Posted on 10/23/2003 7:39:04 AM PDT by PhiKapMom
Bush-Cheney '04 Blog Update: Opinion: A Defense Secretary Undeterred
October 23, 2003
In his column today in the Washington Post, George Will takes a look at the Secretary of Defense and the tough questions he is asking about the War on Terror. Throughout his unprecedented career in politics, Rumsfeld has lived by the axiom, "A narrow focus on the certain obscures the almost-certain." As Will wisely notes, "certainty is a luxury policymakers often cannot wait for."
The president said Iraq posed a "grave and gathering danger" rather than the familiar locution "clear and present danger," because it is reckless to wait until a terrorist danger is present or imminent. In interviews and press briefings before the war, Rumsfeld, like other administration officials, was repeatedly asked to apply the word "imminent" to the Iraqi threat, and he repeatedly did not. Today, as then, he stresses the problem of knowing when a threat is imminent: When were the Sept. 11 attacks imminent? "A week before, a month before, a year before, an hour before?"The remarkable souring of political argument in 2003 continues as some Democrats, with their calculated extravagance, insist there was "no plan" for postwar Iraq. But if that were so, how is it that we have gone, in just six months, from zero to 85,000 Iraqis participating in providing security? And what was all that work done with the World Food Program before the war?
Critics correctly fault the mistaken certitude of some of the administration's prewar pronouncements. But critics indicting the administration not merely for mistakes but for meretriciousness would do well to avoid that in their indictments.
Something NEW ...
... and old reliable:
Click HERE or on the pic to hear the Rolling Thunder !
I'd nail all the dishonest pols and pundits who were too careless or lazy to bother listening to the DoD, CENTCOM or CPA briefings, yet were quick to condemn the war throughout based on shoddy research and rumors. Shame on them, when our troops are risking their lives saving civilization!
I would also quote Teddy Roosevelt:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." ~ Theodore Roosevelt
Then I'd tell them I doubt any President, any military leaders or any troops could do as great a job as THIS President, THIS military leadership and THESE troops - in the history of the world, and if they can't say anything constructive, to shut up and sit down, and meditate on the many blessings they have living in this freeest, greatest nation on earth - thanks to our troops, past and present.
That's just me. (^;
In interviews and press briefings before the war, Rumsfeld, like other administration officials, was repeatedly asked to apply the word "imminent" to the Iraqi threat, and he repeatedly did not.
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Ping to George Will telling the DNC romper room to cool it re. our fearless (and grown up) SOD in the new Bush-Cheney '04 Blog.
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DEANIE WEENIE &
NONDEFENSE DEMS
LOL ! Looks just like him !
Listen http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2002/07/20020703_a_main.asp
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