The swifties campaign is being run by a trial lawyer. Experienced in uncovering lies on a schedule.

First establish that a witness is not credible.

Then destroy the major arguments.

Cambodia first. Then Winter Soldier.

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Did you know that John Kerry was a secret agent?

He performed a mission in Cambodia so secret that only he has ever talked about it. It is so

secret three of his crew and all his superior officers claimed it never happened.

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What is the War Hero Afraid of?

Form 180. Release the records.

Perhaps you’d prefer Bechtel? Or Schlumberger? Or Mitsubishi?

Spend more money faster, but not with Halliburton. Why didn’t I think of that?

FTLT. Again.

For the life of me I don’t understand why it was fine and dandy for Clinton to use Halliburton in Kosovo in the 90’s and a crime to use it now. Nor do I usderstand why we question why Iraq is not rebuilt but no one deals with the fact that the people of Kosovo still don’t have power more than the half the time years after that war. It is the usual double standard.

I think it will take years to rebuild Iraq. I also think that if certain politicians would spend more time trying to help Iraqis than they do trying to hang Bush and Co it would help. It seems that making trouble is more important than getting results.

Btw, in terms of historical perspective it should be remembered that when the Soivets invaded Afghanistan and killed about a million people the French and the rest of those cocnerned Europeans did not burn any flags. When the Russians went into Chechnya there was nary a peep. When the Rwandans were being slaughtered like cattle the world did nothing. Now one of the Dems talking points is that I am supposed to allow what these people think to effect my choice for president.

Only one country in history has ever gone to the UN and asked for permission to go to war and that is the US. And only one country in history has ever rebuilt their enemy’s country and that is the US. So why should I as an American care what other people think when they obviously don’t care what I think?

Hollywood, I don’t think anyone, not even Rumsfeld, disagrees with you here. The problem is that it’s hard to loosen the purse strings when you also have to follow DoD procurement rules, and when every time someone lets a contract to KBR, which is already there and on the ground, someone says “Halliburton, see, we knew it”, and when every time we let a contract to a non-US company, Chuck Schumer complains that we’re not using US workers.

If you know of a way to solve this problem, I’ll absolutely help you try to sell it.

I thought this portion of the article was somewhat supportive of my points:

“While we know that the situation is not going to change overnight, our measures do not show much improvement in the quality of life for Iraqis since our last report on this page in May. Though the unemployment rate appears to be dropping and electricity production is rising, the economy is still not much better than it was under Saddam Hussein.”

More importantly, I thought it was clear on this thread that there are basically 2 schools of thought (It’s a good thing. No, it’s a bad thing. Sometimes approaching, Jane, you ignorant slut!). And further discussion along those lines wasn’t going to move things forward. The chart, however, at least puts some data out there that arguably could be used to gauge our “progress” in Iraq. It ain’t as rosy as Rumsfeld would have us believe, but there has been some improvement, no doubt. To the extent progress has been very slow, I think the chart supports my view that it’s time to loosen the purse strings on the money that’s budgeted so that more substantial improvement can be made and loss of life diminished. Just my opinion.

3)Here is the most complex issue of the bunch. Invading Iraq for the sole purpose of forging a liberal democracy struck me as a compassionate idea, but clearly out of left field. First of all, the US here is hypocritical. Why not then invade North Korea, which possessed a ruthless dictator AND weapons of mass destruction. Bush has chosen to negotiate with Kim Jong Il rather than invade his country. Why not Saudi Arabia, proponent of anti-Western madrassa schools and the source of 15 hijackers?

Resolving this is a lot simpler than it looks. If you simply ranked the most repressive regimes on earth prior to the regime change in Iraq, according to Freedom House’s three scales for political, civil, and press freedom, there were three at the very top: Iraq, N. Korea and Burma. Since it’s reasonable to be more concerned about the Middle East than Asia, because that’s where the terrorists came from, and because N. Korea already has WMD (meaning it’s too late there) and Burma isn’t even contemplating them, the choice of Iraq is simple triage. You look at the most urgent cases and then rank them according to how amenable they are to treatment.

Saudi Arabia, by the way, is in the top ten most repressive regimes, but it’s outranked by Cuba and several others.

You gotta love an article that starts with:

Hans Blix

Incompetent bureaucrat or cowardly diplomat?

and gets worse for the subject from there. He’s a guy who really should have just kept his mouth shut and I never understood why he didn’t.

How about this article from Slate in 2002:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2074629/

It pretty much sums up the opinions of Blix when he was appointed, “a henhouse to guard the fox”…

The quoute from Per Ahlmark is really telling, Blix is “weak and easily fooled”, “easily misled”, “a wimp”, “I can think of few European officials less suitable for a showdown with Saddam”

A Swedish newspaper even has Ahlmark quouted as calling Blix “an incompetent dork”.

It should be noted that Blix was a member of the Swedish Liberal party, and was their Forreign Minister in 1978-1979. The leader of that same Liberal party was, up until 1978, Per Ahlmark…

Oh, and check out the quoutes from the New York Times editorial too…

Re: Media impact on Vietnam and Iraq perceptions. IMHO the negative media impact in Vietnam was greater than today. WAPO was able to bring down a President almost singlehandedly. Many decisions in both Washington and Saigon were made with an overt eye to media reaction. Those decisions almost always turned out to be halfhearted and incomplete.

Power is still there. WAPO or NYT could easily sink Kerry’s candidacy if competent reporting would affirm “Unfit for Command’s” charges. Won’t happen because the MSM realized they could pursue their own political objectives. Remember how J School enrollment spiked up after Watergate in the wake of WAPO’s and subsequent allies takedown of Nixon? “Hey, if we’ve got this kind of power, we can stop pretending.” The disaffected protestors of the Vietnam War turned to media career paths. They populate media power positions today.

American public’s media naivete was much greater in Vietnam period. “Why would our press lie to us? All those Vietnam vets must be…. It’s in the papers.” Media is still working from that playbook today. Witness Abu Ghraib, 24/7, = All Merkins Evil Torturers.

Bush would be gone already if a Vietnam-like media environment prevailed today. Key logistical differences are talk radio, Fox and the Internet. Like in the 80s Apple commercial, the media monolith has been smashed. Strategic difference is that more people are media savvy and quicker to recognize spin for what it is. One of the unintended benefits of Clinton’s Presidency is that we all got better at spotting fact parsing and lies. BDS is just at too high a volume to be believable. Higher, I think, than the Impeach Clinton VRWC. But, that was just on talk radio.

I do think a lot of decisions are still made with an eye to media impact, despite Bush’s overt reluctance to pander to media whining. Which leads to second point – At first I had a negative reaction to Bush’s decision not to flatten Fallujah or deal decisively with the gangsterism of the Baathist remnants and Jihadi infiltration. I thought it was fear of domestic media reaction. After noodling around the Internet a bit, I’m convinced that Bush is going out his way to avoid putting too heavy a footprint on Iraq. That will pay benefits in the short and long run. Iraqi’s are now in a position to deal with their problems themselves. And, for a culture that still remembers the Baron’s bloody Jerusalem massacre in the First Crusade, we have not assumed a Carthage-like guilt. Yes, I read Hanson.

Afraid I, like others, have misunderestimated Bush. He, like Reagan, is a “hedgehog.” Works great when you are faced with life and death choices. The nuanced “fox” presidents like Clinton, Carter, and Nixon eventually outsmarted themselves. Kerry is a fox.

Kerry famously asked of Vietnam, “Who wants to be the last man to die for a mistake?” So, who wants to be the first to die for Kerry’s efforts to treat this War as a law enforcement issue with help from staunch, but Bush aggrieved, American allies like Annan and Chirac?