"I think during these difficult times -- and they are difficult when we're at war -- the American people expect there to be a honest and open debate without needless partisanship. And that's how I view it. I did notice that nobody from the Democrat Party has actually stood up and called for getting rid of the terrorist surveillance program. You know, if that's what they believe, if people in the party believe that, then they ought to stand up and say it. They ought to stand up and say the tools we're using to protect the American people shouldn't be used. They ought to take their message to the people and say, vote for me, I promise we're not going to have a terrorist surveillance program. That's what they ought to be doing. That's part of what is an open and honest debate.
I did notice that, at one point in time, they didn't think the Patriot Act ought to be reauthorized -- "they" being at least the Minority Leader in the Senate. He openly said, as I understand -- I don't want to misquote him -- something along the lines that, "We killed the Patriot Act." And if that's what the party believes, they ought to go around the country saying we shouldn't give the people on the front line of protecting us the tools necessary to do so. That's a debate I think the country ought to have. "
- GWB, yesterday's press conference
Fucking Republicans
Two op-ed 'blog' pieces from the Chicago Tribune (a paper that endorsed Bush in 2000 and 2004):
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/
President Bush fights the strawmen
Posted by Frank James at 1:21 pm CST
More thoughts on the president's conference today.
The press conference once again showed the president's fondness for the old debater's trick of setting up straw men and knocking them down, the result being that you look like you've demolished your opponents' ridiculous argument.
It's the rhetorical equivalent of fighting a battle on the ground of your choosing. The president often turns to this tactic whenever his approach to the war on terror is questioned.
Here's how it came up today.
REPORTER: I know you've said about your presidency that you don't pay that much attention to the polls, but --
PRESIDENT BUSH: Correct.
REPORTER: -- there is a handful that have come back and they all say the exact same thing, that a growing number of Americans are questioning the trustworthiness of you and this White House. Does that concern you?
After saying he understands the concerns of Americans who see the daily Iraq violence and that he would never endanger U.S. troops for a cause he thought was lost, Bush said:
Now, some in this country don't -- I can understand -- that don't view the enemy that way. I guess they kind of view it as an isolated group of people that occasionally kill. I just don't see it that way. I see them bound by a philosophy with plans and tactics to impose their will on other countries. The enemy has said that it's just a matter of time before the United States loses its nerve and withdraws from Iraq. That's what they have said, and their objective for driving us out of Iraq is to have a place from which to launch their campaign to overthrow modern governments and moderate governments in the Middle East as well as to continue attacking places like the United States.
Now, maybe some discount those words as kind of meaningless propaganda. I don't, Jim. I take them really seriously, and I think everybody in government should take them seriously and respond accordingly. And so it's -- I've got to continue to speak as clearly as I possibly can about the consequences of success and the consequences of failure, and why I believe we can succeed.
I've listened in Washington to many critics of the president's prosecution of the war on terror for several years now. Not once have I heard any of them minimize the threat represented by al Qaeda or its shadowy allies.
Serious critics ranging from Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterror official to former (and future) Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) have all ascribed to al Qaeda the same vast ambitions and strategic designs the president does.
Even Howard Dean, when he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2003, said: "I believe it is my patriotic duty to urge a different path to protecting America's security: To focus on al Qaeda, which is an imminent threat, and to use our resources to improve and strengthen the security and safety of our home front and our people while working with the other nations of the world to contain Saddam Hussein."
It's not an understanding of al Qaeda's aims that critics, including some Republicans, differ with the president on but the correct response to those "Islamofascist" ambitions, as the president would say.
So a follow-up question to ask the president is, does he really believe that his critics have dismissed the threat from al Qaeda, in which case what evidence has the White House staff found to support this? When have critics said al Qaeda and like-minded terrorists "are an isolated group of people that occasionally kill?"
The president's remark echoes comments by Deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove who in a New York speech last year said: "...Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." So it's obviously bouncing around the White House and its allies. But that doesn't necessarily make it true.
I don't think the White House staff will be able to find remarks by serious critics of the administration's war-on-terror policy minimizing the al Qaeda threat. If anything, the critics have often sounded more alarmist than the administration.
Which is how we get back to the strawmen.
---
Harsh reality: The Bush administration's own assessment of the situation in Iraq
Posted by Cam Simpson at 7:20 pm CST
Repeated suggestions by the White House and friendly commentators that the news media’s selective displays of terrorist attacks in Iraq are warping American public opinion seem to belie even the unclassified assessments of the situation in Iraq produced by the U.S. government.
In fact, just two weeks ago the Bush administration publicly released a detailed report stating that “even a highly selective” inventory of the terrorist attacks inside Iraq “could scarcely reflect the broad dimension of the violence” there.
That line comes from the Iraq section of a congressionally mandated annual compilation, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” which was produced by Condoleezza Rice’s State Department and released at a press conference she headlined March 8.
The main focus of the report for Iraq, as with all other nations listed, is on that government’s own human rights record. But the report also briefly catalogues the overall atmosphere in Iraq in order to provide context.
And it’s not pretty.
Here are some excerpts:
-- In Iraq, “A climate of extreme violence in which people were killed for political and other reasons continued.”
-- “Insurgents and terrorists killed thousands of citizens … Using intimidation and violence, they kidnapped and killed government officials and workers, common citizens, party activists participating in the electoral process, civil society activists, members of security forces, and members of the armed forces, as well as foreigners.”
-- “Bombings, executions, killings, kidnappings, shootings, and intimidation were a daily occurrence throughout all regions and sectors of society. An illustrative list of these attacks, even a highly selective one, could scarcely reflect the broad dimension of the violence.”
-- “Bombings took thousands of civilian lives across the country during the year.”
-- “Former regime elements, local and foreign fighters, and terrorists waged guerrilla warfare and a terrorist campaign of violence impacting every aspect of life. Killings, kidnappings, torture, and intimidation were fueled by political grievances and ethnic and religious tensions and were supported by parts of the population.”
-- “Insurgents and terrorists targeted anyone whose death or disappearance would advance their cause and, particularly, anyone suspected of being connected to government-affiliated security forces.”
-- “All sectors of society suffered from the continued wave of kidnappings. Kidnappers often killed their victims despite the payment of ransom. The widespread nature of this phenomenon precluded reliable statistics.”
In other words, this report, just two weeks old, contradicts the very raison d'être of the current White House public relations campaign on Iraq — to convince Americans that the “reality” in Iraq is far better than the constant stream of bad news they see on their televisions every night.
If anything, the State Department’s candid assessments would seem to indicate that things might be far worse than the press is currently able to report, given the fact that journalists are hampered by the same violence racking everyone else in the nation.
But the State Department is hardly alone. A recent assessment by the U.S. Agency for International Development painted a similar picture of Iraq. It was included as a part of a bid solicitation seeking contractors for a 28-month effort to implement “a social and economic stabilization program” in 10 Iraqi cities.
First reported by The Washington Post earlier this year, the Jan. 2 assessment summed things up this way, according to a copy:
“Former regime elements, foreign fighters and Islamic extremists continue to conduct terrorist attacks with devastating effect upon Iraqi civilians … Moreover, these attacks significantly damage the country’s infrastructure and cause a tide of adverse economic and social effects that ripple across Iraq.”
Beyond the havoc unleashed by terrorists, the USAID assessment also stated that “criminal elements within Iraqi society have had almost free reign.”
Although this report might not have been intended for widespread public consumption, its conclusions are even more alarming given that USAID has been perhaps the most notoriously upbeat agency inside the federal government when it comes to reporting publicly on Iraq.
Respected Washington analyst Anthony Cordesman, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, once suggested that USAID’s Iraq reports bordered on pure propaganda, calling its first-year assessment of reconstruction efforts inside the country (released in 2004), “little more than 25 pages of glossy, self-congratulatory rubbish.”
Beyond the assessments being released publicly by Bush’s own agencies, the depressing weight of the ongoing violence in Iraq also offers evidence enough that it would be nearly impossible for the news media to over-emphasize how bad things really are there.
According to statistics compiled by The Brookings Institution, bombings alone claimed an average of 62 lives each and every week during the last 12 full months in Iraq (excluding the 167 people killed in bombings this month, as of March 19).
That means every week, for the last 52 weeks, bombings in Iraq averaged a yield of more fatalities than the infamous London transit bombings in July 2005.
Think of that: A London attack, and then some, each and every week.
Or consider the numbers this way: In just the past 10 months, more people died in Iraq from terrorist bombings than all of those who died during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S.
In all, Brookings says bombings alone (it only counts a bombing if it kills at least three people) have so far killed 5,746 people in Iraq and wounded 11,473 as of March 19.
Thousands more, of course, have been killed or disappeared by other means.
In the end, the Bush administration’s public relations problem on Iraq may not stem from skewed reporting by the news media.
It may instead stem from its own drumbeat of optimism over the past three years, while Americans came to realize that reality was often marching to a very different drummer.
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/
President Bush fights the strawmen
Posted by Frank James at 1:21 pm CST
More thoughts on the president's conference today.
The press conference once again showed the president's fondness for the old debater's trick of setting up straw men and knocking them down, the result being that you look like you've demolished your opponents' ridiculous argument.
It's the rhetorical equivalent of fighting a battle on the ground of your choosing. The president often turns to this tactic whenever his approach to the war on terror is questioned.
Here's how it came up today.
REPORTER: I know you've said about your presidency that you don't pay that much attention to the polls, but --
PRESIDENT BUSH: Correct.
REPORTER: -- there is a handful that have come back and they all say the exact same thing, that a growing number of Americans are questioning the trustworthiness of you and this White House. Does that concern you?
After saying he understands the concerns of Americans who see the daily Iraq violence and that he would never endanger U.S. troops for a cause he thought was lost, Bush said:
Now, some in this country don't -- I can understand -- that don't view the enemy that way. I guess they kind of view it as an isolated group of people that occasionally kill. I just don't see it that way. I see them bound by a philosophy with plans and tactics to impose their will on other countries. The enemy has said that it's just a matter of time before the United States loses its nerve and withdraws from Iraq. That's what they have said, and their objective for driving us out of Iraq is to have a place from which to launch their campaign to overthrow modern governments and moderate governments in the Middle East as well as to continue attacking places like the United States.
Now, maybe some discount those words as kind of meaningless propaganda. I don't, Jim. I take them really seriously, and I think everybody in government should take them seriously and respond accordingly. And so it's -- I've got to continue to speak as clearly as I possibly can about the consequences of success and the consequences of failure, and why I believe we can succeed.
I've listened in Washington to many critics of the president's prosecution of the war on terror for several years now. Not once have I heard any of them minimize the threat represented by al Qaeda or its shadowy allies.
Serious critics ranging from Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterror official to former (and future) Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) have all ascribed to al Qaeda the same vast ambitions and strategic designs the president does.
Even Howard Dean, when he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2003, said: "I believe it is my patriotic duty to urge a different path to protecting America's security: To focus on al Qaeda, which is an imminent threat, and to use our resources to improve and strengthen the security and safety of our home front and our people while working with the other nations of the world to contain Saddam Hussein."
It's not an understanding of al Qaeda's aims that critics, including some Republicans, differ with the president on but the correct response to those "Islamofascist" ambitions, as the president would say.
So a follow-up question to ask the president is, does he really believe that his critics have dismissed the threat from al Qaeda, in which case what evidence has the White House staff found to support this? When have critics said al Qaeda and like-minded terrorists "are an isolated group of people that occasionally kill?"
The president's remark echoes comments by Deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove who in a New York speech last year said: "...Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." So it's obviously bouncing around the White House and its allies. But that doesn't necessarily make it true.
I don't think the White House staff will be able to find remarks by serious critics of the administration's war-on-terror policy minimizing the al Qaeda threat. If anything, the critics have often sounded more alarmist than the administration.
Which is how we get back to the strawmen.
---
Harsh reality: The Bush administration's own assessment of the situation in Iraq
Posted by Cam Simpson at 7:20 pm CST
Repeated suggestions by the White House and friendly commentators that the news media’s selective displays of terrorist attacks in Iraq are warping American public opinion seem to belie even the unclassified assessments of the situation in Iraq produced by the U.S. government.
In fact, just two weeks ago the Bush administration publicly released a detailed report stating that “even a highly selective” inventory of the terrorist attacks inside Iraq “could scarcely reflect the broad dimension of the violence” there.
That line comes from the Iraq section of a congressionally mandated annual compilation, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” which was produced by Condoleezza Rice’s State Department and released at a press conference she headlined March 8.
The main focus of the report for Iraq, as with all other nations listed, is on that government’s own human rights record. But the report also briefly catalogues the overall atmosphere in Iraq in order to provide context.
And it’s not pretty.
Here are some excerpts:
-- In Iraq, “A climate of extreme violence in which people were killed for political and other reasons continued.”
-- “Insurgents and terrorists killed thousands of citizens … Using intimidation and violence, they kidnapped and killed government officials and workers, common citizens, party activists participating in the electoral process, civil society activists, members of security forces, and members of the armed forces, as well as foreigners.”
-- “Bombings, executions, killings, kidnappings, shootings, and intimidation were a daily occurrence throughout all regions and sectors of society. An illustrative list of these attacks, even a highly selective one, could scarcely reflect the broad dimension of the violence.”
-- “Bombings took thousands of civilian lives across the country during the year.”
-- “Former regime elements, local and foreign fighters, and terrorists waged guerrilla warfare and a terrorist campaign of violence impacting every aspect of life. Killings, kidnappings, torture, and intimidation were fueled by political grievances and ethnic and religious tensions and were supported by parts of the population.”
-- “Insurgents and terrorists targeted anyone whose death or disappearance would advance their cause and, particularly, anyone suspected of being connected to government-affiliated security forces.”
-- “All sectors of society suffered from the continued wave of kidnappings. Kidnappers often killed their victims despite the payment of ransom. The widespread nature of this phenomenon precluded reliable statistics.”
In other words, this report, just two weeks old, contradicts the very raison d'être of the current White House public relations campaign on Iraq — to convince Americans that the “reality” in Iraq is far better than the constant stream of bad news they see on their televisions every night.
If anything, the State Department’s candid assessments would seem to indicate that things might be far worse than the press is currently able to report, given the fact that journalists are hampered by the same violence racking everyone else in the nation.
But the State Department is hardly alone. A recent assessment by the U.S. Agency for International Development painted a similar picture of Iraq. It was included as a part of a bid solicitation seeking contractors for a 28-month effort to implement “a social and economic stabilization program” in 10 Iraqi cities.
First reported by The Washington Post earlier this year, the Jan. 2 assessment summed things up this way, according to a copy:
“Former regime elements, foreign fighters and Islamic extremists continue to conduct terrorist attacks with devastating effect upon Iraqi civilians … Moreover, these attacks significantly damage the country’s infrastructure and cause a tide of adverse economic and social effects that ripple across Iraq.”
Beyond the havoc unleashed by terrorists, the USAID assessment also stated that “criminal elements within Iraqi society have had almost free reign.”
Although this report might not have been intended for widespread public consumption, its conclusions are even more alarming given that USAID has been perhaps the most notoriously upbeat agency inside the federal government when it comes to reporting publicly on Iraq.
Respected Washington analyst Anthony Cordesman, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, once suggested that USAID’s Iraq reports bordered on pure propaganda, calling its first-year assessment of reconstruction efforts inside the country (released in 2004), “little more than 25 pages of glossy, self-congratulatory rubbish.”
Beyond the assessments being released publicly by Bush’s own agencies, the depressing weight of the ongoing violence in Iraq also offers evidence enough that it would be nearly impossible for the news media to over-emphasize how bad things really are there.
According to statistics compiled by The Brookings Institution, bombings alone claimed an average of 62 lives each and every week during the last 12 full months in Iraq (excluding the 167 people killed in bombings this month, as of March 19).
That means every week, for the last 52 weeks, bombings in Iraq averaged a yield of more fatalities than the infamous London transit bombings in July 2005.
Think of that: A London attack, and then some, each and every week.
Or consider the numbers this way: In just the past 10 months, more people died in Iraq from terrorist bombings than all of those who died during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S.
In all, Brookings says bombings alone (it only counts a bombing if it kills at least three people) have so far killed 5,746 people in Iraq and wounded 11,473 as of March 19.
Thousands more, of course, have been killed or disappeared by other means.
In the end, the Bush administration’s public relations problem on Iraq may not stem from skewed reporting by the news media.
It may instead stem from its own drumbeat of optimism over the past three years, while Americans came to realize that reality was often marching to a very different drummer.
"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war." – Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Neither slave nor tyrant." - Basque motto
"Neither slave nor tyrant." - Basque motto
