TDPS: Obama Libya speech double standard...when did Bush address criticisms like this? TRANSCRIPT

[celtics23]

Run time: 06:17 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmRxU-Gv_uk   Posted on YouTube: April 01, 2011 By YouTube Member: MidweekPolitics Views on YouTube: 351   Posted on DU: April 02, 2011 By DU Member: celtics23 Views on DU: 823

 
From: www.davidpakman.com | Subscription: www.davidpakman.com/membership | YouTube: www.youtube.com/midweekpolitics

David: The Obama Libya speech. Much anticipated, by people who are paying attention, I guess, not if you were more concerned about, I don't know, "Real Housewives" of wherever your favorite one is. But to some people, the Obama Libya speech was much anticipated.

The first half to me sounded like Bush Iraq-era rhetoric delivered with much better vocabulary and much more eloquently. That was my sense. And when I ran this... when I bounced that idea off of some people, I had some agreement from a couple of people, but also the consensus I got was well, the rhetoric, or maybe not rhetoric, but the narratives may be similar, which is we're doing the right thing, we're going in for the right reasons, so on and so forth, but the difference is that it's a much smaller operation. So the mere fact that Barack Obama, within a week of going in, is actually giving this much information to the American people versus George W. Bush, operation the scale of Iraq, a couple of weeks in, whatever, when there were significant specific criticisms, George W. Bush, nobody, certainly not on his side, actually said he should be coming out and addressing why even though A, B, and C are going on this is still the right decision.

Louis: Obama has given more information to the American people on just about every issue. I mean, compared to Bush, Bush was silent about just about everything.

David: Well, there's a double-standard on this. In other words, given the size of the Libyan conflict from the point of view of U.S. involvement, Barack Obama went out there within a week of its starting and addressed the criticisms from the left and the right. Now, you may disagree with his explanations, you may still think we shouldn't have gone in or we should've gone in sooner or we should've gone in bigger or whatever it is, you may think all of these things at the same time, if you're Newt Gingrich. But the reality is that it's a complete double-standard, because this is a tiny operation compared to Iraq, and Barack Obama's out there addressing critics from both sides, whereas George W. Bush said God told me this is the right thing, this is the right thing, did not address criticisms in any real way until much later, in a vague way.

Louis: Right.

David: So I think people are forgetting about that. Not forgetting, it's just a double-standard, people aren't even thinking about that.

Louis: Right. I think if there's one thing Obama has done better than anything, it's been keeping a dialogue with the American people. I guess you can call it a dialogue. I mean...

David: Yeah, well, that's... the White House likes to call it that.

Louis: Right.

David: The thing is people say he's too... he was overexposed for a while, too many press conferences, too much communication. But you know what? He's...

Louis: Too many, like a 20-minute press conference once a month is too much.

David: He's the president, and just because you got used to George W. Bush telling you nothing and when he did tell you stuff, it was either impossible to understand or flat-out propaganda misdirection, just because that's what you're used to doesn't mean Barack Obama's overexposed and talking to the American people too much. That being said, the White House has pared it down over the last year from where it started.

Louis: Yeah. Well, there was more to talk about last year, too.

David: That's true. Obama also saying the U.S. has done what we said we would do. And he reiterated no ground troops in Libya, but I am still just not convinced. I believe there are still rumblings about the possibility of ground troops in Libya. I got a couple of emails from listeners in the last few days saying at this point, I don't see any way we won't send ground troops to Libya given the situation. Not that our audience is in charge of the U.S. military, but there is still this sentiment that I believe is growing about you know what, Obama has to say that now, because if he says well, yeah, we might send in ground troops in a couple months, he can't say that, I understand, for PR reasons, but there are many, many areas from which we are hearing the suggestion that ground troops will go into Libya.

Louis: We'll see. I don't know. Risky business.

David: It's serious business. Much like the Internets, Louis knows that...

Louis: Very serious business.

David: Libyan ground troops are serious business. Bill O'Reilly, by the way, while accusing the left of hypocrisy on Libya and military intervention, he did one of these, what does he call it, at the beginning of his show? The... is it the Talking Points Memo?

Louis: Something like that. I don't know.

David: Yeah. Anyway, he said we can't occupy Muslim nations anymore. Right, anymore. Now we can't do it.

Louis: Iraq, Afghanistan, fine.

David: Those are fine. Fine. When George W. Bush was president, hey, but now we can't do it anymore, Louis.

Louis: Can't do it if there's a Democrat in the White House.

David: It's incredible. So we'll keep an eye on what's happening with Libya, obviously. I would be curious to hear from the audience, do you predict, informally, that ground troops will go in? We have poll results about how long we will be involved in Libya, we'll have them at the end of the show. I'm actually surprised by those results. It is not what I expected our audience to say about the extent and length of our involvement in Libya. In any event, we'll get to that.



Transcript provided by Alex Wickersham and www.Subscriptorium.com. For transcripts, translations, captions, and subtitles, or for more information, visit www.Subscriptorium.com, or contact Alex at [e-mail].

[RIChris]

1. Actually,

how often did Bush supporters whine about Clinton every time President Bush was expected to do something, say something, or make a decision about something?

[WhoIsNumberNone]

2. K&R