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8/17/00New York Post By John Podhoretz EXCERPT Joe Lieberman, the vice-presidential nominee, who has spent 10 days fleeing from his own convictions, last night (giving his VP speech) fled from the eloquence of his speech on the Senate floor two years ago denouncing Bill Clinton's immorality. Hanging around Al Gore seems to have reduced Lieberman to baby-boomer solipsism: In this speech, as in so many of his speeches these last 10 days, he treated his elevation not as the assumption of a solemn responsibility but like he won the Lotto. Excuse me, but what does all this sentimental Oscar-acceptance-speech junk...

Imagine this. Upon hearing of the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter, John McCain chooses someone else off his short list for vice president, like Tim Pawlenty. Over the course of the week that followed, word leaks out that McCain had closely considered Palin — known at this point only as a maverick Republican woman who took on the Establishment — but went another way because of the pregnancy of her teenage daughter.

The twist-yourself-in-knots-to-oppose-Palin-on-grounds-of-inexperience exercise being indulged in by those otherwise ecstatic about Barack Obama and indifferent to his lack of experience is truly astounding to behold. It is leading them into some fascinating mistakes. Judgment, comportment, the largeness that seems necessary to hold high office without questionable baggage - these are the qualities that matter. The effort to pre-determine her unfitness is not only a losing proposition; there is something fundamentally foolish, about it. Even un-American, in the sense that it suggests rule by wonk rather than popular fiat. Ask Bill Clinton, who tried his best to make the case against...

The most emotionally resonant case for Barack Obama is that he will bring something fresh to American politics — that his relatively young age, relatively limited experience, and relatively short time in Washington constitute a plus rather than a minus because they mean he is untainted by the messes of the last decade or so. By contrast with John McCain, who has been in public office for a quarter-century and in Washington for several years before that, Obama is a new face. Fine. But by the time November rolls around, will Obama seem like a new face? He will have...

With John McCain's vice presidential pick only a few weeks away and the race between him and Barack Obama far closer than either of them probably thought it would be at this point, the possibility of McCain choosing Joseph I. Lieberman as his running mate suddenly seems both credible and plausible in a way it didn't a few months ago. It appears, from the consistency of McCain's numbers in the polling data, that he has shored up the Republican base . . . . So McCain no longer has to close the sale with conservatives, which is a good thing...

It has become axiomatic among liberals and on the Left that Democrats are somehow just too nice to win presidential races — that they get slimed and don’t slime back, that they get attacked and don’t counterattack, etc. They believe in ideas, you see, in calm persuasion, not in demagoguery, and therefore do not deign to stage a mud-wrestling match in the fever swamps. It was said of Michael Dukakis, it was said of Al Gore, and it was said of John Kerry. They were all just too high-minded to allow themselves not to be “swift-boated.” This has become such...

The November election is, and remains, Barack Obama’s to lose. Usually, candidates whose victories are entirely in their own hands make it through. It is clear Obama’s path to victory is through the teleprompter. Let him give a big speech and he drives it like Tiger Woods hitting a fairway, as he did Sunday with his stunning sermon about the importance of fathers. But let him sit for an interview with a well-prepared reporter who isn’t interested in shilling for him and Obama makes mistake after mistake. This is what happened the other day with ABC’s Jake Tapper, who got...

"Frankly, I can be wrong, but I do not think that America can carry to the presidency a candidate as on the left as Barack Obama." Norman Podhoretz, May 14, 2008 Check the link for the complete interview on Iraq, Iran, the WoT, neoconservatism and US presidential elections.

If you look a few posts below, you will find the text of President Bush’s powerful and moving speech to the Knesset today. In the course of it, he says something very general: Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this...

Norman Podhoretz, as you will recall, was a staunch supporter of GW Bush, and is staying the course, and was in support of Sharon's Disengagement. He now replies to his critics of both these positions, in his Commentary article, Israel and the Palestinians:Has Bush Reneged?. Anyone interested in the peace process from its beginning in Madrid should read this very informative article. He begins, On June 24, 2002, George W. Bush, having already become the first American President to come out openly and officially for the establishment of a Palestinian state, attached two stern conditions to that new policy. The...

Among the findings: * Only 34 percent of McCain voters, 42 percent of Clinton voters, and 52 percent of Obama voters correctly identified their candidate as favoring eventual citizenship for illegal immigrants who meet certain requirements. * Of McCain voters, 35 percent mistakenly thought he favored enforcement that would cause illegals to return home, another 10 percent thought he wanted mass deportations, and 21 percent didn’t know his position.

There are several stories today about John McCain’s possible vice-presidential picks. This is absurd for many reasons. Here are a few: 1) It is a 95 percent certainty that McCain will not announce his pick until, at the earliest, a few days before the convention. There is no upside whatever to an early announcement. If it provokes excitement, the excitement will dissipate, leaving the campaign with nothing. If there are any problems, it will be the only subject of discussion surrounding McCain for weeks and weeks and weeks, with the worrisome subtext — Look, here is McCain’s first major decision,...

Hillary Clinton is not stupid. She knows perfectly well that she’s not going to catch up with Barack Obama when it comes to delegates or the overall popular vote in the primaries, and that her lead with superdelegates is not at all secure. She’s staying in the race to see what happens — to lengthen it so that there is a chance Obama will implode for some reason or combination of reasons, leaving her to pick up the pieces.When Hillary and her people talk about Obama’s lack of experience, they are not just talking about foreign policy and Washington voting....

The thing is, Eliot Spitzer is a crook. I’m not referring to the current prostitution scandal. I’m not referring to the scandal last year involving his senior aides and the leaking of confidential police information to the Albany Times Union. I’m not referring to the threatening phone call he made to the august John Whitehead, retired head of Goldman Sachs, who had the temerity to question a case Spitzer was building against an old friend of Whitehead’s. I’m referring to his conduct dating back to 1994, when he designed a complex scheme involving loans and real estate and collateralized apartments to evade...

Michelle Obama today said that “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction.” Really proud of her country for the first time? Michelle Obama is 44 years old. She has been an adult since 1982. Can it really be there has not been a moment during that time when she felt proud of her country? Forget matters like the victory in the Cold War;...

Can it really be there has not been a moment during that time when she felt proud of her country?

Up until a fairly short time ago, scarcely anyone dissented from the assessment offered with “high confidence” by the National Intelligence Estimate [NIE] of 2005 that Iran was “determined to develop nuclear weapons.”

The past three months have seen an odd turn in the presidential primary process in both parties — a turn away from the key issues confronting the United States and toward emotional and social vapor. The success of the surge in Iraq, coupled with the bizarre “we’re safe” reading of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, drained some of the passion from the anti-war fervor in the Democratic primary electorate and from the hawkish fervor of the Republican primary electorate. In their place came the Christian identity-politics rise of Mike Huckabee on the Republican side and the “we need a...

A new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), entitled “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,” has just dealt a serious blow to the argument some of us have been making that Iran is intent on building nuclear weapons and that neither diplomacy nor sanctions can prevent it from succeeding. Thus, this latest NIE “judges with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program”; it “judges with high confidence that the halt was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work”; it “assesses with moderate confidence that Tehran had...

Rudy Giuliani has made a "promise" not to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear capability, even if it requires U.S. military action. Though the U.S. Army is scrimping to meet recruitment goals, Rudy has pledged to add at least 10 new combat brigades. Speaking to an Atlantic Bridge conference in London, Rudy called for NATO expansion to include Japan, India, Australia, Singapore and Israel. Has Rudy thought this through? Why would Japan and Australia, each of which already has a U.S. commitment to come to its defense, commit to go to war with a nuclear-armed Russia if it invaded Estonia?...

We must bomb Iran, says US Republican guru By Toby Harnden in New York Last Updated: 7:28pm BST 26/10/2007 A senior foreign policy adviser to the Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani has urged that Iran be bombed using cruise missiles and "bunker busters" to set back Teheran’s nuclear programme by at least five years. Iran threatens 'decisive strike' if US attacks Analysis: Iran and US in political flux US elections coverage in full The tough message at a time of crisis between the United States and Iraq was delivered by Norman Podhoretz, one of the founders of neoconservatism, who has also...

Uptown Lefties Live Down To Their Reputation IT takes guts to be a conservative in Manhattan. Norman Podhoretz entered the lion's den when he read from his bestseller "World War IV" at Barnes & Noble on Broadway at 82nd Street on Thurs day night. The Upper West Siders were polite enough during the reading, but started "caus ing a ruckus" during the Q&A, especially after Podhoretz opined, "It may be necessary to bomb Iran." Reports a witness: "A front- row audience member became so irate that a staff member had to go over to quiet him. Then a lady stood...

October 10, 2007 -- FRED Thompson had a senior moment at an unfortunate moment - during the very first words he spoke as a presidential debater. Only a minute or so into his opening answer of yesterday's Republican debate - Thompson's first debate since formally entering the race in September - he just stopped speaking. Froze. Blinked in confusion. Seemed to have lost his train of thought. It was a discomfiting pause. And if it had come during prime time during a general-election season, it would have spelled the end of Thompson's candidacy and ensured a Democratic landslide.

One of the founding fathers of neoconservatism has privately urged President Bush to bomb Iran rather than allow it to acquire nucler weapons. Norman Podhoretz, who has joined Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign as a senior foreign policy adviser, held an unpublicized meeting with Bush last spring. "I urged Bush to take action against the Iranian nuclear facilities and explained why I thought there was no alternative," said Podhoretz. "I laid out the worst case scenario - bombing Iran - versus the worst consequences of of allowing Iranians to get the bomb." He also told Bush, "You have the awesome responsibility...

WEDNESDAY brought two key developments in the 2008 race for the White House. Together, they make it increasingly likely we're finally going to see that Hillary-vs.-Rudy match-up we were denied in New York's 2000 Senate race. First, Democratic candidates for president appeared in a debate in New Hampshire - and Sen. Hillary Clinton's rivals failed to act in any way to slow or derail the bullet train that is her bid for the party's nomination next year. Yes, it's possible that Hillary won't be the Democratic nominee. It's also possible that "Good Luck Chuck" will win the Academy Award for...

Neocon 'godfather' Norman Podhoretz tells Bush: bomb Iran Sarah Baxter, Washington ONE of the founding fathers of neoconservatism has privately urged President George W Bush to bomb Iran rather than allow it to acquire nuclear weapons. Norman Podhoretz, an intellectual guru of the neoconservative movement who has joined Rudolph Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign as a senior foreign policy adviser, held an unpublicised meeting with Bush late last spring at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. The encounter reveals the enduring influence of the neoconservatives at the highest reaches of the White House, despite some high-profile casualties in the past...

<p>December 7, 2001 -- THE Senate Judiciary Committee convened yesterday so that chairman Patrick Leahy and his Democratic colleagues could rip into Attorney General John Ashcroft and, by extension, the entire Bush administration for their handling of the domestic-terrorism investigation and the plan for military tribunals.</p>

It is not unreasonable to see the race for the Republican Party's presidential nomination eventually boiling down to the two men currently atop the GOP polls, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson. But if this happens, it will be a race between something more than just the men. It will be a battle between two distinctly different political philosophies. In Sunday's New York Daily News, the paper's Senior Correspondent David Saltonstall has authored a very revealing piece, Neocon hawks go all-out for Giuliani: They are officially known as Rudy Giuliani's senior foreign policy advisory board, but they also could be dubbed...

They are officially known as Rudy Giuliani's senior foreign policy advisory board, but they also could be dubbed something else: Neocons For Rudy. As in neoconservatives, the Republican faction that many see as among the most potent forces of Bush-era Washington - a well-funded, sharply analytical bunch that provided the ideological basis for invading Iraq and is now training its cross hairs on Iran. ---snip--- Giuliani's neocon roster includes Norman Podhoretz, a founding father of the movement; Charles Hill, a former foreign policy official for President Ronald Reagan and early backer of invading Iraq; Martin Kramer, an expert on Islam...

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on us that took place on this very day six years ago, several younger commentators proclaimed the birth of an entirely new era in American history. What Dec. 7, 1941, had done to the old isolationism, they announced, Sept. 11, 2001, had done to the Vietnam syndrome. It was politically dead, and the cultural fallout of that war--all the damaging changes wrought by the 1960s and '70s--would now follow it into the grave. I could easily understand why they thought so. After all, never in their lives had they witnessed so powerful an...

Some set the matter aside as being nothing more than verbal play for the benefit of word-men. What term properly designates what we are doing, and what we are enduring, in many parts of the world, the symbolic center of which is the Twin Towers site in Manhattan? Sometimes the words chosen can mean the justification of an additional measure of military power. Always they calibrate the public mood and the public perception of what is going on. I am informed that French pacifists, ensconced in the French Academy in 1939 and determined to understate Nazi military exercises (even...

-- snip -- Bush contends that since the end of the Second World War, there has always been a deep divide in the country about the wisdom of trying to affect change in non-Western nations. And the speech offers interesting parallels between American skepticism about the positive effects of U.S. intervention in previous conflicts and American skepticism about our role in Iraq today. -- snip --Win in Iraq, as we did in Japan, or hold the line, as we did in South Korea, and there is hope for the future in Iraq and the Middle East. If we lose, we...

I hate to be nasty, but anybody who takes the Ames Straw Poll results seriously is an idiot. A bunch of people spent ludicrous amounts of money to bus-and-truck 14,000 people to a big picnic, and the guy who spent the most bought the win with a mammoth 4516 votes. Goshers! 4,516 votes! Another guy who spent a lot less than the first guy got some people to eat his fried Oreos to vote for him too — 2,587, of them, to be precise. And he's claiming a big triumph and momentum blah blah blah. This is ridiculous. The two...

Although many persist in denying it, I continue to believe that what September 11, 2001 did was to plunge us headlong into nothing less than another world war. I call this new war World War IV, because I also believe that what is generally known as the cold war was actually World War III, and that this one bears a closer resemblance to that great conflict than it does to World War II. Like the cold war, as the military historian Eliot Cohen was the first to recognize, the one we are now in has ideological roots, pitting us against...

THE turn in the polls against the Republican Party appears to be stunning in its ferocity

Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani is packing his campaign staff with Middle East Hawks – including one who urges a U.S. military strike on Iran. Giuliani recently announced he had assembled a "team of foreign policy advisers featuring several prominent neoconservatives, including one of the movement’s founders, Norman Podhoretz,” the Jewish publication Forward reported. Giuliani’s advisory panel also includes several figures with experience in Israeli affairs, Forward noted. His chief foreign policy adviser is Charles Hill, who once served as political counselor to the American Embassy in Tel Aviv. On the panel as well is Martin Kramer, an expert on Islam...

I got a press release the other day from Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani. He was announcing a photo opportunity. It seems a UFO will be landing soon to take him back to his home planet. Photographers are invited. Actually the press release didn't say that. What it really said is that Giuliani has appointed Norman Podhoretz as a foreign policy advisor. But the effect is the same. Only a visitor from another planet could think that the way to win the presidency of the United States is by taking foreign policy advice from the nuttiest man on Earth. That's...

Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice — but even if you accept that these convictions were just, what Fitzgerald did not demonstrate was that any kind of harm was done. Whatever Libby did was unrelated to the the publication of Valerie Plame Wilson's name in Robert Novak's column. We know of a certainty that it was Richard Armitage who retailed her name, first to Bob Woodward before Libby ever heard of her, and then to Novak. Armitage, a State Department official, did this independently of any actions taken at the White House or anywhere else. Therefore, even...

DUBYA'S END BORDER BILL THE LAST BLOW June 29, 2007 -- PRESIDENT Bush's disastrous second term has not been without its moments. Unfortunately for him, these moments have come primarily when members of his own party have risen up against him to defy his wishes. That's what happened yesterday. For the second time in four weeks, Republicans in the Senate put a stake through the heart of Bush's beloved but politically catastrophic immigration bill. It's also what happened in the early months of the second term, when Bush chose to nominate his unqualified aide, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court...

THE American Right is up in arms. The new immigration-reform bill announced with great fanfare last week is, say my fellow conservatives, a disaster of Biblical proportions. Virtual spittle is being expectorated all over the senators who negotiated the terms of the bill and the White House, which supports it. Anti-immigration conservatives are the most vocal people in the country when it comes to saying that our immigration system is broken. But now they have been presented with an "immigration reform" bill that attempts to address some of their concerns, and they're screaming bloody murder about it. They're right to...

In a New York Times story, a conservative journalist named Chris Ruddy (who once long ago worked for this newspaper) declared that he and his boss, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, had changed their minds about someone who had preoccupied them in the 1990s: Bill Clinton. "Clinton," said Ruddy, "wasn't such a bad president. In fact, he was a pretty good president in a lot of ways, and Dick [Scaife] feels that way today."

'PATH' MISSED REAL 9/11 STORY September 8, 2006 -- FIRST things first: ABC's miniseries "The Path to 9/11," which will air Sept. 10 and 11, is a stiff. For those well-versed in the infuriating details of the missteps and missed opportunities in pursing al Qaeda between the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the attack five years ago, there is nothing new here. SNIP Of course, the question obsessing everyone today is: Does the movie misrepresent events, conversations and policies of the Clinton administration? Yes and no. Ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's anger is unquestionably justified....

"YESTERDAY, the Republican president threw down the gauntlet to Democrats in the House and Senate. Join me, he said, in revising the rules under which we hold and try the world's most dangerous and despicable men ... "And join me, he said, in protecting Americans fighting the War on Terror from prosecution ... "These requests raise the question: Is it too late for the president to be asking Democrats to join him in anything?"

GEORGE W. Bush just delivered what may be the most important speech of his presidency since he went before the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002, and declared his intention to seek regime change in Iraq. The time has come, the president all but said yesterday, to take the gloves off with Iran. "The world's free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," he said flatly. He prefaced those words by saying that efforts were being made to find a diplomatic solution to the problem. Nonetheless, Bush has now said in the strongest sentence he has yet...

...So far as the implementation of this new strategy goes, it is still early days—roughly comparable to 1952 in the history of the Truman Doctrine. As with the Truman Doctrine then, the Bush Doctrine has thus far acted only in the first few scenes of the first act of a five-act play. Like the Truman Doctrine, too, its performance has received very bad reviews. Yet we now know that the Truman Doctrine, despite being attacked by its Republican opponents as the “College of Cowardly Containment,” was adopted by them when they took power behind Dwight D. Eisenhower. We also know...

THERE'S a growing sense among political insiders that Republicans will get blown out of the water in November. GOP politicians have met waves of hostility from voters in their home districts. K Street lobbying firms are said to be staffing up with Democrats to be well-positioned for a new reality in Washington after Election Day. Democrats need a net gain of six Senate seats and 15 House seats to take control of Congress. That doesn't sound like a huge challenge, really, given the public disaffection with Washington and especially considering the Iraq war's unpopularity. The drumbeat is constant: We haven't...

Neoconservatism is hard to pin down as discrete political theory; Mr. Podhoretz [prefers] "tendency." In any case, as a practical matter, it denotes the mentality of those who moved from somewhere on the political left to somewhere on the right, primarily during the late '70s. It had "two ruling passions," according to Mr. Podhoretz. On the one hand, the neocons were repulsed by the countercultural '60s radicalism that came to dominate the American liberal establishment. On the other, they argued for a more assertive, muscular foreign policy (at the time in response to Soviet expansionism). ... The "war on terror,"...

In recent months, we have been bombarded with reports of the death of the Bush Doctrine. Of course, there have been many such reports since the doctrine was first promulgated at the start of what I persist in calling World War IV (the cold war being World War III). Almost all of them were written by the realists and liberal internationalists within the old foreign-policy establishment, and they all turned out to resemble the reports of Mark Twain’s death—which, he famously said, had been “greatly exaggerated.” Nothing daunted by this, the critics and enemies of Bush are now at it...

To see the context of this remarkable article I suggest one see the Wall Street Journal editorial today by Joseph Rago in opinionjournal.com It gives a comprehensive view of America's war against international terrorism and why we must not waver even - especially! - in Iraq.

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y.--If Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then Iraq was lost--according, at least, to the conspiracy-minded--on the pages of Commentary magazine and the other house organs of the neoconservative movement. Better yet, blame America's post-9/11 foreign policy on Leo Strauss, Albert Wohlstetter and Allan Bloom, regularly disinterred as the neocon godfathers. Yet however much one loathes lending credence to talk of a neocon conspiracy--call it Cabal Theory--it does possess a certain element of truth. That is, the Iraq intervention found its genesis not only in the immediate crises of the prewar period, but also in...