Sullivan - QUOTE FOR THE DAY: "But for the moment, what we are doing, I think, is having its impact and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively and we should continue to do it that way." - John Kerry, discussing the tactic of outsourcing the capture of Osama bin Laden to local warlords at the time. (Hat tip: Mickey.)
- 1:37:52 AM
ROBERTSON SAID IT BEFORE: It turns out that Pat Robertson told his story about warning the president about casualties before - on the air on Hardball. Here's the transcript:
CAMPBELL BROWN (Guest host): I want to ask you how you feel about the war in Iraq. And if God is calling this war a disaster, does that mean that he is actually opposed to it?
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I don't think God's opposed to the war, necessarily, but it was a danger sign. I felt very uneasy about it from the very get-go. Whenever I heard about it, I knew it was going to be trouble. I warned the president. I only met with him once. I said, You better prepare the American people for some serious casualties. And he said, Oh, no, our troops are, you know, so well protected, we don't have to worry about that.
No one in the administration denied it then, did they? And this statement is more convincing than the crude idea that the president predicted "no casualties." You know what? I believe Robertson. Either Bush believed the casualties would be minimal (and, by any historical standard, they were low in the war phase); or he didn't and was just spinning a supporter. All this shows is that Bush really did believe the "cakewalk" stuff, and had no inkling of the possibility of an insurgency. (But we knew that already from the aircraft carrier embarrassment.) It also reveals Bush's gut-instinct as a war-leader: never, ever make war seem hard or difficult or risky. Always talk up the war, because you don't have the strength to tell the public what the war will really cost and what it really entails. That's why he's been so unimpressive when things went wrong. He has no internal mechanism to deal with trouble or failure, except denial, arrogance or an attack on his critics. Just what you need in a commander-in-chief, no? |
