Reply #16: "a story that illuminates a signature disgrace of the Bush presidency" [View All]

[understandinglife]

<clip>It was, in fact, a story that had everything to do with politics and not much to do with national security -- a story that illuminates a signature disgrace of the Bush presidency: its tendency to treat the war in Iraq as an issue to be spun, rather than a life-and-death struggle to be won.

In this case the White House was trying to "knock down" a former ambassador, Joseph Wilson, who had disputed the claim--made by President Bush in his State of the Union address--that Iraq attempted to buy uranium in Niger. The Administration had built its case for war on the probability that Saddam Hussein had "reconstituted," in Vice President Dick Cheney's felicitous and inaccurate phrase, his nuclear-weapons program. Eventually, the White House was forced to retract the Niger claim.

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The election is long over, but the campaign-style spinning persists. Last week, after Rove's name was divulged, the Republican National Committee engaged in a freestyle vitriol spew, attempting once again to discredit Wilson and suggest that Rove was merely trying to "knock down" a bum story. This was so much smoke and baloney -- and all too typical of the persistent fecklessness on the part of the Administration and its allies when it comes to Iraq.

Cheney continues to spin dross from the hard currency of military intelligence: he recently said that the insurgency was in its "last throes." The President makes a prime-time television address to the nation about Iraq in late June and merely rehearses campaign platitudes without offering a serious discussion of the problems on the ground and the real sacrifices needed to overcome them.

From Stop trying to spin the Iraq war

by Joe Klein

July 25, 2005

Link:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/07/25/klein.iraq.tm/


What is most significant about this item is that it is written by someone who still thinks we should send more troops, 'root out the insurgency,' .... blah, blah, blah. Thus, the criticism indicates the growing frustration among those who would be ardent supporters of the neocon agenda as long as we were winning 'the war on terrorism.'

Mr. Klein best expresses his frustration with -- "There are, after all, oaths more important than those between reporters and sources. One is the oath between the Commander in Chief and his people. I mean, Mr. President, you are going to protect us on this, right?

Let me answer that question honestly - Nope.

The only people who are going to protect America are those of us who go to the White House and demand that Mr Bush, Mr Cheney and their neoconster entourage exit.


Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us