Betsy's Page
Saturday, March 27, 2004
A former liberal describes how working for a NPR show turned him into a conservative. All it took was reading and listening to some actual conservatives. Now, how do we duplicate that experience?
Gosh, Mark Steyn is the absolute best. That probably means he'll never get a Pulitzer or someother mainstream award. But, week after week, he uses with and logic to cut to the quick on whichever issue he's tackling. His column on Richard Clarke is a classic. Here's a taste, but read the whole thing.In January 2002, the Enron story broke and the media turned their attention to the critical question: how can we pin this on Bush? As I wrote in this space that weekend: "Short answer: You can't."
So Enron retreated to the business pages, and, after a while, the media and the Democrats came up with an even better wheeze: how can we pin September 11 on Bush? Same answer: you can't. But that doesn't stop them every month or so from taking a wild ride on defective vehicles for their crazy scheme.
The latest is a mid-level bureaucrat called Richard Clarke, and by the time you read this his 15 minutes should be just about up. Mr Clarke was Bill Clinton's terrorism guy for eight years and George W Bush's for a somewhat briefer period, and he has now written a book called If Only They'd Listened to Me - whoops, sorry, that should be Against All Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror - What Really Happened (Because They Didn't Listen to Me).
Having served both the 42nd and 43rd Presidents, Clarke was supposed to be the most authoritative proponent to advance the Democrats' agreed timeline of the last decade - to whit, from January 1993 to January 2001, Bill Clinton focused like a laser on crafting a brilliant plan to destroy al-Qa'eda, but, alas, just as he had dotted every "i", crossed every "t" and sent the intern to the photocopier, his eight years was up, so Bill gave it to the new guy as he was showing him the Oval Office - "That carpet under the desk could use replacing. Oh, and here's my brilliant plan to destroy al-Qa'eda, which you guys really need to implement right away."
The details of the brilliant plan need not concern us, which is just as well, as there aren't any. But the broader point, as The New York Times noted, is that "there was at least no question about the Clinton administration's commitment to combat terrorism".
Yessir, for eight years the Clinton administration was relentless in its commitment: no sooner did al-Qa'eda bomb the World Trade Center first time round, or blow up an American embassy, or a barracks, or a warship, or turn an entire nation into a terrorist training camp, than the Clinton team would redouble their determination to sit down and talk through the options for a couple more years. Then Bush took over and suddenly the superbly successful fight against terror all went to hell.
David Wissing has a comprehensive list of poll results. He notes that the Newsweek poll just out doesn't show that Clarke has had much of an effect on Bush's numbers and that half the people think Clarke is pursuing partisan advantage. Also, by a wide margin people think Bush has done a lot more to fight terror than Clinton did. Duh! (Link via Viking Pundit)
What a crock! Some no-name historian from Florida Atlantic University has reportedly done a survey of historians to rank First Ladies. I'm not sure what the criteria would be, but I suspect one of the criteria was "married to a Democrat." I don't know how you compare First ladies from different centuries and how much historians know about all the First Ladies. Not all the rankings are in this article, but here are the rankings that the article does list with my guesses as to what the historians were thinking in parentheses.
Great
1. Eleanor Roosevelt (We'd lose tenure if we picked anyone else)
2. Dolley Madison (That portrait thing was a smart move plus she threw great parties)
Near Great
3. Lady Bird Johnson (Trees are always nice and plus she put up with his philandering; we like that in a First Lady)
4. Abigail Adams (Those letters were great, but how about encouraging John to sign the Alien and Sedition Acts?)
5. Martha Washington (Setting the mold counts for something, but not as much as planting trees did for Lady Bird)
6. Hillary Clinton (Gag!!! But she must have been great; the media is always telling us so and she did get elected and put up with her husband.)
7. Rosalind Carter (Yup, we love the idea of the First Lady sitting in on cabinet meetings)
8. Jacqueline Kennedy (The only babe First Lady)
Above Average
9. Betty Ford (We like wives of Republicans when they come out for abortion)
17. Barbara Bush (The people liked her but she could be a word that rhymes with rich, couldn't she? Plus, she gave us her son. Enough said.)
Average
20. Laura Bush (We hate that demure, ladylike, support-her-husband model; just forget about her help after 9/11)
21. Nancy Reagan (Supporting her husband and leading a campaign against drug use doesn't hack it these days; she needed a better issue)
24. Pat Nixon (She never should have married him in the first place; what was wrong with her?)
27. Bess Truman (Now, there was an unsupportive wife - always going back to Missouri and leaving poor Harry all alone)
30. Mamie Eisenhower (What was with those bangs?)
I can pick my nominee for worst First lady: poor Mary Todd Lincoln. She was always nagging at him before he was elected and was out shopping and spending money while Abe tried to deal with the war. However, I'll cut her some slack for losing three sons and seeing her husband shot before her eyes. Having her remaining son try to commit her later in life must have been the last straw. What a pathetic woman.
I wonder how the sickly wives who did nothing rated such as the wives of Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, or William McKinley. Does that put them below Mamie. Given that Buchanan was a bachelor and several presidents were widowers, there can't be that many below her. Of course, there were some presidents who had two First Ladies. I wonder how the second Mrs. Wilson rates for running the country while he was sick. Is that a good thing or a bad thing in historians' minds. Given that Wilson's star has been steadily sinking recently, she probably has fallen also.
Lists like these always end up irritating me. I never agree with the ratings and have to vent somewhere. Hence this post.
However, if you like ratings, here are two that are less biased. The Wall Street Journal did one with the Federalist Society and it is not as left-leaning as most historian polls are. Also, read the articles on the presidents. C-Span did one where they broke it down into separate categories such as "moral authority" and "crisis leadership." You get a better picture that way. Plus, Lincoln comes out on top.
Condoleezza Rice is going to go on Sixty Minutes tomorrow night. She won't get anywhere as sympathetic a reception as Clarke received, unfortunately. While I think she will do great, you know the focus is going to be on why she won't testify under oath. maybe she'll pull a surprise and say that, in light of the questions raised and the importance of those questions, the President has waived his order that she not testify. That would take some of the wind out of their sails.
David Brooks contrasts what the preliminary report of the 9/11 Commission with all the stuff that Richard Clarke has been saying. Guess which got more publicity.Warren Bass, Michael Hurley and Alexis Albion are not exactly household names. But they are a few of the authors of the outstanding interim reports released by the 9/11 commission this week. In clear, substantive and credible prose, these staff reports describe the errors successive administrations made leading up to the terror attacks. More than that, they describe the ambiguities and constraints policy makers wrestled with.
But, of course, these reports were eclipsed. This was the week the Richard Clarke circus came to town.
It should be said that Clarke used to be capable of the sort of balanced analysis contained in these reports. Indeed, he was a major source for them. But that was the old Richard Clarke. That was the Richard Clarke who could weigh the pros and cons of the Clinton and Bush terror strategies. That was the Clarke who expressed frustration at the glacial pace of the pre-9/11 antiterror policy process, but who also, in 2001, sent out e-mail praising the White House for alerting agencies to a possible attack, and who praised the Bush team for "vigorously" pursuing the Clinton strategy while deciding to quintuple the C.I.A.'s anti-Qaeda budget.
But that wonky Richard Clarke doesn't become a prime-time media sensation or sell hundreds of thousands of books. Because in this country, we speak only one language when it comes to public affairs, the language of partisan warfare. So out goes Mr. Wonk. Clarke turns himself into an anti-Bush attack machine, and we get a case study of how serious bipartisan concern gets turned into a week of civil war.
The Washington Times tracks how Richard Clarke's allegations have hurt the President in polls.
Powerline does a well-resourced and supported fisking of Paul Begala's attack on Condoleezza Rice.
Larry Kudlow explains what is wrong with Kerry's tax proposal.The Kerry proposal to roll back the Bush tax cuts would raise the after-tax cost and reduce the post-tax investment return on capital by more than 54.5 percent. Taking out the upper-bracket labor-income component -- which is still investment capital -- the Kerry tax hike would reduce investment incentives by nearly 47 percent and work-effort returns by more that 7.5 percent. A big hit.
Offsetting that, Kerry's corporate tax cut would raise after-tax returns on corporate income by almost 2.75 percent. But that's only a tiny amount compared to the overall tax-hike proposal.
Kerry would also terminate the extra-territorial tax credit for multinational companies with offshore operations. In doing so, he's both giving and taking away. More, he's pandering to the current political hysteria over so-called jobs outsourcing, a misinformation campaign that Kerry compounds with his threats to terminate a number of free-trade agreements.
As the profits of U.S. firms are taxed overseas as well as at home (when the income is transferred back to the United States), companies are unfairly double-taxed on their earnings. This is the big issue regarding the current corporate tax debate in Congress. Why should American companies be double-taxed on a worldwide basis when nearly all other foreign companies, including those in Europe, are only single taxed? (Europeans provide a rebate to their companies in the amount of the extra-territorial tax burden.)
U.S. multinational companies operate abroad, largely through foreign sales corporations, because that's where the market customers are. A little-known factoid shows that roughly 90 percent of all worldwide markets (in population terms) are located outside the United States. When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton responded, "That's where the money is." If you asked GE, Gillette, Intel or Microsoft why they go offshore, they'd each say, "That's where the customers are."
Narrow-minded members of Congress who are obsessed with the phony outsourcing argument are trying to punish international companies, arguing that the "loophole" that lets corporations defer foreign-earned profits with a special tax credit is merely a reward for creating offshore jobs. This is Kerry's argument.
But the truth is, the territorial tax break is only a small part of the corporate rationale to locate part of an operation overseas. The greater justification is to be closer to foreign customers. And yes: Why should companies be double-taxed at home and abroad?
As for the outsourcing argument, that's old-fashioned fearmongering. Recent trade data show that there's far more insourcing of service jobs from foreigners who invest directly in the United States than outsourcing of jobs from U.S. foreign investment. In manufacturing, there is a net outsourcing, but that number hasn't changed in 20 years, a period during which the United States created 38 million new domestic jobs. "Outsourcing" today is a phony war against American business and open international trade.
Kathleen Parker says that March has been a good month for terrorists.
Here's a weird story. An author doing a book on the Vietnam Veterans Against the War had boxes of FBI documents that he'd gotten through the Freedom of Information Act stolen from his house.
A nonpartisan study of television advertising from the primaries to the present shows that John Kerry spent more money in ads attacking the president than any of the other Democratic contenders and more than Bush has spent now attacking Kerry. So Bush is just playing catch up now.
I think it would be better for Bush to allow Condi Rice to testify and not worry so much about separation of powers. He could make some statement that he is allowing her to testify in the interests of finding out the truth and is in no way waiving his rights to keep private advice given to the president by the National Security Adviser private. There is precedent for the National Security Adviser to testify when it's been a case of investigating corruption. And there is precedent for the Advisor not to testify when it concerns policy. But, it is too important now to get a full picture and she should come forward and say under oath what she has been saying publicly.
Also, as Paul Rodriguez points out, it is erroneous to say she hasn't testify. She just hasn't done it under oath or in public.
The UN oil for food program was a scandal and deserves a worldwide airing of its corruption. Of course, the involvement of Kofi Annan's best friend and son make the chances of a full accounting seem remote. This article from a New Zealand paper reminds us of corruption big and small at the United Nations.Almost a year ago, when kitchen workers at United Nations headquarters walked off the job in a dispute over holiday pay, the cream of the world's diplomats knew just what to do. They thronged to the site's five unattended restaurants and stole everything that wasn't nailed down.Read the whole thing and then wonder how the United Nations got to occupy such a high space in people's estimation. And wonder if you want a president who professes such admiration for the United Nations that he would not be willing to do what would anger the UN.
As one witness marvelled after seeing an envoy make off with a baked turkey under one arm and a framed picture under the other, "They were locusts!"
The next day, however, the incident hadn't happened - not officially, anyway. A UN spokesmen swore blind that a senior official, concerned that his colleagues might go hungry, had granted permission for staffers to help themselves. There had been no mass theft, in other words, because after the event, everything was declared free for the taking.
As excuses go, that one had the benefit of brazen originality. With a few simple words, official honesty was once again the order of business inside the glass-fronted monolith overlooking the East River.
If all episodes of pillage were as easy to explain, the UN might not today be facing what is shaping up as the biggest scandal in its chequered history.
This time it isn't cutlery, baked hams and wine-cellar locks that have gone missing, but at least US$11 billion ($17 billion), depending on who is doing the counting - or rather, the guessing, since the UN has been curiously disinclined to investigate where all that money went.
Friday, March 26, 2004
Here's a novel method of classroom discipline.
Scrappleface describes a new Defense strategy to stop terrorism.Rumsfeld Offers Plan to Prevent Past Terror Attacks
(2004-03-23) -- U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld today told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States that he has a plan to prevent past acts of terror.
"As I have listened to people speculate on what might have been done to prevent 9/11," said Mr. Rumsfeld, "I realized that we've been doing all the post-mortem analysis after the fact."
Mr. Rumsfeld proposed that the CIA, FBI and the Pentagon immediately begin "studying the facts about the next major terror attack, which will never happen because we will prevent it in hindsight."
"All we have to do is figure out who attacked us, where and when," he said. "It's a simple matter of stepping out of the time-space continuum to ward off future incidents after they have already happened."
Drudge shows how the DNC is similar to Saddam Hussein. They both think it's an act of great wit to use a Bush president for a foot mat.
John Hawkins is optimistic about Bush's chances in the Fall. Read him if you've been getting worried.
Byron York says that Bob Kerrey nailed Madeline Albright in the hearings.On Tuesday, Kerrey cut through all the talk. "From 1993 through 2001, the United States of America was either attacked or we prevented attack by radical Islamists close to a dozen times," Kerrey told Albright. "During that period of time, not only did we not engage in any single military attack other than the 20th of August 1998 — there was no attack against al Qaeda during that entire period of time. Indeed, the presidential directive that was...written and signed in May of 1998, didn't give the military primary authority in counterterrorism. They were still responsible for supporting the states and local governments if we were attacked and they were still providing support for the Department of Justice and doing investigations. It seems to me that that was a terrible mistake."
Albright answered by saying the administration basically didn't know who — or where — to attack.
"Well, what the hell does that say to al Qaeda?" Kerrey responded. "Basically, they knew — beginning in 1993, it seems to me — that there was going to be limited, if any, use of military, and that they were relatively free to do whatever they wanted."
That's about as concise a summation of terrorism in the Clinton years as could be made.
Now, it should be said that Kerrey was tough on Bush-administration officials, too, for their action (and inaction) on terrorism before September 11. But in the end, the eight-years/eight-months argument is a pretty compelling one.
Clinton bears a grievous responsibility for doing too little about terrorism during his eight years in office, in which there were several attacks. Bush, it seems, bears less responsibility for doing too little about terrorism during his eight pre-9/11 months in office, in which there were no attacks. And when the attack came, of course, Bush fought back.
These days, the best the former Clinton aides can say is that, at the end of their time in office, after they failed to adequately respond to the growing threat, they came up with a really great plan to strike back at al Qaeda. As they walked out the door, they handed it to incoming Bush officials and said, "Here — do this."
How can they expect anyone to take them seriously?
Rich Lowry dissects how the Washington Post unfairly slammed Condi Rice.
Deroy Murdock reviews the links between Al Qaeda and Iraq.
Jonah Goldberg pays tribute to C-Span and Brian Lamb.C-Span's greatest accomplishment is the message it sends about how improvements in our democracy get made. Sure, grass-roots groups do good things (and bad). Sure, government reformers can do good things (and bad). But the most radical positive transformation in a generation, in terms of how informed citizens understand their government, came about because a quiet former Hill staffer and correspondent named Brian Lamb wanted to do something good and decent for his country.
And through the power of his idea, he convinced those supposedly greedy fat cats to launch C-Span, and he convinced those supposedly elitist and cynical politicians to cooperate with it. One guy accomplished so much because he worked on the assumption that the "powers that be" wanted to be good Americans and good citizens, too. The guy deserves a medal.
Why isn't this a mini-scandalette about disrespect and insult?"Why has there been no flack regarding the tour Judy Woodruff took with Terry McAuliffe yesterday afternoon of the new DNC Headquarters? Before entering his office the camera panned down to get a closeup of his doormat which has a picture of President Bush. McAuliffe made a point of wiping his shoes across the picture of Bush and laughed like it was very funny and not a bit disrespectful. It was stunning. Ms. Woodruff caught her breath and walked around the mat so as not to step on the president's face."
The Bush campaign unleashed "Democrats for Bush."
What a switch. The Washington Post looks at Kerry's fumbled rhetorical style. And I thought Republicans were the only ones who couldn't put coherent sentences together.
Sean Hackworth has up a new Kerry's House of Ketchup.
John Fund pays tribute to C-Span and one of my heroes, Brian Lamb. The only thing I doubt is the survey that shows that 20% of Americans tune into C-Span once a week. If they do, it's only for a minute or two while flicking through the channels. I just don't believe that 20% of Americans are politics and history nerds. But, if it's so, that is wonderful. Brian Lamb is Da Man.
Here's another candidate for a chutzpah award. A woman tried to bribe a prosecutor and now wants her bribe money back.
John Podhoretz sums up what we've learned from the 9/11 Commission's public hearings.Did the Clinton and Bush administrations do enough to stop the 9/11 attacks? The answer is no - for the simple reason that the attacks took place. The only way either administration could have "done enough" is to have acted to pre-empt those attacks.
Could America have acted to pre-empt the attacks? Theoretically, yes. Practically, no.
Right Thinking looks at a Saudi TV show giving advice to husbands about how to beat their wives with a pool cue. Apparently, that is Allah's weapon of choice for spousal abuse.
Did you realize that most of the fund-raising that Hamas does is done in the United States? The Washington Times looks at financial ventures that Hamas has been involved in in the Washington area.
Mona Charen fact checks Bush and Kerry ads.
Maryland's attorney general has ruled that it's okay for the school to ban vulgarities at Terps' games. My AP Government students will love this example. Half of them are Duke fans who despise Maryland. And half of them hate Duke and so love Maryland.
Kerry is lining up behind a Democratic challenger to that moron, Congressman Moran.
Jonah Goldberg looks at Hamas using a vulnerable teenager as a human bomb.These kids aren't doing this because of the "occupation." They're doing it to be cool or to get (otherwordly) chicks. By all accounts, the terror masters in these various groups send their own kids to boarding schools. It's only other peoples' kids who they think are worth sending to "paradise," often by having them kill other kids.
This is all worth pondering in the wake of the assassination of Ahmed Yassin. The founder of Hamas, Yassin was also a founding father of suicide bombing. A significant segment of elite world opinion holds it was somehow wrong to kill Yassin because he was old, popular and in a wheelchair.
If you want to make the case that the killing wasn't a smart move, fine, that's debatable. But the morality was crystal clear. Yassin chose to be a pied-piper of kiddy-murder with his eyes wide open. That's more than you can say about Hussam Abdu, those like him, or their intended victims.
Lileks has a great column today fisking the press coverage of the Clarke testimony.So if Al Qaeda had failed on 9/11, do you think OBL and the rest of the merry band would be sitting around a table in Kabul holding hearings about who was to blame? I tend to think they would have moved on.you know the drill. Read the whole thing.
I tend to think they have moved on.
It’s interesting how this Clarke thing plays out. When I said yesterday that Clarke should have expected some push-back, I should have been more clearer. I meant that he must have known his contradictory statements would be made public, quickly, and these remarks, combined with his exquisitely timed book and PR push, would have an impact on his credibility. But he’s obviously smarter than I will ever be; he expected that the climate was right for his contradictions to be explained away or ignored.
I read a wire-story compilation today about the Clarke appearance - it gave no details of the background briefing tape. Let me quote:
“The charged political climate enveloped the commission as well. Key Democrats and Republicans on the panel dropped the neutral posture that had shown in previous hearings and were openly partisan in questioning Clarke and three witnesses.”
Okay, keep that in mind. Dems and Repubs were openly partisan. We continue:....
Here's another chutzpah award.Within hours of the Israeli missile attack that killed Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin this week, scolding fingers began to wave. Germany, France, the European Union, the Secretary-General of the United Nations and a host of Arab countries all condemned Israel's decision to kill the terrorist leader. Even Washington, Israel's greatest backer, said it found the attack on Sheik Yassin, whose organization is blamed for 52 suicide bombings that have killed 288 Israelis, "deeply troubling."
That was a classic example of chutzpah - unmitigated effrontery. For the fact is that many of the countries now admonishing Israel have themselves targeted their worst enemies for death in time of war or in fighting terrorism.
Among the first to chide Israel was Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary. As Mr. Straw is perfectly aware, the British security forces often hunted down agents of the Irish Republican Army during their long years of struggle with the IRA. In the most famous incident, 16 years ago this month, the elite Special Air Service anti-terrorism unit shot down three unarmed IRA agents in Gibraltar.
Charles Krauthammer has an award for Richard Clarke.It is only March but the 2004 Chutzpah of the Year Award can be safely given out. It goes to Richard Clarke, now making himself famous by blaming the Bush administration for 9/11 -- after Clarke had spent eight years in charge of counterterrorism for a Clinton administration that did nothing.
....Look. George W. Bush did not distinguish himself on terrorism in the first eight months of his presidency. Whatever his failings, however, they pale in comparison to those of his predecessor.
Clinton was in office eight years, not eight months. As Clarke himself said in a 2002 National Security Council briefing, the Clinton administration never made a plan for dealing with al Qaeda and never left one behind for the Bush administration.
Clarke says he pushed very hard for such critical anti-al Qaeda measures as aid to and cooperation with Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan's Northern Alliance. By his own testimony, the Clinton administration then spent more than two years -- October 1998 to December 2000, the very time the 9/11 plot was hatched -- fruitlessly debating this and doing absolutely nothing.
Clarke is clearly an angry man, angry that Condoleezza Rice demoted him, angry that he was denied a coveted bureaucratic job by the Bush administration. Angry and unreliable. He told the commission to disregard what he said in his 2002 briefing because he was, in effect, spinning. ``I've done it for several presidents,'' he said. He's still at it, doing it now for himself.
The Washington Post concentrates on the effort that the White House is putting forth to counter Richard Clarke. Hey, what are they supposed to do if they truly believe that Clarke is pushing an erroneous picture of how Bush is leading the war on terror? Maybe the reason they are putting so much information out there about how Clarke is contradicting himself is because there is so much information out there about how Clarke is contradicting himself.
Suzanne Fields says that this election is turning into a battle of the alpha males. Naomi Wolf, call your office.
A Vietnam Vet writes an open letter to John Kerry about Kerry's testimony about the war crimes that he said were being committed daily.1. Did you or any of the men who served under your command commit any of the ?war crimes? you described in your testimony? (page 180) If so, what did you do when you were there to stop these crimes from occurring?
2. You testified that the men who participated with you in the ?Winter Soldier Investigation? in Detroit ?relived the absolute horror of what this country . . . made them do.? (page 180) Having described these actions in great detail, did you come away feeling a certain sympathy with, say, Nazi storm troopers or concentration camp guards, who also claimed that they were doing only what their country made them do?
3. Would you agree that there were American servicemen who, unlike you and your ?Winter Soldier? colleagues, found the strength to refuse to engage in the sorts of atrocities you described? And would you agree that these men (in vastly greater numbers than those who appeared with you in Detroit) displayed more courage and character than did you?
4. Do you believe any former United States military officer who so much as tolerated the sort of behavior you described in your testimony should be elected President of the United States?
5. Despite the blatant and outrageous violations of the Geneva Conventions by the Viet Cong and the NVA, you testified that America was ?more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions.? (page 185) Were you serious when you said that?
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Lileks has a message for Hamas.Attention, Palestinian public relations agents: exquisite timing, guys. You get a nice little bump when Sauroman gets converted into a pavement stain, and all the crocodiles who lead the nations of the world get out their pre-moistened towelettes and pretend to squeeze out a few tears. So how do you capitalize on this moment? The ”world community” is outraged that Israel smoked a guy who sent men to kill children, so naturally: you send a child to kill men.
George Will makes a convincing case for Jim DeMint to replace Fritz Hollings in the Senate.
Ralph Peters says that the 9/11 hearings, by inserting politics into the war on terrorism, will weaken our fight.The terrorists are drawing the - incorrect - lesson that a Democratic victory this November would allow them to regain the global initiative. Although every new administration inevitably makes some mistakes, a Kerry presidency would have to face up to the need to combat terrorism as vigorously as the Bush administration has done. The man in the Oval Office doesn't get a choice on this one.
But the terrorists read things otherwise, thanks to our public venom. They'll attempt to strike here, as they did in Spain, to influence our elections. If they succeed, both of our political parties, with their craven bickering, will be guilty of inciting our enemies.
We Americans may disagree about many issues, but we cannot afford disunity in the face of fanatical killers. Nor are we remotely as divided as our enemies are led to believe. The problem is the politicians, not the people.
David Greenberg states the obvious. Sometimes, presidents such as Lincoln and FDR get reelected during a war. And sometimes, like Truman and LBJ, they don't.
The Boston Globe has been reading the question and answer session from Kerry's 1971 testimony before Congress about the Vietnam War. In that testimony, Kerry said two things that are rather troubling. One was that American soldiers had "murdered" 200,000 Vietnamese a year. "Murder" is not the normal verb used when a country is at war. Do all those Vietnam vets whom Kerry is appealing to like being called murderers? Doesn't that make Kerry a murderer too?
Kerry also said that he had gone to Paris and met with both sides in the negotiations going on there at the Peace talks. Great. A private citizen inserting himself into delicate negotiations just out of his own curiosity. You know, there is a law against that. (link via Memeorandum)
Check out what Just One Minute has put together to refute Clarke's allegation that fighting terrorism was Clinton's top priority. JOM has checked out the National Security briefing to Congress by Sandy Berger.The top priority gets mentioned, with respect to Afghanistan, after North Korea, the Middle East peace process, Libya, Iraq, Iran, India v. Pakistan, and the Caspian. Afghanistan is only mentioned in connection with drugs; neither "Taliban" nor "Qaeda" appear in the document.
Romesh Ratnesar in Time Magazine contrasts what Clarke said in his book and then how he's flacking and sexing up his allegations in TV interviews.The accounts of high-level conversations and meetings given by Clarke in various television appearances, beginning with the 60 Minutes interview, differ in significant respects from the recollections of a former top counterterrorism official who participated in the same conversations and meetings: Richard Clarke. In several cases, the version of events provided by Clarke this week include details and embellishments that do not appear in his new book, Against All Enemies. While the discrepancies do not, on their own, discredit Clarke's larger arguments, they do raise questions about whether Clarke's eagerness to publicize his story and rip the Bush Administration have clouded his memory of the facts.
Some Palestinians, particularly the parents, are angry that Hamas is sending children and young mothers to murder Israelis. They don't mind it if Hams sends older guys. The murdering is all fine and good; they just don't want kids being sent. Notice that the Hamas leaders never send their own children to commit murder. That should tell the Palestinians something, but apparently logic and reasoning is not their strong suit.
Drudge points out that, while Kerry is furiousover Bush's joke about looking for WMD, Kerry himself made a joke about the assassination of the first President Bush.
Of course, consistency in a Democrat doesn't matter. This will become the latest kerfuffle (James Taranto's favorite word) in the media like the use of 9/11 images in Bush's ad. Laughing at himself, as Bush did, is now enough for a lot of humorless people like John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi, to get their panties all in a knot. Does anyone really believe that Bush doesn't want to find WMD? Or that he didn't believe that there were WMD in Iraq? Oh, that's right. The line is that he knew that there weren't any WMD, but decided to provoke a war where the lack of WMD would become obvious, just to win votes while everyone was talking about the lack of WMD. Gee, that Karl Rove is such a genius. Grrrr.
Steven Plaut has a powerful column about Israel's assassination of Sheik Yassin.It does not matter what the Israel-bashers now say.Read the whole thing.
And it does not matter that it is much too little and much too late.
It does not matter that the anti-Semitic scum of the world is already whining that the assassination of the Bloody Sheikh, the genocidal Yassin, was "illegal" and an "obstacle" to peace. Any peace for which the killing of Yassin is an "obstacle" is one that should be prevented at all costs.
Robert Bidinotto helps us to get to know John Kerry better.