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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ish who wrote (421456)	7/1/2003 5:29:53 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Why are some people second-guessing President Bush's intelligence work and reasons for going to war? by Hugh Hewitt 06/26/2003 12:00:00 AM Hugh Hewitt, contributing writer THIRTEEN MONTHS AGO, Senator Hillary Clinton rose on the Senate floor to demand answers to questions about what President Bush knew about the September 11 attacks before those attacks occurred. Dick Gephardt (then minority leader in the House) echoed the demand, asking "what the president and what the White House knew about events leading up to 9/11, when they knew it, and most importantly, what was done about it at the time." The Notebook editors at the New Republic couldn't resist a little second guessing of their own--directed at Attorney General John Ashcroft's post-attack request for a higher budget for counterterrorism: "[S]omeone should ask why he didn't mobilize some of those resources beforehand," scolded the magazine in its June 17, 2002 issue. It's a year later and leading Democrats are again throwing bricks at the president's handling of intelligence. So is the New Republic. But this time the charge is that the president overestimated the threat to American security posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. A year ago he was too cold. Now he's too hot. The Democrats and their allies want the president to be just right. The trouble with both sets of attacks is not their inconsistency--though that is amusing--it is that they lack a standard to instruct a commander in chief's action. This is the freedom that lack of authority brings: Every action can be second guessed, even if the second guessing makes no internal sense. Stephen F. Hayes has made short work of the John Judis and Spencer Ackerman manifesto on Bush's handling of pre-war intelligence out of Iraq. Joshua Micah Marshall's attempts to have it every way has become so transparent that folks aren't even bothering to answer his charges of "the various misrepresentations, distortions, and outright lies the Bush administration put out in the lead-up to the war with Iraq," although it is great fun to revisit his postings from May of last year, especially his caution from May 16, 2002, that "we should keep in mind the distinction between signals and noise in intelligence collection, and how hard they can be to distinguish from each other," and his pronouncement on May 23 that "I for one remain quite skeptical of this sort of retrospective analysis of scattered intelligence data," even as he endorsed the idea of a hard look into the what "the White House should have known about the attacks or perhaps could have if all the tidbits and shreds of evidence had been properly assembled and analyzed." It appears as though the public has already concluded that the attacks on Bush of this spring are like the attacks on Bush of last spring--partisan cheap-shots of the worst sort since they concern national security. I think a good majority of the electorate has also come to an intuitive understanding of the key concept: It is okay to overestimate a threat, but, since September 11, it is never okay to underestimate one. If Bush overestimated the threat from Iraq, he certainly gave Saddam every opportunity to open the doors, and even at the end, to quit the country. Bush was unwilling, however, to run any serious risk of WMDs reaching terrorists. His 2003 critics have apparently reversed their 2002 positions, and would have preferred him not to highlight the threats in his intelligence briefings. I will leave it to the foreign policy mavens like Marshall to come up with a more precise standard, but I think the layman's rule is this: If the commander in chief perceives a significant risk of severe casualties to Americans, he uses whatever force is necessary to remove that risk. The forgery of documents related to purchases of uranium from Niger, or the lack of a detailed Baghdad hotel bill from Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, in no way detracts from the correctness of the president's assessment of all the evidence of risk. The attempt to impeach the president's conclusion by impeaching parts of his data set establishes a standard under which many future September 11s could never be prevented because of the distinction between "signals and noise in intelligence collection." One final note about the New Republic's analysis: As with Joshua Micah Marshall, I host Peter Beinart each week on my radio program. Peter has a particular attachment to the idea that Bush radically overstated the threat Iraq's unmanned aerial vehicles posed. This refrain is picked up by Judis and Ackerman, and they, like Beinart, chastise the October 7 warning from the president that "We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States." Judis and Ackerman conclude that this "claim represented the height of absurdity. Iraq's UAVs had ranges of, at most, 300 miles. They could not make the flight from Baghdad to Tel Aviv, let alone to New York." It would be useful to know if the authors considered the attack on the USS Cole or the attacks on our embassies in Africa to have been missions targeting the United States. It felt that way to most Americans, but apparently not to these writers. The refusal of the public to be conned by such ploys reflects a reassuring attachment to common sense, and to a fundamental truth: It is best to be right in the assessment of danger, but it is also better to be wrong than dead. Hugh Hewitt is the host of The Hugh Hewitt Show, a nationally syndicated radio talkshow, and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard. His new book, In, But Not Of, has just been published by Thomas Nelson. Increase Font Size Printer-Friendly

To: Ish who wrote (421456)	7/1/2003 5:34:25 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 769667

Contemplating the L-word Six reasons why the stars could be aligning for a Bush landslide in 2004. by Fred Barnes 06/27/2003 8:30:00 AM Fred Barnes, executive editor THE POLITICAL STARS are suddenly aligned for President Bush for a smashing re-election victory in 2004. This doesn't guarantee he'll win. And it doesn't preclude anything of political significance changing the situation between today and Election Day 16 months from now. What it does mean, though, is that if all goes as expected--and that's a big "if"--Bush will be in an extremely strong position against his Democratic opponent. The stars consist of six factors, all of which appear favorable to Bush at the moment. They are: an improving economy, a successful war, a big domestic triumph, a boatload of campaign money, an opposition party in disarray, an a discredited big media. Let's look at each one. The Improving Economy. The index of leading indicators is positive. The best indicator, the stock market, has soared 20 percent since March. There is anecdotal evidence of an uptick in IPOs and mergers and acquisitions. And the economic fundamentals are sound, particularly low interest rates and inflation. Plus Bush's tax cuts go into effect July 1, which means there's plenty of economic stimulus. The only question mark--a big one--is capital investment. For sustained growth and a decrease in unemployment, it must come strongly into play. The expectation is it will, but that's only an expectation, not a sure thing. A Successful War. Two, to be exact, first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq. On top of that, there's the war on terrorism, which has gone reasonably well, as evidenced by the absence of a major terrorist attack in the United States since the assaults on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The postwar occupation of Iraq has been rocky, but things are improving. "The postwar will determine the judgment on the war," says Democratic consultant Robert Shrum. He may be right, and that should make the Bush forces nervous. Still, the overriding issue in 2004, national security, is owned by Bush. Big Domestic Issue. Tax cuts are not enough for a Republican president to run on, though they are politically helpful. A breakthrough in domestic policy is necessary. Bush will achieve that when a prescription drug benefit for senior citizens is enacted, probably this summer. Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle could have passed one and gotten credit for Democrats. Now Bush will get the credit. A Ton of Money. Democrats insist the drug benefit will be trumped by the larger issue of health care itself. Not a chance. Bush intends to raise $200 million, giving him funds galore for TV ads touting the long-sought Medicare benefit as a glorious Bush accomplishment. Clinton used his re-election money for television spots in 1995 that set him up for easy re-election the next year. Bush is in a position to do the same. His Democratic foe won't come to close to matching his money. Democrats in Disarray. One of the reasons Republican consultant Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies throws around the L-word ("Landslide") is the sad state of the Democratic party. "Never before have we witnessed what's happened since the [September 11] attack: a sustained, almost two-year period where Americans have rated the Republican party higher on a thermometer than the Democratic party," he said. Republican leaders are considerably more popular than Democrats. Democrats are weak among independent and swing voters. Only 18 percent of voters in a Public Opinion Strategies survey are convinced any of the Democratic presidential candidates "can handle terrorism." And Democrats are conflicted on issue after issue--war in Iraq, Medicare, taxes, guns. Discredited Media. Rarely have the major media outlets--TV network news, big newspapers, newsmagazines--been as embarrassingly wrong as they were in covering the war in Iraq. They were defeatist, exaggerating minor battlefield glitches as the American forces raced to victory. Dick Morris, once a political adviser to Clinton, argues in his new book "Off With Their Heads" that the era of media dominance in politics is over. Big media is no longer trusted, he writes. To the extent this is true, it helps Bush, since the national press is not his friend. Again, the caveats. Nothing is assured. One can imagine a Democratic ticket--Lieberman-Graham perhaps--that would be competitive. Political scientist Larry Sabato calculates the 2004 contest now with 278 electoral votes probable or leaning for Bush and 260 for the Democratic challenger. That's a Bush lead, but not a landslide. And, of course, it's only a projection. But you have to like Bush's chances a lot better than any Democrat's at the moment. Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.