons, to my mind, for believing what I do, I’m not going to change my mind because you find my attitudes towards politics distasteful. In fact, I might feel more compelled to defend my views.

You cite CIA documents that were never meant to be taken as a final intelligence report, nor as proof of anything. They were meant to be data points, the raw stuff you feed to an analyst to get worked out. I mean, don’t spies lie, give chicken feed, make mistakes in their observations and get decieved themselves?

Before you start trumpeting the truth of this stuff, you might ask yourself what we can trust of what was put out there.

On deficit spending, you have to look at it in terms of our money going out to our creditors here and abroad to pay for the debt, in the form of T-Bills. The more money we have to borrow, the less money the treasury can be sending around. So either they print more money to make the difference, or they withdraw some of the money, by interest rates, out of the economy.

In the meantime, tax increases are necessary if you want to avoid that dilemma. The more debt we have outstanding, the more this scenario become real.

As for stimulation of the economy, let me ask you a question- are businesses ever at fault for their own shortfalls? Perhaps the economic downturn isn’t the result of taxes or the lack of them, perhaps it’s the result of fewer workers contributing to the economy, or a lousy culture of management within most companies today. All these things could have an effect on the economy. I mean, can you tell me that the boom of the 90s wasn’t the result of the advances in technology?

I asked about when the taxes were supposedly repealed because if they were still in effect when the growth started, that may have just yanked us out of deficit territory and into surplus. without that tax increased, we’d owe even more money than we do now.

As for economics, I believe I made a B. And I probably remember more of the details more than most people who attended that class.

“Another obviously FALSE CLAIM on your part. Bush never said any such thing. Quote him, or admit you MADE UP another Whopper.”

From CNN article, source: Colin Powell 2/10/2003

quoted from the text:
If the U.N. Security Council does not support military action when it’s time to take that step, Powell said, the United States and a willing coalition of other countries will.

Anyways, if you kept track of the build-up pre-war, it’d be hard to come to any other conclusion. It never hitched a bit. And people were talking about a Coalition of the Willing (as opposed to all those unwilling to help) back in November of 2002. so is it obviously false? No. I think it holds up under scrutiny if you go back and read through the stories.

The Cuban Missile crisis was a defeat for the Russians. We showed them that they could not put nuclear missiles in one of their satellite countries. That we could board and inspect their vessels at will, and that they couldn’t bluff us out of our blockade of their satellite. We showed the rest of the world that Russia could not mess around in our backyard without consequences, and we also showed that in a contest of wills, America was more than capable of coming out on top. They had to settle for a promise not to invade Cuba. They couldn’t even get us to diplomatically recognize Cuba’s government (We still don’t!). I mean, if they had the upper hand, don’t you think they would have gotten that at the very least? No, they had to settle for the dismantling of obsolete nukes, and pledge not to invade, which is in itself an admission for them that we could invade at will if we chose, but just to give them something to shut up their hardliners, we did that as a favor. With the way Bay of Pigs went, Kennedy was probably glad to be rid of the albatross.

As for Cuba’s interventions elsewhere, the spending they contributed was probably dwarfed by ours and the Soviet’s. Hell, who do you think was propping the Cuban economy up, Richard? The fact that Castro is even starting to negotiate with western interests shows how much he needs our money and renewed interest.

Again, I reiterate, the Soviets lost diplomatically. They were exposed as liars in front of the whole UN and slapped down by the council of the Americas concerning the Blockade. Additionally, we didn’t know they had more nukes, and they knew we didn’t know.

As for the Russian Character, I think that’s kind of broad. Even recently, during the coup of 1991, when communism was heaving it’s last gasps, we had Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin opposed to hardliners and conservatives in their government. Numerous coups and purges dot Soviet history. If you think they were of a unified character, a good look at the way political succession worked would quickly disabuse you.

Yes, Reagan outspent them. Question: was he spending with the intent of defeating them by spending? Or was he simply hoping for a military advantage? I think the latter is more historically correct.

I think we simply have a more robust culture and civil society. Communism depended on a kind of Orthodoxy that our country didn’t. We could swallow socialism whole, without destroying ourselves. They could not absorb democratic principles and freedoms without losing control of their system. So in the end, the system that could tolerate the other sides ideas more in competition with their own was the one that survived. Reagan’s spending only put them in a position where such a competition was the only option left. So in the end it wasn’t only the Marketplace of capitalism that won, but the marketplace of ideas.

I believe, in the end, it will be the American ability to absorb and process diversity that will triumph over its competitors.

As for the 16 words, Dick Cheney and the CIA sent Joseph Wilson to Niger to establish the truth of the claim. He came back and said that the official this supposed letter was addressed to had been out of office for over a decade. Do I need to make myself any clearer on this? Why would the Bush administration have gone into damage control if there was any value to the information?

As for the current document O’ proof, it’s a leaked memo of data points. In english, this is raw information as given out by the sources, unfiltered for the BS, the half-truths, the misinformation and the honest mistakes. To take this document as representing a valid piece of intelligence, would be like feasting on cattle feed instead of cooking yourself a steak. There’s a reason that most people allow the process to take its course, instead of jumping to conclusions.

As for Tenet and Woolsey, I’d say Tenet was in a position where they basically had to take his word for it, and where he did in fact shoulder some of the responsibility for the matter.

Woolsey is no longer sitting at a desk in the CIA. That’s all I need to know to say that he’s at a disadvantage analyzing that document’s data points.

You don’t need new evidence to say that- the evidence is all there. You just have to understand that they aren’t going to pass the sensitive data required to fully understand what’s in the memo, what’s good, what’s iffy, and what stinks, to a man who no longer works at the CIA.

Oh, and if you’re going to pull that numbers stuff, let me tell you: the majority of Americans will not describe themselves as conservative. It goes both ways of course, but you should realize that your political majority is in the hands of people