oldOzymandias

Off for a couple days


but you can stay in the loop with

Andrew, Josh and Ana Marie.






Comments: ozymandias_1@hotmail.com

More Too Early Polls

that will mean whatever partisans wish them too, but can't be seen as a good thing for the Boston Brahmin who can't pronounce Brahimi.


CNN/USAToday Bush 50%, Kerry 44%, Nader 4%.

WashPost/ABCNews Bush 48%, Kerry 43%, Nader 6%.

Well, Darn

Josh Marshall had good points yesterday, damn it. It seems Bandar handled this better with Woodward than McClellan did with the press. Seems a clear if rare example of McC caught wholly unbriefed if you ask me.


The Bandar Oil Deal Gaggle...

QUESTION: Can you describe conversations between the White House and Prince Bandar about his essential promise to lower oil prices before the election?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think you heard from Prince Bandar a few weeks ago about --

QUESTION: He didn’t talk specifically about the election.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- the most recent conversation that we had with him regarding oil prices. And he expressed his views out at the stakeout to you all that Saudi Arabia is committed to making sure prices remained in a range, I believe it’s $22 to $28 price per barrel of oil, and that they don’t want to do anything that would harm our consumers or harm our economy. So he made those comments at the stakeout and we’ve made our views very clear that prices should be determined by market forces, and that we are always in close contact with producers around the world on these issues to make sure that actions aren’t taken that harm our consumers or harm our economy.

QUESTION: There were no conversations specifically about the President’s reelection?

MR. McCLELLAN: You can ask Prince Bandar to --

QUESTION: But from the point -- I mean, conversations are obviously two ways.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- what his comments were. But the conversations we have are related to our long-held views that we have stated repeatedly publicly, that market forces should determine prices.

QUESTION: To follow up on that then, I would gather that the White House view is one of expectation that the Saudis would increase oil production between now and November.

MR. McCLELLAN: Our views are very well-known to Saudi Arabia. Prince Bandar made a commitment at the stakeout that I will let speak for itself. You all should look back to those remarks.

QUESTION: We’re missing the allegation here, which is that Prince Bandar and the Saudis have made a commitment to lower oil prices to help the President politically. Is that your --

MR. McCLELLAN: I’m not going to speak for Prince Bandar. You can direct those comments to him. I can tell you that what our views are and what he said at the stakeout is what we know his views are, as well.

QUESTION: Does the White House have any knowledge of such a commitment?

MR. McCLELLAN: I’m sorry?

QUESTION: Does the White House have any knowledge of such a commitment?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I’m not going to speak for Prince Bandar. You can direct those questions --

QUESTION: Is there a deal?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- I wouldn’t speculate one way or the other. You can direct those questions to him, but I’m telling you --

QUESTION: I’m not asking you to speculate either. Do you have knowledge of such a commitment?

MR. McCLELLAN: I’m telling you what our views are and what we've stated, and I'm telling you what I do know, which is that our position is very clear when it comes to oil prices and what our views are. And Prince Bandar spoke to you all just a few weeks ago out at the stakeout after meeting with some White House officials and expressed --

QUESTION: So you have no knowledge of such a commitment?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and expressed their view. I'm not going to try to speak for Prince Bandar. You can direct those questions to him.

QUESTION: The President is confident that the American elections are not being manipulated by the world's largest oil producer?

MR. McCLELLAN: Our view is that the markets should determine --

QUESTION: The market doesn't. It's a cartel.

MR. McCLELLAN: But our view is that that's what -- that the markets should determine prices. And that's the view we make very clear to producers around the world, including our friends in OPEC.


"Did you get a straight answer out of that?" -- Josh Marshall


Notsomuch - no.

Comments: ozymandias_1@hotmail.com

God Bless Tony Blair


PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: "Thank you very much, Mr. President. George and Laura, thank you very much for welcoming myself and Cherie back to the White House. The many years that -- particularly most recently, since September the 11th -- our two countries have been friends and allies standing side-by-side, and we will continue to do so.

Let me restate the historic nature of what we're trying to achieve in Iraq. It is to take a state that, under Saddam Hussein and his family, was a merciless tyranny that brutalized the country over many decades, that used chemical weapons against his own people, a state that threatened its neighbors in the wider world, that caused two wars with over a million casualties, that funded and supported terrorism; a country where, already, the remains of 300,000 innocent men, women and children have been found in mass graves in Iraq; a state that under Saddam was without human rights, civil liberties, or the rule of law. And our task is to take this state and turn it into a democracy, stable and prosperous, a symbol of hope to its own people and throughout the whole of the Middle East.

Against us in this task ranged every variety of reactionary forces: sympathizers of Saddam Hussein, outside terrorists, religious fanatics. We know the future that they have in mind for the people of Iraq, and we reject it utterly, as do the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people.

It was never going to be easy, and it isn't now. I pay wholehearted tribute to the American and British troops and troops from all the different coalition countries; and to the civilians, also, from many nations. We mourn each loss of life, we salute them and their families for their bravery and their sacrifice.

And our promise to them, in turn, is very clear. It is to succeed, to get the job done, to ensure their courage and their sacrifice has not been in vain. And our plan to do this is clear, and we shall see it through.

Our strategy, political and military, is as follows. First, we stand firm; we will do what it takes to win this struggle. We will not yield, we will not back down in the face of attacks either on us or on defenseless civilians. Second, we hold absolutely to the 30th of June timetable for the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis, themselves. Third, we will redouble our efforts to build the necessary capability of the Iraqis, themselves, to take increased responsibility for security and law and order; the measures for recruiting, training and equipping Iraqi police and civil defense corps will be intensified. Fourth, we will carry forward the plan for reconstruction and investment in Iraq so that all parts of Iraq -- Sunni, Shia and Kurdish -- know that they have a place and a future in the new Iraq that is being created. Fifth, the U.N. will have a central role, as now, in developing the program and machinery for political transition to full Iraqi democracy. And we will seek a new U.N. Security Council resolution to embody the political and security way forward.

It follows from this that the political and military strategies will reinforce each other, as they do now. The purpose of the military action is to create the security environment in which the political aims can be achieved. And of course there will be resistance. We have resistance now by assorted terrorists in Fallujah, by supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf. We shall deal with both with the right balance of firmness in the face of terror and a clear offer to all people in Iraq, including those who might be tempted to support lawbreaking.

The new Iraq will give opportunities to all its citizens, whatever their ethnic or religious background, but it will not tolerate or compromise with those who want to wreck the future for the law-abiding majority in Iraq.

Alongside this strategy for Iraq, we will seek to broaden the agenda for international action and cooperation. The G8 gives us the chance, under the chairmanship of the United States this year and Britain the next, to construct such an agenda; to allow us to defeat the security threat, but also to confront the issues upon which the terrorists prey; to tackle the poverty, conflict, religious and ethnic strife which mar so much of the world.

In this regard, we reaffirm again the importance of a solution for the Middle East peace process. We welcome the Israeli proposal to disengage from the Gaza and parts of the West Bank. We want the Quartet to meet as soon as possible to discuss how it can support the Palestinian Authority in particular, economically, politically, and in respect of security, to respond to that offer. We reaffirm that this is part of a process to get us back into the road map, which we continue to believe offers the only realistic route to the two states, Israel and Palestinian, living side-by-side in peace.

We have, therefore, an agenda for Iraq, for change and for democracy in Iraq. We have, also, an agenda to help overcome the problems in our world, the problems not just of terrorism, but the problems in the breeding grounds of terrorism. And I believe that our two countries will continue to play a role as allies and friends in securing not just a decent future for the people of Iraq, but a decent future of people everywhere in our world today."



This guy is priceless. Beyond compare.

The Plan! The Plan!


Josh Marshall, in his little white suit, running all the way up to the bell tower today may have actually taken leave of his common sense. The entire entry is laughably bogus "news" but it's all he seems to want to discuss.

"This plan -- pushed by Wolfowitz -- is referred to obliquely in the Saturday article on Woodward's book in the Post. But this wasn't just some idea Wolfowitz proposed prior to 9/11, as the author implies. Centcom planners began putting together the plan for it right as they were putting together the war plan for Afghanistan.

What happened in November was still important, and qualitatively different, because this earlier tasking was not explicitly aimed at regime change, simply seizing the southern oil fields. But whether it was formally aimed at regime change or no, within less than two weeks after 9/11, Centcom planners were at work putting in place a plan to make war on Iraq."

Now, why, why, a thousand times why, is such an activity anything, anything other than perfect and, in fact, requisite LOGIC for a president? We have one nation in the world shooting at us. One. Not two. Not three, one. We are attacked and 3,000 civilians killed - it would have been ludicrous to not make plans on Iraq, making plans does not mean making war - not now, not ever. Not for Clinton and not for Bush. It would greatly surprise, even disappoint me if the Pentagon didn't have hundreds of plans for all sorts of far-flung options. Any president who did NOT ask for such a plan would have been derelict in his duty.

And Guess What?

Josh Marshall agrees with me!!! But only when it suits his cause - this is the WORST aspect of partisanism. When you blind yourself to how one sided you view all information coming your way.

On the Augst 6th PDB, and all through his 9/11 commission comments, Marshall laments the lack of plans, of execution, of actions:

"I think what people would want to know -- having now seen the warnings the president received -- is that the White House snapped into action and was trying to put together every clue it had to get to the bottom of what was coming. After the attack came they could say to the public, "There were some warnings something was coming. We put all the resources we could into it. We scrambled to turn over every stone. But we were in a race against the clock. We did our best. But we didn't figure it out in time."

So the DNC talking points are as follows: "If Bush had a plan - make plan seem nefarious, and focus on negative aspects of plan. If Bush did not have a plan, make absence of plan seem nefarious, and focus on negative aspects of absence of plan.

"And yes, we Dems NEED to make this an issue or else all there is to talk about is the fact that all of our plans, on both issues, failed.

"And we have yet to offer a new one."




Comments: ozymandias_1@hotmail.com

Who's Flip-flopping?

AS noted:

"Senator, I will say this. I think that politically, historically, the one thing that people try to do, that society is structured on as a whole, is an attempt to satisfy their felt needs, and you can satisfy those needs with almost any kind of political structure, giving it one name or the other. In this name it is democratic; in others it is communism; in others it is benevolent dictatorship. As long as those needs are satisfied, that structure will exist." - John F. Kerry, Congressional Testimony, April 22, 1971.

"I have always said from day one that the goal here . . . is a stable Iraq, not whether or not that's a full democracy. I can't tell you what it's going to be, but a stable Iraq. And that stability can take several different forms." - John F. Kerry, April 14, 2004.


This guy is a presidential candidate - the best the Left could do this year. That ought to depress Lefties, I should think. Smart ones anyway.





Comments: ozymandias_1@hotmail.com

Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite

New Samuel Huntington piece in The National Interest


The following are excerpts.

"Debates over national identity are a pervasive characteristic of our time. In part, they raise rhetorical questions, but they also have profound implications for American society and American policy at home and abroad. Different perceptions—especially between the citizenry and the more cosmopolitan elites—of what constitutes national identity generate different national interests and policy priorities.

The views of the general public on issues of national identity differ significantly from those of many elites. The public, overall, is concerned with physical security but also with societal security, which involves the sustainability—within acceptable conditions for evolution—of existing patterns of language, culture, association, religion and national identity. For many elites, these concerns are secondary to participating in the global economy, supporting international trade and migration, strengthening international institutions, promoting American values abroad, and encouraging minority identities and cultures at home. The central distinction between the public and elites is not isolationism versus internationalism, but nationalism versus cosmopolitanism."

. . .

"In 1953, the head of General Motors, nominated to be secretary of defense, proclaimed, "What’s good for General Motors is good for America." He was widely criticized for not saying that what’s good for America is good for General Motors. Either way, both he and his critics presumed some coincidence of interest between corporation and country. Now, however, multinational corporations see their interests as separate from America’s interests. As their global operations expand, corporations founded and headquartered in the United States gradually become less American. In the 1990s, corporations such as Ford, Aetna, Motorola, Price Costco and Kimberly-Clark forcefully rejected, in response to a Ralph Nader proposal, expressions of patriotism and explicitly defined themselves as multinational. America-based corporations operating globally recruit their workforce and their executives, including their top ones, without regard to nationality. The CIA, one of its officials said in 1999, can no longer count on the cooperation of American corporations as it once was able to do, because the corporations view themselves as multinational and may not think it in their interests to help the U.S. government."

. . .

"Growing differences between the leaders of major institutions and the public on domestic and foreign policy issues affecting national identity form a major cultural fault line cutting across class, denominational, racial, regional and ethnic distinctions. In a variety of ways, the American establishment, governmental and private, has become increasingly divorced from the American people. Politically, America remains a democracy because key public officials are selected through free and fair elections. In many respects, however, it has become an unrepresentative democracy because on crucial issues--especially those involving national identity--its leaders pass laws and implement policies contrary to the views of the American people. Concomitantly, the American people have become increasingly alienated from politics and government."



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Gorelick Getting Heat


The Washington Post 's Eggen and Pincus report "the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee yesterday called on former deputy attorney general Jamie S. Gorelick to resign from the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, arguing that she has "an inherent conflict of interest" because she wrote a memo nine years ago setting out the procedures for FBI information sharing in counterintelligence cases."

The Washington Times offers signs that "pressure is growing" on Gorelick to stand aside.



The Wall Street Journal 's editorial page weighs in too:

"We predicted Democrats would use the 9/11 Commission for partisan purposes, and that much of the press would oblige. But color us astonished that barely anyone appreciates the significance of the bombshell Attorney General John Ashcroft dropped on the hearings Tuesday. If Jamie Gorelick were a Republican, you can be sure our colleagues in the Fourth Estate would be leading the chorus of complaint that the Commission's objectivity has been fatally compromised by a member who was also one of the key personalities behind the failed antiterror policy that the Commission has under scrutiny. Where's the outrage?

At issue is the pre-Patriot Act "wall" that prevented communication between intelligence agents and criminal investigators--a wall, Mr. Ashcroft said, that meant "the old national intelligence system in place on September 11 was destined to fail." The Attorney General explained:

"In the days before September 11, the wall specifically impeded the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. After the FBI arrested Moussaoui, agents became suspicious of his interest in commercial aircraft and sought approval for a criminal warrant to search his computer. The warrant was rejected because FBI officials feared breaching the wall.

"When the CIA finally told the FBI that al-Midhar and al-Hazmi were in the country in late August, agents in New York searched for the suspects. But because of the wall, FBI headquarters refused to allow criminal investigators who knew the most about the most recent al Qaeda attack to join the hunt for the suspected terrorists.

"At that time, a frustrated FBI investigator wrote headquarters, quote, 'Whatever has happened to this--someday someone will die--and wall or not--the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain 'problems.' "

What's more, Mr. Ashcroft noted, the wall did not mysteriously arise: "Someone built this wall." That someone was largely the Democrats, who enshrined Vietnam-era paranoia about alleged FBI domestic spying abuses by enacting the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Mr. Ashcroft pointed out that the wall was raised even higher in the mid-1990s, in the midst of what was then one of the most important antiterror investigations in American history--into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. On Tuesday the Attorney General declassified and read from a March 4, 1995, memo in which Jamie Gorelick--then Deputy Attorney General and now 9/11 Commissioner--instructed then-FBI Director Louis Freeh and United States Attorney Mary Jo White that for the sake of "appearances" they would be required to adhere to an interpretation of the wall far stricter than the law required.

Ms. White was then the lead prosecutor in cases related to the Trade Center bombing. Ms. Gorelick explicitly references United States v. Yousef and United States v. Rahman--cases that might have greatly expanded our pre-9/11 understanding of al Qaeda had investigators been given a freer hand. The memo is a clear indication that there was pressure then for more intelligence sharing.

Ms. Gorelick's response is an unequivocal "no":

"We believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will more clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation" (emphases added).

In case anyone was in doubt, Janet Reno herself affirmed the policy several months later in a July 19, 1995, memo that we have unearthed. In it, the then-Attorney General instructs all U.S. Attorneys about avoiding "the appearance" of overlap between intelligence-related activities and law-enforcement operations.

Recall, too, that during the time of Ms. Gorelick's 1995 memo, the issue causing the most tension between the Reno-Gorelick Justice Department and Director Freeh's FBI was not counterterrorism but widely reported allegations of contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign from foreign sources, involving the likes of John Huang and Charlie Trie. Mr. Trie later told investigators that between 1994 and 1996 he raised some $1.2 million, much of it from foreign sources, whose identities were hidden by straw donors. Ms. Gorelick resigned as deputy attorney general in 1997 to become vice chairman of Fannie Mae.

From any reasonably objective point of view, the Gorelick memo has to count as by far the biggest news so far out of the 9/11 hearings. The Mary Jo White prosecutions and the 2001 Moussaoui arrest were among our best chances to uncover and unravel the al Qaeda network before it struck the homeland. But thanks in part to the Clinton Administration's concern with appearances and in part to its legacy, these investigations were hamstrung.

Ms. Gorelick--an aspirant to Attorney General under a President Kerry--now sits in judgment of the current Administration. This is what, if the principle has any meaning at all, people call a conflict of interest. Henry Kissinger was hounded off the Commission for far less. It's such a big conflict of interest that the White House could hardly be blamed if it decided to cease cooperation with the 9/11 Commission pending Ms. Gorelick's resignation and her testimony under oath as a witness into the mind of the Reno Justice Department. What exactly was the purpose of the wall?"



And the Ashcroft transcript is here. --- money quote:

"This memorandum established a wall separating the criminal and intelligence investigations following the 1993 World Trade Center attack, the largest international terrorism attack on American soil prior to September 11. Although you understand the debilitating impact of the wall, I cannot imagine that the Commission knew about this memorandum, so I have declassified it for you and the public to review. Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this Commission."


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Translating MoDo

Taking a page from the felicitious Wonkette, who skillfully dissects the often immutable Tina Brown every Friday (do check it out), I have decided to provide the same service for fans, and anti-fans, of the, yes, still babelicious, Maureen Dowd.

MoDo, this Marxist maven of the deft left, serves as the twice-week (Sunday-Thursday) absurdly partisan commentator at the former paper of record, now DNC newsletter, known as The New York Times. This entry will deal with her last two pieces and from then on I will suffice to settle her hash in schedule.

From April 11th:


“It would come in handy for Karen Hughes's Bush-nannying book tour and Condoleezza Rice's Clarke-riposting 9/11 commission testimony.”

Means: Yes, I am pissed about the book’s sales and Rice’s slam-dunk.

“And I was desperately wishing for it yesterday, when Donald Rumsfeld held forth at a Pentagon briefing.”

Means: I don’t “hold forth.” Only other people, Republicans, “hold forth.”

Even though the assumptions the Bush administration used to go to war have now proved to be astonishingly arrogant, naïve and ideological, Mr. Rumsfeld is as testy and Delphic as ever about the fragility of Iraq.

Means: One adjective is never enough, even when they contradict each other. It’s cadence, okay? Whatever. I have a Pulitzer.

“Our troops in Iraq don't know who they're fighting and who they're saving. They don't know when they're coming home or when they're being forcibly re-upped by Rummy. Our diplomats in Baghdad don't know who they're handing the country over to next month. And Bush officials don't know where to go for help, since the military's tapped out, the allies have cold feet, the Arab world's angry and the rest of the globe is thinking, ‘You got what you deserved.’”

Means: Hey, I watch the BBC. I know what’s going on.

“The marines had to fire rockets at a mosque in Falluja used by the Shiite followers of the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and the hospitals are filled with civilians. Instead of playing soccer with kids, now the marines have to worry that the kids are the enemy, spotting targets or wielding guns.”

Means: Okay, I meant Sunnis – they all look alike to me. And check it – I used his FULL name. Got the spelling off Memri, baby. Or my intern did. Whatever. God, I’m good.

“Paul Wolfowitz assumed that the Shiites, tormented by Saddam over their religion, would be grateful, not hateful. Wrong. It isn't a cakewalk; it's chaos.”

Means: This was on NPR, okay? I heard them say this.

“Every single thing the administration calculated would happen in Iraq has turned out the opposite. The W.M.D. that supposedly threatened us did not exist. The dangerous dictator was deluded and writing romance novels.”

Means: Kurds Schmurds. Hell, he only killed a few thousand. Or, hundred thousand. Whatever. I have a Pulitzer.

“Rummy also thought he could show off his transformation of the military, using a leaner force. Now even some Republicans say he is putting our troops at risk by stubbornly refusing to admit he was wrong.”

Means: For other people to admit mistakes is always good; for Rummy to do it would give me several weeks of columns. But it would be wrong for a DNC newsletter columnist to do such things.

“The hawks thought they could establish a democracy that would produce a domino effect in the Arab world. Wrong. The dominoes are falling in a scarier direction.”

Means: Yes, I'm excluding the Taliban, Saddam, Libya, Arafat, etc.

“The president thought he could improve on the ending to his father's gulf war. Wrong again.”

Means: Yes, I mean after Saddam’s capture in a hole.


And MoDo from April 8th:


“Young Americans are bravely fighting and dying in Iraq, trying to fulfill the audacious vision of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to remold Iraq in the image of America.
But while we try to turn them into us, who have we become?”

Means: It’s important to sounds lamenting when discussing America in broad strokes – keeps up my liberal bona fides and gives an illusion of tragic, well-meaning patriotism.

“From Abigail Adams to Tom Sawyer to Bugs Bunny to Jimmy Stewart's Jefferson Smith to Indiana Jones, the best American character is plucky, nimble, clever, inventive.”

Means: Like me! Like me!

“So it's disturbing to see our government reacting to crises with a jaded shrug and lumbering gait, especially since we are up against such a creative, chameleonlike enemy."

Means: Damn you Didion! I had to jump through hoops to get around “slouching”, grrr.

“Consider the pathetic performance of NASA, which inverted its motto to "Failure is an option" by shrugging off warnings about the safety of the seven Columbia astronauts who burned up coming back to earth, and not trying to send up a rescue shuttle.”

Means: Huh, I was trying for one paragraph that didn’t attack a Bush Admin official, (some new rule, I don’t know). Ended up with a personal (and erroneous) slam on an organization that saw their seven good friends burn to death. Kinda weird, oh well. Next.

“And what would Eliot Ness say about an F.B.I. that is less computer savvy than American preschoolers and Islamic terrorists? The F.B.I. is only halfway through modernizing its computers, which could not, before 9/11, do two searches at once, such as "Al Qaeda" and "flight schools." Can't we draft Bill Gates for duty?”

Means: Conceal facts of longstanding liberal fear/campaign against an embolded FBI? Check.

“This ominous passivity was threaded through the testimony of Ms. Rice, a brainy and accomplished woman who should represent the best of America. She blamed "systemic" and "structural" impediments that prevented the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. from sharing. She complained that other people hadn't recommended what she should do; even the terrorists were faulted for not giving specifics.

Means: (giggle) Quite proud of this graf – lots accomplished here. First, passivity in women is ALWAYS ominous, if not nefarious! My duty to point that out. Second sentence: note how placing normal everyday words in quotations lends them asuspect nature? An aire of triviality? Or je ne sais quoi? Brilliant! The sentence is meaningless otherwise, but the quotes give that wink of cahoots to the reader, saying “you know?” with the eyes, when all the while I haven’t a clue! Then third: While I realize it was the intelligence that was faulted, (I’m not stupid!) I spin it with a casual humor that Condi blames the terrorists. Ah, how lovely that all came together. It’s why I make the big bucks.

“The screeching chatter in the spring and summer of 2001 — ‘There will be attacks in the near future’ — did not yank Mr. Bush and his team from their Iraq fixation. ‘But they don't tell us when,’ Ms. Rice protested. ‘They don't tell us where, they don't tell us who, and they don't tell us how.’ Paging Nancy Drew.”

Means: Chatter screeches. What? It does. Really! And Nancy Drew books are nostalgic for me and mentioning them helps me keep my lesbian audience.

“What should have made Condi hysterical, she deemed ‘historical.’”

Means: Bill, did you SEE my word play? Heh heh. Thought of it allbymyself.

“On Iraq, they ran roughshod over the system. On Al Qaeda, Condi blamed the system, saying she couldn't act on Richard Clarke's plan until there was a strategy, a policy, "tasking," meetings, etc.”

Means: Meetings? A strategy? Bush, of course, needs these things for Iraq but we don’t need a strategy for everything, I mean that takes time! Look at Kerry! He doesn’t have a strategy for anything! Er, I mean…… anyway…..One must always run ‘roughshod,’ you know. That’s how I got my Pulitzer. My sex appeal had nothing to do with it. Ask Naomi Wolf – she’ll tell you.

"Dick Clarke has struck a chord because his passionate efforts reflected those great American virtues of ingenuity and brashness."

Means: Like me! Like me!

Even if he was a bit of a cowboy, loading up his .357 sidearm to return to the West Wing the night after 9/11, at least he was not dozing through High Noon.

[We have removed the words “like President Clinton” from the end of the piece. Though accurate, we feel a sin of omission is not out of place in this instance, and will strengthen the overall piece. - DNC eds.]





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Gorelick's in Love!


Wonki baby? where are you?

Did you watch her fawning, self-conscious, eye-batting, bump-into-furniture, school-girl nervous, questioning of Tenet? She must have touched her mouth eight times! And he kind of went for it, if you ask me.

Ah, me. The spooks get all the smart crunchy chics.




Comments: ozymandias_1@hotmail.com

Bush in Prime Time

Pretty solid - Bush more relaxed, less hesitating - excepting the one long pause. Seems he has learned his lesson about "admitting error" - that this then becomes the entire story, for week and weeks, and there is no laying the issue to rest.

Excellent piece on American foreign policy, pre and post Bush, by Victor David Hanson.

Andrew already snagged the money quote:

"In contrast, George W. Bush, impervious to such self-deception, has, in a mere two and a half years, reversed the perilous course of a quarter-century. Since September 11, he has removed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, begun to challenge the Middle East through support for consensual government, isolated Yasser Arafat, pressured the Europeans on everything from anti-Semitism to their largesse to Hamas, removed American troops from Saudi Arabia, shut down fascistic Islamic “charities,” scattered al-Qaida, turned Pakistan from a de facto foe to a scrutinized neutral, rounded up terrorists in the United States, pressured Libya, Iran, and Pakistan to come clean on clandestine nuclear cheating, so far avoided another September 11—and promises that he is not nearly done yet. If the Spanish example presages further terrorist attacks on European democracies at election time, at least Mr. Bush has made it clear that America—alone if need be—will neither appease nor ignore such killers but in fact finish the terrible war that they started.

As Jimmy Carter also proved in November 1979, one man really can make a difference."



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Occidentalism


New Book by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit - subtitle : "The West in the Eyes of its Enemies."

Excellent and entertaining read - greatly expanding the "why do they hate us" question to deal with the anti-Americanist left (no not all of them are) but this is an astonishing look at how long standing this trend is.

We will be hearing a great deal about this for years to come.




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This is why I will vote for Bush

This was a Anti-War protest in San Francisco:

This is the discussion at Little Green Footballs.

And more here.

And the movies here.

These are times when I unfortunately realize why the left should just never, never, never be allowed to govern. It is so sad how this entire event is about hatred. Anti-War used to be about Love and Peace - now its just about hate and racism, not fighting these things, but forwarding them Just frightening and sick.

Racist Islamists marching along utterly clueless anti-war lemmings who don't even get that the Islamists' first act would be to forcibly supress the left in an Islamic state.

These people are sick, wrong, and many are actually treasonous. They should be tried under the 1917 Sedition Act, fined and jailed.
















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Dems on Condi – All Spin Zone


The reason Dems on the 9/11 committee are going nuts over the non-story about pre-9/11 intelligence is that is becoming painfully obvious that John Kerry hasn’t a clue what to do in Iraq. The longer the flocking press can be kept from pressing him on this issue the better. Kerry has no Iraq plan or we would have been hearing about it.

Instead, he’s still pitching the jobs thing – pretty dangerous when a year ago the Dems magic number on jobs was 3 million and now its 1.8 million. These numbers have every indication of being close to even by October. The DNC has so far based their entire campaign on “Anyone But Bush” and bad job numbers. Problem is job numbers aren’t so bad now and Kerry has been effectively shown to be a fairly typical liberal Washington senator, a man without real convictions. If he has such convictions – we need to hear about them. We need to believe them by November.



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Condi Rice in 2008

Still Running

National Security Advisor Condolezza Rice – as was to be expected from a former Stanford Provost – was in large part a slam-dunk today for Bush, or at least a nice three pointer, and in a game where he’s only up by a basket or two in most polls, three points gives a lot of Big Mo. Much of Clarke’s so-called “warning” is revealed to be far afield from the smoking gun Lefties wish it to be.

What is truly remarkable is that even the smart articulate lefties, like Josh Marshall, can’t give up their desire to discredit her – or more to the point – place inordinate blame upon the office of the NSA for no other reason than it seems nefarious for her to not want to testify. But even moreso is the Left's complete ironclad desire to ignore the need, that's NEED, for the war to be fought and won.

Josh Marshall writes: “On the level of atmospherics, she struck me as surprisingly tense and anxious during her opening statement. And she tried to skate through on many points by resorting to repeated instances of semantic mumbojumbo like the fraudulent distinction between "rolling back" al Qaida and "eliminating" al Qaida, or her equal frail distinction between tactics and strategy.”

This statement is staggering in its own semantic mumbojumbo and fraudulent distinction. It is painfully clear to me that a Left – even a smart left – does not or will not admit the difference between elimination and non-elimination. This learned man is unable to allow for the distinction between an existential declared war and a protracted, random, wainscoting of a war. The very fact that this willfully, selectively uninformed Left is recommending John Kerry for a war president is a potentially clear indication of his inability to wage it.

Now pouring over the transcript but….a better day for Bush than Kerry.



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Also adding Wonkette


To the link list - she tends to bash whats needs bashin' - and a rapier prose.

Adding a few new links today.

The ABC Noteheads have started their own Anti-Drudge - but I have faith it will continue in the ABC (Anti-Bush Central) tradition. So I am calling it Anti-Bush Drudge - which, I am confident will offend no member of ABC News and please the majority.

But it will be a good slush page of Kerry-centric news.

Here and on the link list.


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Okay – Back in Action

First off – KICK ASS piece by Leon Wieseltier on the ‘under God’ debate in TNR.

Teaser:
“Some of the individuals to whom I am attributing a hostility to religion would resent the allegation deeply. They regard themselves as religion’s finest friends. But what kind of friendship for religion is it that insists that the words ‘under God’ have no religious connotation?”

Then the money: “The solicitor general stood before the Court to argue against the plain meaning of ordinary words. In the Pledge of Allegiance, the government insisted, the word ‘God’ does not refer to God. It refers to a reference to God.”

Then the meat, as the Government’s argument is to stress that “under God” is an expression of the historical American understanding of the sovereignty of the individual. But, as LW writes:

“It is historical and intellectual nonsense to believe that the concept of the sovereignty of the individual rests exclusively, or even mainly, upon religious foundations. Modernity was not merely the most recent era in the history of religion. The American order was a new idea, not a new version of an old idea. Moreover, a ceremony is not a museum. There are many notions that filled the heads of our eighteenth-century heroes that we do not reproduce in our civic life.”

And a great section:
“Citing United States v. Seeger from 1965, though he might have illustrated his speculation more vividly with the historical precedent of the Cult of the Supreme Being in revolutionary Paris, Breyer proposed that such a faith “in any ordinary person's life fills the same place as belief in God fills in the life of an orthodox religionist," and so "it's reaching out to be inclusive"--so inclusive, in fact, that it may satisfy a non-believer such as Newdow. Breyer suggested that the God in "under God" is "this kind of very comprehensive supreme being, Seeger-type thing." And he posed an extraordinary question to Newdow: "So do you think that God is so generic in this context that it could be that inclusive, and if it is, then does your objection disappear?"

Needless to say, Newdow's objection did not disappear, because it is one of the admirable features of atheism to take God seriously. Newdow's reply was unforgettable: "I don't think that I can include 'under God' to mean 'no God,' which is exactly what I think. I deny the existence of God." The sound of those words in that room gave me what I can only call a constitutional thrill. This is freedom.”

And this killer:

“In fact, Breyer was advocating the Lockean variety of toleration, according to which it would be based on a convergence of conviction, a consensus about the truth, among the overwhelming majority of the members of a society. The problem with such an arrangement is that the convergence is never complete and the consensus is never perfect. Locke himself instructed that "those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the Being of a God." The universal absolute is never quite universal. And there is another problem. It is that nobody worships a "very comprehensive supreme being, Seeger-type thing." Such a level of generality, a "generic" God, is religiously senseless. Breyer's solution was another attempt to salvage religious expression by emptying it of religious content.”

Really – every thinking religious person should read this – and not throw a fit about it. But deal with the arguments it makes.



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