Posted on 12/06/2006 2:06:31 PM PST by Sabramerican
JOHN Bolton's resignation as the American ambassador to the United Nations makes it official: The Bush administration is now drifting idly toward a mixture of centrism and impotence.
In less than a month, two of President Bush's stronger and more independent aides - Donald Rumsfeld and Bolton - have been dispatched. Rumsfeld's designated successor, former CIA head Robert Gates, is a leading member of the Beltway's permanent bureaucracy.
The administration seems to be waiting for the Baker-Hamilton commission of old Washington hands to dictate U.S. policy on Iraq. Leaks from the commission suggest it will recommend a gradual U.S. withdrawal camouflaged by negotiations with Iran and Syria over a new Mideast grand bargain.
All of this feeds an exaggerated defeatism in the United States over Iraq.
.....
Rumsfeld's abrupt firing was an act of flagrant disloyalty to a loyal subordinate. The defense secretary had made his share of mistakes - notably, his failure to crush looting immediately after the fall of Baghdad - but he had followed the president's policy faithfully.
.......
We don't know for certain the reasons for Bolton's departure: Either the White House wasn't prepared to fight for him, or he was no longer prepared to lend his voice to the diplomatic charade over Iran and North Korea. Either way, his departure demonstrates timidity on the administration's part. The net result will be that Bush has one less loyal subordinate in the shrinking ranks of his own administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I agree with you as I am sick, too, of being so politically correct we are strangling ourselves as a country... and, I hate that our President named Bill Clinton to not one, but two special envoy positions and all Clinton did in return was go out on the stump and trash the administration.
This statement shows O'Sullivan to be uninformed about both major combat operations and the looting. Had he read the LTC Bogdanos book he would know that few valuable pieces were looted from the Baghdad Museum, and what was taken was mainly by insiders. Matthew Bogdanos is an expert in classical studies, a New York prosecutor, and the U.S. Marine officer who has been assigned by Gen. Tommy Franks to track down the stolen treasures of Iraq's cultural heritage.
Second, the priority of commanders mopping up at the end of active hostilities is to consolidate their positions and defeat pockets of resistance, not to divert resources to save inanimate objects no matter how old or how precious to the art world in New York .... or at the New York Times--which incidentally (but consistently) got the story wrong by several orders of magnitude when they reported 170,000 items were missing.
O'Sullivan is an embarrassment to the Hudson Institute and the New York Post fact checkers.
He needs to give China an ultimatum that they either back the U.S. politically or the U.S. breaks the global economy and cuts the Chinese off at the knees economically by signing an across the board trade embargo of Chinese goods and services.
He needs to confidently explain to the United States during his State of the Union speech why the Middle East is so important to the U.S. and to the world and why the U.S. needs to be there. He needs to draw a parallel to what the media did during Vietnam to help lose that war and what the media is doing today in Iraq. He needs to explain who is creating the chaos in Iraq, where they get their financing and their weapons from and what he plans to do about this. He also needs to define the U.S.'s role in the world and how America is going to approach that role.
Domestically he needs to pull a Clinton trick and blackmail the hell out out of the Democrat Party. If they want to go to war with him, they should know that his justice department will divy out hell for all the B.S. they did during the 90's. Is there a really a statute of limitations for taking bribes from the Chinese military? Whatever is done, he needs to remove from his skull the notion that this "New Tone" garbage works.
He needs to be bold, he needs to go on the offense, he needs to adamantly defend his policies and he needs to be a leader. Actually he doesn't need to do this, America needs him to do this, he is still the President and he needs not be impotent any longer!
It really is logic applied; the more we cave, the more leftward we are dragged.
It's going to be hard to do when ever loser who has ever had a job in Washington is on TV tonight saying that the report is bipartisan and "the truth" and "he better listen."
I'm at a loss; it looks like a coup to me.
Don't think so.
Oil? Who said anything about oil? Not me. I don't think George W. Bush is bright enough to even understand the oil market, let alone hatch machiavellian plots to corner it for his cronies.
But I will say this much. The Bush administration has NEVER been able to put forward, for public consumption and scrutiny, a plain and simple, straightforward, believable and uncontestable explanation for why the war was a vital necessity. Into that vacuum marched all kinds of conspiracy theorists, "no blood for oil" wackos among them.
As I've stated, I believe the president was motivated first and foremost by personal animus, which he mistakenly confused with the best interests of the United States. Various mid-east strategists and old hands also convinced him that something good could come out of the new power structure that a fallen Saddam would bring to mid-east politics. And of course, he wasn't able to challenge them with cogent arguments and penetrating questions, since he's not a policy wonk and, by his own admission to Tucker Carlson in 1998, he's never read a difficult book in his life.
So here's the moral of the tale: If you can't explain plainly and simply to the people why you are going to war, and if they can't understand it and believe it intuitively, don't go.
If you're too stupid to get it, why not get yourself over to DU where they don't get it either.
Tommy Franks was parsing his comments tonight, he really struggled a few times with how he wanted to phrase his take on this.
Did you see the article here today that he plagerized some of this latest book?
I listened to him and when he said that the panel was bipartisan, I flipped off mentally.
I really am getting the feeling that they have ALL banded together against Bush.
Brilliant! Demand that the Chief Executive of the U.S.A. singlehandedly destabilize the US, China, EU, Korea(s), and Japan. Not to mention the middle east, specifically KSA that got summoned to China over an energy agreement. And thank you for pinging the Desperate Housewives Club from their echo-chamber.
I was getting the drift that Tommy didn't want to say anything that would be taken as a slam against the President. Alan tried and it didn't work and then Sean tried to put some words into his mouth and he refused to let him, Franks appears to be his own man, but at the same time didn't want to say anything that could be used against the Administration and undermine the troops.
"The Bush administration is now drifting idly toward a mixture of centrism and impotence."
BS -- you neglect that he had OODLES of help from a Rep.-controlled congress (alas, no more). I think the article overstates the situation, but there is much to be learned over the events since 2004.
Or something that might be used against him in an upcoming election?
That's what I was thinking.
As in Tommy Franks and election? If so, funny you would say that because I was putting things away in the refridgerator and listening and thinking that at the rate he was parsing his words he could run for office and not have any of his statements used against him.
You really are a POS.
If you've got something to say to me, say it to my face.
But that's not your style, is it?
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