This is an agree to disagree blog site. I'm pretty sure we will not be able to change the opinion of the other authors, but we will have the opportunity to "fine tune" our political arguments to go after the weak undecided with our back and forth banter and opinion. The only rule is, no personal attacks...be nice to the person, but brutally honest about the idea.
I was a strong supporter of McCain in 2000, but I steadily lost respect for him in recent years. His campaign this year has been extremely dishonorable. However, it wasn't until this week that I started to think the previously unimaginable.
Bush has been a disaster, including failing to act on the mortgage crisis for way too long. Nevertheless, when I contrast Bush's leadership in the past week with McCain's empty grandstanding, I would have to consider voting for a third term of Bush over McCain if those were my only two options.
Democrats have tried to paint McCain as a third term of Bush. I'm not sure he wouldn't be worse. McCain wants to give even more tax cuts to the wealthy. Whereas Bush has discovered the art of diplomacy in his second term, McCain wants to pursue an even more neoconservative foreign policy than Bush's first term. Bush is a juvenile frat boy who always seems to think he operates with divine inspiration. McCain is an erratic drama queen who thinks himself more moral than anyone around him. At least Bush seems to have learned from his mistakes.
McCain could accomplish quite a feat by winning this election. He could make me nostalgic for Bush.
A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.
Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.
The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”
The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’”
Politico has more interesting stuff about the workings of the White House and the deliberate use of Cheney to preserve willful ignorance on Bush's part as to the illegal actions of his administration.
HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.
Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.
Former Justice Department counselor Monica M. Goodling and former chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson routinely broke the law by conducting political litmus tests on candidates for jobs as immigration judges and line prosecutors, according to an inspector general's report released today.
Goodling was part of an effort to give a large number of highly sought-after Justice Department jobs to law school grads from her alma mater, Pat Robertson's bottom-tier Regent University:
The infiltration by mediocre graduates of a poorly rated faith-based law school into key positions in the Department of Justice is just plain scary. The New Republic website, referring to the Goodling affair, observed with uncharacteristic understatement: “That a recent graduate of one of the worst (and sketchiest) law schools with virtually no relevant experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there is something seriously wrong at the [Department of Justice].”
Besides being a bad lawyer, he has broken the law and advised his client to break the law. He has been involved in most of the major abuses of power of the Bush Administration, as shown by this Slate diagram (follow the link for the interactive diagram):
Kucinich is continuing in his efforts to impeach Bush and getting no cooperation from the House Democratic leadership.
While I agree with the Democrats' decision not to impeach, I am going on record as saying that impeachment of Bush would not be inappropriate. Bush's actions (e.g., torture, trumped up case for Iraq, politicization of the Justice Department, violations of civil liberties, evasion of Congressional oversight; executive signing statements; Valerie Plame) are far worse than Clinton's and probably worse than Watergate.
However, I tend to think that impeachment is probably outdated. In addition to facing re-election after four years, presidents are now limited to two terms. The country can survive four to eight years of all but the most egregious abuses. The divisiveness and disruption of impeachment proceedings probably outweighs the potential benefit.
With Clinton, and to a certain extent with Bush, the impeachment movement is partially based upon politics and frustration with failure to defeat the President upon re-election. As I said, there are grounds for impeachment, but at this point the only purpose of impeachment would be to try to override the election and embarrass the President. That doesn't justify the national trauma of impeachment.
To its proponents, the surge is working so well that it sets the stage for years and years of further American military engagement in Iraq. And it's true -- the security gains of the past year do make the Bush/McCain strategy of perpetual military entanglement in Iraq look a lot more viable than it looked a year ago. But it's also true that the security gains of the past year make a strategy of leaving Iraq look a lot more viable than it looked a year ago.
A friend recently compared Bush to Lincoln. I laughed out loud. The Truman comparison is only slightly less ridiculous.
Andrew Roberts analogizes that both Truman and Bush will have left office with extremely low approval ratings and a foreign policy that has been judged a failure. He goes on to predict that, like Truman, Bush will be regarded as a great president. The analogy should be of no comfort to Bush's supporters. Truman was unpopular, and his foreign policy deemed a failure, because of the Korean War. Truman's handling of the Korean War is still considered a foreign policy failure. Truman is considered a great president because he was, in retrospect, successful in other areas. Surely Andrew Roberts, a historian, knows this. I can only assume he is being dishonest.
On to the merits. The article gives this pretty good summary of Bush's supposed positive legacy.
The overthrow and execution of a foul tyrant, Saddam Hussein; the liberation of the Afghan people from the Taliban; the smashing of the terrorist networks of al-Qa'eda in that country and elsewhere and, finally, the protection of the American people from any further atrocities on US soil since 9/11, is a legacy of which to be proud.
Hussein was an awful dictator whose removal from power is a good thing. No reasonable person ever denied that. It remains to be seen whether Iraq will become a liberal democracy. I would say the odds are still against that final outcome.
Even if that is the outcome, it came at great financial cost to the United States, with great sacrifice on the part of many soldiers and their families, and with great loss of life in Iraq. Will a liberal Iraq be worth it? Additionally, the disregard for diplomacy leading up to the war badly strained our international relationships.
The conduct of the war is nothing to be proud of. If we have a stable and peaceful Iraq, it will be in spite of - not because of - Bush's leadership. He went in with too few troops. He then stuck by Rumsfeld well after it was clear that Rumsfeld was not up to the task. The surge, the impact of which I believe has been overblown by the right in an effort to take more credit for recent progress than Bush or McCain deserve, was not even Bush's idea. Finally, he authorized torture and other abuses of power for which I will forever be ashamed of my country.
The invasion of Afghanistan was a no-brainer. I give Bush no credit for that. Further, instead of seeing that project through, he diverted attention to Iraq. The author credits Bush with "the smashing of the terrorist networks of al-Qa'eda in that country and elsewhere," so why is Osama bin Laden still putting out tapes? Did Bush disrupt al Qaeda? Maybe. Smash? Not so much. I would expect any president to have at least overthrown the Taliban and disrupted al Qaeda. You don't get credit for doing the minimum.
In the article, Andrew Roberts says we should give Bush credit for the lack of a terrorist attack after 9/11. According to Roberts, if there is a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center during the first year of a president's first term and none during the rest of his two terms, he has responded to the threat as well as possible. So I'm sure you can understand my surprise when he described Clinton's response to al Qaeda as ineffective. After all, there was an attack on the WTC in 1993 and no other successful attacks from Islamic terrorists on U.S. soil until after Bush took office. Roberts describes Clinton as refusing to act against al Qaeda. However, some conservatives accused Clinton of an attempt to "wag the dog" when he ordered strikes against al Qaeda in 1998. During the transition in early 2001, the Bush Administration reportedly had little interest in the Clinton Administration's strong recommendations for dealing with al Qaeda.
I'm fairly certain that, if there had been a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Andrew Roberts and the rest of the Bush apologists would have plenty of (good) reasons for absolving Bush of responsibility. They were preparing for such a possibility years ago by talking about how we have to succeed 100% of the time and the terrorists only have to succeed once. Even with our best efforts, attacks can still happen. What effective measures has Bush taken that any other president wouldn't have taken? I can't think of any. While I criticize his lack of attention to terrorism before 9/11, I don't blame Bush for 9/11 because I have no concrete reason to believe he could have prevented it even if he were paying attention. However, I'll give Bush credit for the lack of a terrorist attack since 9/11 if he accepts full responsibility for 9/11. No, "But Clinton!" Full responsibility.
Bush's actual record is terrible. Port security remains neglected. The war in Iraq has been a drain on resources and a recruiting tool for terrorists. I'll conclude with former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora's comments to the Senate last week explaining how Bush's detention and torture policies killed Americans.
I'm going to write several posts about the Bush Administration's decision to go to war with Iraq at some point. I don't plan to be persuasive enough to change any body's minds but I would like to write about why I felt at the time, and still feel, that we were justified in going to war and that it was a good thing to do. I need to read a couple books before I start on this project though
However, before I start doing that (it may be a couple of months, or even after the election before i do this) I'll present this article about Bush's legacy.
I fully expect this to cause a flood of links and posts. Let's see if this gets Ryan and Curt going.
No, there are no powerful interests involved in shaping scientific reports on climate change to minimize the problem:
An investigation by the NASA inspector general found that political appointees in the space agency's public affairs office worked to control and distort public accounts of its researchers' findings about climate change for at least two years, the inspector general's office said yesterday.
...
From the fall of 2004 through 2006, the report said, NASA's public affairs office "managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public." It noted elsewhere that "news releases in the areas of climate change suffered from inaccuracy, factual insufficiency, and scientific dilution."
The reports two years ago that Iran had offered and the Bush Administration had summarily rejected dialogue has a lot to do with my thoughts on Bush's foreign policy and Obama's new direction. A few takeaways:
Part of the more cynical case for war in Iraq was to frighten our enemies and show that we mean business. The Bush Administration foolishly squandered the opportunity to take advantage of that.
Iran may be a rational actor willing to negotiate terms beneficial to both parties.
We lose credibility with the people of Iran as a result of our stubbornness, thereby "emboldening" our enemy Ahmadinejad and other hard-liners in that country.
Also, a lot of the talk about Iran has to do with Ahmadinejad and his personality. However, he may not be around much longer and can't make major foreign policy decisions without the approval of the Supreme Leader.
