This really summed up the arguments as they played out last night.
Donna Brazile cut through the entire Clinton position when she stated:"My mama taught me to play by the rules and respect the rules..."
Game, set and match.
"When you decide to change the rules, especially, in the middle of the game, it's called cheating."
The Republicans are making an awful lot out of McClellan's supposed treachery, but are saying very little about the substance of what he said. Sure, most of us had already come to a lot of the conclusions that McClellan's story now confirms, but the fact that our worst suspicions have now been confirmed by a member of the Texas mafia surely is more deserving to be the story than the motives behind McClellan spilling the beans?
Bill sees bias everywhere except at Fox News. Despite the fact that Scott McClellan has admitted that the White House regard Fox News as "allies".
O’REILLY: I’ll tell you what, I wouldn’t work, Bernie, and I don’t think you would either—I don’t know about Jane—for any organization like NBC which is in the tank, dishonest, has been dishonest, and doesn’t deserve any credibility. You’re working for them, you’re part of it! You’re part of it!O'Reilly is simply a ridiculous creature. Beyond caricature.
GOLDBERG: What do you want? You want everyone to quit?
O’REILLY: Yeah! I would! I would!
HALL: Bill, I still think you can differentiate—you never want to hear me say this—I think he will have a tough interview. The Today Show was okay. That’s different from what he’ll hear on MSNBC. I just think there’s a difference there. I know you don’t agree with me.
O’REILLY: You’re wrong. There’s no difference. It’s the same guys running both. There’s no difference, Jane. I know who these people are. You gotta make a decision in life. If FOXNews ever did what NBC News is doing. In 12 years, FOXNews has never told me what to say, how to say it, and never allowed any org…any of us…any of us! to go in the tank and attack one candidate and give the other a pass. That’s what they did at NBC. They allowed Hillary Clinton to get carved up, and they let Obama go. That’s a stain that will never go away.
I watched this live online last night until they broke for lunch at 4.15 their time and dinner time my time. By the time I was ready for bed they were still to return from their lunch, but I went to bed feeling that the Hillary side had no chance as their arguments sounded incredibly weak when put forward in this kind of context.
I woke this morning and am pleased that Obama's side have held fast and the compromise has been reached, which will seat the delegates but allow them only half a vote each.
The agreement, reached by the rules committee of the Democratic National Committee behind closed doors and voted on publicly before a raucous audience of supporters of the two candidates, would give Mrs. Clinton a net gain of 24 delegates over Senator Barack Obama. But this fell far short of her hopes of winning the full votes of both delegations and moved the nomination further out of her reach.Although I am noting that Hillary, to the very bitter end, is reserving the right to challenge this decision.
She now lags behind Mr. Obama by about 176 delegates, according to The New York Times’s tally, in the final weekend of campaigning before the nominating contests end.
Mrs. Clinton, who led the voting in the Michigan and Florida contests, which were held in defiance of party rules, picked up 19 delegates more than Mr. Obama in Florida and 5 delegates more than Mr. Obama in Michigan.
The deal prompted one of her chief advisers, Harold Ickes, a member of the rules committee himself, to declare that Mrs. Clinton’s fight may not be over, even though Mr. Obama’s advisers say he is only days away from gaining enough delegates to claim the nomination.
“Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee,” Mr. Ickes said before the final vote, raising the specter of a fight until that committee meets. His words drew cheers from Clinton supporters, including many who yelled, “Denver! Denver! Denver!” — implying that the fight could go all the way to the convention in that city.
When one listened to the Clinton team arguing in this setting their case seemed incredibly weak. They appeared to be arguing that because Obama took his name off the ballot, then he should be assigned no votes at all from Michigan. As someone pointed out, this was - in effect - demanding that Obama be punished for following the rules of the DNC.
Whilst watching this online I was simultaneously watching the comments as they appeared on Taylor Marsh's site - where some of Hillary's more deranged supporters gather - and it was obvious from there that "rules" have become a sort of swear word for these people, as anyone who demanded that they be followed was wildly jeered and ridiculed.So we are witnessing the very end of Hillary's hopes, the moment at which even she is even going to have to concede that the fight is up.As the votes on the agreements were taken, one woman, wearing a blue “Team Hillary” shirt, shoved a man in a suit and tie wearing a small Obama button on his lapel. Another woman in a white Clinton shirt hung her head in her hands.
“That was a crime!” a man shouted.
“McCain in ’08! McCain in ’08!” a woman yelled from the back of the room. “No-bama! No-bama!”
The committee were jeered by Clinton supporters as they came to their decision. And therein lies the problem now for Obama's campaign.The committee voted to restore the entire Florida delegation but give each delegate only half a vote, a penalty for moving up its primary and a warning to other states that might consider doing the same in 2012. The vote was 27 in favor and 1 abstention. The committee first turned back a motion, by a vote of 15 to 12, to seat the full delegation and give each delegate full voting rights.
The committee reached essentially the same decision about Michigan, voting 19 to 8 to seat all the delegates while giving each delegate only half a vote. But the decision seemed even more tortuous than that over Florida because of the bizarre circumstances of the primary.
Mrs. Clinton received 55 percent of the vote, but Mr. Obama’s name was not on the ballot and 40 percent of voters cast their ballots for “uncommitted.” The committee approved a plan giving Mrs. Clinton 69 delegates and Mr. Obama 59.
It is simply undeniable that certain supporters of Clinton will not be able to bring themselves to support Obama come November as they have been told that he is practically the anti-Christ by Hillary and sites like the one run by Taylor Marsh.
Well...a remarkable thing just happened. We just discovered that the Clintons no longer control the Democratic National Committee. They were unable to win a single argument today.I expected MyDD, who are big Hillary supporters, to have gone down the Taylor Marsh road of disgruntled outrage but was pleasantly surprised to find them saying this:
I was actually fairly shocked that they decided to seat Michigan as they did but seriously, why are Ickes and Flournoy bitching? This is about as good a result as Clinton could have hoped to get. Sure Obama took himself off the ballot in Michigan, but everyone knows a good chunk of the uncommitted vote was for Obama, so if the Clinton team is really making an intent of the voter argument then they should be pleased with this result.The truth is that Hillary's arguments made no sense. It was ridiculous to argue that Obama should be punished for taking his name off a ballot that the Democratic leadership had stated would not count.
Taylor refuses to even acknowledge that she - and the Clinton camp - have been pushing a lie since March 5th, telling people a Clinton win was possible when everyone knew that this simply was not the case.You have no idea what you've done. The fury you have unleashed. Your arrogance is topped only by your ignorance and the sheer stupidity of this "compromise," which sends a message that you just don't get it. Oh, and by the way, you've also likely just thrown the 2008 election.
Taking myself out of the equation, as well as my support for Clinton which is unending, and to encapsulte the carnage wrought by Saturday's idiocy, you have simply given Hillary's supporters the reason they were craving. Outraged already, many of Hillary's supporters were waiting for a reason to raise a ruckus, and you just gave them one. A righteous one. They were already screaming for Clinton to go to Denver. Now the decibel level is ear shattering.
Let me enlighten you. Senator Obama is ahead in delegates. A gracious split of Michigan would not have jeopardized his lead. But instead, the RBC, in your infinite wisdom, decided to adjust the delegates just enough to infuriate the entire Clinton contingent that is now set on Defcon Activist Revenge.
The perception problem created is beyond comprehension. Honestly, you have no idea the fuse that's now been lit. But to give you an idea. I'm in the minority on my own blog when it comes to pushing back against a McCain presidency. This didn't happen because of anything Clinton did, my friends. You all cemented it all by yourselves.
In theory, Saturday's rules committee Michigan decision can be appealed to a new body -- the convention's Credentials Committee, when it comes into existence in July. Ickes, in fact, raised just that specter in his final remarks on the Michigan vote and the Clinton acolytes in the audience chanted, "Denver! Denver!" But, in reality, a formal challenge of Saturday's decision can only be brought by a Michigan convention delegate, not by the Clinton campaign itself. The odds are prodigious that -- under almost any scenario -- the four votes that Clinton theoretically lost in the rules committee will not matter by Denver.Here's hoping Hillary is getting ready to stop this nonsense.
I'm with The Young Turks and McClellan on this one. This incident proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that President Bush is a liar.
He stated publicly that he would punish the leaker when he, himself, had authorised the leak. He's a liar. There's simply no other way to describe what he did.
God, this guy is simply embarrassing.
I can tell you that it [the Surge] is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet."The United States have not drawn down to pre-surge levels and are not expected to do so until the end of the year, and even that's being highly optimistic.
--John McCain, Town Hall meeting, May 28, 2008.
Moreover, McCain's claim that Mosul is "quiet" was disproved earlier today in grim fashion. Three suicide bombings -- two in Mosul and another in a surrounding town -- left 30 Iraqis dead and more than two dozen injured, according to press reports.It really is an indication of the difficulty that the entire McCain campaign faces, pinning it's success to the coat tails of a highly unpopular war, and trying to sell that war as a success to a public who have long given up on believing in it.
In a conference call with reporters, McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann said the issue was a "question of semantics," and that McCain would have been right if he had said that the Pentagon had "taken a decision" to draw down the troops or was in the process of drawing them down.Taking a decision and implementing it are entirely different things, and McCain is giving us a further example of how much he is promising a third Bush term when he makes such an argument. Scott McLellan has told us just this week how Bush believes that a decision, once made, is always correct. McCain appears to be employing a similar logic here. He thinks that if a decision has been made to reduce the troops to a pre-surge level then that must be a sign of success. The decision alone is a sign of success, rather than the implementation of that decision.
Scheunemann was clearly irritated by what he considered to be "the nitpicking" of senatorial grammar. "If you're going to start fact-checking verb tenses," he admonished me, "we're going to make sure we start monitoring verb tenses a lot more closely than we have in this campaign."This is simply bizarre and is reminiscent of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" sign. You can't define success based on what you expect to do in the future. Success is when you have done it. Before that, it's simply a wish list.
McCain insists that he did not make a mistake, in verb tenses or any other way. "I said we had drawn down," he told reporters today. "I said we have drawn down and we have drawn down three of the five brigades. We have drawn down three of the five brigades. We have drawn down the marines. The rest will be home the end of July. That's just facts, the facts as I stated them."Those are not the facts as he stated them. In fact, I'll go further and say that this last statement of McCain's is a bald lie.
I simply loathe the way the Rupert Murdoch and other barons use the power they have to further their own selfish interests at the expense of everyone else, and was very surprised to hear that Murdoch has been heaping praise on Barack Obama, despite the fact that he is such a good friend of John McCain.
And why does this self confessed friend of McCain think that Obama will win?Speaking at the Wall Street Journal D6 conference in Carlsbad, California, Murdoch was asked by veteran tech correspondent Walt Mossberg if he had played a part in the New York Post's endorsement of Obama.
"Yeah," he replied, candidly. The select audience of entrepreneurs and digital business executives at the conference earlier this week cheered, as can be seen in the accompanying video.
"We're on the verge of a complete phenomenon," Murdoch said. "Politicians are at an all-time low and are despised by 80% of the public, and then you've got a candidate trying to put himself out above it all. He's become a rock star. It's fantastic.
"There are a lot of problems. The education system in this country is a total disgrace."
Murdoch heaped praise on Obama, saying he was a "highly intelligent man with a great record at Harvard", but stopped short of a full personal endorsement because he wanted "to meet him personally".
"The Obama phenomenon and undoubtedly the recession and everyone getting hurt... the average American family today is really financially hurting and that all bodes well for him," he said.
"He may not carry Florida because the Jewish people are suspicious of him, and so are Hispanics. But he'll probably add Ohio and others. He will probably win."
I have watched how Murdoch operates here in the UK and have always argued against the notion that The Sun won John Major his last successful election or that The Sun were responsible for the election of New Labour. The truth is much more simple, Murdoch is a businessman who would prefer to see a Tory in power but is smart enough to know when they are going to lose and lines his popular papers up with the probable winner so that he can pretend that his newspapers swayed the public.Despite saying he was a friend of John McCain, Murdoch said the Republican presidential nominee had "a lot of problems".
"McCain has been in congress a long time and you've got to make too many compromise," he said.
"What does he really stand for? He's a patriot - he's a friend of mine and a really decent guy - but he's unpredictable.
"[He] doesn't know much about the economy and - I say this sympathetically - I think he has a lot of problems."
This is just too funny. Barack Obama has said that there is a reason why hate crimes against Hispanics have doubled in the last year and that the reason can be laid at the door of "people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh" for "ginning things up" and said it was not surprising that things like this would happen in such an atmosphere."A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia."
Rush Limbaugh has responded on his radio programme:"I actually don't believe this. Barack Obama, in my own state, raising money for his presidential campaign called me xenophobic at a fundraiser," Limbaugh said. "I thought this guy was the unity candidate? Calling me a Xenophobe? Responsible for hate crimes? My feelings are hurt here."
That's just too funny. Limbaugh is hurt that people might think he's a xenophobe. This from a man who has admitted that he was once distracted by the Hispanic Mayor of LA who he assumed "was either the shoe shine guy or a Secret Service agent."
Referring to one of the country’s foremost Latino politicians in this way is acceptable in Rush's world. Not surprisingly, most Hispanics virulently disagree:
Yesterday, Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, blasted Limbaugh for uttering “the same kind of nasty, bigoted, racist type comment that has become so prevalent in today’s society, as practiced by Lou Dobbs, as practiced by [Sean] Hannity, [Bill] O’Reilly, [Michael] Savage.”Poor, poor, Rush. He must be crushed. It's not just Obama that's got it in for him, it's those nasty shoe shine guys as well.
Racial slurs, particularly fueled against Hispanics, has found a home on right-wing radio, which claims 91 percent of radio airwaves.
The nation’s leading Hispanic advocacy group, National Council of La Raza, launched a campaign earlier this year decrying right-wing radio for its “rhetoric that demonizes immigrants and Hispanic Americans.” “Talk like Savage’s, or Limbaugh’s or O’Reilly’s, has become routine, even systematic, and certainly a big business.
Carville is insane. He blames Obama for the RFK incident which he refers to as "this idiotic story out of South Dakota" and he's also continuing with the argument that Hillary has - wait for it - "the superior moral position on Florida and Michigan".
The woman who agreed that the delegates from those states should not be seated and only changed her mind when she needed their votes is the woman who holds "the superior moral position".
Unbelievable.
1.
Bush decided to go to war with Iraq shortly after 9-11.
2.
McLellan hoped that Bush would be a bipartisan President. It didn't happen. The Bush White House was "too secretive".
3.
Why did it take so long for McLellan to come clean? McLellan says he only became disillusioned when he discovered that Rove was involved in the Plame leak and that Bush had authorised the secret leaking of the National Intelligence Estimate. He also talks of the "obvious allies" that the administration has at Fox News.
4.
McLellan now says that the critics of the Iraq war were right and that the administration should have been listening to them.
For some reason, that I am honestly unable to fathom, John McCain's team appear to think that his stance towards Iraq will prove to be some kind of vote winner and they are pushing to move his Iraq agenda centre stage in his fight with Barack Obama for the White House.
"The next commander in chief is going to have to make decisions that will either lead to peace and security in Iraq or chaos and conflict," said Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, sounding a theme that Republicans have pushed all week.I love the notion that the next Commander in Chief will make decisions between "peace and security" and "chaos and conflict", as if Iraq is presently in some kind of neutral state. Chaos and conflict have already been achieved by the present Commander in Chief, so this argument is a totally false one.
The voters need to know how the candidates will make that decision. And the fact that there are 2-year-old Iraqi children who weren't born the last time Obama was in their country raises questions about what he is making his decisions on."No doubt Conant thinks that McCain's humiliating visit to an Iraqi market gives McCain some kind of special insight into Iraq and where we go from here.
Obama aides said yesterday that the senator from Illinois is now considering a trip to Iraq as part of a long-deferred foreign tour. But they made it clear that he intends to assess how best to withdraw U.S. forces, not to reconsider whether they should be withdrawn. And they responded that none of McCain's trips to Iraq has been illuminating enough to dislodge his commitment to Bush's war policies.
"For all the travel that he's done, what we're looking at is John McCain wanting to double down on George Bush's foreign policy, to leave our troops there for 100 years instead of putting pressure on the Iraqis to come to some sort of political reconciliation," said Obama communications director Robert Gibbs.
I really, really, hope that the McCain campaign team focuses on Iraq as much as this latest spat suggests they might. If they think the Iraq war is a vote winner then they are looking at a wipe out come November.
"Frankly, his policy is about bringing our troops home sooner and safer, and that is a message resonating with the American people," Tauscher said. "I wouldn't do anything to validate Senator McCain's attempt to change the subject and create this red-herring debate."The Republicans are attempting to make a big deal out of the fact that Obama hasn't been in Iraq for two years. Perhaps if Obama walks through a market as McCain did - surrounded by over 100 soldiers and with attack helicopters swirling overhead - the American public will realise that Baghdad is safe after all and that Obama is talking nonsense?
The man widely regarded as "South Africa's moral conscience", Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has been dispatched to Gaza by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate the deaths of 18 Palestinians from a single family, who were killed by a wave of Israeli artillery shells in Beit Hanoun in November 2006.
He has said that he is in "a state of shock" at what he has found there and has called for an end to what he describes as Israel's "abominable" blockade of Gaza.
"We saw a forlorn, deserted, desolate and eerie place," he said. "The entire situation is abominable. We believe that ordinary Israeli citizens would not support this blockade, this siege, if they knew what it really meant to ordinary people like themselves." The international community was also at fault, he said, for its "silence and complicity".I have long condemned international support for this blockade and think that the EU are disgracing themselves by taking part in it.
This has long been my problem with the Israeli argument that they are targeting military units. The fact that one is targeting military units does not mean that one can fire into civilian areas, especially when it is easily predictable that such an action will result in civilian deaths."There can be no justice, no peace, no stability, not for Israel, not for the Palestinians, without accountability for human rights violations," he said. "Israel has admitted it made a mistake but this falls far short of accountability and due redress for victims and their families."
Israel's military has said the shelling in Beit Hanoun was mistaken and was the result of a "rare and severe failure in the artillery fire control system" which created "incorrect range-findings". It said no legal action would be taken against any officer.
However, it is not clear why the artillery weapon was targeted so close to a residential district of Beit Hanoun, nor why shells continued to be fired after the first one hit the house. At least six shells were fired in the space of a few minutes that morning, though some witnesses told Tutu's team that as many as 15 were fired.
Christine Chinkin, professor of international law at the London School of Economics, who travelled with Tutu in his team, said it was her preliminary assessment that the incident was still a breach of international law.
"Firing in a way that cannot distinguish between civilians and combatants is clearly a violation of international humanitarian law," she said. "I don't think that the idea of a technical mistake takes away from the initial responsibility of the action of firing where civilian casualties are clearly foreseeable ... it has to be foreseeable when you give yourself such a small margin that any error has the potential to lead to civilian casualties."
Tutu has for a long time compared the situation in Israel with that of South Africa's Apartheid regime and has condemned the culture in the US where, because of the power of Jewish lobbies, criticism of Israel appears to be forbidden.Tutu met with the former Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh on Tuesday and told him that, while he was opposed to the Israeli occupation, he condemned the rocket fire by militants into Gaza. Tutu said there should be more dialogue with Hamas.
"True security, peace, will not come from the barrel of a gun," he said. "It will come through negotiation; negotiation not with your friends, peace can come only when enemies sit down and talk. It happened in South Africa. It has happened more recently in Northern Ireland. It will happen here too."
"People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what?Of course, it will come as no surprise to Tutu that an American administration are failing to condemn Israel's actions and are, indeed, offering support. He will well remember the way that Reagan offered a "constructive engagement" policy to the Apartheid South African regime, and advocated "friendly persuasion" rather than sanctions at a time when black South Africans were calling on the world to disengage from this moral wrong.
"The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists.
"Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust," he said.
Speaking at a conference called Ending the Oppression in Boston, Archbishop Tutu told delegates Jewish people had been at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
He asked: "Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon?
"Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions?"
The American State Department has withdrawn all Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza hoping to pursue advanced degrees at American institutions this fall because Israel has not granted them permission to leave.Israel has isolated this coastal strip, which is run by the militant group Hamas. Given that policy, the United States Consulate in Jerusalem said the grant money had been “redirected” to students elsewhere out of concern that it would go to waste if the Palestinian students were forced to remain in Gaza.
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McLellan's finally spoken out about why he has written the book that he has written. He talks of his "disappointment" that Bush turned out not to be "a uniter not a divider" and that Bush got caught up playing the Washington game.
He then says that most Americans want that kind of politics to change, which sounded like he might cast his vote for Obama.
He declines to say that they "threw him under the bus" but it's clear that he was angered by being caught between Libby and Rove and being sent to the podium to tell lies on their behalf.
He talks of the disappointment he felt on discovering that Bush was behind the declassification of the national intelligence estimate on Iraq, giving Libby permission to talk publicly. McLellan had, of course, been saying publicly how seriously the president took the leaking of classified information.
When McLellan confronts Bush and asks if it was, in fact, him who "authorised the leaking of this information?" Bush replied, "Yeah, I did."
At this point McLellan knew it was time to get out.
Sadly, George Monbiot has been prevented from conducting a citizen's arrest on John Bolton at the Hay Festival by security guards stepping in and restraining him. Monbiot had promised for days that he would make the attempt as he considers John Bolton a war criminal for planning the Iraq war outwith of United Nations.He said: "I'm aware that I've made what I believe is the first attempt ever to arrest one of the perpetrators of the Iraq War, and I believe that is a precedent and I would like to see that precedent followed up."
He had earlier confronted Bolton during a question and answer session:Mr Monbiot asked Mr Bolton what distinguished him from a Nazi war criminal.
The error in Bolton's logic, of course, is that it is not for individual nations to decide whether or not Iraq is in breach of a United Nations resolution, that is a matter for the UN to decide. Bush and Blair attempted to get them to do so by the passing of the infamous second resolution, which they withdrew when it became obvious that the rest of the world simply didn't agree with them.
Mr Bolton replied that in exchange for a ceasefire on the Gulf War, Iraq had been required to do a variety of things including a declaration of weapons of mass destruction and the elimination of those weapons.
"By consistently refusing to abide by Resolution 687, Iraq demonstrated it was time and time again not in compliance with the ceasefire resolution," said Mr Bolton.
"It's a fairly straightforward argument, when one party is not in compliance other parties are freed from their obligation under that resolution as well.
Speaking afterwards, Mr Monbiot said he planned to pursue former PM Tony Blair.He said he considered Mr Blair and other leading politicians to be war criminals who had breached international law by their involvement in the decision making process which led to the Iraq war.
He said he had given a dossier of evidence on Mr Bolton - who was President Bush's representative at the United Nations during the time of the Iraq War - to Dyfed-Powys Police ahead of his attempt to present his charge sheet.
McLellan's book has caused miracles to occur. Matthews is now admitting that the press were utterly manipulated by the Bush White House prior to the Iraq war.
The lies are now being openly discussed as what they were: Lies and propaganda.
Can't we impeach them yet?
Rupert Cornwell - in today's Independent newspaper - is giving his critique of Scott McLellan's new book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception" and is in agreement with most people that this:
"is no falsely touted insider memoir, jazzed up with a few titillating anecdotes to boost sales. It is a 341-page disquisition on Mr Bush, on his misbegotten war in Iraq, and on his entire conduct of the presidency, which Mr McClellan says was built on the use of propaganda, and on the technique of government as permanent campaign.It's hard to overstate how damning this indictment is, coming from a man who owes his entire Washington career to Bush, a man who was part of the "Texas mafia" which Bush brought to Washington.
"History appears poised to confirm," he writes in arguably the most damning paragraph of a book full of them, "that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder. No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now ... What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."
That's utterly damning for the simple fact that it rings so true. The Bush presidency has been one where Bush thinks that once "the Decider" has made the call then it is the duty of everyone else to make what he wants happen.In fact, Mr McClellan's portrait of the President – a man he says he still respects and admires – is far more nuanced. Which of course only makes it more telling. Mr Bush comes across in now familiar guise, as a skilled politician, possessed of charm and an engaging wit, who is, "plenty smart enough to be President". On the other hand, he is utterly incurious and uninquisitive on policy matters, preferring to rely on gut instinct than a detailed sifting of the arguments.
For the 43rd President, a decision once taken is always right. The approach reflects not only Mr Bush's ingrained stubbornness but his ability to deceive not only others, but also himself.
Mr McClellan offers as illustration a moment on the campaign trail in 1999, when he heard the governor/candidate talking on the phone to a friend about reports that he had used cocaine in his youth. Apparently, Mr Bush remarked that ... "the media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumours. The truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back then, and I just don't remember."
If Bush could convince himself that he couldn't remember whether or not he had ever used cocaine, then he really was capable of convincing himself of anything.In 2000 voters – battle-hardened by having to confront Bill Clinton's marijuana use ("I did not inhale") and explain to their curious children the finer points of the Monica Lewinsky affair – did not seem greatly bothered. They assumed Mr Bush might indeed have indulged in cocaine, just as he had indulged in the bottle which he had emphatically given up. But Mr McClellan drew a different lesson from the episode. "I remember thinking to myself, how can that be?" he writes. "How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense."
On the other hand, Mr Bush wasn't, "the kind of person to flat-out lie." So, McClellan concludes, "I think he meant what he said in that conversation about cocaine ... I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true. And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious – political convenience." And thus, by implication at least, it was with Iraq and Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
But the White House had to sell the war as necessary because of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. They accordingly took a different tack, not of "out-and-out deception", but of "shading the truth". This was achieved by "innuendo and implication", and by "intentionally ignoring intelligence to the contrary".They simply made a decision to ignore any evidence which might prevent their war. That's something which we have always suspected and which McLellan has just confirmed.
"I know the President pretty well," Mr McClellan writes. "If he had been given a crystal ball in which he could have foreseen the cost of war, more than 4,000 American troops killed, 30,000 injured, and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis dead, he would never have made the decision to invade, whatever he says or feels he has to say publicly today."But his criticism is not limited to Bush alone:
History, I suspect, will not be kind to any of them. Rarely does an administration get it this wrong on so many different levels. Rarely does an administration act with such arrogance and so little common sense. This really has been the first Frat presidency, run by a man who gained his position solely through his father's achievements and who governed based on the notion that he didn't care what anyone - including history - thought of his actions.What Happened delivers tough criticism of the President's once vaunted national security team. One member of it of course was Dick Cheney, referred to by Mr McClellan as "the magic man" who somehow "always seemed to get his way" on every issue that mattered to him, be it the war, boosting the executive power of the presidency, or the harsh treatment of detainees.
Even more damning is his verdict on Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser in the run-up to the invasion. Her main talent, Mr McClellan suggests, was a Teflon quality. Whatever went wrong, "she was somehow able to keep her hands clean," even when the problems related to areas for which she was responsible, such as the WMD rationale for war (including the infamous "16 words" in the 2003 State of the Union address about Saddam seeking uranium in Africa, that led to the CIA/Valerie Plame affair) and the planning for post-war occupation. History, he predicts, will not be kind to Ms Rice. But "she knew well how to adapt to potential trouble, dismiss brooding problems and always come out looking like a star".
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."It was that mindset which defined Bush's presidency and which led it to be the unqualified disaster which McLellan describes.
Good for Gordon Brown. He has actually gone ahead and banned the UK from using cluster bombs, but he has dared to go even further, banning the US from stockpiling any cluster bombs on US bases on British soil.
This is the kind of clear, moral distinctions which he should be making to put some light between his government and Cameron's conservatives.
Bush's government had made it very clear that they were opposed to this treaty, going as far as to say that it's endorsement would hinder US participation in joint peacekeeping and disaster relief operations, as most US military units carry cluster bombs. The notion that the cluster bombs could be removed from US military units obviously wasn't something which team Bush had even considered. Once again, Bush was offering threats, in this case the threat that the US would abandon joint peacekeeping if Europe went ahead and outlawed the use of these dreadful weapons which maim thousands of children every year.
I am very pleased to note that the Bush regimes threats have not only been ignored but that Brown has gone much further, banning the US from even keeping these weapons on their own bases on British soil.
At last, Brown's government has made a clear moral decision, giving not a fig what the neo-cons threaten to do if he goes along with it. Indeed, by going even further and banning these foul weapons from American bases, Brown has considerably upped the ante. And he has done so whilst maintaining the moral high ground at all times.The government has agreed to scrap the two types of cluster weapon in the armoury of British forces, but it will also ask the US to get rid of its cluster bombs based here, and it will no longer ask for a "phasing out" period for its newest cluster munition - the M73, which is attached to Apache attack helicopters.
Both this weapon and the M85 - an Israeli-designed artillery shell used by British forces during the 2003 invasion of southern Iraq - will now be scrapped as soon as possible. Cluster weapons scatter "bomblets" across a wide area. Many of them fail to explode, later killing and maiming civilians long after the weapons are fired.
Gordon Brown yesterday described the treaty - due to be formally signed in Oslo in December - as "a major breakthrough". He added: "We will now work to encourage the widest possible international support for the new convention." In a statement released by Downing Street, he said: "I am delighted that the negotiations in Dublin have come to a successful conclusion, and congratulate the Irish government and all those involved. I am confident that this agreement is in line with British interests and values, and makes the world a safer place."
At last a Labour government is doing something, not because we are keeping in with our allies, and not because we are acknowledging "the real world" as the right wing always call it, but rather we are doing something because it is the right thing to do.Campaigners and human rights groups welcomed the UK government's ban on cluster weapons.
"The treaty will create a new international standard that will prevent the use of cluster munitions even by those countries that have not signed up," said Simon Conway, of Landmine Action UK. Along with the US, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan are not taking part in the Dublin talks.
When Bill made this claim the other day I thought he was getting carried away and being delusional. But now Hillary has started saying it as well.“You have to ask yourself, who is the stronger candidate? And based on every analysis, of every bit of research and every poll that has been taken and every state that a Democrat has to win, I am the stronger candidate against John McCain in the fall,” she said.
The only problem with this claim is that it is utterly untrue.
This is Hillary finally detaching herself from reality and now demanding that reality be what she imagines it to be rather than what it actually is.“Who is the stronger candidate against John McCain? We have not gone through this exciting, unprecedented, historic election, only to lose,” she said.
If the Democrats do lose come November there will be many people, myself included, who will lay a fair portion of the blame for that outcome on Hillary and her inability to quit when it became mathematically impossible for her to win. Which apparently even she appears to be now conceding; as she is not claiming victory on the delegate count, or on the popular vote, but on which candidate is best placed to beat John McCain. Unfortunately for Hillary, the polls say that the person best equipped to do that is Barack Obama.
However, as the end approaches, she is becoming utterly deluded, making monstrously false claims and comparing the decision not to seat the delegates of Michigan and Florida - a decision which she formally approved of - to the struggles of the early suffragists and likened the primaries of those states to the fraudulent election that took place in Zimbabwe.
But her claim to be ahead in "every poll" simply flips her out into wacko land:With or without participants in the caucus states of Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington (i.e., states where voters’ preferences were expressed by gathering in corners and the like, and whose numbers can be estimated but are not pinpointed), and with the totals for both Florida (whose primary was unsanctioned by the Democratic Party, with the consent of all the candidates, and where no one campaigned) and Michigan (also unsanctioned, and where Obama’s name was not even on the ballot), Clinton’s claim that more people have “voted” for her is factual. But her claim to be “ahead” depends entirely on a tally for the Michigan primary that is distinctly North Korean: Clinton, 328,309; Obama, 0. However, if the bulk of the 238,168 Michiganders who voted “uncommitted” are assumed to have been Obama supporters—a reasonable assumption—then Obama leads by every possible reckoning. And if only Florida is included, then Obama leads whether or not those four caucuses are counted.
It's getting harder and harder to work out what she's actually talking about now. She's changed the way a winner should be decided so many times that its starting to make my head spin.
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I know that Taylor Marsh and her guest bloggers have decided to do everything in their power to project every Clinton act as an inherently noble one, even as she brings up the suggestion of assassination during the Democratic search for a presidential nominee, but guest blogger Grey is surely pushing the boat out when describing Hillary's apology as "agonized".
My take on Hillary's apology was that she was blaming Obama for causing such an outrage over her comments, rather than truly accepting that what she said was unforgivable. Once again, Hillary chose to portray herself as the victim of an Obama led media attack, rather than apologising for taking this election into a truly despicable gutter.
There has been much written about what Clinton said, by people who I very much admire, although I have a slightly different take on why Hillary said what she said.
Firstly, as with Bill's comments regarding Jesse Jackson in South Carolina, I do not believe that the Clinton's make many slip ups and I think they often inject things into the political discourse because it suits their purposes for that subject to be discussed at that particular time.
However, where I slightly disagree with friends online is with the reasoning as to what Clinton hopes to gain by bringing this up now.
It has been suggested, by Keith Olmermann and many others, that Clinton is suggesting that she has to hang around in this contest in case Obama gets shot. I think that reading is too crude even for a game player like Hillary, who has so far showed herself capable of doing literally anything in an attempt to win the nomination, something which Marshians seem to see as her greatest strength, showing that Hillary is "a fighter".
I actually think that the message Hillary sought to convey is aimed at the same audience which Bill was aiming at during the South Carolina campaign when he made his infamous comments. I thought at the time that Bill was sending a subtle message to the super delegates, asking if they wanted a good guy who loses, or a Clinton, people who would take the fight into the gutter and beat the Republicans at their own game.
And I believe the super delegates remain Hillary's prime target with her not too subtle insertion of the possibility of assassination into the Democratic race.
I think she is sending a signal to the super delegates that the possibility of assassination is one of the reasons why they must choose her over Obama, unless they want that hideous responsibility on their own hands should such a grotesque event take place.
Hillary would have us believe that she was merely discussing RFK's demise simply to prove a dateline, which I regard as preposterous. She need not have mentioned the assassination in order to make that point. She could simply have have reminded us that RFK was still campaigning in June.
No, she wanted the subject of assassination to be part of the public debate, but not to justify her remaining in the race, as she's going to do that no matter what common sense or pledged delegates or the popular vote demands.
It's yet again another of her insane reasoning's as to why Obama can't possibly be the Democratic nominee. She wants all of us to know that, if anything were ever to happen to him, it would be all of our faults.
I've always said that Hillary will do or say anything - even contradicting herself in the process - to win this nomination, but with the assassination comment she has gone further than any of us could have predicted.
She's now arguing that if you love Obama, you should vote for her. For his own sake.
It is utterly without morals. And I agree with Mash that, at this point, American politics have truly entered, " a new low".
Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour from huffpost on Vimeo.
As even McCain distances himself from Hagee and his beliefs, here we see Joe Lieberman describe Pastor Hagee as Moses.I want to take the liberty of describing Pastor Hagee in the words the Torah uses to describe Moses. . . and those words really fit him. Like Moses, he has become the leader of a mighty multitude, even greater than the multitude that Moses led from Egypt to the Promise Land.
The rest of the views on display here, the bombing of Iran to benefit Israel etc, simply speak for themselves. But to see mainstream US politicians openly embracing this kind of lunacy really is deeply disturbing.
Why is Liberman not being vilified for supporting such a person that even McCain has had to distance himself from? And why are people who hold such extremist views so easily accepted into the American political mainstream?
What's also astonishing is the belief that the anti-Christ will be the person "who forces Israel into a peace deal with the Arabs". Why are mainstream American politicians associating themselves with such extremists?
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"Those who would sacrifice a little liberty for a perceived increase in security, deserve neither - and will eventually lose both." Benjamin Franklin.
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