I’m Joe and Suzie Six-Pack, and I voted for Bush in 2004. I don’t like how the war is going, and I don’t trust Bush anymore. But, I think maybe he’s right — that you’re demoralizing our soldiers and giving the enemy comfort when you criticize him.
You’re Nancy Pelosi. You’re Harry Reid. You’re Jay Rockefeller. You’re Howard Dean. How do you counter the new White House strategy? What’s your strategy? What are your counter-arguments?
WOLF BLITZER: The president of the United States speaking to U.S. troops and their families at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, on his way to Asia — the president restating what he said in Pennsylvania on Friday, but, this time, going beyond and specifically going after three other Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate.
On Friday, he went after John Kerry, his Democratic presidential opponent of last year. And, today, he is directly going after, without mentioning their names, Senator Jay Rockefeller, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, and Carl Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, citing statements they made in the buildup to the war, in effect, accusing them now of undermining the U.S. troops and encouraging terrorists to operate against the United States — strong words from the president on his way to Asia.
Let’s bring in our senior analyst, Jeff Greenfield.
What’s the president’s strategy here, Jeff?
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: I think the point here, Wolf, is for the president to try to make the case that there’s an undermining going on here.
And I think those are — those are very strong words the president used. That it sends mixed signals to the enemy and mixed signals to the troops — to the troops is a way of saying, if you now go back and say that I, the president of the United States, misled or lied us into a war, you’re encouraging our enemies and you are — and you are discouraging the troops, because that is always the strongest card that any president has to play when public support for combat diminishes, as our — as every poll shows it has been here.
And I think the idea is to say, look: They were saying the same things I was about Saddam Hussein. And for them now to go and say they were misled is just wrong.
Now, there’s going to be a real debate going on, on two quick levels, if I may. One, did the congressional leaders have the same access to intelligence that the administration had? There’s — there’s a real debate about that one. And, second, the White House is — is arguing that — that commissions have said that there was no twisting of intelligence.
That’s not exactly what those Intelligence Committees were — were finding. They found that that — that the administration did not pressure intelligence operatives to change the intelligence. What they did with that intelligence, those committees have said, was not in their purview.
But, clearly, in Pennsylvania and again today, the president is really trying to turn the tables and say, it’s you Democrats who are partly responsible for the uncertainty out in the land. I think, by the way, it’s also a way to say, that — that’s why my poll numbers are going down. It’s because Democrats are misleading people about the history — Wolf. … Continued below:
BLITZER: It sounds like some of the campaign rhetoric that we heard last year, going into the election. It’s still a year away from the midterm elections. But it certainly has that ringing give-and- take, that back-and-forth.
GREENFIELD: Well, you may remember the — it was a line much quoted at the Republican Convention. And, obviously, it’s overstated, as journalists are wont to do.
But one journalist, Roger Simon, said that the message of the Republican Convention was, vote for Bush or die, his — his satirical point being, they were trying to make the case that, if John Kerry were put in the White House, his uncertainty would weaken the United States. What you’re getting now, a year — almost a year to the day after the — the reelection of the president, is an argument from the White House saying: We know things are going — are — are tough. We just heard the president acknowledge that. But — but, if you Democrats try to refight the basis for going into this war, you’re misleading the people.
And that, I believe, is what the White House wants people to focus on. Look, they read these poll numbers. I don’t care what any politician says. They know what the poll numbers say. And they are trying to change those numbers.
BLITZER: Jeff Greenfield, helping us better understand what’s going on, as he always does — Jeff, thank you very much.
But then, this is CNN!
Well, the helpful thing is that the two main GOP talking points are lies:
They are not only lies but Pincus and Milbank instantly debunked them as lies, as did Fineman. When GOP guests are on they are a little more effective, but these lies won’t stick.
But, this is why I keep talking about momentum for impeachment or resignation. Because the President did lie, they not only gave us false intelligence, they were responsible for going out and farming that false intelligence into the system in the first place (Chalabi’s network, the WHIG group).
And the American people only need to be made aware of that through real investigations and they will be outraged. So, either we back off or we go the whole hog. There is no more wishy-washy position left. We can’t go around saying they faked the intel without recommending the only possibly remedy for that.
Otherwise we would be doing nothing but undermining the moral of the troops, rather than doing something to atone for this mistake.
Hogshit.
Hmmm. Let me try that again, but with more details.
From the afternoon after the 9/11 attack onwards — when I came home to find people I didn’t know standing on the street corners of my neighborhood holding flags — all real political debate stopped for upwards of a year. We had a dangerous demagogue president demanding the obedience of friend and foe alike, announcing that you were either with “us” or you were the enemy. Anyone brave enough to question the official line, and there were damn few of those, was immediately smeared as a traitor.
The Democrats in Congress rolled over and played dead. They should not be forgiven for that, and certainly they should not be allowed to get away with claiming they were fooled. The only people who were fooled by the lead-up to Iraq were people who wanted to be fooled. If there are any Democrats in Congress who are seriously, honestly claiming that they were misled by the President, they need to resign on the grounds that they are too damn stupid to serve. The rest of them — almost all of them — cynically decided to place their electability over the well-being of the United States and its servicemembers. That is the sense in which the Dems are traitors: they supported the President.
All during this time, while the neutered Democratic Party gnawed on its own nonexistent balls, the executive and legislative branches were firmly in the control of the Republican Party, as was most of the mainstream press. People marched — a lot of people marched — but when it gets down to it, no one who had any power to resist Bush did so.
If Bush is going to complain that smart people did nothing to save him and our country from the stupidity, insanity, incompetence, and mendacity of his administration, he may have a point. But otherwise, this war is all his baby. As perhaps no president in American history, he had carte blanche to run the show exactly the way he wanted it, and the end result, an intractable quagmire, is entirely his creation.
I don’t know what to say to Joe and Suzie Sixpack. I certainly can’t say much on behalf of the cynical, craven cowards in my own party. I can ask them to consider, in light of George W. Bush’s performance as commander-in-chief, whether we can afford to “stay the course” with the current leadership, and if not, what we ought to do. Yes, withdrawal will mean disgrace. But we are already disgraced in the eyes of the world. Will withdrawing now be any more disgraceful than withdrawing once the body count reaches 4,000? 8,000? At what point do the lives of our troops matter more than saving face amongst a bunch of foreigners to whose opinions Joe and Suzie are notoriously indifferent?
uneasiness. I didn’t think the war was a good idea and I didn’t have ANY access to so-call intelligence. So why did most of the dems? Were they afraid to get in front of what they saw was a band wagon for war? I don’t think people were that up for Iraq intervention then either. Or were they uncertain about how to put themselves out on what they saw was a limb that might break underneath them? Whatever they were afraid of, the net result was that they were then and to some extent are now acting without any kind of governing principles.
I’m pretty sure that the primary calculation going through the minds of the Democrats, fresh from their defeat in 2000, was their ongoing electability. The public was at least as outraged after 9/11 as after (the much more serious) attack on Pearl Harbor. Bush’s demagoguery was very effectively whipping up the public, the media was cowed, and there were some high profile left wingers who jumped on the war bandwagon. To have opposed the war would have cost many Democratic congressmen their jobs.
It might, however, have saved the country. It probably wouldn’t have stopped the war, mind you, but now that the war has ground down to an endless, bloody slog with no end in sight, the Democrats would now be a credible opposition party. Instead, they are a cynical joke. Democrats traded the lives of many tens of thousands of people to save their careers. We should not forget that.
I held my nose and voted for a hypocritical me-too hawk like John Kerry only because the alternative was the Worst President Ever. At any other time, I might have voted for a third party or not voted at all. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that. The next election will lack some of the urgency of the last one, and Democrats must do better. At the very least, they must offer up someone who did not support the war, which rules out most of the congressional Dems.
There he goes again.
First he twisted the intelligence now he is twisting the facts about the intelligence. The Congress only saw what the White House released. We all know the kind of material they were releasing. And of course the only investigation that is nearly complete has issued an indictment.
Indeed he blah blah Dem Talking Point About Anything We Want blah blah’d/
This one is broken. So let’s find a nice calming authoritative type – a white Colin Powell, a younger Ronald Reagan – who can be brought in to fix things. Problem is that a smarmy bunch like Grover,Rover, and pals are a little to weird to even know how to recognize the right front man.
Dear Joe and Suzie,
I know you have serious concerns about the well-being and morale of our brave soldiers in Iraq, and the question you ask about whether our enemies are gaining comfort from those here at home who oppose this presidents agenda in Iraq is an important one. Whether we disagree with the president’s policies or not, no one wants to even inadvertently jeopardize our endangered soldiers any more than they already are.
While it’s easy to think that discord and criticism of the president’s policy here at home might increase the dangers to our troops, in fact our opposition to the president’s Iraq policy and our criticism of the massive, across the board incompetence demonstrated at every level of his administration with respect to this war is motivated by our preeminent concern for the well-being of our young fighting men and women, by the need to provide for increased security here at home and by our earnest desire to restore to our great country the honor and respect this Bush administration has so seriously damaged by their reckless and incompetent actions.
Had it been true that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to us in any way shape or form, had there been any evidence at all to support this contention, we would have gotten all the help and co-operation we might have needed to share the burden of fighting and dying in Iraq just like we did in the 1991 gulf war when the current president’s father assembled a broad and enthusiastic coalition from amongst all our capable allies to drive back Saddam’s aggression on Kuwait and to permanently cripple his ability to marshal a major military aggression again.
Tragically, the fact that Saddam was not an imminent threat to us and that we invaded Iraq anyway is the proximate cause of the long-suffering tragedy we’re enmeshed in today. This is the primary reason why we have 2056+ of our own soldiers dead in Iraq and why there have been probably close to 100,000 Iraq killed, most of them civilians and many women and children.
Mr. Bush and his war party decided to invade for reasons we may never really come to know. In the process they let the monster bin Laden, the one who really attacked us on 9/11, get away scott free. Turning their sights on Iraq, they have now created a catastrophe there. Iraq is the best training ground for bin Laden terrorists there’s ever been. In addition, we ourselves have killed so many more Iraqi civilians than those who oppose us there that our continued presence there has created more enemies than it has vanquished, and promises to continue to do so the longer we remain.
Because our administration deceived us here at home, deceived the soldiers they sent to fight and die, and deceived the Iraqi people, no one trusts our government in Iraq and most want us gone from there. Because we are giving support to international criminals and swindlers like Ahmed Chalabi, because we are torturing prisoners in Iraqi prisons, because we have given the Iranian mullahs a huge boost in their desire to influence things in Iraq, because we are pretty much shooting any Arab adult with a gun in his/her hand on sight, there’s virtually no chance our continued presence in Iraq will accomplish anything but to intensify and widen the conflict until eventually the entire Middle East is at War.
We who oppose the current administration’s policies regard this kind of scenario as the worst possible not only for the MidEast region but for our own national interests and security as well. As long as we are creating more enemies by our actions our own security will continue to be undermined.
If I were president right now, I’d begin to extricate our forces from Iraq forthwith and enter into serious arrangements with Pakistan and Afghanistan to pursue bin Laden and Zawahiri to the ends of the earth if necessary, and to capture or kill them. I would hand over all the funding we’ve appropriated for Iraq reconstruction to the UN for them to set up a workable program to apply those funds to reconstruction in that country we’ve so terribly brutalized.
Thanks, sbj. I’ve never seen or heard that question answered better or with more care.
Joe and Suzie,
Howard Dean gave you your answer Sunday when he spoke with Tim Russert. He said “Let’s tell the truth.” Lying doesn’t get us anywhere. The President lied. If we are to have any hope of solving this problem it begins with telling the truth. Continuing the lie doesn’t work, dishonors our troops, dishonors our nation, dishonors you Joe and Suzie, and doesn’t do anything to help bring our troops home sooner. Once we know the truth then we can honestly assess the situation and come up with real solutions. Lies and continuing lies, cover ups, and deceit only lead to disaster and continued disaster.
Your politicians are only saying that they believe they can run the crusade better than your Dear Leader Mr. Danger.
Some say they would be able to slaughter more Muslims in less time, some say also for less money, which would mean more for the corporations, which are, after all, what your gunmen are fighting for.
Others note that outsourcing has effected a very impressive increase in profits for some non-defense companies, and shrewdly point out that the crusades could make use of this nifty strategy.
And granted, there have been a couple of obstructionists who have expressed distaste for some of the extermination methods used on the Iraqis – if truth be told, most right-thinking Americans simply have a preference for blowing flesh and bone apart as opposed to melting the flesh – but this should not in any way be interpreted as an aversion on the part of your loyal countrymen to the extraordinary kill ratios enjoyed by your forces, which the whole world has come to know as the most feared, the most brutal, the most sadistic since Ghengis Khan roamed the steppes. (Don’t worry about that last part, it’s history stuff, all you need to know is it’s a compliment)
But on the basic issue of imposing America’s will on Iraq, as well as its other properties around the globe, your politicians and your fellow citizens speak with one voice, and that voice rings with Resolve! Every time an Iraqi child dies, every time a “detainee” screams with agony, you can hear that ring of Resolve, like the peal of the Liberty Bell!
The only Americans who are so over the top as to actually oppose the crusade at all are to begin with, very few in number, and even fewer of them have any serious money. Even so, you can rest assured that those venerable personages in Washington whom you revere the most know the names of each and every one, and if they should happen to step too far out of line, or if too many people start to take them seriously, they will be brought to justice faster than you can say Jose Padilla.
So snuggle into your clean white beds, Joe and Suzie, and maybe when you wake up tomorrow Dear Leader Danger just might have a special treat for you – yes, that’s right! Green nightshots of the bombing of Damascus!
In other words; turn Joe Sixpack and you can rule.
Let’s analyze Joe.
Possible course of action.
I forgot about Suzie.
OK, make him handsome and a little mysterious, but married.
Let her read between the lines that Roe v. Wade is safe.
.
Plays party politics telling the world —
Heck, as Commander In Chief with a U.S. government budget of a trillion, spending unknown $$$ billions on NSA, CIA, MI and FBI intelligence every year, I know as much as leading Democrats sitting in their Congressional seats on the Hill.
Everyone was happy when I retunred from Iraq campagne declaring VICTORY!
See my VIDEO as Commander in Chief landing on USS Lincoln
You are undermining my authority in the world, I can’t shake hands with people for fear of bodily hurt. The Democrats are the cause everybody is protesting against me in South America, London, Madrid and Rome. With my earthly father, these nations were our allies. Damnit Democrats!
Posted earler in my diary —
Car Bomb Explodes in Heart of Karachi, Pakistan
A Blow To Country In Quake Distress
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
If You Don’t Support the Truth.
Any service man or woman I know wants it straight. Not all bent around and shaped to make it look pretty to help some lowlife politician. The truth is what they want. We owe them at least that much.
Look, you have to know what’s wrong before you can start to fix it. This knot was once straight rope but you can’t just keep yanking on it to make it come lose, you have to unravel it, little by little. Facing the lies is discouraging for all of us now, but continuing to operate on the basis of these kinds of lies loses more than face, it loses lives. Leaving our troops over in Iraq without being willing to face the truth here in America is no different than leaving one of your own behind in battle. If the truth is that discouraging, then we probably should not have gone over there in the first place.
Who wants to be the last one to die for a mistake?
The parallels to Vietnam are starting to get downright spooky.
I am very interested in this
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