Is this a turning point? I wasn’t politically aware during the Nixon years, but I’ve heard that it took around a year before people became aware of the impact of Watergate. At some point, the Republicans during the Watergate era had to go from protecting the part leader strategy to a CYA strategy.
Here’ a bit from Senator Richard G. Lugar, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, @ the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Mr. Lugar can forge his own path. He knows that he is President-proof. Here in Indiana he is very popular, and his seniority and pull in the Senate mean that he doesn’t need to go hat-in-hand to the Presidency for anything.
Yes, but isnt that precisely what you would expect? The first rat to hit the water at ship-desertion time is generally the strongest swimmer.
Well it is about bloody time someone on the Right started to speak up about the piss poor efforts in Iraq. It should not be a partisan issue to recognize, for anyone but december of course, that Iraq is not going well and the resources devoted to date are insufficient in the extreme.
I’m looking through the CSIS report for the Pentagon. A word that comes up again and again is signifigant. The amount of additional reources needed is signifigant, the number of additional personel needed is signifigant, the size of the difficulties is signifigant, etc
Who’s idea was it to turn the nation building over to the Pentagon instead of the Stat Dept?
Did State give numbers that the Admin didn’t like when asked for estimates on rebuilding Iraq?
It appears to have been a upper Admin decision. By the way, please share the above obs in my Recon. thread. Our dear december is still pimping the idea that all is fine with Recon. efforts.
State has been shut out because State is part of the Powell-Rice faction. Defense is part of the Wolfowitz Doctrine faction. das Bushschen has subscribed to the Wolfowitz Doctrine, a doctrine that Bush le Pere was not happy with. Sometimes, the old guys know better…
It’s not gonna be a Watergate-type thing. It’s gonna be a Vietnam-type thing, if Bush is to be dethroned. If we keep getting casualties in Iraq, with no apparent signs of improvement, it’s gonna continue to be a big issue. If the public loses its patience with this occupation, I would expect the Republicans running for office in 2004 to distance themselves from it as much as possible. Of course, if it remains a huge issue, you can’t dodge the tough question – do you support Bush’s Iraq policy? Then, that’s where I would expect ship-jumping.
Senator Lugar deserves props and kudos for being consistently ahead of the curve.
Some are just now realizing that we’ve been driven ‘into a ditch’ as Mr. Kristol puts it.
Of course there’re more enlightened individuals who have had this quality of sight. Several of whom are known amongst us.
Wow, what a blast from the past this thread is. I thought it was new until I started reading. I miss Collounsbury.
What I want to know is: how the heck did SimonX find/remember this thread, and why did he drag it up from the depths?
SimonX moves in mysterious ways. Maybe nostalgia.
What I find noteworthy about this thread is how much worse things have continued to become, but the official line has remained “stay the course,” which has in turn been gobbled up constantly.
That is just plain sad.
Heh heh, I find it entertaining and informative actually. His rants about how an idiotic prick like Nick Berg make his life more dangerous are p-riceless, and no matter how much one might disagree with his analyses, they are nothing if not well-informed, which is more than can be said for many of the Middle East threads around here.