Or, alternatively, Rudy is defending a foreign policy that has proven to be a blazing turd tornado. I feel rather confident in declaring such a position to be pretty fucking stupid.
Because politicians saw a problem and in their infinite wisdom, decided to make a committee about it. The very fact that it was created as a “bipartisan committee” is usually a strong indicator that’s it’s a worthless load of bullshit, hand-wringing, government tripe; as most such committees ultimately end up being.
No, Rudy didn’t drop the ball. This committee wielded no decision making power whatsoever. It didn’t wield any power whatsoever to make the President, the person who actually gets to decide our policy in Iraq, do things one way or another. It was a committee without teeth and serving virtually no meaningful purpose that hadn’t already been served by thousands of independent think tanks all over the country. Contrast that with you know, the Constitutional Convention which Madison was a part of, a convention that did have actual power and it’s laughable to even mention them in the same thread let alone the same post.
Yep, that’d be it. I can understand his brush-off, what with being so entwirned with Mr. Moto and all right now. But the funny part was that he told me to run off and open a new thread! Like I was hijacking this one, as though the OP had anything to do with fucking Edwards. 
Then why didn’t he just say so? Why not, if what you say is so, simply say it? But he didn’t. He accepted the position. Follow carefully now, here’s the punch line: if he didn’t think the game worth the candle, then why say “Yes.”?
Yeah, right. The problem with your response was, it’s still totally inadequate. What makes you think I didn’t read what you said? I said that it was a bad assumption to assume that absenting yourself from a single committee is equivalent to not having an interest in being educated. In response, you point to an earlier post of yours which essentially says, “He could have used their staff!” That doesn’t address what I said at all, so that’s why I gave it virtually no notice (even though I did read it.) The fact that the ISG had a good staff is irrelevant, because the point I’m making is, and that I already made very clearly is “just because he chose not to be on the committee does not demonstrate that he isn’t interested in being educated about foreign relations.” You’ve demonstrated he didn’t want to be part of one committee, that doesn’t suggest one way or another that he is interested or disinterested in learning about foreign relations. The only way you can make such a leap is if you think the Iraq study group definitely would have educated him, that it was the only way he could have become educated, and that he specifically absented himself from it because he didn’t want to be educated about foreign relations. You can’t demonstrate a single one of those things, period.
All you did by suggesting that Giuliani would have had access to the “top flight staff of the wholly pointless, never-going-to-affect-policy Iraq Study Group” is suggested that maybe, possibly, he could have “educated himself” about foreign relations by being part of it. I disagree. I don’t think it was a particularly valuable forum for learning things, and my point still stands that just because he chose not to be involved with one specific committee does not, in fact, mean he was not interested in educating himself about foreign relations.
You’re leaping to conclusions because you don’t want Giuliani as President, you dislike Republican candidates so any GOP candidate out there you take the position of “let’s see what I can find wrong with them.” You’re not operating from a neutral viewpoint, you’re operating from the viewpoint of specifically going out and trying to find bad things about candidates you don’t like.
FWIW, I don’t want Giuliani to be President either (and I’m a Republican) but I don’t set out to find everything wrong with him instead of trying to look at him as a complete person and candidate. Every single Presidential candidate we’ve ever had looks like absolute horse shit if you intentionally seek out and only repeat the bad things about them.
Interestingly enough, before I posted I thought, “It sure seems like RTFirefly has been bashing a lot of Presidential candidates in pit threads; but lest I be made an ass by making this claim needlessly, let’s do a quick search of threads he’s started over the past few months.” Well, let’s just say the search results showed that my thoughts were correct, that you have started quite a few pit threads bashing Presidential candidates lately.
It may be educational for our viewers to take a look at some of the threads you’ve started:
CNN Reporter: “I don’t know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about.”
A kinder, gentler authoritarianism (Giuliani, Romney, and Pres. imprisonment power)
Hillary Clinton, the ‘Seinfeld’ Candidate
Hey Mitt! If you hated MA so much, why’d you run for office there?
What! Disdain for Republican policies and candidates? Why, what more proof does one need of blind partisanship, than to hold in contempt those visionaries who led us out of our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity!
Shame on you,** Arty**, you blind partisan you! Go lay down by your water dish!
Despite Edwards’ good looks and well-groomed hair ;), I don’t have the least interest in fucking Edwards, which is why the OP didn’t have anything to do with fucking Edwards.
Where Edwards got into this in the first place was my post @11, where I said:
I had originally written a generic “If a candidate I supported had done this” draft of that paragraph, but keeping it generic just made the language really awkward, so I opted to be specific.
As you note, that has led to a great deal more discussion of Edwards than I had any reason to expect. I may have inadvertently brought that on myself, but that’s far enough afield for me in this thread, thanks. I will answer your questions in another thread. For purposes of this one, it’s no secret that I’m a liberal Democrat who favors Edwards out of the Dem field.
Captain Amazing: that can of course be said about any partisan. I’ve made some modest efforts to show that this is not just my perception, but true - well, not objectively true (there ain’t no ‘objectively’ with such things), but at least would be viewed as true to people who are in the reality where Iraq’s a debacle, Afghanistan’s in grave danger of slipping away, the Middle East isn’t noticeably further along the road to democracy than it was in 2002, and U.S. policy in the region is a shambles.
Yep, you found me out. Out of 29 Pit threads I’ve started in the past six months, three of them have been about GOP Presidential candidates, and one has been about a Democratic Presidential candidate.
Golly bum, I sure am working overtime to Pit Presidential candidates, aren’t I? Yep, it’s practically an M.O.
Why, I’ve had one more Pit thread about GOP Presidential candidates than I’ve had about the Bush Administration’s dropping the ball on supporting the troops! (For stats junkies, that’s 50% more!!) It’s also one more - again, 50% more - Pit thread(s) than I’ve had about supporting or harboring terrorists!
Yep, there’s no question about where I’m concentrating my Pit fire these days. 
Go back to your cave, Martin.
Oh, it’s also 50% more Pit threads than I’ve started about Joe Lieberman during that time period. :D:D:D
And as Josh Marshall shows us today, foreign policy expert Giuliani’s response to questions about Iraq has been to basically slough them off: Iraq, he says, should be seen as a part of the larger War on Terror, but he never seems to say what he’s going to do about Iraq itself. When asked why none of his “twelve commitments” to the American people had to do with Iraq, he said, “Iraq may get better; Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in iraq; we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people. But what we do know for sure is that the terrorists are going to be at war with us a year, year and a half from now.”
I’m all for taking the war on terror seriously, but it sure is a cavalier attitude towards the very real war in Iraq where our soldiers continue to fight and die.
Were the Warren Commission and the Challenger Commissions worthless loads of bovine dung? No, men of honor like Gerald Ford and Earl Warren answered their country’s call. Ditto for the Challenger Commission, except that Chuck Yeager pulled a Rudy and backed out of his commitment. When you’re talking about the single biggest mistake in US history, a bipartisan commission is entirely appropriate.
And this just in…Rudy goes for the “Oopsy!” defense:
Giuliani says joining Iraq study group a mistake
Sneering commentary from extreme centrist partisans available here:
http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/jun/20/rudy_responds_to_story_saying_he_blew_off_isg_but_repeats_bogus_explanation
Well, I’ll say this, RT. With the notable exception of Ron Paul, all the Democratic candidates are far more palatable than ANY of the Republican candidates this time around. The bad choices range from a theocratic monster who hates the notion that someone somewhere might be having a good time to a bad actor who doesn’t have Reagan’s charm. Frankly, I’d prefer Hitlary over any of them.
The fact that the vast majority of your remaining pit threads is primarily focused on anti-GOP diatribe but not directly focused at a given political candidate just tends to show that you’re a partisan hack.
There’s nothing wrong with being against the GOP or against the Dems. But don’t expect us to really give two shits when you introduce some reason as to why we shouldn’t vote for Giuliani, you’re a hardcore partisan who is only interested in blasting the GOP at every possible opportunity, nothing more, nothing less. You bring absolutely nothing to the current political debate, sort of like 'luci, people who say the exact same thing over and over again aren’t worth paying attention to, so don’t be surprised that no one aside from other partisan hacks take your present round of criticism for Giuliani seriously.
Martin: Do you think you and Mr. Moto are any less partisan on the other side?
Wow. Is this one of those “being partisan is bad, if you’re a liberal” sorts of things?
I’m NOT being facetious, btw. Politics is one of my main hobbies, and neither bicycling nor berry-picking provides nearly as much fodder for threads on the Dope. And things being what they are these days, a lot of the interesting political stuff doesn’t have any visible debate to it: if McCain walks through a marketplace in Baghdad and claims it’s perfectly safe - but is accompanied by 100 soldiers, with helicopters and whatnot providing additional security, what’s the debate? It’s strictly Pit material. Can’t see what’s hackery about bringing that up; it was the GOP’s “Dukakis in a tank” moment.
I don’t expect you to give two shits, but you obviously do, judging by your participation here.
But here’s how the debate fora of the SDMB work: people can be as partisan as they damned well please. But what counts is what you can defend in debate.
If you’re reduced to saying I’m a partisan hack, I’d say it’s up to you to win an argument. Otherwise, it’s obviously just sour grapes for not being able to make your case on the merits.
Cry me a river.
While I agree that to compare the Iraq Study Group to the Constitutional Convention is ridiculous, I would have hoped that the President would have at least noted its conclusions. Bi-partisan commitees composed of high-powered and influential politicians can, and have, had an effect. Your arguments that it had no power are identical to Bush’s: “I am the decider.”
Rudy is out getting laid.
Hell, I’m as partisan as they come. But at least when I was dragging Edwards over the coals about the Marcotte mess, I had the decency to state clearly that I was commenting about campaign strategy, and wasn’t considering voting for the man.
You’re right. That’s the least.