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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (55166)	2/20/2007 1:18:05 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

The national Democratic party has become the puppet of antiwar groups. The Democrats' 'Slow-Bleed' Strategy A disgraceful moment in Congress. by William Kristol The Weekly Standard 02/26/2007 Politicians often say foolish things. Members of both parties criticize cavalierly and thunder thoughtlessly. They advance irresponsible suggestions and embrace mistaken policies. But most of our politicians, most of the time, stop short of knowingly hurting the country. Watching developments in Congress this past week, though, one has to ask: Can that be said any longer about the leadership of the Democratic party? President Bush is sending reinforcements to join our soldiers fighting in Iraq. Democrats are entitled to doubt this will work. They are entitled to conclude the whole cause is hopeless or unjust--and that we should withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible or on some other more responsible timetable. They are entitled to move legislation in Congress to compel such a withdrawal, on a schedule and with provisions that seem to them appropriate. But surely they should not fecklessly try to weaken the U.S. position in Iraq, and America's standing in the world, by raising doubts as to our commitment in Iraq without advancing an alternative. That is precisely what they are doing with the nonbinding resolution condemning the dispatch of additional troops to Iraq. The fact that some Republicans have embraced this resolution does not excuse the Democratic party for its virtually monolithic support of it. The GOP has its share of fools and weaklings. But it is the Democratic party that now seems willing to commit itself, en masse, to a foreign policy of foolishness and weakness. For the nonbinding resolution passed by the House Friday is merely the first round. What comes next are legislative restrictions and budgetary limitations designed to cripple our effort in Iraq. As Politico.com reported Thursday: <<< Top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups, have decided against using congressional power to force a quick end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, and instead will pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration's options. . . . The House strategy is being crafted quietly. . . . [Rep. Jack] Murtha, the powerful chairman of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, will seek to attach a provision to an upcoming $93 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. It would restrict the deployment of troops to Iraq unless they meet certain levels of adequate manpower, equipment and training to succeed in combat. That's a standard Murtha believes few of the units Bush intends to use for the surge would be able to meet. . . . Additional funding restrictions are also being considered by Murtha. >>> So the nonbinding resolution is only the first step in the slow-bleed strategy. The Murtha plan intends to block further relief and reinforcement for American troops, leaving them exposed and unable to succeed. Surely Democrats (and fellow-traveling Republicans) will turn back from this path while they still have time to save some of their honor. But the antiwar groups won't make it easy. John Bresnahan's Politico.com report continues: <<< Anti-war groups like [Tom] Mazzie's are prepared to spend at least $6.5 million on a TV ad campaign and at least $2 million more on a grass-roots lobbying effort. Vulnerable GOP incumbents . . . will be targeted by the anti-war organizations, according to Mazzie and former Rep. Tom Andrews, D-Maine, head of the Win Without War Coalition. . . . Mazzie also said anti-war groups would field primary and general election challengers to Democratic lawmakers who do not support proposals to end the war. . . . Andrews, who met with Murtha on Tuesday to discuss legislative strategy, acknowledged "there is a relationship" with the House Democratic leadership and the anti-war groups, but added, "It is important for our members that we not be seen as an arm of the Democratic Caucus or the Democratic Party. We're not hand in glove." . . . "I don't know how you vote against Murtha," said Andrews. "It's kind of an ingenious thing." >>> No, the Democrats and the antiwar groups shouldn't "be seen" as "hand in glove." But they are. The national Democratic party has become the puppet of antiwar groups. These groups do not merely accept-reluctantly--American defeat in the Middle East. They seek to hasten it. Some seem to welcome it. The leaders of those groups believe their slow-bleed strategy is "kind of an ingenious thing." In truth, it's not really so "ingenious." But it is disgraceful. In our judgment, it will fail as a political strategem, it will fail to derail the president's policy--and we will ultimately prevail in Iraq. The slow-bleed strategy will, however, stain the reputation of its champions, and of the useful idiots in both parties who have gone along with it. --William Kristol weeklystandard.com

To: Sully- who wrote (55166)	2/20/2007 2:20:55 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

The Bush critics' position is that we must believe without reservation or criticism any intelligence that can be used to argue against military action and that we should never believe any intelligence, however plausible, that can be used to argue for it. That's not very intelligent. The Misuses of Intelligence By Michael Barone Townhall.com Columnist Monday, February 19, 2007 Last week, we had a couple of object lessons in how to use -- or misuse -- foreign intelligence. The first emerges from reports by U.S. military authorities in Iraq that weapons have been used there against American forces which seem highly likely to have come from Iran. To many of us, these reports seem unremarkable. There is every reason to believe that the mullah regime in Iran wishes us ill, and the border between Iraq and Iran, much of it highly mountainous, is surely porous. Yet from many critics of the administration emanate cries that these reports are not to be given credence -- they are just a ploy to justify military action against Iran. To be sure, it appears that our military has been given orders to take action against Iranian agents in Iraq and that those orders have been followed. One wonders why such orders weren't given long ago. And there is certainly a case to be made -- I'd make it myself -- against a land war in Iran. But why should the reports be treated with suspicion? The mullah regime has been making war against the United States since 1979. It committed an act of war against us by imprisoning our diplomats for 444 days. It sponsored Hezbollah, whose suicide bomber killed 240 Marines in Lebanon in 1983. It was behind the attack on the U.S. barracks in Khobar Towers in 1996. It calls the United States the Great Satan, and its current president has called for the eradication of the United States and Israel. The New York Times laments that America is "bullying" Iran. Actually, the mullah regime has been bullying the United States for 28 years. So why the suspicion? The answer seems to be that because intelligence erred in its judgment that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction it could be erring here, too: All intelligence that could be used to justify military action is inherently dubious. But the conclusion of our intelligence community -- and that of every other nation with serious intelligence capacity -- that Saddam had WMD was eminently justifiable. Saddam had possessed and used WMD in the past; he had resisted and evaded WMD inspections; and, as we have learned from Charles Duelfer, he retained the capacity to produce WMD in the future. We found in 1991 that his nuclear program was further along than our intelligence agencies thought. No responsible American leader could have given Saddam the presumption of innocence and assumed he had no WMD until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. George W. Bush didn't. Neither did Bill Clinton. The critics seem to be assuming that we can somehow obtain intelligence that is 100 percent accurate. But that is not possible in the real world. Intelligence tries to get information that regimes are making great effort to conceal -- evil regimes, in the case of Saddam and the mullahs. Our leaders must make decisions based on incomplete and highly imperfect information. And that information can remain imperfect for a long time. We still don't know what Saddam did with the WMD he once had and never accounted for. The second object lesson was the Defense Department Inspector General's report accusing former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith of "inappropriate" behavior in presenting a briefing critical of intelligence community consensus. The IG conceded that Feith's briefing was legal and authorized by his superiors, and did not criticize them for authorizing it. But it was somehow "inappropriate" for Feith to question the conclusion that there was no significant cooperation between Saddam's regime and al-Qaida. What Feith did was to point to the intelligence community's own evidence of such cooperation and to question the assumption made by analysts that there could be no cooperation between Sunnis and Shiites. As we now know, such cooperation is very common. If your job is to protect the United States, you cannot assume it can't happen. Britain and France paid a high price for assuming that Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union would never cooperate. Again we encounter the idea that intelligence agencies' conclusions should be regarded as Holy Writ, not to be questioned or analyzed critically by high government officials -- that there can be an intelligence product that is 100 percent accurate, and that every intelligence community conclusion must be treated as if it is. The Bush critics' position is that we must believe without reservation or criticism any intelligence that can be used to argue against military action and that we should never believe any intelligence, however plausible, that can be used to argue for it. That's not very intelligent. Michael Barone is a senior writer with U.S. News & World Report and the principal co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, published by National Journal every two years. He is also author of Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan, The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again, the just-released Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Competition for the Nation's Future. townhall.com