perfidy

I have some comments on Ross’ last post.

Foreign Policy:

Why, then, has Bush's response been so different to the same intelligence reports? Clinton, viewing, the exact same information, chooses to remain at arm's length from Iraq. Bush sets off to war. Bush has 9/11 looming large...but that's what Afghanistan was about.

Bush’s response has been different because every previous president found it politically expedient to ignore the threat. 9/11 makes that more difficult, though you seem up to the challenge. Afghanistan was about 9/11, but it didn’t end there. We still need to hunt al Qaida everywhere else (including Iraq) and then hunt down those who make terror possible – the state sponsors (including Iraq.) It is a war on terror, not on al Qaida. Hunting for bin Laden isn't enough - he is only one instance of the class of terrorism. We need to do everything in our power to eliminate that threat. We've been hit by terrorism incrementally over the last thirty years. 9/11 was only the worst. Letting the problem grow (as five presidents in a row did) only makes it worse. Terrorism is immoral, unethical, antithetical to everything good about civilization, and frankly evil. Hunting bin Laden is merely expedient. We need to stamp out terrorism, and that's a hard enough road without apologists for terror getting in the way.

A necessary war in Afghanistan, and a stupid, wasteful one in Iraq. The entire world holds Bush (and to an extent America), in very low esteem at the moment. Nobody was fooled by the pre-war WMD crap, and it turns out that there was good reason not to be fooled. His current attempts to run away from the considered opinions of his own administration is embarrassing for the country.

Everyone in the world, including the French, was convinced that Iraq had WMD. It is disingenuous for you to suggest that all those farseeing anti-Americans had it right all along. And I’m sure the people of Iraq thank you for calling their liberation wasteful. WMD was never the only reason we invaded Iraq. Humanitarian reasons, violations of the cease fire agreement, threat to other nations, etc. ad nauseum. That the rest of the world thinks ill of us reflects badly on them, not us. We liberated a nation from a brutal tyrant; they opposed it. Which side do you want to be on? And now we have evidence that the French were opposing the war for oil money. Screw them. Saddam killed on average 12,000 people a year. We saved 9,000 so far by invading, and could have saved 9,000 more if we’d invaded the summer before instead of tap dancing with the UN. And why are you embarrassed? You’re Canadian.

Bush is blaming the CIA for feeding him bad information about Iraq. He's also saying that those intelligence reports have been around for a long time, and they've stayed consistent. Fine -- let's assume that's true. Bush gets his information from an inner circle of advisors. He doesn't read the reports directly; he doesn't know what they say. It's highly probably that there was quite a bit of spin put on the information Bush got. The simplest explanation for the whole situation is that some of his closest advisors _didn't_ see justification in the intelligence reports, but were willing to bet that when we got there, we'd find the evidence. The bet didn't pay off. Bush was betrayed by his advisors; they made a decision that's supposed to be made by a President, in full view of the facts. They made the decision because they screwed around with the facts they presented Bush.

I refer you to the Keegan article I linked earlier for some info on how intelligence works. Kay insists that no one was pressuring anyone to color their reports. Ever since the Church commission back in the seventies, our intelligence capabilities have been gutted. We have had to rely on sigint almost entirely. Now, we are supremely good at signals intelligence, satellite reconnaissance and the like. But good intelligence requires human spies, on the ground where we need to know things. We haven’t had that in over a quarter century. So the fact that the intelligence estimates were off is no surprise. But we were also getting information from France, Britain and other sources that all pointed in the same direction. That was what we based our conclusions on. Further, capability is not the only factor in weighing a threat. The other half is intentions – and we know that the Iraqis had that.

But this is all bullshit, because you’re arguing over why we went to war; or more specifically, was this one reason enough to go to war? There were other reasons, and in the end are you pissed that we got rid of Saddam, just because you weren’t satisfied with the decision making process? It was entirely legal – there was a congressional authorization, and then Bush sent in the troops. What did the war achieve – is that a good thing? If you think that leaving Saddam in power would have been a good thing, then maybe your arguments about WMD would make sense.
Environment:

Disagrees with conclusions on global warming, climate change, and so forth. His response? Cut the funding for research. Chewed up and spit out Christie Todd Whitman, who went into the job as EPA administrator thinking that she'd have some impact on policy. All decisions were made before Bush even took office. Maybe God'll sort us all out in the Rapture.

Is everything that much more polluted since Bush took office? Have you noticed the thicker smog, and Bush’s little minions spraying CFC’s on your lawn? The same environmental laws are still there. We are still far less polluted than we were ten, twenty, or forty years ago. Disagreeing with global warming is a cardinal sin, apparently. Oh, and he’s a fundamentalist so he must be wrong. That’s rank bigotry.

Economy:

Has attempted "stimulation" with tax cuts. Negligible effects on the economy, and massive destruction to the federal budget. The long term prospects for the federal government are so bad, it will inhibit the us economy, particularly by scaring off foreign investors, who prop up the government's borrowing habits.

The economy went south before he took office. The stimulus package has had results – the economy is doing better than when he took office. It takes time for the economy to recover from a recession. It doesn’t happen overnight. Deficits are not as bad as you suggest, though I agree that they should be lower. The best way to lower deficits is to lower spending. And that means that you can’t have all your liberal programs.

Here's the biggest mistake you make. You presume that the tax cuts mean that people have "money in their pockets". That's just plain wrong. The tax cuts didn't go to you and me, my friend. They didn't go to the regular people in this country. The vast majority of those dollars went back into the pockets of people who don't need them. People who are already vigorously trying to get around the tax code, to avoid paying _any_ share, let alone a fair share. People who have armies of lawyers devoted to keeping everything they can.

Well, I got to keep more of my money thanks to the tax cuts. I am regular people. Or at least my wife is. You can send your money in, but I’d like to keep mine. We certainly need fundamental tax reform, and I’ve talked about that before.

Bush's casual destruction of the finances of the federal government is truly the greatest security threat facing this country. It turns out that the $200 Billion is doing this war on the cheap; there are serious problems with supplies. In other words, it's gonna cost more in the future. The American government needs to be in a fiscal position to finance necessary actions around the world. Bush is screwing that up, massively. Of course, we could just print more money, right? That'll fix it.

You are complaining that we won’t have enough money to finance a war you oppose? You should be happy. Deficits in 1943 were a third of GDP. Now they are well under 5%. It’s not that big a problem. The government is not going to have its credit rating reduced. We will have the money we need, if for no other reason than the economy will improve and provide more revenue. Greatest security threat? We’re running up the credit card a little, and you think that’s a bigger problem than someone trying to kill us? Terrorism is a reality we have to deal with.

Political Climate

More partisan and divisive and STUPID than it has ever been. The reason? This white house is not interested in discussions. The "smart guys" have already made the decisions. Having international embarrassments like Tom Delay in power doesn't help, either.

I didn’t notice Bush getting up on a stage and insulting the Democratic candidates. I don’t see young republicans waving signs saying Kerry=Hitler. And btw, you think Tom Delay is worse than Chappaquiddick Ted? And you say that Republicans are making the political climate worse when you say this:

Every action Bush has taken has been rooted in one of the following: Making his rich buddies vastly richer with tax cuts, engaging in experimentation with neoconservative foreign policy, pandering to the (relatively) conservative base with wedge issues, and selling access to the donor class. Virtually every domestic policy initiative he has engaged in has been a failure… Most GOP attacks on the Democrats this fall will center on their "hate" for Bush. Whatever...it's not exactly misplaced, to the extent that it exists. The GOP will tell its base that Democrats therefore hate them, as well. The dirty secret is that there are Republicans out there who are honorable, who are fiscally conservative, and who adhere to principle. The crooks in the white house won't have anything to do with those guys.

Well, as I mentioned in my last post, that kind of thing doesn’t exactly contribute to reasoned discourse. It’s not a dirty secret that there are honorable Republicans, they’re half the fucking population.