Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Eric Altermain nails Dubya's press conference Go, Eric!: I had to end the "Meet the Press" contest, owing to today’s meeting of the press, albeit a long way from prime time. But I also wonder just what their value is, when the president did not give a single substantive answer to the deeply troubling questions about both his honesty and competence with regard to Iraq, homeland security and the economy. The lack of the ability (or willingness) of the reporters to ask tough follow-ups or to cede their questions to other reporters whom the president refuses to call on makes such scenarios mostly public relations exercises for the White House, with reporters acting as mere props. I thought the a lot of the questions were quite good, but Dubya gave ridiculous answers and there was no follow up. For example, here is one good question: You just explained that your approach to your job is to try to produce results. It has been roughly a year since North Korea apprised the United States government that it is seeking to reactivate its nuclear weapons program. In that year, you and your aides have repeatedly said that you seek a diplomatic approach to that problem. And yet, over that year, all we've seen from the North Koreans are more bellicose statements and more steps taken to add to their stockpile of nuclear weapons that they already have. What can you point to in the record over the last year by your administration, for Americans to look at and say, this President has produced results? Dubya gives a long windy answer that featured the fact that he had "talked to Hu Jintao this morning" and wound up with: So the progress that is being made is we're actually beginning to make serious progress about sharing responsibility on this issue in such a way that I believe will lead to an attitudinal change by Kim Jong-il, which will be very positive for peace in the region. Is that straight talking or what? My favorite answer was, when asked "U.S. has lost credibility by building the case for Iraq upon sometimes flimsy or, some people have complained, non-existent evidence": And in order to placate the critics and the cynics about intentions of the United States, we need to produce evidence. And I fully understand that. And I'm confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe, that Saddam had a weapons program. I want to remind you, he actually used his weapons program on his own people at one point in time, which is pretty tangible evidence. We didn't invade Iraq because it had a weapons program. We were told we invaded it because Iraq had weapons. And how is a weapons program used on people? Does Dubya not know the difference between weapons and weapons program? Or, more likely, is he saying totally contradictory stuff so that he can't be proved wrong? And Dubya said something that actually addressed the question only after a 265 word ramble. Continuing my previous post UN Inspections of Iraq - Still didn't happen No chemical or biological weapons and no nuclear weapons in Iraq - Mentioned slightly and confusingly  Daily deaths of American troops in Iraq - Still not happening, only "sacrifice" 9:11:35 PM    comment []

More on Iraq and the Right living in a fantasy world I wanted to tie together a couple of threads from early posts.  Earlier, I said that the Far Right is living in a fantasy world.  Earlier today, I said that most of Dubya's case for the invasion Iraq fell apart once the UN inspectors went into Iraq.  Recently, both Cheney, Delay and Dubya each made speeches about Iraq.  Cheney spent over 1,000 words describing the run up to the invasion of Iraq, and didn't mention the UN inspectors.  Delay said, "But in the last 18 months, it has become clear that the extreme, Bush-hating wing of the Democrat Party has decided to either ignore or reject the fundamental realities of 21st century life," and then ignores that the UN inspections ever happened.  Dubya takes the cake though.  He said, "[W]e gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region." Some more curious omissions - both Cheney and Delay fail to mention in their speeches that no chemical or biological weapons and no evidence of an active nuclear weapons program has been found in Iraq.  They both also don't mention any of the causalities that have occurred in Iraq. To summarize, in the Republican fantasy world: UN Inspections of Iraq - Didn't happen No chemical or biological weapons and no nuclear weapons in Iraq - Not worth discussing Daily deaths of American troops in Iraq - Not happening 6:59:48 PM    comment []

My thoughts on the case for the war in Iraq I recently got an e-mail from the author of the Mythic Flow blog, linking me to his thoughts on a recent Economist article on the case for the war in Iraq. Let me give you some background (as I understand it) before I give you my thoughts on the case for the war in Iraq.  Once Iraq kicked the inspectors out in 1998, my understanding is that the US intelligence agencies stopped receiving any significant intelligence from Iraq.  What the intelligence community then did is say that based on what Saddam did before inspectors went in, this is probably what he did after the inspectors left.  It may have been a Wild Ass Guess, but it was a Scientific Wild Ass Guess (SWAG).  Dubya then built his case for war on those intelligence estimates (though he left out all the caveats). Then, the UN inspectors went in.  Even sitting in my living room, it was obvious that our intelligence estimates were all wrong.  There was clearly no nuclear weapons program.  It was highly unlikely that the Iraqis could product chemical or biological weapons.  There was a chance that the Iraqis had some chemical or biological weapons hidden somewhere, but that chance was dwindling fast. I read somewhere that the speechwriters for the State of the Union address tried to build a 5 point case in favor of invading Iraq - that Iraq had chemical weapons, that Iraq had biological weapons, that Iraq was trying to build nuclear weapons, that Iraq had links to al-Quida, and that Saddam was a brutal dictator.  By Dubya's March press conference, he knew that the support for the first four points were weak.  But he made no mention of that at the press conference and soon we invaded. Now, one could argue that the invasion of Iraq is justified by the removal of Saddam.  But if we were going to invade for humnitarian reasons, we needed to make life significanly better for the Iraqi people right away and we have not.  But as the humanitarian reasons were just one point out of five, I feel that the case for the invasion of Iraq has not been proven out. 7:09:05 AM    comment []

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