Neocons throwing Bush under the bus on Iraq (2 Viewers)

blackadder

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Rats desert a sinking ship. This was just too predictable:

According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.…

To David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who co-wrote Bush's 2002 State of the Union address that accused Iraq of being part of an "axis of evil," it now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them." This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on "failure at the center"—starting with President Bush.

Frank Gaffney: "[Bush] doesn't in fact seem to be a man of principle who's steadfastly pursuing what he thinks is the right course. He talks about it, but the policy doesn't track with the rhetoric, and that's what creates the incoherence that causes us problems around the world and at home. It also creates the sense that you can take him on with impunity."

"Cakewalk" Kenny Adelman: "The most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was the day that Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [former C.I.A. director] George Tenet, General Tommy Franks, and [Coalition Provisional Authority chief] Jerry [Paul] Bremer—three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots. And they get the highest civilian honor a president can bestow on anyone! That was the day I checked out of this administration. It was then I thought, There's no seriousness here, these are not serious people. If he had been serious, the president would have realized that those three are each directly responsible for the disaster of Iraq."

Michael Rubin: "Where I most blame George Bush is that through his rhetoric people trusted him, people believed him. Reformists came out of the woodwork and exposed themselves." By failing to match his rhetoric with action, Rubin adds, Bush has betrayed Iraqi reformers in a way that is "not much different from what his father did on February 15, 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up, and then had second thoughts and didn't do anything once they did."

Richard Perle: "Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad. I'm getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, 'Go design the campaign to do that.' I had no responsibility for that."

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612?printable=true&currentPage=all

And Perle expected better? Perle is the same guy who a few years ago said so condescendingly of Bush:

"The first time I met Bush 43, I knew he was different. Two things became clear. One, he didn’t know very much. The other was he had confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn’t know very much. Most people are reluctant to say when they don’t know something, a word or a term they haven’t heard before. Not him."

He expected to convince this guy to start a war and then trust him to manage it right when it was obvious to him from the start that "he didn't know very much" about the world?

These guys are too shrewd to have discounted the liklihood of an insurgency and a quagmire. Plenty of knowledgeable and credible people predicted this. It's just that no one wanted to hear it.

I'm pretty sure they knew all along that if circumstances required it they would throw the administration under the bus and wash their hands of responsibility for the war they sold with lies. And sure enough here they go.

All that mattered to these guys was to get the war rolling and get us committed. Once in there they knew it would be a "you break it you buy it" situation and that with U.S. prestige on the line, we would be hooked.

That is all they wanted, which is why we rushed in with so little forethought or preparation. Get us committed and the rest can be made up on the fly...

Nice work Mr. Perle, Mr. Adelman. Nice work.
 
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Vanity Fair's Inventions

....Vanity Fair then set my words in its own context in its press release. They added words outside the quote marks to change the plain meaning of quotations.

When I talk in the third quotation above about failures "at the center," for example, I did not mean the president. If I had, I would have said so. At that point in the conversation, I was discussing the National Security Council, whose counter-productive interactions produced bad results.

And when I talked in the second quotation about "persuading the president," I was repeating this point, advanced here last month. In past administrations, the battle for the president's words was a battle for administration policy. But because Bush's National Security Council malfunctioned so badly, the president could say things without action following - because the mechanism for enforcing his words upon the bureaucracy had broken.

In short, Vanity Fair transformed a Washington debate over "how to correct course and win the war" to advance obsessions all their own.

How was this done?

The author of the piece touted by the press release is David Rose, a British journalist well known as a critic of the Saddam Hussein regime and supporter of the Iraq war. (See here and here for just two instances out of a lengthy bibliography.)

Rose has earned a reputation as a truth teller. The same unfortunately cannot be said for the editors and publicists at Vanity Fair. They have repackaged truths that a war-fighting country needs to hear into lies intended to achieve a shabby partisan purpose.
http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGIyM2M4NzFlNTQwN2QxNzU0MDg4MjNiMjMwYjk4Zjk=
 
Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute freedom scholar: "Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes."
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612?printable=true&currentPage=all
The Latest Disinformation from Vanity Fair [Michael Ledeen]

My experience with Vanity Fair is even more extensive than David Frum 's, having been the subject of a 30,000 word screed that ends with the author's bland confession "there is no evidence for any of this." So I am not at all surprised to see the editors yank words from me, David, and others out of context and totally misdescribe what we think, do and feel. I do not feel "remorseful," since I had and have no involvement with our Iraq policy. I opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place and I advocated—as I still do—support for political revolution in Iran as the logical and necessary first step in the war against the terror masters.

Readers of NRO know well how disappointed I have been with our failure to address Iran, which was, and remains, the central issue, and it has been particularly maddening to live through extended periods when our children were in battle zones where Iranian-supported terrorists were using Iranian-made weapons against Americans, Iraqis and Afghans. I have been expressing my discontent for more than three years. So much for a change of heart dictated by developments on the ground.

So it is totally misleading for Vanity Fair to suggest that I have had second thoughts about our Iraq policy. But then one shouldn't be surprised. No one ever bothered to check any of the lies in the first screed, and obviously no fact-checker was involved in the latest "promotion." I actually wrote to David Rose, the author of the article-to-come, a person for whom I have considerable respect. He confirmed that words attributed to me in the promo had been taken out of context.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjQ0OTQyNTdhNWE0NzAxNGMxYWQ2ODAxOTNjNWM4M2E=
 
Michael Rubin, former Pentagon Office of Special Plans and Coalition Provisional Authority staffer: "Where I most blame George Bush is that through his rhetoric people trusted him, people believed him. Reformists came out of the woodwork and exposed themselves." By failing to match his rhetoric with action, Rubin adds, Bush has betrayed Iraqi reformers in a way that is "not much different from what his father did on February 15, 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up, and then had second thoughts and didn't do anything once they did."
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612?printable=true&currentPage=all
Re: Vanity Fair [Michael Rubin]

Okay, a couple of notes about the Vanity Fair piece in which I’m quoted. Some people interviewed for the piece are annoyed because they granted interviews on the condition that the article not appear before the election. Vanity Fair is spinning a series of long interviews detailing the introspection and debate that occurs among responsible policymakers every day into a pre-election hit job. Who doesn’t constantly question and reassess? Vanity Fair’s agenda was a pre-election hit job, and I guess some of us quoted are at fault for believing too much in integrity. What the article seeks to do is push square pegs into round holes. Readers will see that the content of the piece does not match the sensational headlines. Were people gathered around the author gripping about Bush? No. Were people identifying faults in the implementation? Yes. Are people sick of the autodafe whereby pundits demand “neocon” confessions to fit their own silly conspiracy theories? Yes. Have those interviewed changed their mind about the war? I have not, no matter how self-serving partisan pundits or lazy journalists want to spin it. I can’t speak for others. Again, despite the punditry out there, the so-called neocons are not Borg.

Now, for my own quote: I absolutely stand by what I said. Too many people in Washington treat foreign policy as a game. Many Washington-types who speak about Iraq care not about the US servicemen or about the Iraqis, but rather focus on US electoral politics. I am a Republican, but whether the Republicans or Democrats are in power, Washington’s word must mean something. Leadership is about responsibility, not just politics. We cannot go around the world betraying our allies—in this case Iraqis who believed in us or allied with us—just because of short-term political expediency. This is not just about Iraq: If we abandon Iraq, we will not only prove correct all of Usama Bin Laden’s rhetoric about the US being a paper tiger, but we will also demonstrate—as James Baker and George H.W. Bush did in 1991—that listening to the White House and alliance with the United States is a fool’s decision. We can expect no allies anywhere, be they in Asia, Africa, or Latin America, if we continue to sacrifice principles to short-term realist calculations. It’s not enough to have an attention span of two years, when the rest of the world thinks in decades if not centuries.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzdjZDhjM2Y3YzUzNzU1NmJmYzRkYzI0Mzk2Njg0ODU=
 
Richard Perle:
Vanity Fair has rushed to publish a few sound bites from a lengthy discussion with David Rose. Concerned that anything I might say could be used to influence the public debate on Iraq just prior to Tuesday’s election, I had been promised that my remarks would not be published before the election.​


I should have known better than to trust the editors at Vanity Fair who lied to me and to others who spoke with Mr. Rose. Moreover, in condensing and characterizing my views for their own partisan political purposes, they have distorted my opinion about the situation in Iraq and what I believe to be in the best interest of our country.​


I believe it would be a catastrophic mistake to leave Iraq, as some are demanding, before the Iraqis are able to defend their elected government. As I told Mr. Rose, the terrorist threat to our country, which is real, would be made much worse if we were to make an ignominious withdrawal from Iraq.​


I told Mr. Rose that as a nation we had waited too long before dealing with Osama bin Laden. We could have destroyed his operation in Afghanistan before 9/11.​


I believed we should not repeat that mistake with Saddam Hussein, that we could not responsibly ignore the threat that he might make weapons of mass destruction available to terrorists who would use them to kill Americans. I favored removing his regime. And despite the current difficulties, I believed, and told Mr. Rose, that “if we had left Saddam in place, and he had shared nerve gas with Al Qaeda, or some other terrorist organization, how would we compare what we’re experiencing now with that?”​


I believe the President is now doing what he can to help the Iraqis get to the point where we can honorably leave. We are on the right path.


 
Vanity Fair's Inventions

....Vanity Fair then set my words in its own context in its press release. They added words outside the quote marks to change the plain meaning of quotations.

When I talk in the third quotation above about failures "at the center," for example, I did not mean the president. If I had, I would have said so. At that point in the conversation, I was discussing the National Security Council, whose counter-productive interactions produced bad results.

And when I talked in the second quotation about "persuading the president," I was repeating this point, advanced here last month. In past administrations, the battle for the president's words was a battle for administration policy. But because Bush's National Security Council malfunctioned so badly, the president could say things without action following - because the mechanism for enforcing his words upon the bureaucracy had broken.

In short, Vanity Fair transformed a Washington debate over "how to correct course and win the war" to advance obsessions all their own.

How was this done?

The author of the piece touted by the press release is David Rose, a British journalist well known as a critic of the Saddam Hussein regime and supporter of the Iraq war. (See here and here for just two instances out of a lengthy bibliography.)

Rose has earned a reputation as a truth teller. The same unfortunately cannot be said for the editors and publicists at Vanity Fair. They have repackaged truths that a war-fighting country needs to hear into lies intended to achieve a shabby partisan purpose.
http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGIyM2M4NzFlNTQwN2QxNzU0MDg4MjNiMjMwYjk4Zjk=

Well that's great. Mr. Perle can sue them then. It's a clear cut case.

He never said any of it. He's not responsible.

It was all a fabrication. Perfect opportunity to make an example of them.

Ha ha.

This is just like when Perle threatened to sue Seymour Hersh a couple of years ago for similar reasons:

http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/g...Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2003/03/12&ID=Ar00200

Did he sue? No.

Why?

Wasn't it all a slam dunk?
 
Vanity Fair's Inventions

....Vanity Fair then set my words in its own context in its press release. They added words outside the quote marks to change the plain meaning of quotations.

When I talk in the third quotation above about failures "at the center," for example, I did not mean the president. If I had, I would have said so. At that point in the conversation, I was discussing the National Security Council, whose counter-productive interactions produced bad results.

And when I talked in the second quotation about "persuading the president," I was repeating this point, advanced here last month. In past administrations, the battle for the president's words was a battle for administration policy. But because Bush's National Security Council malfunctioned so badly, the president could say things without action following - because the mechanism for enforcing his words upon the bureaucracy had broken.

In short, Vanity Fair transformed a Washington debate over "how to correct course and win the war" to advance obsessions all their own.

How was this done?

The author of the piece touted by the press release is David Rose, a British journalist well known as a critic of the Saddam Hussein regime and supporter of the Iraq war. (See here and here for just two instances out of a lengthy bibliography.)

Rose has earned a reputation as a truth teller. The same unfortunately cannot be said for the editors and publicists at Vanity Fair. They have repackaged truths that a war-fighting country needs to hear into lies intended to achieve a shabby partisan purpose.
http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGIyM2M4NzFlNTQwN2QxNzU0MDg4MjNiMjMwYjk4Zjk=


Well now it's filtering out through other outlets. The Vanity Fair article is not set for publication until Dec. 6th. This gives our principled Neocons time to do something about this if the article truly is a fabrication.

Let's watch and see. I'm sure they can tap lots of donations to a legal fund if they wish to make an example of Vanity Fair and defend their reputation.


http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/IraqCoverage/story?id=2629489&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
 
Richard Perle:



So, Perle is NOT claiming that his remarks are fabricated. He is claiming that they were promised to be held back until after the election and that he was lied to.

He trusted a journalist????

That sort of judgement is perfectly consistent with the acumen he displayed through his harebrained schemes for the Middle East.

Trusting a journalist???

He got what he deserved.
 
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well they may be throwing him under the bus, but that's what he gets for giving his presidency and the lieves of thousands of Americans to those PAX Americana sellouts.....conservative they are not......
 
Good post Black'. It's funny that these guys come out of the "coatroom" now and light up Bush. Don't get me twisted though, I have never been an apologist for Dubya. These snakes have all made their money, and now it's time to distance themselves.
I wonder why they didn't helb Dubya when these decisions were made? Seems rather treasonuos don't you think?
 
Well now it's filtering out through other outlets. The Vanity Fair article is not set for publication until Dec. 6th. This gives our principled Neocons time to do something about this if the article truly is a fabrication.

Let's watch and see. I'm sure they can tap lots of donations to a legal fund if they wish to make an example of Vanity Fair and defend their reputation.


http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/IraqCoverage/story?id=2629489&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
I am not defending any of their recent comments or their comments before the war. The people quoted in the article said that they argreed to do it if it wasn't published right before the election because they thought their comments would be taken out of context. I see why they were concerned.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzgxYzUzYmRlNjhmNzMyNjI2MDM4YmRjNTFhODA4MGQ=
 
I'm not about to get into the he said-they edited debate. But is it apparent to anyone out there in EE land that the final nail in the historical coffin of neoconservative foreign policy will be hammered should "The General" Daniel Ortega be elected to run Nicaragua again? I mean forget the middle east. Our foreign policy is breeding militaristic-leftist dictatorial regimes in Central and South America now. :shrug:

TPS
 
I'm not about to get into the he said-they edited debate. But is it apparent to anyone out there in EE land that the final nail in the historical coffin of neoconservative foreign policy will be hammered should "The General" Daniel Ortega be elected to run Nicaragua again? I mean forget the middle east. Our foreign policy is breeding militaristic-leftist dictatorial regimes in Central and South America now. :shrug:

TPS

I thought our foreign policy was about democracy?

Ortega was democratically elected.

So long as he minds his own business, the issue is now between Ortega and the Nicarguan people. It's not any of our concern.

When we get out of the business of passing judgement on every government on the planet, we'll get along a lot better with the world.
 
>>I thought our foreign policy was about democracy?

Technically it is right now. But "Democracy" for democracy sake doesn't seem to add up to a whole lot (ref. Iran).

>>Ortega was democratically elected.

Indeed. I used to laugh at him all the time when he'd come on Nightline and bash the Reagan Administration with better material than they had for him.

>>So long as he minds his own business, the issue is now between Ortega and the Nicarguan people. It's not any of our concern.

No, it isn't, specifically from a Libertarian perspective. However, with the idea that Chavez is looking to turn Venezuela into a nuclear power (another guardian of oil) and exporting leftist poor-military dictatorship alliances to other countries in the region (Bolivia, potentially Peru, Columbia, etc.), then you have to wonder what a destabilized South America might mean for the future.

>>When we get out of the business of passing judgement on every government on the planet, we'll get along a lot better with the world.

True. But there is an argument that our foreign aid and assistance might be better tied to those who share the values of freedom, honesty and human rights somewhere.

The background from my premise is kind of the opposite though. Much of the world seems to be reacting to America rather than vice versa. This administration has become a lightning rod for the world's protest vote and provides ample ammunition.

TPS
 
>>I thought our foreign policy was about democracy?

Technically it is right now. But "Democracy" for democracy sake doesn't seem to add up to a whole lot (ref. Iran).

>>Ortega was democratically elected.

Indeed. I used to laugh at him all the time when he'd come on Nightline and bash the Reagan Administration with better material than they had for him.

>>So long as he minds his own business, the issue is now between Ortega and the Nicarguan people. It's not any of our concern.

No, it isn't, specifically from a Libertarian perspective. However, with the idea that Chavez is looking to turn Venezuela into a nuclear power (another guardian of oil) and exporting leftist poor-military dictatorship alliances to other countries in the region (Bolivia, potentially Peru, Columbia, etc.), then you have to wonder what a destabilized South America might mean for the future.

>>When we get out of the business of passing judgement on every government on the planet, we'll get along a lot better with the world.

True. But there is an argument that our foreign aid and assistance might be better tied to those who share the values of freedom, honesty and human rights somewhere.

The background from my premise is kind of the opposite though. Much of the world seems to be reacting to America rather than vice versa. This administration has become a lightning rod for the world's protest vote and provides ample ammunition.

TPS

I'm pretty sure that Chavez will run the Venezuelan economy into the ground before all is said and done. These jokers almost always self-destruct in one way or another.
 

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