Let Me Paraphrase President Bush's speech tonight:

[UATrewqaz]

ANYTHING can be won militarily.

(except things like love, etc.)

Read my other posts, I do participate in debate. This was a cheap shot that was too easy for me to pass up. To address your statement, I've yet to hear a good idea from Bush for me to embrace other than the obvious attacking those who attacked us, however, he kinda lost me when he decided to attack Iraq for no reason, never come clean about the B.S. intelligence, etc. Plus, it's very difficult to respect a man who, during his first administration, had to look in the mirror every day with the knowledge that the majority of the country voted against him.

[sweetjazz]

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Improving the quality of debate about Iraq? Seems to me there wasn't any room for debate according to Bush(You're either with us or against us). But now that his ratings have fallen off a cliff he wants to build a consensus.


[/ QUOTE ]

EXACTLY! Bush was wrong initially. He was deservedly criticized by many people. This led to political pressure which has forced him to change his position and accept that there is more subtlety to the matter and that a consensus approach to Iraq is better than listening to only half of the ideas out there. It's a shame that he took so long to get to this point, but at least he's finally willing to listen (or at least getting there).

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Give me a break.

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This isn't about Bush and whether he's a good person or not. It's about having the chief executive make the best decisions for America. He has not, in my opinion, succeeded at this when it comes to Iraq (and I don't really care to dwell on why any more than is necessary). He is now showing a willingness to change his tune and I think his policies are getting better, but are still flawed. Rather than dwell on his past mistakes to try to let out my frustration or feel smug about myself, I want to acknowledge what I think is right and explain what I think is still wrong.

But that's just me, and one of the main reasons I am becoming as disillusioned with the "left" in this country as I am with the "right." The world is a lot more complex and policy decisions are a lot harder than moveon.org and powerlineblog.com would have you believe.

[ACPlayer]

I too am sickened by the smug political rhetoric out of touch with reality.

Too bad DVaut1 keeps reminding us of how badly the prez has handled himself. It is sickening how he does so, if he was a "real" american he would just shut up and salute.

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It's about having the chief executive make the best decisions for America.

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Wake me up when he starts doing this.

[sweetjazz]

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Read my other posts, I do participate in debate. This was a cheap shot that was too easy for me to pass up. To address your statement, I've yet to hear a good idea from Bush for me to embrace other than the obvious attacking those who attacked us, however, he kinda lost me when he decided to attack Iraq for no reason, never come clean about the B.S. intelligence, etc. Plus, it's very difficult to respect a man who, during his first administration, had to look in the mirror every day with the knowledge that the majority of the country voted against him.

[/ QUOTE ]

RB, I did read one of your other posts after my reply above, and I appreciate your willingness for dialogue.

I think you may be underestimating how counterproductive the cheap shots at Bush are. He has hidden behind them for a long time, and many moderate people are aware that most of the outspoken critiques of Bush are just lame cheap shots. (Of course, so are most critiques of Democrats as well, and I do think that Republicans manage to get away with cheap shots a bit easier because they play the fear card better.)

I think if you look at the specifics of what is going in Iraq, you see a lot of mistakes but also some good moves and you realize how hard it is to make good decisions there. (Which by the way is the main reason I thought we should have held out longer before invading Iraq -- nation-building is not an easy task and it is sometimes a necessary evil to have to allow an evil dictator to stay in power if there are ways to contain him, and it was certainly possible to contain him longer than we did. Whether he could have been deterred from rebuilding a weapons program indefinitely is debatable and there were serious problems with the oil-for-food program, but I think is fairly clear that we had more time with the inspectors still there.) After the invasion, we moved too slowly in organizing Iraqi security forces (military and police). It turns out in hindsight that disbanding the army formally was probably a major strategic flaw. But there is now an urgency to get Iraqi security forces trained and that's a good thing. So yes, Bush screwed up, but now he's finally getting things right on this matter (or so it appears). So let's applaud that and acknowledge that this is an improvement. Let's focus on other issues with have with Bush's idea. I'd like to focus on understanding the motivations of Islamist fundamentalists and try to pressure Bush to stop with the frequent nonsense implication in his speeches that they are motivated by "hatred of Western values of democracy, liberty, and freedom" when in fact they are motivated by their opposition to the presence of American troops in Muslim nations, particularly Saudi Arabia. That might not fit in as well into political speeches, but it's the reality that we are facing and it's important that the public realize it. There will likely be a debate as to how this particular fact should affect our strategy.

Why not spend more time focusing on improving the understanding of the world among the public (which starts with improving our own understanding by reading a diverse selection of respected news sources -- New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Atlantic Monthly)? Not everyone will agree on what this deeper understanding means for American policy, but at least it would get us on a better track.

Playing the game of Bush sucks versus Hillary sucks is just not productive in my opinion.

FWIW, I don't think the results of the controversial 2000 election are really worth focusing on any more at this point. Bush did end up winning the election through the ugly process and no doubt a different Supreme Court makeup could have changed the result; but he won the 2004 election legitimately and the reality is that it is in everyone's interest to get the president (and Congress and other public officials) to do what is best for America, regardless of how they got there or how much we respect them.

Respectfully,
Mike

[sweetjazz]

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ANYTHING can be won militarily.

(except things like love, etc.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, but it's always prudent to ask: at what cost?

[Lestat]

You are exactly right. I could go off for a couple thousand words on how and why I think Bush is a lying idiot who should literally be impeached (and possibly imprisoned?) for the incompetent (and criminal?) way he's led this country. But it is what it is, and right now the question is, where do we go from here?

[DVaut1]

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Hi Devault,

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Hi Stoo Pidahhsoo,

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911 wasn't mentioned in the CNN article. Was it mentioned at all in the speech? If it was a major point I'm sure it would have been mentioned multiple times.

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In fact, yes -- a majority of the first half the speech (the 'Campaign of Murder' section of the CNN transcript) was another in the long line of Bush administration attempts to link together domestic terrorism/Sept. 11 and Iraq in the minds of Americans; a claim that is as of now completely devoid of compelling evidence -- but a claim that many polls have demonstrated resonates as true in the minds of many Americans; again, despite the lack of compelling evidence, and due in no small part to Bush administration efforts like this to purposefully suggest, even if not overtly so, that Iraq and 9/11 were somehow related.

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Devault, I bet if you reviewed the transcript of the speech, you would be pretty embarrassed about the summary you provided for us here.

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You have no idea how proud of it I am -- the fact that you find it such an inaccurate and unfair summary only further convinces me that I've done well.

At first, the summary I provided was merely my attempt to be rather satirical; but now that I've had a chance to review the transcript, I don't think I was that far off the mark.

Thanks for the eye opener.

[DVaut1]

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In spite of that, I think it is a shame that your summary is all you took out of Bush's speech, or at least that is the attitude you chose to convey. While I think there are legitimate criticisms of Bush's speech, it also had some valid points and was a move toward improving the quality of the debate about Iraq and trying to build a consensus.

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Yes, consensus building typically revolves around taking your critics out to the woodshed and calling them defeatists.

The quality of debate has clearly improven if you're a strident right-winger, as the President said exactly what you wanted to hear: vocal critics are mere dishonest defeatists, who criticize for their own sheer 'partisan uses' in a way that 'is not justified by the facts'.