Redstate

I believe this party will be shooting itself permanenetly in the head if it doesn't nominate a person who has the widest possible base of popular support and a proven record of persuading even his harshest critics. We need a great debator, someone with oratorical and televisual presence, strong Conservative credentials and a solid track record if we are going to hold the executive branch in 2008. We have a lot of 'splaining to do, and frankly if we go off the rails and pick someone marginal we're looking at President Hillster.

People had better wake up to that fact, right now.

I wish I'd said that. You're 110% on this one.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

And I'm not proud of saying it but I think it is true. You don't take America into a big war in the Middle East (even if the ambitions are noble and the underlying wishes are magnanimous and the people conducting the war are the best we can hope for) unless the man pulling the trigger can stand up and convince people that it was the correct thing to do at the time. I may only be half right on this, but that half is enough.

George Bush never had what it takes to be a wartime leader. He could recite prepared speeches but he couldn’t defend, debate, or explain the goals and priorities in a clear and organized manner. His choice in advisors, from Powell to Rice, leaves much to be desired. His knowledge of Arab and Islamic culture is non-existent. Is saving grace is that he looks good next to Kerry. But why hold the bar so low?

I was worried about Bush from the first month after 9/11 when he dropped food behind enemy lines in Afghanistan and said Arafat wasn’t a terrorist. The nation demanded action and Bush did the minimum. Even the Iraq regime-change was a Clinton-Gore policy that Bush had every reason to believe would be a bi-partisan policy. He just doesn’t get it. As a President you have to go on the offensive in an intellectual contest or your opponents define the terms of the debate.

As eloquent as Tony Blair is, he could never get any traction for support of the Iraq War either. I think it's just the nature of the West. It's too hard to convince people in Western Europe and America--a well-fed comfortable populace, with their own selfish personal concerns--to care about oppressed Arab Muslims living half-a-world away. They don't care. Some of us care, but the majority don't. Just as the majority of America didn't give a rat's behind about Rwanda in the '90s, or the Sudan later, and shame on us all. Stop America’s domestic terrorism for a few years, and people stop caring. “If it doesn’t happen here, it’s not our problem” is the attitude.

Americans do care about "oppression" in other places, but it's never really been our job to police the world and make sure that everyone lives in "freedom." And of all the reasons given for being in Iraq, freeing Iraqis doesn't cut it.

The only reason to invade Iraq was to defend America's security interests, and the reason that people haven't gotten behind the war or have lost interest is the inability of this President to make a credible link between our presence there and our security. He has asked us to accept it on faith for more than 3 years, but people need to see something more concrete, and that's been missing from Day 1.

The BDS media outlets and the Democratic Party Leadership simply don't care about US security. Especially if it looks like they're supporting a position the Administration takes.

Whats been missing from day one is an honest press and a Democratic Party that cares about anything but getting even with Bush.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

Yes, he's said it over and over, but people finally stopped listening to him because he hasn't backed it up. And the President has unrivaled access to getting his message out and does not need to rely on the MSM or the Democrats; all he has to do is take his message -- complete with facts, charts, whatever -- directly to the people.

I'm sure it's much more satisfying to blame someone else, but the bottom line is that the President failed to make his case so far.

hasn't made the case. My point is that for most of the media and all of the Democratic Leadership the case couldn't be made if a US city was smoking and radioactive.

As far as "unrivaled access", he gets to make a speech that is promptly shredded in the media with half truths, outright lies, phony sources and leaked classified information to undermine the effort. At the same time, the media provide a constant drumbeat of editorial content passing as news and unchallenged access to the opposition, which would be people (and I use the term loosely) like Murtha.

As I said earlier, Bush hasn't made the case. His biggest mistake was not understanding exactly who the enemy is. On that point, this was is Vietnam. The enemy then was CBS, the NYT and Congressional Democrats. Some things are EXACTLY the same.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

Is that there are still some people who don't recognize just how hard they have worked to keep GWB alive over the past six years as a President, despite every screwup he's made. Even the Weekly Standard was still trying valiantly a year ago to tell this man what to say before he opened his mouth and screwed it up. That's why John McCain is the #1 candidate right now, folks.

DUMP. BUSH. NOW.

You know the stakes, I know the stakes, everyone else here knows the stakes, (except for flyerhawk and our idiot mobys and trolls) and we got our information from GWB. He has said time and time again that the war must be won for our future security against terrorists, that democracies are stable and that's why we are busting our humps trying to get one started over there.

The problem is that the media and the democrats are 100% opposed to the Pres and everything he does. The nation is secondary to them. Their primary concern is taking him down. Unfortunately for us, there is a large proportion of Americans who get their information from the headlines and John Stewart. You can't blame Pres. Bush for that. When Americans wake up and realize that this is not some political game, it will change. Not until.

And Britain is no different. They face the same threat as we do, yet look at the way they treat Blair. And he is elequent in the extreme. You can't blame the President for the failures of the American people to smell coffee. All the blame lays at our feet, not his.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.

Is the sacking of Rumsfeld, the surrender on Bolton, the nomination of Gates, and for any ridiculous ISG suggestions he is going to accept (you know that's coming). My optimism about the President has diminished significantly in the past month.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

And I wouldn't say the same thing about you. I really do believe that Rumsfeld has it right when he says that this war is "complex." But as I see it, the primary liability for the President has been that if you compare his (public, the ones that stick) statements from 2003 and 2004 to his most recent statements about Iraq you'll find that there's very little difference.

It is still the same script: "We're winning. We're making progress. We'll stand down when they stand up. We don't want Iraq to become a safe haven for terrorists."

The problem is that they're not standing up and the President isn't being candid about why they're not. He's done a poor job of articulating the status of Iraq except to say that "we're adjusting our tactics." That doesn't mean anything to the average American watching the war drag into its fourth year. The American people have been willing thusfar to give the President an almost blank check to wage this war, but the man himself has not done enough (because he's not effective enough internationally) to bring the war to a conclusion, to show either some light at the end of the tunnel or to explain why we're still fighting. And the impression now among a large segment of people is that we're throwing lives after lives to justify their sacrifice in the first place.

President Bush has spent nearly a trillion dollars on this war. Certainly by the time we leave Iraq we will have spent that much.

Do you know to this moment any of the following with any degree of precision?

1) How many U.S. Military bases there will be in Iraq in 2010?
2) Will the Iraqi oil industry ever get back on its feet and start supplying revenue?
3) Will the Iraqi government ever be able to overcome its sectarian hatreds and form a workable coalition?
4) Can we ever expect that in the absence of people stringing along the border of Iran and Syria that we're not going to keep up the game of cat and mouse against the insurgency?
5) How many people among the intellectual/professional class in Iraq will die before large, large numbers of refugees start showing up in surrounding countries?
6) Is Iraq really more under the control of Iran than it is the Iraqi government? If so, how do we stop that?
7) The security situation in Iraq is so bad that people have reverted to clans and tribal warfare. Is this what we expected to see in late 2006?
8) How many other "semi-friendly" states will be destabilized within the next two years?

...

The questions go on and on and on. I have another dozen of them! We're sitting here at the end of 2006 and all the answers to those questions are even more indeterminate than they were in the middle of 2003. To me, that says that something is not working. The situation isn't improving.

Tony Blair to me deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom much more than George Tenet ever did. He did more to make the case for our inarticulate President than our President himself did. And for that he was absolutely taken to pieces in the press in his own country and everywhere else in Europe for being "Bush's poodle". Tony Blair's political career is over because he hitched his wagon to GWB, but he did his best over the past four years. Erick seems to believe that this monstrous outcome doesn't start and end with the POTUS, but it DOES. I'm not carrying Bush's water any more. I'm dumping him.

Tony Blair to me deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom much more than George Tenet ever did.

That isn't saying much. I think Ken Lay was more deserving of a Presidential Medal of Freedom than George Tenet was, too.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

If Bush believes we need to win this by going for victory, but believes he doesn't have the political capital to do it, he should put those in place that do. Have Cheney resign, make McCain VP and then make McCain POTUS three weeks later.

I'm not a McCaniac but we can't afford a POTUS with no moral authority or communication skills when it comes to defending our nation's interests.

Even though I'm castigating Bush for this I realize that also it is not entirely his fault: circumstances did force his hand. I'm not saying the man should be hauled out to the stockade for his weaknesses as a statesman. I really don't think he foresaw 9/11 or the consequences of 9/11, but that doesn't matter. I think he did the best he could. I just don't think he was equal to the task that was thrust upon him.

It's a cautionary tale as we select our nominee for 2008. We need to make sure that whoever we pick, they are someone who can rise to the occasion of something completely unprecedented, as best we can. In fact, I would make that one of the first debate questions for any prospective Republican candidates. For people to elect another Republican as President in '08 I think they are going to need to know that the person they're picking will be able to rise to the occasion, not just in terms of the mechanics of the policy, but also internationally.

And I'm not talking about the church going kind. I'm talking about the kind of moral authority it takes to rally 60% of this country to defeat this nation's enemies, whatever it takes. It also means rallying 60% of the country to shove it back down the Left's throats if thats what it takes. That's the piece George Bush never had the stomach for with his failed "new tone". I think highly of him as a man, I just believe he's been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

2008 is our party's first post 9/11 primary, and I think that means something. In 2000 we were looking for someone who could take down Clinton/Gore during that vacation from reality called the 90s. The Bush brand name fit the bill. But George Bush is like far too many Republican leaders, a nice guy you trust around your kids and wife in a second and would love to have run the church treasury, or your baseball team. But they don't have the backbone needed to work in the profession that is war by other means, politics. Pelosi and crew went with the strategy of deamonize and take down the president while the Republican leasership ran scared on the bet it would backfire. It didn't and it will not until someone on our side turns it back on them and runs it down their throats, in a nice and smiling sort of way. That is why it backfired on us with Clinton.

2008 cannot be a contest for who is the most idealogically and morally pure conservative. We need someone in 2008 that's a proven executive/commander that will take on this nation's enemies (foreign and domestic), rally the country to do so, cut federal spending, defend tax cuts that grow the economy, appoint federalist judges and take on the moral rot of the left from the bully pulpit. The only two guys I see right now that fit the bill are McCain and Giuliani, although they're not perfect. I'm not a populist personally, but our party has to produce a populist president in 2008 if we are going to have any chance to prevail in the conflicts that await us.

ahem...
in a burly, manly sorta way of course.

What we do in life echoes in eternity.
-Maximus Decimus Meridius

You got the mission accomplished meme right, but remember, this was about stealing the Iraqi's oil for teh BushHitlerBurton's fat cat cronies, not about bringing democracy to the Middle East.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

If we weren't willing to take on Syria and Iran militarily when they engaged in low intensity military ops, we should have never pulled the trigger. To do so was another half measure, just like the prior administrations.

they should have known this before they went in. Or, even if they did know it (let's assume there were some smart people somewhere doing some sort of post-war planning), this certainly wasn't sold to the American people as part of the process.

You're either up front about it and produce a realistic assessment from the beginning, or you're constantly playing catch-up, and worse, you look like a liar. That's where we are now.

You always put the American military in a position to win. The administration has not done this, and they didn't have the backbone or intelligence to do this from the beginning.

I guess it was expecting too much to even have that basic question answered, "what are we willing to do if the Iranians and Syrians engage"? Not exactly a lot of planning.

But Syria is where the WMD ended up and we still have dealt with that.

"It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win." - Vince Lombardi

"But I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle — victorious." - Vince Lombardi

At least 60% of this country hates to lose, can't stand losers and despises the thought of accepting anything short of winning. That's the 60% that would just as soon vomit on this report. That is the 60% that must be rallied!

There are three guesses, zuiko and the first three don't count. The only guess that matters is who is going to be able to invest in Iraq? That should have been our strategy from the beginning: framing the regime change in Iraq as an international investment opportunity and giving the long-suffering people in Iraq a chance to do something better than either die under a dictator, oppress and kill people under a dictator, listen to Iran, or suffer because their newly elected government is composed of a bunch of corrupt people who are still going to take all their money.

We didn't do that, and that's why we've got an enormous insurgency and people grappling for power.

Money beats ideological power, every single time. That's what caused the Soviet Union to collapse. If we really want to save Iraq, we need to turn it into an international investment opportunity and get their people back to work so that they can be proud of themselves again, instead of hapless victims of regional warlords and international interlocutors.

The Baker Commission is on the right track: we've lost the ability to "win" this war politically under its original terms. Now what we need to do is achieve regional stability, if we can still salvage it, and that means allowing Iraq to prosper.

Uh, have you seen Russia lately? If you've been, and spoken to many people, they'll just tell you the KGB turned in their badges and went to work for the mafia.

Same people, different uniform. Yes, the Soviet Union is gone, but magical investment money certainly didn't improve the lives of most middle-class Russians.

Their mafia is all mafia, to be sure. But at least they've agreed to shut down allofmp3 as part of becoming responsible under the WTO.

BTW, dude, most of the money that was flowing to allofmp3 was coming from people IN THE UNITED STATES who wanted almost-free downloads of copyrighted music.

You tell me who is to blame? The Russians or the hip people in Georgetown?

VISA America and international didn't start shutting down their transaction processing for allofmp3 downloads until AFTER Russia's entrance into the WTO was announced. They were happy to transfer the money to the Russian mafia as long as they were collecting their cut right up until that point.

Again. You tell me who is responsible?

Doing business in Russia today isn't any worse than doing business in any other 3rd world country. It is certainly doable, but just like in Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, or in a hundred other countries, the level of corruption in the government is a very significant risk factor to be considered.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

Which in some ways is a worse place to do business than Russia. I know because my father owned a business there. I don't mean to muddy the waters, but the bad actors are gradually losing in Russia. It's taking time, because they rule through fear and intimidation.

But I have always believed along with Armand Hammer and Buckminster Fuller that embracing Russia's good people is something we should be doing. As always, there are a lot more of them than the bad actors. I still believe that Russia can be a partner with the United States in maintaining global security and creating market-based global prosperity, if we have the long-term will. I'm not going to let people like Kaspersky down.

Next year I want to visit Russia and try to get a business venture started. I believe they have some of the best-trained, hungriest and most intelligent people in the world. I respect them enormously and I want to work with them to build real prosperity.

I would say that the ISG is not so much "Cut and Walk" as "Cut and Walker"...anybody under eighty on this panel????? How did they get around in Iraq? Oh wait -- they didn't.

I think the least we can do is give them a free vacation there after the last chopper leaves the green zone. I think Carter has earned a ticket on that flight as well.

Our guys just have to start saying this is unacceptable, because -- you know -- it is.

I sincerely hope we do. I don't have all that much confidence in President "kick Rumsfeld to the curb and replace him with Gates" Bush. He seems to have gone into full capitulation mode since Nov 7th... it reminds me a lot of Arnold's total melt down after his ballot initiatives lost. I hope I'm wrong about that.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman