Getting Old but Fast

It's all Bush's fault.

Have you no Perspective!?

Over at Politico's Arena today lots of folks are taking their turn at Vice President Cheney's remarks on Afghanistan. Most of them appear to be academics and more than a few Democratic political types...folks you would commonly refer to as 'operatives' in some cases. Regardless of the labels, the outrage is palpable.

Meanwhile, the contrast between conservative criticism of President Obama's cautious decision-making on Afghanistan and the Democrat's criticism of the previous Administration's handling of...well, everything...is, ironically, on display for all to see (at least at this writing) on Politico's home page where Rep. Maurice Hinchey accuses President Bush of purposefully allowing Osama Bin Laden to escape Tora Bora:

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) on Monday accused former President George W. Bush of “intentionally” letting Osama bin Laden escape during the American invasion of Afghanistan.

“Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away,” Hinchey said during an interview on MSNBC.

“That was done by the previous administration because they knew very well that if they would capture al Qaeda, there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq,” the Democratic congressman continued. “There’s no question that the leader of the military operations of the U.S. called back our military, called them back from going after the head of al Qaeda.”

When host David Shuster followed up to ask if Hinchey really thought Bush “deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away,” the congressman responded: “Yes, I do.”

Rory Cooper of the Heritage Foundation rightly exposes the contrast between Democrat reaction to President Bush (even now, having been gone long enough to have had a third child) and Cheney's criticism of President Obama's decision-making process and it's consequences for the military forces already in Aghanistan.

Read the criticisms of Cheney and agree if you like. But don't let the differences between his comments and the 8 years of Bush-rants escape you.

How far into their Heads did He go?

Mark Steyn at The Corner notes this absurd bit of mental gymnastics from Jacob Weisberg.

It's all Bush's fault. Everything. Ever.

Yeah, that's the ticket...

Why the Floor may Drop Out

At the Corner, this post captures perfectly the frustration of the President's last remnant of supporters.


For years now there's been a minimum of 35% or so percent of the public that disapproves of the job he's doing--they hate the way he speaks, much less his policies. These have been effectively gone since immediately after 9/11.


On the other end, roughly another 1/3 of the public have supported most, if not all the President's efforts on foreign or domestic policy with some specific exceptions such as Harriet Miers and Dubai Ports World. And in the middle have sat independents and reasonable folk of both left and right.


They have fluctuated from issue to issue and time to time, though over the course of the last year and a half on Iraq, they have swung to decisive disagreements with the President at home and abroad.


So what of K-Lo's post? Well, that dwindling third that I mentioned above is now being told by the President and a strange collection of Pro-Immigration Reform activists to shut up and sit down. This is absurd.


How is the man willing to alienate this small and dwindling group when it is all that stands between he and flat-out, no holds barred, all-time historic lows in Presidential approval?

War for Oil

Our War for Oil worked out well:

The first crude oil pumped by a foreign company in Iraq in decades will flow into the global market next month.

DNO, a Norwegian oil company, will announce on Wednesday that it will begin producing a small amount of oil from the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan, marking a symbolic return of foreign companies to Iraq after 35 years of state control.

The company’s experience is being closely watched by larger competitors, eager for a slice of the world’s third-largest oil reserves, but deterred by security fears and the lack of a legal framework for Iraqi oil.

But DNO’s announcement could add strain to relations between Iraq’s Kurdish authorities and the central government in Baghdad. DNO’s contract is with the local administration in the relatively peaceful north of Iraq, rather than with Baghdad.

The sharing of oil resources has been a point of dispute between Iraq’s sectarian communities. The Kurdish authorities’ decision to sign separate contracts, which could bring them a direct income source and consolidate their power, has provoked fears of a break-up of Iraq.

DNO’s contract may have to be amended once the country’s hydrocarbons law is finally agreed. Passage of the law – which is critical to attracting foreign investment – through the Iraqi parliament has stalled over control of individual oil fields.

Talk about incompetent...not only can Bush not win his staged war, he can't get his oil buddies the hefty contracts they so greedily covet.

When is irony ironic?

When the most hated man in America is more popular than his detractors. It's all relative of course but no less funny for it.

The Argument that should have been made

Mario Loyola at NRO makes the argument that the Bush Administration did not:

Intel is by its nature fragmentary and inferential. The evidence we needed in Iraq was on the ground in Iraq, and Saddam controlled all of it. When Tenet said the case for war was a “slam dunk” he was jumping the barrier that should separate intel and policy. The intel was ambiguous. Intel is always ambiguous, especially when the question is as vast as that posed by Iraq. Because the presumption was already against Saddam — and rightly so — the intel community’s ambiguous answer left Cheney and many other people with no doubt that Saddam had WMDs — as a policy judgment based on history and the totality of the circumstances, of which intel was only a part.

Policymakers do not have the luxury of coming to no firm conclusion simply because the intel comes to no firm conclusion. What has been consistently missing from this whole debate is an appreciation of the fact that, given Saddam’s history, we had to presume the worst. By 2002, the only thing that could assuage our fears about Saddam was transparency in his regime. Without transparency, we were facing a potential threat of unknown scope that — should it ever materialize — could cause much more damage than a punitive action would be able to remediate.

Earlier in the day I finally got around to listening to this conversation between Hugh Hewitt and Michael Isikoff from last week's LA Times Festival of Books. Ostensibly a discussion at least partly about Isikoff's collaborative work, Hubris, it devolved somewhat into an argument about pre-war intel for the sake of arguing pre-war intel.

Loyola's point about 'no firm conclusion' speaks directly to this Isikoff comment:

HH: That’s exactly what we knew about Zawahiri. It’s intelligence. We have to make guesses.

MI: And it was intelligence that was wrong. That’s the point. The point is that intelligence that was murky…

HH: Your spin, your spin…

MI: …that the intelligence that was murky was presented with certitude, and I think that’s ultimately the case against the selling of the war.

That argument wasn't convincing in 2004 and it isn't convincing now that Isikoff has teamed with David Corn to write a book about it. As Hugh states in reply:

HH: And I would argue that even on the mushroom cloud…

MI: Things that were very ambiguous were presented as we know…

HH: No, on the mushroom cloud…

MI: We know, we have learned.

HH: No, he said we cannot take the chance. That’s very different. Maybe it’s my lawyer’s training…

MI: Well, I think…

HH: …that you have to do probabilities.

Mario is right and this point is usually missed in the routine fits of "Bush Lied, People Died" rage. Intelligence by it's nature is nothing more at it's most basic level than a best-guess.

9/11 changed the way the President viewed what Tenet and the CIA told him. Tenet's comments on this point are, in my opinion, about the only worth-while thing he's got to say on the issue and they bolster the President's view of Iraq in 2002.

The whole Iraq equation changed in light of 9/11. Should the Administration be blamed for that? Hardly.

You know you're incompetent when...

You're getting pilloried from both sides. George Tenet's memoir and the obligatory "60 Minutes" interview are the target of much criticism, not just from the hard-core Bushies as it were. He's also gotten clobbered today from some hard-core anti-Bushies as well.

First things first though. Bill Kristol fires an opening salvo about a purported exchange between Tenet and widely-hated neocon Richard Perle on September 12th 2001. Tenet's biggest problem here is the simple fact that Perle was out of the country on that date. Oops.

NRO is full of fine prose today devoted to Tenet's tome. The Editors speak here, Andy McCarthy blasts away here and Victor Davis Hanson's thoughts from Saturday are here.

The best part of this whole attempt at CYA at the CIA is hearing what former CIA types think of the former Director and Medal of Freedom winner. They published their thoughts here.

Strange bedfellows Victor Davis Hanson, Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson are. The fact that such disparate minds can find common ground on the subject of George Tenet's tenure speaks volumes about just what kind of job Tenet did at CIA.

The Paul Wolfowitz Controversy in Perspective

Imagine that a top civil servant at a major multinational institution arranges a job for a fortysomething female colleague that comes with a $45,000 raise and brings her yearly salary to about $190,000, tax free. Now imagine that the couple has been photographed at a nudist beach--him wearing nothing but a baseball cap.

The latest sordid twist in l'affaire Wolfowitz? Not at all. This is the story of Günter Verheugen, first vice president of the European Commission in Brussels.

The Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens compares and contrasts the facts and responses surrounding the Wolfowitz and Verheugen scandals. Clearly, Mr. Verheugen is neither an American nor a neoconservative.

Over the edge of Loyalty

Losttxn responds to yesterday's post calling for AG Alberto Gonzalez to step down. He makes an interesting point along the way but one that I'm inclined to think ultimately doesn't make a difference. His response:

I'm afraid of how a resignation would be reported and viewed by the poor uninformed that still get their news from the MSM.

Heck, my mom believes that Scooter got convicted for exposing Plame! If Gonzo leaves she'll likely think that he was removed for "illegally" firing judges. It would only embolden the right to do the same to the next Dem president, further diminishing the power of the Presidency.

Yes, this was poorly handled by the AG, but that doesn't warrant him leaving. Congress is overstepping and the cowardly republcans don't want to stand up to the political heat they are getting. They should grow a pair and back Gonzo because he is a quality individual. The truth is that giving in now would only encourage the libs to go after something or someone else!

What I agree with: Republicans in a Congress with worse ratings than the President are indeed afraid of confronting the Democrat's political grandstanding. I don't know why.

What I'm unsure of: How even an articulate argument pointing all that out benefits the Administration after being filtered through a media whose main story for 3 years now is Bush incompetence, 24/7.

What I disagree with: Sadly, folks like Losttxn's mom are irretrievably lost to the truth in some of these matters. As mentioned above, can/will the truth of this matter change the perception?

Frankly, would the resignation or dismissal of Gonzalez likewise change the perception? Probably not and again I tie it back to the media story of the Bush Administration that has solidified since Katrina.

To the extent that anything can change in these last two years, it needs to start with better decision making and better personnel. Bush's team has, for the most part, always looked pretty good on paper. Unfortunately, the reality has consistently been less impressive.

The edge of Loyalty

Strong personal loyalty is a trait I share with the President. So when he seemingly blindly holds fast in support of his people, I get it. And it is more than admirable.

In the case of Alberto Gonzalez though it's come time to let go. These reactions to yesterday's train-wreck in the Senate make it obvious that the man has passed a point of no return.

Though I believe that he hasn't truly done anything wrong (and you can hear the same admission from the linked comments), this is too injurious to the Justice Department, it's reputation and to the Administration. There is no evidence that there was illegal or unethical conduct here but the AG was not able to present a simple, coherent defense of his and his department's actions yesterday and hasn't since this would-be scandal broke.

End the ridiculousness and step down.

Refresh my Memory

Today at the Washington Monthly blog Kevin Drum highlights a piece from McClatchy's Greg Gordon discussing the politicization of the Bush Justice Department. Kevin calls it Banana Republicans:

Greg Gordon of McClatchy on the politicization of the Justice Department:

For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.

....On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the [Civil Rights] division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins.

At first blush I wasn't sure who to be most appalled by...Kevin or Greg. For all his success--after all he blogs for a living, I do not--Kevin is not exactly the most astute blogger in the world.

Upon further review however, the ridiculousness of all this is all on Gordon. Kevin, as good bloggers do, only highlighted the bad logic. He just forgot to call it that.

It's that last quote that kills me. Essentially we're to believe that part & parcel with a systematic shredding of the Constitution over the last 6+ years the Bush Justice Department has acted inappropriately--dare we say illegally--to influence elections!?

Let's hit the refresh button for a minute and reflect; was it Republicans that car-pooled homeless folks to the polls in Wisconsin, enticing them with free cigarettes in 2004? Did Republican would-be student activists vote multiple times in 2004?

Was it dead Republicans voting in both 2000 and 2004? Or maybe it was Republicans who sought recounts in only certain counties, applying different standards across Florida in 2000?

Well, no it wasn't. And perhaps the reason the Voting Rights Division "sided" with Republicans so often since 2001 is that Democrats were responsible for the majority of documented voter rights violations and attempts at voter fraud.

Just a thought.

The Dumb Leading the Blind

As he's wont to do, Thomas P.M. Barnett cuts to the chase with an interesting overview of U.S. development efforts in Iraq. Barnett assembles a series of articles on the topic and brilliantly explicates for us:

This is classic stuff: the idealists and can-do types in DC constantly overridden by the realists and the not-invented-here types on the ground in Iraq. The former don’t realize what they can’t do and the latter know all too well all too much about all the things that will never--ever--be done in Iraq. This is the dumb leading the blind. Regional experts tend to go native, constantly telling you how “that won’t work here” for all these idiosyncratic reasons, while the functional experts assume their one-size-fits-all. Between them there’s almost no one with any serious private-sector experience making all sorts of decisions regarding market and generating business activity. How screwed is that?

He goes on to discuss the integration of the Iranian and Iraqi economies but draws conclusions that may ruffle the feathers of the know-it-alls:

Please don’t give me that crap about Iran “winning.” All this economic connectivity will change Iran more than Iraq, and the former will play Poland to the latter’s Russia.

Why the US Attorney scandal isn't a scandal

Courtesy of David Frum today:

1) Nobody has yet adduced a gram of evidence to suggest that anyone did anything wrong. All we know is that the White House replaced 8 political appointees with 8 other political appointees.

Shredded

Yesterday while sitting-in at Instapundit, TM noted an academic "study" that purports to prove that the Bush Administration has set an all-time record for Political profiling of Democrats while in office. And today, some guy I've never heard of at Stubborn Facts shreds the study mercilessly.

I've said it before and I make no claim to expertise but I spent 3 1/2 years working in research. Pat's analysis is not overly-complex and that more than anything indicts this study as the piece of junk it is.

Read it all then marvel and laugh.