Never Yet Melted » Bush-hatred

Civility Hypocrisy

JDZ — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:26:26 +0000

National Journal’s Michael Hirsh wants to raise the bar on metaphorical speech to an entirely new level.

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Charles Krauthammer comments on liberal hypocrisy, noting just how uncivil the left was in the case of George W. Bush.

2006 Leftwing Mocumentary Film

Cuban State Department Spy Was “Radicalized” By Bush

JDZ — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:18:34 +0000

The Washington Post’s story makes it clear that Walter Kendall Myers is going to plead insanity and beat the rap for spying for the Communist Cuban regime on the basis on Bush Derangement Syndrome, a disorder afflicting numerous Ivy League graduates, and one particularly epidemic within the State Department.

You can picture the scene now.

Walt (or it is “Ken?”) flings down his London Review of Books indignantly, livid with rage after reading the latest Monbiot editorial describing the misery of oppressed Americans who were denied entry to Mercersburg and Brown. Gwendolyn sympathetically brings him a glass of Chardonnay, and sighs, “Oh dear, if only there were something we could do!”

“There must be.” returns Walt (or Ken) with determination.

He was a courtly State Department intelligence analyst from a prominent family who loved to sail and peruse the London Review of Books. Occasionally, he would voice frustration with U.S. policies, but to his liberal neighbors in Northwest D.C. it was nothing out of the ordinary. “We were all appalled by the Bush years,” one said.

What Walter Kendall Myers kept hidden, according to documents unsealed in court Friday, was a deep and long-standing anger toward his country, an anger that allegedly made him willing to spy for Cuba for three decades.

“I have become so bitter these past few months. Watching the evening news is a radicalizing experience,” he wrote in his diary in 1978, referring to what he described as greedy U.S. oil companies, inadequate health care and “the utter complacency of the oppressed” in America. On a trip to Cuba, federal law enforcement officials said in legal filings, Myers found a new inspiration: the communist revolution.

Read the whole thing.

Bush Derangement Syndrome Still a National Problem

JDZ — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:36:03 +0000

Roger de Hauteville aptly compares the left’s still continuing vendetta against George W. Bush with the restored House of Stewart having Cromwell dug up and posthumously hanged, drawn, and quartered.

Maureen Dowd got caught plagiarizing a blogger in her New York Times column the other day. But calling the lockstep mindset she’s channeling “plagiarism” is superfluous. She’s cribbing the homework of someone who writes something called Talking Points Memo, after all. They can all finish one another’s sentences, or start them to get the ball rolling. Makes no never mind. They never have an original thought, just endless permutations of the same drivel about George W. Bush.

They all think if they rearrange the words a little one more time, George Bush will be guilty and Karl Rove will be arrested or Alberto Gonzales won’t be able to rent movies from Netflix or… something. Or maybe they’ll all be tried in absentia in some weird traffic court based in a European country whose GDP is less than Al Gore’s electric bill, and George will be forever unable to travel to some frosty HMO masquerading as a country to pick up the Nobel prize they’ll never award him anyway. It seems like trying to invest heavily in tulip bulb futures at this point to any sane observer. George wasn’t running in the last election; he’s very, very unlikely to stand in the next one. But still they persist.

Read the whole thing.

Ambushed on the Potomac

JDZ — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:09:36 +0000

George W. Bush confronting the bureaucracies

In the National Interest, Richard Perle describes the fatal disconnect between George W. Bush’s professed policies and the entrenched State Department and National Security bureaucracies’ failure to implement them. Not only were Bush’s policies not faithfully pursued, in many cases, they were openly attacked and covertly undermined by leaks and disinformation operations.

Perle additionally debunks the left’s favorite bogey: the sinister imperialist “neocon” conpiracy. In recent years, neocon came to be used as a leftwing pejorative for someone supposedly guilty of responsibility for a new, more virulent and objectionable form of conservatism, inclined to unilateral militarism overseas and supportive of hypersecurity measures at homes. The left entirely managed to forget that a neocon is really a (typically Jewish intellectual) former liberal who has been “mugged by reality” and become a foreign policy and law enforcement hawk in response to the excesses of the radical left post the late 1960s. Dick Cheney, who has always been a conservative, for instance, cannot possibly be classified as a neocon.

For eight years George W. Bush pulled the levers of government—sometimes frantically—never realizing that they were disconnected from the machinery and the exertion was largely futile. As a result, the foreign and security policies declared by the president in speeches, in public and private meetings, in backgrounders and memoranda often had little or no effect on the activities of the sprawling bureaucracies charged with carrying out the president’s policies. They didn’t need his directives: they had their own. ...

The responsibility for an ill-advised occupation and an inadequate regional strategy ultimately lies with President Bush himself. He failed to oversee the post-Saddam strategy, intervening only sporadically when things had deteriorated to the point where confidence in cabinet-level management could no longer be sustained. He did finally assert presidential authority when he rejected the defeatist advice of the Baker-Hamilton commission and Condi Rice’s State Department, ordering instead the “surge,” a decision that he surely hopes will eclipse the dismal period from 2004 to January 2007. But that is but one victory for the White House among many failures at Langley, at the Pentagon and in Foggy Bottom. ...

Understanding Bush’s foreign and defense policy requires clarity about its origins and the thinking behind the administration’s key decisions. That means rejecting the false claim that the decision to remove Saddam, and Bush policies generally, were made or significantly influenced by a few neoconservative “ideologues” who are most often described as having hidden their agenda of imperial ambition or the imposition of democracy by force or the promotion of Israeli interests at the expense of American ones or the reshaping of the Middle East for oil—or all of the above. Despite its seemingly endless repetition by politicians, academics, journalists and bloggers, that is not a serious argument. ...

I believe that Bush went to war for the reasons—and only the reasons—he gave at the time: because he believed Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States that was far greater than the likely cost of removing him from power. ...

[T]he salient issue was not whether Saddam had stockpiles of WMD but whether he could produce them and place them in the hands of terrorists. The administration’s appalling inability to explain that this is what it was thinking and doing allowed the unearthing of stockpiles to become the test of whether it had correctly assessed the risk that Saddam might provide WMD to terrorists. When none were found, the administration appeared to have failed the test even though considerable evidence of Saddam’s capability to produce WMD was found in postwar inspections by the Iraq Survey Group chaired by Charles Duelfer.

I am not alone in having been asked, “If you knew that Saddam did not have WMD, would you still have supported invading Iraq?” But what appears to some to be a “gotcha” question actually misses the point. The decision to remove Saddam stands or falls on one’s judgment at the time the decision was made, and with the information then available, about how to manage the risk that he would facilitate a catastrophic attack on the United States. To say the decision to remove him was mistaken because stockpiles of WMD were never found is akin to saying that it was a mistake to buy fire insurance last year because your house didn’t burn down or health insurance because you didn’t become ill. ...

I believe the cost of removing Saddam and achieving a stable future for Iraq has turned out to be very much higher than it should have been, and certainly higher than it was reasonable to expect.

But about the many mistakes made in Iraq, one thing is certain: they had nothing to do with ideology. They did not draw inspiration from or reflect neoconservative ideas and they were not the product of philosophical or ideological influences outside the government. ...

If ever there were a security policy that lacked philosophical underpinnings, it was that of the Bush administration. Whenever the president attempted to lay out a philosophy, as in his argument for encouraging the freedom of expression and dissent that might advance democratic institutions abroad, it was throttled in its infancy by opponents within and outside the administration.

I believe Bush ultimately failed to grasp the demands of the American presidency. He saw himself (MBA that he was) as a chief executive whose job was to give broad direction that would then be automatically translated into specific policies and faithfully implemented by the departments of the executive branch. I doubt that such an approach could be made to work. But without a team that shared his ideas and a determination to see them realized, there was no chance he could succeed. His carefully drafted, often eloquent speeches, intended as marching orders, were seldom developed into concrete policies. And when his ideas ran counter to the conventional wisdom of the executive departments, as they often did, debilitating compromise was the result: the president spoke the words and the departments pronounced the policies.

Read the whole thing.

A Last Kind Word For George W. Bush

JDZ — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:22:12 +0000

J.R. Dunn puts the Bush presidency into historical perspective.

It can be stated without fear of serious argument that no previous president has been treated as brutally, viciously, and unfairly as George W. Bush.

Bush 43 endured a deliberate and planned assault on everything he stood for, everything he was involved in, everything he tried to accomplish. Those who worked with him suffered nearly as much (and some even more—at least one, Scooter Libby, was convicted on utterly specious charges in what amounts to a show trial).

His detractors were willing to risk the country’s safety, its economic health, and the very balance of the democratic system of government in order to get at him. They were out to bring him down at all costs, or at the very least destroy his personal and presidential reputation. At this they have been half successful, at a high price for the country and its government.

Although everyone insists on doing so, it is impossible to judge Bush, his achievements, or his failings, without taking these attacks into account. ...

[T]he New York Times, which on its downhill road to becoming a weekly shopper giveaway for the Upper West Side, seriously jeopardized national security in the process of satisfying its anti-Bush compulsion. Telecommunications intercepts, interrogation techniques, transport of terrorist captives, tracking of terrorist finances… scarcely a single security program aimed at Jihadi activity went unrevealed by the Times and—not to limit the blame—was then broadcast worldwide by the legacy media. At one point, Times reporters published a detailed analysis of government methods of searching out rogue atomic weapons, a story that was no doubt read with interest at points north of Lahore, and one that we may all end up paying for years down the line. The fact that Bush was able to curtail any further attacks while the media as a whole was working to undermine his efforts is little less than miraculous.

Read the whole thing.
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Hat tip to Bird Dog.

The Drip Who Leaked

JDZ — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:45:05 +0000

Thomas M. Tamm

Michael Issikoff, in Newsweek, systematically applies the coat of whitewash, drapes the red-white-and-blue bunting, and affixes the journalistic left’s paper mâché halo to Thomas M. Tamm, renegade attorney from the Department of Justice’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR), who leaked damaging allegations about the NSA foreign communications surveillance program to New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, ultimately resulting in their famous December 16, 2005 Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts story, which naturally won them the Pullitzer Prize.

Tam, you see, was understandably outraged by the following nefarious practice.

After arriving at OIPR, Tamm learned about an unusual arrangement by which some wiretap requests were handled under special procedures. These requests, which could be signed only by the attorney general, went directly to the chief judge and none other. It was unclear to Tamm what was being hidden from the other 10 judges on the court (as well as the deputy attorney general, who could sign all other FISA warrants). All that Tamm knew was that the “A.G.-only” wiretap requests involved intelligence gleaned from something that was obliquely referred to within OIPR as “the program.”

Obviously any fair-minded attorney would conclude that an instance of special handling of particular intelligence information or the exclusion from participation in its processing and examination by any subordinate judges of Justice Department officials always ipso facto constitutes a sufficiently grave breach of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the US Constitution to necessitate an immediate donation to the John Kerry Campaign and a covert phone call to the Times. What else is a patriotic American do?

Issikoff procedes to explain that Tamm’s Hamlet-like struggle with his conscience over leaking and Raskolinkov-like agonies over fear of being caught and punished made the poor soul depressed.

He had trouble concentrating on his work at the U.S. Attorney’s Office and ignored some e-mails from one of his supervisors. He was accused of botching a drug case. By mutual agreement, he resigned in late 2006. He was out of a job and squarely in the sights of the FBI. Nevertheless, he began blogging about the Justice Department for liberal Web sites.

And Tamm had good cause for fear.

With the investigative speed and precision the FBI is famous for, brandishing guns and wearing flak jackets, G-men promptly descended a mere two years later upon Tamm’s suburban home to seize his desktop computer, his children’s laptops, some private papers, and his Christmas card list.

Let that be a lesson to policy free-lancers, leakers, violator of the Espionage Act, and traitors everywhere!

Divulge highest level classified information, participate in undermining US counterrorism, act consciously to discredit the elected government you serve, and the FBI will come over and browbeat your family and steal your PC.

That, of course, is as far as it is going to go, if the administration you are discrediting happens to be George W. Bush’s. The Bush Administration has never been able to muster the intestinal fortitude needed to make sure that the people working in the highest level classified positions in its War on Terror are actually on its own side, and still less has it able to steel its nerves to the point where it dares actually to prosecute such cases.

The Bush Administration understands only too well that it would be represented, after all, in court in cases of that kind by representatives of the Bush Administration. The leakers and traitors would be represented by skilled counsel from leading white shoe law firms and the cream of the faculty of Ivy League law schools. The defendants would additionally have the mainstream media operating as full-time public relations managers and publicists. So I suppose the administration’s timidity may be at least partly exculpated by its self awareness of its own inadequacy.

Nuclear Proliferation and the Left

JDZ — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:27:52 +0000

James Lewis, at American Thinker, explains how the domestic and international left are responsible for Iran and North Korea becoming nuclear powers.

The single most suicidal action by the Left has been its years of assault on President George W. Bush after the overthrow of Saddam. It has often been pointed out that every intelligence agency in the world believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction before the invasion of Iraq. UN inspectors like David Kay repeatedly said so. Democrats and European socialists alike repeated warned about the danger of Saddam’s weapons programs, knowing full well that his first nuclear reactor was destroyed by an Israeli air raid as long ago as 1981. Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and even the UN’s El Baradei pointed out the danger.

As we now know, Saddam has had 500 metric tons of yellowcake uranium in storage since 1992. But George W. Bush was assaulted by the Left, in the person of Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson and the New York Times editorial page, allegedly because Bush peddled the lie that Saddam wanted to obtain yellowcake uranium. But there was no lie; the whole phony brouhaha was a PR assault to destroy the credibility of the Bush administration. The end result was to make us helpless in the face of more nuclear proliferation. To slake its lust for power the Left was more than willing to sabotage our safety.

Did Saddam pose a plausible threat of nuclear weaponization? Of course he did. Did he pose an actual threat? That is, did he actually possess WMD’s ready to mount on missiles in a matter of hours, to shoot off at his enemies? Today’s conventional wisdom is that he did not. But that is pure post-hockery.

George W. Bush has been crucified for five long years in the media, by the feckless, hysterical and cowardly Europeans, by the United Nations, and of course by the Democratic Party, because he took the only sane action possible in the face of the apparent WMD threat from Saddam. Because presidents don’t have the luxury of Monday morning quarterbacking. They cannot wait for metaphysical certainty about threats to national survival and international peace. There is no such thing as metaphysical certainty in these matters; presidents must act on incomplete intelligence, knowing full well that their domestic enemies will try to destroy them for trying to save the peace.

But that is water under the bridge by now. What’s not past, but rather a clear and present threat to civilization are the consequences of the unbelievable recklessness of the International Left—- including the Democrats, the Europeans, the UN, and the former communist powers. Because of their screaming opposition to the Bush administration’s rational actions against Saddam, we are now rendered helpless against two even more dangerous challenges. With Saddam there was genuine doubt about his nuclear program; the notion that he had a viable program was just the safest guess to make in the face of his policy of deliberate ambiguity. In the case of Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il there’s no guessing any more. They have nukes and missiles, or will have within a year.

The entire anti-proliferation effort has therefore been sabotaged and probably ruined by the Left. For what reason? There can be only one rational reason: A lust for power, even at the expense of national and international safety and peace. But the Left has irrational reasons as well, including an unfathomable hatred for adulthood in the face of mortal danger. Like the Cold War, this is a battle between the adolescent rage of the Left and the realistic adult decision-making of the mainstream—- a mainstream which is now tenuously maintained only by conservatives in the West.

History and Bush

JDZ — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 21:16:44 +0000

Charles Krauthammer argues that George W. Bush is like Truman, a president whose virtues and accomplishments will be better regarded by History than they were by his contemporary countrymen.

When I asked the president about his one unambiguous achievement, keeping us safe for seven years—about 6 1/2 years longer than anybody thought possible at the time of 9/11—he was quick to credit both the soldiers keeping the enemy at bay abroad and the posse of law enforcement and intelligence officials hardening our defenses at home.

But he alluded also to some of the measures he had undertaken, including “listening in on the enemy” and “asking hardened killers about their plans.” The CIA has already told us that interrogation of high-value terrorists like Khalid Sheik Mohammed yielded more valuable intelligence than any other source. In talking about these measures, the president mentioned neither this testimony as to their efficacy nor the campaign of vilification against him that these measures occasioned. More equanimity still.

What the president did note with some pride, however, is that beyond preventing a second attack, he is bequeathing to his successor the kinds of powers and institutions the next president will need to prevent further attack and successfully prosecute the long war. And indeed, he does leave behind a Department of Homeland Security, reorganized intelligence services with newly developed capacities to share information, and a revised FISA regime that grants broader and modernized wiretapping authority.

In this respect, Bush is much like Truman, who developed the sinews of war for a new era (the Department of Defense, the CIA, the NSA), expanded the powers of the presidency, established a new doctrine for active intervention abroad, and ultimately engaged in a war (Korea)—also absent an attack on the U.S.—that proved highly unpopular.

So unpopular that Truman left office disparaged and highly out of favor. History has revised that verdict. I have little doubt that Bush will be the subject of a similar reconsideration.

I agree that Bush shares Truman’s modesty, courage, and absence of pretension, but I think following the Truman model of limited war, featuring burdens and sacrifices borne by few, absence of public involvement, lack of identification of the terms of victory, and wholesale failure to rebuke or even deter domestic treason, ought to be understood by now to represent a less than morally ideal gamble in real politik, one wagering the lives of patriotic Americans in the hope of attaining a low cost resolution of a security crisis.

Yes, Batman is George W. Bush, Says Melbourne Herald-Sun

JDZ — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:18:15 +0000

Andrew Bolt, in the Melbourne Herald-Sun, agrees with Andrew Klavan: Batman is George W. Bush.

Ironically, Hollywood has found a way to smash box office records which it is not going to like: well-executed action movies with conservative themes. Pity that John Wayne is gone.

Finally Hollywood makes a film that says President George W Bush was right.

But director Christopher Nolan had to disguise it a little, so journalists wouldn’t freak and the film’s more fashionable stars wouldn’t walk.

So he hides Bush in a cape. He even sticks a mask on him, with pointy ears for some reason.

Sure, when the terrified citizens of Gotham City scream for Bush to come save them, Nolan has them shine a great W in the night sky, but he blurs it so it looks more like a bird.

Or a bat, perhaps.

And he has them call their hero not Mr Bush, of course, or even “Mr President”, but . . . Batman.

And what do you know.

Bush may be one of the most despised presidents in American history, but this movie of his struggle is now smashing all box-office records.

Critics weep, audiences swoon – and suddenly the world sees Bush’s agonising dilemma and sympathises with what it had been taught so long to despise.

Well, “taught” isn’t actually the exact word.

As this superb Batman retelling, The Dark Knight, makes clear, its subject is a weakness that runs instinctively through us – to hate a hero who, in saving us, exposes our fears, prods our weaknesses, calls from us more than we want to give, or can.

And how we resent a hero who must shake our world in order to save it, or brings alive that maxim of George Orwell that so implicates us in our preening piety: “Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

Batman’s Secret Identity Revealed in WSJ

JDZ — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:01:36 +0000

Novelist Andrew Klavan dispels the rumors long swirling about eccentric billionaire Bruce Wayne, and explains that Batman is really none other than George W. Bush.

There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history ($311+ million in 10 days), is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society—in which people sometimes make the wrong choices—and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

“The Dark Knight,” then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year’s “300,” “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror—films like “In The Valley of Elah,” “Rendition” and “Redacted”—which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.

Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense—values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right—only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like “300,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Narnia,” “Spiderman 3” and now “The Dark Knight”?

The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films, suddenly those values vanish. The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us. Why should this be?

The answers to these questions seem to me to be embedded in the story of “The Dark Knight” itself: Doing what’s right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous. Many have been abhorred for it, some killed, one crucified.

Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They’re wrong, of course, even on their own terms.

Left and right, all Americans know that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry. We don’t always know how we know these things, and yet mysteriously we know them nonetheless.

The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them—when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love.

When heroes arise who take those difficult duties on themselves, it is tempting for the rest of us to turn our backs on them, to vilify them in order to protect our own appearance of righteousness. We prosecute and execrate the violent soldier or the cruel interrogator in order to parade ourselves as paragons of the peaceful values they preserve. As Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon says of the hated and hunted Batman, “He has to run away—because we have to chase him.”

Alfred the Butler (Michael Caine) explains that it’s impossible to deal rationally with some villains like a Burmese war lord he encountered in his British army days, who simply threw away his loot, and returned to his hideout in a vast and impenetrable forest after a sanguinary raid.

“Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. Some just want to watch the world burn.”

“What did you do?” asks Batman. “We burned down the entire forest.” Alfred replies.

George W. Bush: Most Under-Rated President

JDZ — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:12:05 +0000

Contends Cambridge-graduate, London furniture designer, and sometime journalist Sameh El-Shahat in the Telegraph.

Going to war in Iraq only proves that Bush has leadership, Sameh argues, a quality in short supply in Europe.

Let’s not forget how Europe does wars.

Usually we wait and wait until the enemy starts attacking, then we let them win a bit, then we fight until we are tired, then we just call the US to come over to clean our mess.

That is what happened in WWI, WWII, and the Balkans.

Bush is just showing us what a bunch of dangerous ditherers we are and we hate him for it. Naturally.

Sameh does not think much of liberals or of Barack Obama either.

The fact is you guys hate Mr Bush because he is not a hypocrite and you are used to hypocrites as your leaders. We hate what we don’t understand.

Yes, yes, all you bleeding heart liberals are cringing out there. I can just hear you. But the fact is, Mr Bush has had to take some very tough decisions and the world needs people who can not only talk but also act tough and admit mistakes.

Of course you think Mr Obama is going to make a difference, but as I write this, he’s already giving all the signs of somebody who will say anything to get into power only to act in exactly the same way as the Washington clique he aims to replace!

Hating George W. Bush is not only dull and unoriginal, but it shows a complete lack of understanding of the world in which we live in.

Read the whole thing.

The Left’s Big Lie: “Bush Lied”

JDZ — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:54:26 +0000

Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor, points out what should be obvious.

Search the Internet for “Bush Lied” products, and you will find sites that offer more than a thousand designs. The basic “Bush Lied, People Died” bumper sticker is only the beginning.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, set out to provide the official foundation for what has become not only a thriving business but, more important, an article of faith among millions of Americans. And in releasing a committee report Thursday, he claimed to have accomplished his mission, though he did not use the L-word.

“In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent,” he said.

There’s no question that the administration, and particularly Vice President Cheney, spoke with too much certainty at times and failed to anticipate or prepare the American people for the enormous undertaking in Iraq.

But dive into Rockefeller’s report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.

On Iraq’s nuclear weapons program? The president’s statements “were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates.”

On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president’s statements “were substantiated by intelligence information.”

On chemical weapons, then? “Substantiated by intelligence information.”

On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.” Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles? “Generally substantiated by available intelligence.” Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.”

As you read through the report, you begin to think maybe you’ve mistakenly picked up the minority dissent. But, no, this is the Rockefeller indictment. So, you think, the smoking gun must appear in the section on Bush’s claims about Saddam Hussein’s alleged ties to terrorism.

But statements regarding Iraq’s support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda “were substantiated by intelligence information.” Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda “were substantiated by the intelligence assessments,” and statements regarding Iraq’s contacts with al-Qaeda “were substantiated by intelligence information.” The report is left to complain about “implications” and statements that “left the impression” that those contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation.

In the report’s final section, the committee takes issue with Bush’s statements about Saddam Hussein’s intentions and what the future might have held. But was that really a question of misrepresenting intelligence, or was it a question of judgment that politicians are expected to make?

After all, it was not Bush, but Rockefeller, who said in October 2002: “There has been some debate over how ‘imminent’ a threat Iraq poses. I do believe Iraq poses an imminent threat. I also believe after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. . . . To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? I do not think we can.”

The American left has re-written the history it just lived through in order to justify its current selfish and opportunistic opposition to the foreign policy and national defense efforts of an elected administration, which it refuses to regard as legitimate because of the failure of its leaders to subscribe to the same ideology which from the left’s viewpoint is indistinguishable from religious dogma.

Did Scott McClellan Even Write That Book?

JDZ — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:30:52 +0000

Copies of Scott McClellan’s original book proposal from January of 2007 were still floating around in the publishing industry, and the Politico was able to obtain and authenticate a copy. The proposal presents a very different book making very different accusations directed at completely different targets.

Originally, McClellan evidently blamed social conservatives and neocons for the Bush administration’s missteps, and made the liberal media a primary target of criticism.

EXCERPT:

I will look at what is behind the media hostility toward the President and his Administration, and how much of it is rooted in a liberal bias.

The public holds the national media in low esteem. I think there are several reasons why, and I intend to write about them in some detail while discussing ways the media could improve their image. It is more than just the perceived arrogance, cynicism, gotcha-journalism, and lack of accountability. The establishment media does not tend to reflect Main Street America, or spend enough time focusing on the issues that matter most to the general public, and too often sacrifice substance for process. They tend to reflect the liberal elites of New York and Washington that are part of the social circles in which they run, and it shows in their reporting. Yet, they live in a constant state of denial when it comes to acknowledging such an obvious fact.

Fairness is defined by the establishment media within the left-of-center boundaries they set. They defend their reporting as fair because both sides are covered. But, how fair can it be when it is within the context of the liberal slant of the reporting? And, while the reporting of the establishment media may be based on true statements and facts, is it an accurate picture of what is really happening? And, how much influence do the New York Times and Washington Post have in shaping the coverage? And, why does the media do such a poor job of holding itself to account, or acknowledging their own mistakes?

The obvious inference is that Peter Osnos, the leftwing founder of PublicAffairs Books did not just “work very closely” with McClellan on the book, but rather completely altered the author’s original intentions, and personally provided the perspective and conclusions featured in the completed text. McClellan accepted the cash.

Scott McClellan’s New Book

JDZ — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:03:57 +0000

Giotto, The Kiss of Judas, c. 1305, Fresco, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua.

Michael Reagan explains that McClellan did it for money, revenge for being sacked, and to crawl back into the good graces of the establishment media. History will reserve for Scott McClellan a special place in its accounting of the Bush Administration.

It’s amazing what some people will do for 30 pieces of silver.

Scott McClellan was given the signal honor of being the spokesman for the president of the United States, a distinction few Americans have ever achieved. Being the spokesman for the world’s most powerful political figure is no small thing, and I’m sure that the men and women who have held the post view their service as an honor more given that deserved.

It doesn’t appear as if McClellan sees it that way. He is not the first press secretary to be forced out of the job, and he won’t be the last. But he’ll be the first to sink his teeth into the hand that gave him the job in the first place.

It is a tough job, especially when the spokesman of a president the liberal media despises wears a large bull’s eye on his chest. It’s an even tougher job when the person who holds the job is clearly not up to it, as was the case with McClellan. He was an easy target for the nastier members of the largely hostile White House Press corps.

His lack of competence is what cost him the job, and it is now obvious that he left the White House burning with resentment over his forced departure. The fact that he had held the job as long as he did obviously created no sense of gratitude for his having been given the post to begin with.

His act of vengeance has delighted the media who once excoriated him. Their onetime foe is now their hero, an ally in their never-ending campaign to portray George Bush, a good and decent man, as a bumbling fool if not an outright criminal.

Looking at a Photo of Hostility

JDZ — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:06:58 +0000

Andrew Sullivan is currently running the above photograph captioned only:

US President George W. Bush© leans over to talk with a girl® after Bush participated in a lesson for young children on the importance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day during a tour of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC, 21 January 2008.

But, at Free Republic, Andrew Sullivan’s post is linked (by a correspondent signing himself america4vr) with the following text which appears to have been originally Andrew Sullivan’s.

This picture will forever be branded in my memory as one of the most disturbing images ever. What child would not be thrilled, ecstatic to meet the President of the United States, particularly one with the goofy,likable charm of President Bush? Here you see him greeting, warmly embracing this child in the loveliest, purest of emotions. The look of revulsion, of vehemence, of utter contempt for the President on this child is one of the most haunting, disturbing images I have ever seen.

Certainly the family was aware that the president would be coming to the school in celebration of the holiday.This child has been brainwashed, her palpable prejudice is not one that can be ingrained overnight, one that requires an extended period of incubation.

What an absolute utter disgrace.

It’s possible that that comment is actually by america4vr, but one wonders if Sullivan may not have first posted it and then later removed it.

In any event, it is the interpretive comment which supplies the crucial food for thought and makes one look seriously at the picture.

Bush-Hatred

JDZ — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:14:51 +0000

Peter Berkowitz, in the Wall Street Journal, describes a personal encounter with the hydrophobic Bush-hatred infecting America’s chattering classes.

This distinguishing feature of Bush hatred was brought home to me on a recent visit to Princeton University. I had been invited to appear on a panel to debate the ideas in Princeton professor and American Prospect editor Paul Starr’s excellent new book, “Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism.” To put in context Prof. Starr’s grounding of contemporary progressivism in the larger liberal tradition, I recounted to the Princeton audience an exchange at a dinner I hosted in Washington in June 2004 for several distinguished progressive scholars, journalists, and policy analysts.

To get the conversation rolling at that D.C. dinner—and perhaps mischievously—I wondered aloud whether Bush hatred had not made rational discussion of politics in Washington all but impossible. One guest responded in a loud, seething, in-your-face voice, “What’s irrational about hating George W. Bush?” His vehemence caused his fellow progressives to gather around and lean in, like kids on a playground who see a fight brewing.

Reluctant to see the dinner fall apart before drinks had been served, I sought to ease the tension. I said, gently, that I rarely found hatred a rational force in politics, but, who knows, perhaps this was a special case. And then I tried to change the subject.

But my dinner companion wouldn’t allow it. “No,” he said, angrily. “You started it. You make the case that it’s not rational to hate Bush.” I looked around the table for help. Instead, I found faces keen for my response. So, for several minutes, I held forth, suggesting that however wrongheaded or harmful to the national interest the president’s policies may have seemed to my progressive colleagues, hatred tended to cloud judgment, and therefore was a passion that a citizen should not be proud of being in the grips of and should avoid bringing to public debate. Propositions, one might have thought, that would not be controversial among intellectuals devoted to thinking and writing about politics.

But controversial they were. Finally, another guest, a man I had long admired, an incisive thinker and a political moderate, cleared his throat, and asked if he could interject. I welcomed his intervention, confident that he would ease the tension by lending his authority in support of the sole claim that I was defending, namely, that Bush hatred subverted sound thinking. He cleared his throat for a second time. Then, with all eyes on him, and measuring every word, he proclaimed, “I . . . hate . . . the . . . way . . . Bush . . . talks.”

Read the whole thing.

“Bush Ruined My Marriage!”

JDZ — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:08:06 +0000

John Hawkins went touristing over in the fever swamps of Daily Kos, and has returned with reports of the toll George W. Bush has wreaked upon the private lives of its contributors.

Examples:

angrybird: I wrote a diary a short time ago about how the Bush administration helped ruin my marriage. It wasn’t because my husband was a Bush supporter or anything…it was because of all the stresses from job loses, living without health insurance and getting sick, to my husband being forced to take a job where he wasn’t home much that helped ruin my marriage. ...

begone: Before my head began exploding a few years ago in response to Busharama, I’d exercise a lot… I mean, almost daily, joyous-type exericising. Now I come home with a slight frown on my face and come here to hear the news & be a mojo-mama even if too tired to comment, and hang for hours here and on other blogs, as if the light will shine again and I’ll be present to hear the BREAKING news about that. Bush, I blame you for my new-ish extra 20 pounds….

delphine: I haven’t had a relationship since he took office. But I can say that I’ve been trashed by potential online dating partners for stating I couldn’t date anyone who thinks bush is a good presznit….

meldroc: Bush has also damaged my mental health.

The Kos consensus is that the current president is so totally diabolical that, even from his Oval Office location many miles away, he can literally drive moonbats mad.

Of course, that is frequently a very short trip.

Read the whole pity party, and laugh.

You’d Have To Be an Idiot to Fall Off, Wrote Piers Morgan

JDZ — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:50:55 +0000

The Daily Mail gleefully chronicles Mr. Morgan’s inevitable rebuke for hubris.

If he didn’t believe in karma before, Piers Morgan must surely do now.

The ex-newspaper editor, now a columnist for The Mail on Sunday’s Live magazine, took great delight in making fun of President Bush for falling off a Segway – the two-wheeled, motorised, gyroscopically balanced scooter that, its makers promise, will never fall over.

His paper, the Daily Mirror, ran the headline in 2003: “You’d have to be an idiot to fall off, wouldn’t you Mr President.” It added: “If anyone can make a pig’s ear of riding a sophisticated, self-balancing machine like this, Dubya can.” So, it seems, can Mr Morgan.

He broke three ribs after falling off the Segway at 12mph in California – just three days before he was due to make his biggest TV appearance to date, as a judge on the grand final of reality show America’s Got Talent. ...

He had to be taken to hospital to be patched up, but despite his misfortune, Morgan made it to the TV studio. His celebrity friends have been chortling at his expense. Simon Cowell has urged people to make Morgan laugh because ‘it causes Piers absolute agony’.

Writing in Live magazine this week, Morgan is rueful about the comments on Mr Bush. He says: “Since only he and I appear to have ever fallen off one, I think the makers of the Segway can probably still justifiably claim the machines are “idiot-proof”.”

video

Freudian Slip at CNN

JDZ — Sat, 12 May 2007 10:57:42 +0000

CNN’s technical staff miscaptions this image of his successor Gordon Brown and outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

What a typical piece of leftist infantilism! They can’t even think clearly enough to remember that if Bush resigned, Dick Cheney would become president, which they wouldn’t like one bit.

61% of Democrats Are Just Plain Nuts

JDZ — Sat, 05 May 2007 12:23:11 +0000

Of course, you don’t have to travel all the way to Kurdistan to find superstitious savages, you just need to locate a few democrats.

Rasmussen Reports:

Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.

I read this kind of paranoid lunacy on my class list from time to time. “Republicans wanted a war, so the Military-Industrial Complex would get rich, and to benefit the oil companies.” I’ve frequently suggested that if my classmates really believe this stuff, they should go out and buy stock in the relevant companies, and become fabulously wealthy.

Take Halliburton. Dick Cheney is obviously looking out for them (any leftist believes). Why, in November of 1997 (during Clinton’s presidency) Halliburton’s stock was at $31.62, and after 7 years of Dick Cheney conspiring for their benefit, in yesterday’s trading session that same Halliburton stock closed at $32.28.

A Different View of Bush

JDZ — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 16:10:27 +0000

The Anchoress has written a moving tribute to President Bush, titled The President of All the People, which views his failures to respond more vigorously and effectively to his opponents as explicable in religious terms.

Who knows? Maybe she’s more correct than most of the rest of us as to what really makes George W. Bush tick.

Don Surber shows a wonderful picture of President Bush, helping Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd walk as they gather to confer a congressional Gold Medal to the Tuskegee airmen who served in World War II.

Sen. Robert Byrd is, of course, ... as partisan a Democrat as one may find. In the picture, Bush holds Byrd’s hand with great gentleness and compassion, in no way demeaning Bryd or taking away his dignity. But you can see that he is firmly grasping the old man’s hand; Bush is concentrating entirely on serving him safely to his seat.

Surber says that the picture didn’t get picked up by many papers and suggests that it’s because the press is reluctant to remind people that President Bush is an utterly decent, humane and gentlemanly man. Nothing good is permitted to be shown of President Bush, these days. Doesn’t fit the “Bush is evil and moronic” template. I more than suspect that Surber is correct.

It’s been that way for a while, actually. I recall that a year after 9/11, President Bush’s poll numbers were still in the stratosphere; they were very high heading into Iraq. They were still pretty high during the “cedar revolutions” and the “orange revolutions” – the so-called “Arab Springtime” during which time Democracy seemed to be threatening to break out all over the world. It was all happening under Bush’s watch, and Bush was dancing with these folks as they demonstrated their hopefulness.

That was only in two years ago, in May, 2005. Feels like half an age, doesn’t it? ...

President Bush drives us crazy. We want him to fight back. He won’t. We want him to “save” himself. He won’t. He won’t “save” his presidency, either. He won’t “save” his party. He won’t “save” his legacy.

President Bush is doing what is unthinkable – he is staying true to the task laid out before him, to serve all the people. He is remaining faithful to that and he is counting on his God to do the rest, as his God has promised.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Terrye.

They’ll Miss George W. Bush

JDZ — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 13:56:19 +0000

says Gerard Baker in the London Times, who also echoes the Jonah Goldberg thesis that it would serve the democrats right to win in 2008. The theory that the burden of responsibility would sober the democrat leadership is an interesting one, I think, but it is obviously not necessarily right.

Somewhere, deep down, tucked away underneath their loathing for George Bush, in a secret place where the lights of smart dinner-party conversation and clever debating-society repartee never shine, the growing hordes of America-bashers must dread the moment he leaves office.

When President Bush goes into the Texas sunset, and especially if he is replaced by an enlightened, world-embracing Democrat, their one excuse, their sole explanation for all human suffering in the world will disappear too. And they may just find that the world is not as simple as they thought it was.

It’s been a great ride for the past six years, hasn’t it? George Bush and Dick Cheney and all those pantomime villains that succour him — the gay-bashing foot soldiers of the religious Right, the forktailed neoconservatives with their devotion to Israel, the dark titans of American corporate boardrooms spewing their carbon emissions above the pristine European skies. Having those guys around for so long provided a comfortable substitute for thinking hard about global challenges, a kind of intellectual escapism.

When one group of Muslims explodes bombs underneath the school buses of another group of Muslims in Baghdad or cuts the heads off humanitarian workers in Anbar, blame George Bush. When Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, denounces an imbalanced world and growls about the unpleasantness of democracy in eastern Europe, blame George Bush. When the Earth’s atmosphere gets a little more clogged with the output of power plants in China, India and elsewhere, blame George Bush.

Some day soon, though, this escapism will run into the dead end of reality. In fact, the most compelling case for the American people to elect a Democrat as president next year is that, in the US, leadership in a time of war requires the inclusion of both political parties, and in the rest of the world, people will have to start thinking about what is really the cause of all our woes.

The Lynching of the President

JDZ — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 14:30:58 +0000

Ben Stein had a moment of satori during the State of Union speech.

So there I was, lying in my bed in Malibu with my dogs, watching Mr. Bush’s State of the Union speech. I thought it was darned good. Realistic, gracious, modest, sensible. I happen to think we should get out of Iraq yesterday, but I thought Mr Bush put forward his case well. And Congress responded graciously and generously on both sides of the aisle.

Then, whaam, as soon as the speech was over, ABC was bashing him, telling us how pathetic he was, how irrelevant he was, how weak he was, how unrealistic he was.

Right after that, Jim Webb gave a very short speech biting Bush’s head off—but not making any concrete proposals about anything. No network person mentioned how simple minded and unrealistic he was.

Then, tonight, the next night, I walked into the kitchen where my wife had left the radio going with NPR to amuse the cats. NPR was having a call-in show talking about the State of the Union. The first speaker I heard was a country music legend, Merle Haggard, who said he had never seen things so bad in this country. Then a legion of anonymous callers chimed in with similar thoughts.

And suddenly it hit me. The media is staging a coup against Mr. Bush. They cannot impeach him because he hasn’t done anything illegal. But they can endlessly tell us what a loser he is and how out of touch he is (and I mean ENDLESSLY) and how he’s just a vestigial organ on the body politic right now.

The media is doing what it can to basically oust Mr. Bush while still leaving him alive and well in the White House. It’s a sort of neutron bomb of media that seeks to kill him while leaving the White House standing (for their favorite unknown, Barack Obama, to occupy).

Leftist Historian Pans Bush

JDZ — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 23:52:52 +0000

Today’s Washington Post opinion section serves up in the guise of analysis pure leftist partisanship from such sources as radical historian Eric Foner.

Foner would really fit in among the radical wing of the Republican Party in 1859, or possibly among the Parisian tricoteuses of the French Revolutionary Terror.

His editorial notes a current near unanimity of academic opinion on just who the good and the bad presidents were, which is hardly surprising in an era in which former 1960s radicals typically monopolize university history departments. The “great” presidents, if you’re a Marxist, are those who most dramatically expanded the powers of the state: Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Wilson, Lyndon B. Johnson.

The worst presidents, from the Bolshie perspective are all the pre-Civil War presidents who failed to make war on the Southern states on behalf of the Negro, all the post-Civil War presidents not keen on continuing to punish the South, the interloping 1920s Republicans, and the diabolical Richard Nixon.

Foner adds President James Knox Polk to his personal worst list. Polk annexed Texas, balanced the federal budget, negotiated a settlement with Britain securing the Oregon Territory, defeated Mexico, and acquired California and the territories of today’s Southwest United States, all in a single term.

Obviously, George W. Bush ought to be flattered at being compared to Mr. Polk.

Some Kind Words For President Bush

JDZ — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 00:47:32 +0000

John L. Overland, Jr., Esq.

Even as I write this I know that people smarter than I will have written their own concise and analytical commentaries as to what went wrong for Republicans during the mid-term elections of 2006 and for me, that’s OK. My intent is not to analyze what went wrong for us but to express my own appreciation to a man often belittled, often maligned, and often unjustly so. That man is my President, George W. Bush, and right now I sincerely believe that the President needs some kind words. He has received damned little in the course of his Presidency. Instead, throughout his Presidency and certainly in the last week he has suffered the most vicious attacks, consistently from the Left but lately even from certain of us on the Right, and it’s time to provide an honest appraisal.

I have a few problems with Gerge W. Bush myself, but I always reconsider when I reflect upon his ability to drive the lefties right around the bend. Nobody who affects leftists the way the crucifix affects vampires can be all bad.

Dreaming of Killing Bush

JDZ — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 07:02:35 +0000

The Anchoress is moved to justified indignation by the discreditable behavior of certain people at the Toronto Film Festival, celebrating and applauding a film made entirely for the purpose of dramatizing the assassination of President Bush.

(Ths kind of fantasy) makes me realize that this Bush hate on the left is not about Bush. It’s not about Iraq, it’s not about the war on terror, it’s not about tax cuts…it’s not about Bush. It’s about the foot-stomping tantrums of the perpetually adolescent who – even before the 2000 elections – could not bear even the idea of their side being out of power in congress and out of the White House. It has never been about Bush. They’d hate any Republican in that White House just as roundly and completely, on any pretext.

All this time, we thought it might be about something. Now, we realize, all this hate is about nothing but them, and what they want and their childish angst. It is about the delay to the coup they had in place and their frustrations at having to wait and in some cases, rebuild.

I’m beginning to think they deserve the world they want. But I surely don’t, and neither do my kids. Neither does the rest of the world.

Imagine Gore or Kerry in Charge

JDZ — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 21:49:19 +0000

Jonah Goldberg suggests that criticism of Bush could be sometimes (just a trifle) exaggerated.

LORD KNOWS I have my problems with President Bush. He taps the federal coffers like a monkey smacking the bar for another cocaine pellet in an addiction study. Some of his sentences give me the same sensation as falling backward in one of those “trust” exercises, in which you just have to hope things work out. Yes, the Iraq invasion has gone badly, and to deny this is to suggest that Bush meant for things to turn out this way, which is even crueler than saying he failed to get it right.

But you know what? It’s time to cut the guy some slack.

Of course, I will get hippo-choking amounts of e-mail from Bush-haters telling me that all I ever do is cut Bush slack. But these folks grade on the curve. By their standards, anything short of demanding that a live, half-starved badger be sewn into his belly flunks.

Besides, the Bush-bashers have lost credibility. The most delicious example came this week when it was finally revealed that Colin Powell’s oak-necked major-domo Richard Armitage — and not some star chamber neocon — “outed” Valerie Plame, the spousal prop of Washington’s biggest ham, Joe Wilson. Now it turns out that instead of “Bush blows CIA agent’s cover to silence a brave dissenter” — as Wilson practices saying into the mirror every morning — the story is, “One Bush enemy inadvertently taken out by another’s friendly fire.”

And then there’s Hurricane Katrina. Yes, the federal government could have responded better. And of course there were real tragedies involved in that disaster. But you know what? Bad stuff happens during disasters, which is why we don’t call them tickle-parties.

The anti-Bush chorus, including enormous segments of the mainstream media, see Katrina as nothing more than a good stick for beating on piÃ±ata Bush’s “competence.” The hypocrisy is astounding because the media did such an abysmal job covering the reality of New Orleans (contrary to their reports, there were no bands of rapists, no disproportionate deaths of poor blacks, nothing close to 10,000 dead, etc.). It seems indisputable that Katrina highlighted the tragedy of New Orleans rather than create it. Long before Katrina, New Orleans was a dysfunctional city in a state with famously corrupt and incompetent leadership, many of whose residents think that it is the job of the federal government to make everyone whole.

The Mississippi coast was hit harder by Katrina than New Orleans was. And although New Orleans’ levee failure was a unique problem — one the local leadership ignored for decades — the devastation in Mississippi was in many respects more severe. And you know what? Mississippi has the same federal government as Louisiana, and reconstruction there is going gangbusters while, after more than $120 billion in federal spending, New Orleans remains a basket case. Here’s a wacky idea: Maybe it’s not all Bush’s fault.

Then, of course, there’s the war on terror. Democrats love to note that Bush hasn’t caught Osama bin Laden yet, as if this is the most vital metric for success. Yes, it’d be nice to catch Bin Laden — no doubt Ramsey Clark, the top legal gun for both LBJ and Saddam Hussein, will be looking for a new client soon. But even nicer than catching Bin Laden is not having thousands of dead Americans in New York, Washington and L.A. Contrary to all expert predictions, there hasn’t been a successful attack on the homeland since 9/11. Indeed, the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly contains a (typically) long, exhaustively reported cover story by James Fallows about how the U.S. is in fact winning the war on terror, thanks largely to Bush’s policies (though Fallows works hard not to credit Bush).

Political dissatisfaction with the president rests entirely on Iraq and overall Bush fatigue. The rest amounts to little more than Iraq-motivated brickbats gussied up to look like free-standing complaints. That’s how hate works: It looks for more excuses to hate in the same way that fire looks for more stuff to burn.

That’s why Bush’s Democratic critics flit about like bilious butterflies, exploiting each superficial or transient problem just long enough to score some points in the polls and then moving on. Bush’s Medicare plan was an egregious corporate giveaway, they cried, until seniors overwhelmingly reported that they like it. And the Patriot Act? Can anyone even remember what the Democrats were whining about? I think it had something to do with libraries that were never searched.

Look, things could obviously be a lot better. But they could be a lot worse too. John Kerry could be president.

Fisking Olbermann’s Pretentious Rant

JDZ — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 21:14:44 +0000

Keith Olbermann put “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” on his stereo, turned the volume up on high, and proceeded to explain to MSNBC’s viewers that Donald Rumsfeld was being McCarthyite by criticizing defeatism, and that Rumsfeld’s urging courage and endurance made him like Neville Chamberlain, while persons outside government, demanding appeasement, retreat, and surrender in the face of militant Islam were really all courageous Churchills.

Rick Moran already has performed the obligatory task of shredding Olberman’s nonsense in detail.

I will just observe mself that Olberman’s rant was delivered in a tendentious and partisan tone, and included insolent rhetoric, absurd allegations and expressions of wildly subjective opinion utterly and completely incompatible with the role of a supposedly objective commentator.

For example:

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to flu vaccine shortages, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelope this nation – he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have – inadvertently or intentionally – profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emperor’s New Clothes.

The spectacle of another empty-suit talking head climbing atop his electronic soapbox, and striking heroic poses, while insulting a variety of individuals in the current administration who left seven figure jobs heading up major business organizations to work in government as “profiting and benefiting, both personally and politically” from a syntactically confused melange of leftwing paranoid fantasies was particularly contemptible.

Debating What We Don’t Actually Know Or Understand

JDZ — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 03:45:28 +0000

Orin Kerr, at the Volokh Conspiracy, responds to the left’s most dishonest blogger’s rantings over criticisms of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s NSA opinion by the Washington Post (and others), observing:

the Administration is giving the program only a very partial defense in its public documents, so there is a lot more that we don’t know. (For example, I teach and write in the area of the Fourth Amendment, and my view is that I don’t know enough of the facts to know if the program violates the Fourth Amendment.

Professor Kerr has identified the most interesting feature of the NSA flap. The December 16, 2005 New York Times leaked NSA story accused the Bush administration of “monitoring,” a term subsequently rhetorically upgraded to “spying,” and ultimately to “eavesdropping,” on international phone calls and email messages “within the United States” without warrants.

The Bush Administration’s accusers knew that they were taking a very serious step by divulging the existence of one or more top secret National Security programs, and they not surprisingly chose merely to apply partisan and inflammatory characterizations without ever specifically describing what it was that they were pointing to with feigned outrage.

Since all this is secret, no one outside certain intelligence agencies and the upper reaches of the US Government really knows who is doing what, when, or to whom. It is really as if all it required was for Messrs. Risen and Lichtblau to write a story saying “the Bush Administration is secretly violating the law,” some unidentified persons said “by doing bad things,” and the left faithfully falls into zombified lockstep, and begins shouting cries of pain and outrage in chorus.

A key problem is no one has ever been identified anyone who has ever experienced a known wrong, or a perceived consequence of any kind, from whatever it is that NSA might, or might not, be doing.

Can the Constitution really be violated, or the law be broken, by persons unknown secretly peforming unknown acts devoid of discernible effect?

The left obviously thinks that George W. Bush is just intrinsically unconstitutional, and that he breaks the law just by being in office, and their grasp of so much of the MSM allows them to create an echo-chamber alternative reality in which the liberal articles of faith ~~which everybody knows~~ seem very real, however tenuous their relationship to mere diurnal reality.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Suffers From Urge To Kill

JDZ — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 01:11:12 +0000

The Australian reports: Addressing an audience of schoolchildren in Brisbane, Australia, 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams, suffused with indignation at the violence in the Middle East, confessed, “Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.”