Posted on 05/16/2015 6:15:40 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I spent about 20 years getting people ready to answer questions from tough and even hostile inquisitors. It is what trial lawyers do. I can thus attest that over-preparing a witness can be worse than failing to prepare the witness at all. Ironically, this is especially so with a smart witness.
A person of merely average intelligence is apt to follow advice. A seasoned lawyer can quickly demonstrate how foolish he can be made to look if he doesn’t listen carefully to the questions, or if he readily accepts a loaded question’s premise. The smart guy who radiates self-confidence is often a different story. He outsmarts himself. He thinks, “What would I ask me?” Worse, he manages to hear the question that he calculates should be asked, which is not always the question that is actually asked. When he is over-prepared — when he and his handlers have pored over his vulnerabilities and meticulously scripted what he will say when grilled about them — the smart guy will give the scripted answer. It can end up sounding dumb, even smarmy, if he has the question wrong.
I think that’s what happened to Jeb Bush when he was asked about Iraq by Fox News’s Megyn Kelly this week.
There has been head-scratching in the commentariat. Jeb is a very successful politician and much more at ease with the press than the other successful politicians in his famous political family. So how could someone that bright and able be unprepared for the inevitable question about his brother’s momentous decision to oust Saddam Hussein? But I don’t think that was the problem. I think he was too prepared . . . and because he is now candidate Jeb Bush rather than policy wonk Jeb Bush, we got the scripted campaign answer rather than the thoughtful one.
We should have attacked Iraq. We were justified in attacking Iraq.
The plan of nation building is a different question, but one within the power of a president. I think it was a mistake. We should have deposed their government and left them with a warning not to bother us again.
Didn’t I see this article with a Jeb-related headline earlier today?
These people are unprepared to answer these questions because there are no good answers, Andrew. The invasion of Iraq was a disaster that flew in the face of both pragmatic national policy and conservative principles, which has left these "conservative" candidates standing there 12 years later with their proverbial d!cks in their hands, unable to put together a coherent string of sentences to articulate their position on it.
“We should have deposed their government and left them with a warning not to bother us again.”
In 1991.
It was likely a mistake, and it was certainly a mistake given the State Department fool entrusted with the task. Paul Bremer was in WAY over his head.
RE: Jeb Bush is not, I REPEAT, NOT a Conservative !
Regardless, even candidate Ted Cruz will be asked this question.
Nope. I reject the original assertion.
/johnny
We know NOW that electing a crypto-Moslem president would ultimately waste all the progress achieved in Iraq.
We also KNOW that a dead Saddam Hussein could not achieve his dream of poison gassing Washington, D.C.
Beg pardon, but a key component of planning for war is planning for the peace.
To not do so is reckless and we’re now enjoying the fallout. /s
Catharsis is a good thing. A bit of intellectual honesty would go a long way with intelligent voters.
The problem with attacking Iraq is that we gave that country to the Shia and Iran, and eventually spawned ISIS as the Sunni counter-attack.
Only in the sense that we're the big dog, and can do whatever we damn well please.
Attacking Iraq was committing to a Vietnam war in South Asia. IOW, a war to make a point, rather than a war of conquest to eradicate the enemy.
The enemy is the irregular forces of Wahabi and Deobandi Islam. These branches of Islam are organized as states, called Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Saddam Hussein was neither a Wahabist nor a Deobandist. In fact, he was the enemy of both, at least within his area of control.
If we had killed Bin Laden at Tora Bora with nuclear weapons (as we should have), Saddam and Bush would have become best friends the very next day.
We could have then used Saddam's army to assist with the conquest of Arabia, then turning East into Persia to meet a joint Indian-US expeditionary force somewhere in Afghanistan after the latter force conquered and erased Pakistan from the map.
Iraq was a sideshow, an extraordinarily stupid and worse, foolish sideshow, intended to demonstrate how strong and committed were, when in the event, exactly the opposite was achieved.
Any more "progress" like that, and we are finished.
In fact, the failure to achieve any meaningful success in Iraq was the CAUSE of "Obama".
I (and many others) pointed out at the time that nation building in the Middle East absolutely requires a surveillance state and a lethal crackdown on the enforcement of sharia law. The American government was never willing to do that.
Nation building rather than a punitive war was never persued in a fashion that could work and those of us who mocked the inexcusable idiots who backed George W. Bush’s waste of lives and money have been born out.
H.W. Bush should have removed Sadam in 1991 and we should have left Iraq in ruins. Rinse and repeat as necessary.
The plan of nation building is a different question, but one within the power of a president. I think it was a mistake. We should have deposed their government and left them with a warning not to bother us again.
Or, once the decision to nation build (it worked against secular totalitarians) was made, leave forces in for a 50, 100, 150, … years to help an upstart republic stabilize/grow/persevere and become a melting pot for all peoples with individual rights endowed by their creator to the citizens and the necessary force [limited government] only to back those rights.
Instead, we have the mess we have, American foreign policy is FUBAR (as is ADP), and the chaos/killing of their creator's commandments continues apace internally and externally.
1400 years vs. upstart republics BUMP!
“Iraq was a sideshow, an extraordinarily stupid and worse, foolish sideshow, intended to demonstrate how strong and committed were, when in the event, exactly the opposite was achieved.”
Nope. Iraq was the main event, to remove a hostile government that was willing to sponsor unaccountable terrorists attacks against us with weapons of mass destruction. We were already at war with Iraq, and Iraq was defying the terms of the cease fire. We should have used Iraq as a springboard to take out the Iranian regime.
But the old media mounted an all out attack on the Iraqi war because it was a Republican in charge. A Republican could not be allowed to win a war. Under the media assault, Bush did not have the political capital to take on Iran, which we had every reason to do, as they backed enemy forces in Iraq.
The media was and is the problem. They desperately wanted us to lose in Iraq, and they are close to achieving their agenda.
That’s like saying WWII success spawned a stronger Soviet Union and therefore was a mistake. Addressing a core problem affects other things, but does not reduce the importance or ridding a core problem.
ISIS has much more tie to later decisions than removing Saddam Hussein. Specifically, not leaving behind a US base and abandoning the country too soon. Also a completely lacking policy in Syria. ISIS is born of a power vacuum in the world regarding the middle east. Not on Bush’s watch, but after.
Unfortunately for your plan, Americans still get to vote.
He already was. No one of the chatterers listen to him
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