Jennifer Love Hewitt was very cool.

Things have gotten so slow around here that those of us on the left are debating amongst ourselves. I want to see some spirited defense from the Bush camp, something we can sink our teeth into. As for Bush sending Rice before the Commission being an example of his response to failed policy, the administration position of ‘executive privilege’ was leaking so badly that the water was up to Bush’s eyeballs before he relented, and even then Janet Jackson gave a better performance on ‘SNL’ than Condi did in person. In the meantime…

While the Minister of Agriculture did commit an error in parliamentary procedure by addressing me directly rather than speaking to the blog at large, he is correct that I don’t agree carte blanche with all of the Democratic Party positions and the protectionist rhetoric specifically. I’ve also made personal note of the medal flap and the war vote flap and several other missteps, but I think those are campaign errors, not character or leadership flaws. I’ll save my arguments concerning free trade for when a Democrat is in office, because I don’t think anything Kerry might do to the economy will be as bad for the country as the Iraq fiasco that Bush will perpetuate if reelected. On issues of character, Kerry could change every one of his positions twice in the next two months and I still think he’d be a better model for integrity and honesty than the Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfield crowd. On that front, I suspect the Minister of Agriculture and I agree.

Finally, the Democrats have had at least one worse campaigner/candidate in my memory: otherwise we’d now be debating President Gore’s merits instead of Bush’s failures.

Believe.

A while back The M of A was in chorus with those decrying Spain for Sending the wrong message to Osama by not re-electing their Pro-US president.

Now you are doing the same thing with our own?

Have I been away a tad bit too long from this blog.

I have had some wonderful conversations in the past couple of weeks with returning soldiers AND some of my friends that are “contractors” in Iraq.

I don’t think the western mind is capable of fully understanding what is motivating these terrorist/insurgents and what they understand. They only understand power and winning.

When we pulled back from Fallujah, in the west, we think it is a peaceful solution. On Arab street, we are portrayed as weak and that wecan be beaten (or have no political will).

If we are gonna win this thing, we have to commit to it and all of us be on board no matter how nasty it appears to get.

I really believe that their are some in the US (that are running for office) that HOPE that we do poorly. Lets face it, Kerry can’t win the election himself, but Bush can loose it.

Back to the Trenches

The M of A asks

please e-mail me with a description of a time when Bush or Cheney realized one of their plans was not working and changed policy. I eagerly await your response

OK
Condi Rice testifying in front of the “Lets Blame Bush For 9/11 Commission”.

Back to the Trenches

On a lighter note, it occurred to me the other night that the Minister of Propaganda once worked on the Party of Five Set. He probably knows the apple of the Maximum Leader’s eye. Yet he has strangely failed to mention his experience with Ms. Hewitt. Is this a sign of a gentleman’s discretion?

Perhaps it won’t be me who is the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

The Minister of Propaganda suggests that I should get on board with Kerry and stop criticizing the Democratic nominee.

As I have said many a time (and those on both the right and the left don’t seem to get it), I am not a partisan. I’m gonna call it like I see it.

I don’t think my negative impression of Kerry is the result of Republican propaganda. I seem to be a bit resistant to ham-handed electioneering. It is Kerry himself who has given me this impression. He has had plenty of time to stake out clear positions and has failed to do so. His speeches consist of platitude after platitude.

On some of the issues on which he has been clear, I actively disagree with him. Be honest, Rob, you too are too well educated to buy the protectionism crap the Dems are peddling.

Kerry’s response to the medal flap has been insipid. Why didn’t he just look at the reporters and ask “Let me get this straight: The five-time deferment chickenhawk and the guy who used daddy’s influence to get a safe appointment to the guard are arguing that my elbow wound was too minor to qualify for my THIRD purple heart? <> Next question.”

All of those criticisms aside, I want to WIN the WAR. Kerry’s nuances and flip-flopping may be embarrassing, but at least they designate an active mind - anything would be preferable to Bush’s train wreck.

From the online discussion of the article I pimped in the last post:

There was a time when Bill Gates was convinced the Internet was not a threat to Microsoft’s business. But Gates is a curious person who reads widely and takes two weeks off each year just to talk to interesting people around the world. And he wants and expects people within the organization to challenge his thinking. And as a result of that process of continually subjecting his “vision” in the marketplace of ideas, he changed his “vision” and decided Microsoft had to embrace the Internet. And that’s a pretty good model — a guy who is tough enough to have a vision and stick by it, even when some people criticize it, but also a guy who is open minded enough and curious enough and “paranoid” enough (as Andy Grove calls it ) to do a 180 degree turn when it appears he’s wrong. Does that describe George W. Bush? Donald Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? There’s not a lot of supporting evidence that it does, in my opinion.

Does the Maximum Leader disagree? Republicans (note that I do not say “conservatives” since true conservatives have been and are continuing to jump ship), please e-mail me wth a description of a time when Bush or Cheney realized one of their plans was not working and changed policy. I eagerly await your response.

A Washington Post columnist mirrors Dave’s earlier post about Bush’s management style.

Money quotes:

it is that unwillingness to get into the details and the lack of interest in hearing divergent views that create a kind of ideological rigidity, rendering Bush incapable of admitting mistakes or considering changes in direction.

The Bush team likes to crow that it brought disciplined, private-sector management to government. But as Joshua Marshall wrote last year in the Washington Monthly, theirs turns out to be a largely discredited, old-economy management style — one better suited for the cartel-like oil, drug and railroad industries they came from than the messy, fast-changing realities facing the government of the United States.

On a further note, I would like to differentiate myself from the Minister of Propaganda and the Air Marshal. I do not think that there were shady, ulterior motives in Bush and Cheney’s heart when they launched the war. I think that they legitimately were trying to make the world a better place. My real beef is with the intellectual inflexibility and doctrinaire ideology that has doomed their attempt to improve the world situation.

Cross posting a long rant on beheading etc. on Big Hominid’s blog.

No, the Arab street won’t protest the murder of a Jewish American. It’s a racist, antisemetic, anti-American society. There is no concept of Justice, only revenge. Yeah, I’m prejudice in this respect. I admit it. I’m also right.

Nice post, Smallholder.

Too bad we’re mired in Bush’s private war in Iraq. It’s distracting us from our real fight against Al Quaeda.

The recent Al Queda atrocity enrages me.

Americans wrongly force a prisoner to wear underwear on his head.

Islamofascists saw off a prisoner’s head and proudly display while in a state of religious ecstasy.

The Islamofascists claim that this is a legitimate response to the Abu Gharib humiliations. Daniel Pearl must have been a pre-emptive strike.

Let’s have no more discussion of moral equivalency.

We’re right.

They’re wrong.

We MUST win.

Udate: Do you suppose the Arab street will protest the decapitation of Mr. Berg as ardently as they protested the nakedness of prisoners?

I am solidly with the Air Marshal concerning the war, terrorism and Iraq. Bush wants the election to be about the war? Fine — by any measure, this poorly-planned, poorly-executed and mishandled conflict has revealed terrible flaws in Bush’s leadership and the leadership of his administration. The American people must make a clear statement about Bush’s failures and remove him from office.

I also want to defend the Minister of Agriculture against the false charges of our Maximum Leader. If he has been ’squishy,’ as our Maximum Leader described, it’s just because he hasn’t been working out lately and has nothing to do with his political views. I’ve also never been a pacifist, and my military credentials are as strong as anybody else’s in the cabinet. I have always been in favor of the war on terror and against the war in Iraq, a position I have spelled out on this blog many times. Even our Maximum Leader has acknowledged the merit of my argument, and I’m honored that the Minister of Agriculture has shifted his position; he’s hardly gone soft on the issues simply because he’s made the intelligent decision to vote against Bush.

My only disagreement with the Minister of Agriculture is the expressed reluctance of his shift to Kerry. While I think that Kerry has been a poor campaigner so far, I think Kerry’s character and experience are exemplarly, and he will make a fine President. In suggesting otherwise, I think the Minister of Agriculture has fallen prey to Republican propaganda rather than examining the record of the man himself. If he truly wants Bush to lose, he needs to discover the merits of Kerry’s position for himself and argue in his favor.

Failing that, the Minster of Agriculture remains vulnerable to the charge of wanting it both ways (if so inclined, please insert sexual innuendo here). If our dear rural minister sees fit to post his political hand-wringing verbatim, he should take care lest he be squished in the middle.

Believe.

RE: Profile

I’ll throw my profile into the mix.

RE: Iraq

As fr Iraq, I’ll almost agree with the Minister of Propaganda. I think that the mission in Iraq is damn close to impossible at this point. I say almost, because though I can’t see a way out… and I guarantee that the current administration can’t see a way out… that doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. I’m still mulling over why the administration was dead set on Iraq in the first place. It’s obvious at this point that the White House had enough information in its hands that it should have known that the WMD issue was a dead duck, and the terror connection was tenuous. Yet the administration chose these two points to justify the war.

So two things are possible. Either the administration actually believed this stuff, or there was an ulterior motive for the war. I believe the war was designed, as the Prop Minister asserts, as a first stepping stone in a Neo Con plan of democritizing the middle east. If this is true, then two things about it are typical of the Bush presidency. First, Lying about real motives and agendas. Second, the incapacity to thing things through. Did the administration actually think that we’d be seen as heros, and revered as the angelic liberators of the Iraqi people? Sounds like it.

Did the administration actually think we could democritize the region?

RE: Terror

As for the war on Terror, I don’t believe that Iraq was the right front to fight. The war with Iraq was justified on the grounds that Iraq posed a serious threat to the US. This is why the WMD’s and the Al Quaeda connection were so key. The implication that Iraq would/could provide those sorts of weapons to Bin Ladens’ people demanded action. Any other scenario doesn’t demand the immediate overthrow of the Baathists.

Any war on terror, or Islamofacism, is incomplete without addressing Saudi Arabia. And addressing Saudi Arabia is gonna be damn hard. Dealing with Saudi Arabia will piss a lot of people off.

Now, was Saddam really related to Islamofacism? Maybe. What about Mubarak, or Ghaddafi? Both are just as bad in different ways. Ghaddafi has seen the writing on the wall, and now he’s sucking up to us. And we’re letting him. Mubarak is almost as bad as Saudi Arabia at plaing the two faced game. They suck up to us, and say the right things to our faces, but STATE RUN media actually plays up Wahabist tendencies.

And on the subject of terror, it’s good that we’ve vowed to hunt down the vermin responsible for this. Too bad that all the stuff at Abu Graib undermines any moral high ground we have here. And I guess this is my biggest frustration with the whole Iraq situation. There is a real fight to be fought. We haven’t beaten Al Quaeda yet. We haven’t really eliminated the Taliban. We haven’t captured or killed Bin Laden. We didn’t finish the job in Afghanistan. Bush was so eager to jump into Iraq that he left the bigger, real chore unaccomplished. This will bite us in the end.

RE: Democracy

I believe that democracy has two requirements. It must be wanted by the population in question, and it must be earned by the same population. In short a people that want democracy earn it by fighting for it. The cost is blood. I think any democracy imposed from without is illegitimate. Until an Islamic population rises up, and demands, and fights for, democracy, there will be no Arab democracy under the sun. We can’t go in there and impose one on them. That’s colonialism under a different name, and as Americans we should be dead set against that.

I guess partly what offends me so much about the current Iraq situation is that it is beginning to go against everything I believe in as an American. It seemed like a good idea initially. Here’s a corrupt regime that poses a threat to us, and is holding it’s population in terrible oppression. Because it poses a threat to us, we are justified in going to War. Then we can help them rebuild their government. Now it appears that rebuilding their government was our primary goal, an that nation didn’t really pose a threat to us. (FYI wasn’t one of Bush’s main foreign policy points in 2000 to argue AGAINST Nation Building? Freaking Liar. Yeah, I know, 911 changed everything for him.)

OK, so now that we know that Iraq didn’t really pose a threat to us, and the Administration had enough information in it’s posession to know this, were we justified to overthrow a government for the sole purpose of installing a better one? No. What gives us the right to determine that Saddam is bad enough to merit an invasion? Merely that he’s a brutal tyrant isn’t enough. That’s a given. If that were the only criteria, there are dozens of states that we should invade. North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, China, Just about any Sub Saharan Nation, California, and on and on. It’s just not enough.

Do it for Democracy? That tells me that the Bushites not only don’t understand how to read intelligence, they don’t really know what Democracy is. Democracy to them, I guess, simply means Halliburton gets the contracts.

The Maximum Leader’s Minister of Agriculture begs his esteemed leader to go back and reread my posts. I am not squishy on the war.

We NEED to win.

My “mindless ranting,” if the Maximum Leader will pull his partisan head out of his proverbial partisan backside, is not pacifist in origin.

My conclusion, shared by the oh-so-liberal George Will, is that Bush is incapable of prosecuting the war to a successful conclusion.

Deciding to vote for Kerry has been a painful process. Kerry is the worst Democratic candidate in my memory. That said, if we want to win, we HAVE to change the leadership.

Those conservatives who are still backing Bush need to answer a simple question: Has the war been successful so far? No. How has Bush’s approach changed with the evolving situation? It hasn’t changed. What makes you believe that Bush will suddenly become reflective and change course? That I would like to answer. To paraphrase George Will again (only to insulate myself against the charge of mindless liberal ranting), “This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it does not think, and having thought, have second thoughts.

I’ll grant that Kerry has not really laid out a real plan for Iraq (other than some platitudes designed to attract the Deaniacs). So I’m scared. But we know that Bush’s plan is a failure.

Our choice in November, leaving all domestic policy considerations aside, is A) A lost war that drags on and on or B) A question mark. I’ll take the question mark over guaranteed failure EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Since the Maximum Leader still backs Bush, perhaps he should explain to our readers why he believes that intractable George can win. I’ll be waiting.

In fact, all conservatives should have to answer this question. They may claim to value our security above all considerations, but their blind support for our president belies that claim.

To avoid confusion amongst our gentle readers (wouldn’t want anyone to mis-attribute my liberal views), I’ve retired my usual alias, ‘The Director,’ and am now posting specifically and singularly as ‘The Minister of Propaganda.’

That sounds cooler, anyway. Now BELIEVE (hey, that could be MY sign-off!)

It wouldn’t matter if we publicly executed Rumsfeld, the Arab world will never forgive the U.S. for those images (and the many more to come). The neo-conservative mission of ‘re-imagining’ the Middle East is not just more difficult, it’s now impossible. If we stay, the insurgents (many of whom probably see themselves as fighting for the freedom of Iraqis, not the other way around) will bleed us until we quit. Our intentions are no longer relevent, andI’m surprised that more ‘real politik’ enthusiasts from the Republican side of the aisle don’t see that.

The fact that the Pentagon has known about the abuses for six months (thank you, Red Cross, for staying true to your mission), undercuts anything this administration says about it’s intentions in Iraq. Bush has never been clear about our mission in Iraq, and this is the result. Are we safer now? In the blink of an eye, those images have created more future terrorists than the next 10 years with Hussein would have done. We are wasting the lives of our military in Iraq, and I hold Bush responsible for every individual killed following his stupid orders. Personally, I hope Bush keeps Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the rest of those criminals close — they’ll hang like an albatross around his neck come November.