Of course they did. This is what they do. This is how they operate. Attack, defile, divide, and defend… their own.
Q He said the Democrats wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. That’s not injecting politics into the tragedy of September 11th?
MR. McCLELLAN: I think it’s talking about the different philosophies for winning the war on terrorism. The President recognizes that the way to win the war on terrorism is to take the fight to the enemy, to stay on the offensive, and to work to spread freedom and democracy to defend the ideology of hatred that they espouse, and the ideology of tyranny and oppression.
Q So will the President ask Karl Rove to apologize?
MR. McCLELLAN: Of course not, Jessica.
You’ll remember that this is the same White House that expressed full throated support of Trent Lott after his racist remarks, backing off only when they realized they could have a puppet in the position of majority leader (Bill Frist).
Even more idiocy:
MR. McCLELLAN: I think that Karl was simply pointing out the different philosophies when it comes to winning the war on terrorism. That’s what he was doing. The President of the United States — you bring up something that’s very important — has worked to elevate the discourse in this town and reach out to get things done, and that’s what he’s done. Now, Karl was simply pointing out the differences that exist in how we approach the war on terrorism and how different people view it in a different way
Yes, he elevates discourse by having his and his henchmen declare the opposition party to be weak kneed assistants of terror even as he fiddles as America becomes less safe. Yes, elevating the discourse indeed.
“Karl Rove has moved to center stage in the theater of the absurd. Our entire country came together after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. His shameful comments trying to revise history insult the victims of 9/11 and all of us who support them. President Bush must repudiate these remarks.
“For Karl Rove and his Republican allies to try to exploit 9/11 for political purposes — once again — just shows you how desperate Republicans are to change the subject to distract Americans from their failures.”
Sen. Clinton calls out Governor Pataki and the other conservative attendees:
“I would also call on Gov. Pataki to repudiate these comments. He was at that dinner last night,” said Clinton.
“I would call on anyone who was at that dinner who is a New Yorker who cares about the unity of not only New York City but of our country to say we may have disagreements about what the best way is to win the war against terror, but we have no disagreements about our unity and our resolve and the goals we seek.”
That spirit of our country should never be reduced to a cheap and divisive political applause line from anyone who speaks for the President of the United States. I am proud that after September 11th all our people rallied to President Bush’s call for unity to meet the danger. There were no Democrats. There were no Republicans. There were only Americans. That’s why is hard to believe that last night the most senior advisor to the President of the United States is twisting those days of unity to divide us, that rather than focusing attention on finding Osama Bin Laden and smashing Al Queda, he is instead challenging the patriotism of Americans every bit as committed to fighting terror as he is.
Senator Joe Lieberman today joined Senator Chris Dodd and their colleagues from New York and New Jersey in calling on chief White House Advisor Karl Rove to retract his divisive partisan comments that exploited the memories of the 9/11 victims at a conservative fundraiser. In a letter to Rove today the senators asked Rove to retract his comment that liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.
I wonder if the media will ignore this.
Dr. Laniac is skeptical of any apologies.
Light Up The Darkness talks about how the left’s support for the war on terror has been betrayed.
Kevin Drum has visual evidence of the treachery of us liberals.
Ken Mehlman, head of the RNC and supposedly the moderate opposite to “crazy” Howard Dean, fully backs up Karl Rove’s assault on the Democratic party:
“It’s outrageous that the same Democrats who stood by Dick Durbin’s libeling of our military are now expressing faux outrage over Karl Rove’s statement of historical fact. George Soros, Michael Moore, MoveOn and the hard left were wrong after 9/11, just as it was wrong for Democrat leaders to stand by and remain silent after Dick Durbin made his deplorable comments.”
I wonder if this will finally teach the Democrats something? Karl Rove, by instruction of the White House, has libeled the entire progressive wing of America as a bunch of traitors, and the entire Republican apparatus has backed him up. They’re not giving an inch. I hope folks remember this kind of thing the next time they’re called on to “denounce” Governor Dean, or to “rebuke” something a Senator said.
I actually wonder if it wouldn’t be more effective to just completely ignore this vile statement all-together; for the Dems to operate as if the entire country isn’t being run by anyone at all…that the Republican party won 2004, ran it aground and left the helm (Capitol), pilfering all the life rafts.
They should just start talking directly to the American people, outlining the debacle that is Iraq, defining a strategy for getting out, repeating their plans for bettering our economy, unifying the country, safe-guarding our people, and capturing Bin Laden (who?). Maybe pretend the 2004 election never happened. Ignore these screaming children (Bush, Cheney, Rove, Frist, et al.) and get on news shows to repeat their strategy; never responding to a direct comment from these vicious animals, just pretending that they aren’t even there.
Because, in all actuality, the Republicans aren’t presenting a single viable, acceptable ideology to the American public, and every time they’ve tried recently (Privatization of Social Security, Schiavo, etc), it just works against them.
I say, fuck ‘em…this is a one party state, because only the Democrats are left. The Republicans have rotted into something else entirely.
Rove’s remarks were “elevating the discourse”?
Wow. I been missing out on some nasty stuff.
I don’t know — why doesn’t it?
I get more confused every day.
The man who instigated the bombing of the WTC “isn’t much of a threat anymore” and the President “doesn’t think about him much.”
But the detainees we’re holding in places like Guantanamo are dangerous, bloodthirsty killers.
Why doesn’t this make any sense to me?
Rove and his reasons
Hours after the Bush administration’s Grima Wormtongue having impugned the patriotism of half the fucking country, I’d like to pose what I believe is a reasonable question. Why? I understand that it’s easy enough, particularly for those who (rightly…
Quaker, you’re not alone…
Just a few days ago, the man who runs our national intelligence apparatus claims to know exactly where Osama is hiding, but poo-poos the idea of actually sending forces in there right now to apprehend and/or kill him, because he — get this — has concerns about other countries’ sovereignty.
Excuse me?
Were we concerned about sovereignty when we invaded and laid waste to Afghanistan and Iraq?
It just doesn’t add up.
When a majority of Americans now agree that the Iraq was was a mistake, it’s pretty clear that there’s a sense of desparation to divert attention to, or on, anyone else other than this failed President, and his incompetent administration.
If you can somehow twist and distort the truth to make Democrats every bit the enemy as the group of lunatics who rammed two planes into the WTC, then you’re really just trying to energize your “foaming at the mouth” right-wing, red meat eating, Bud-swilling, redder than red staters who turned out in dROVE’s to vote in 04. Let’s do it again for 06! Heck…even the association between Bin Laden and people like Durbin might be enough. Even more troubling, is the fact that if Rove apparently believes this, then you *know* Bush does.
These days, in print, television and radio media…Democrats are regularly called “Enemies of the Constitution,”…”Evil,” …..just to name a few. Our patriotism is questioned on a daily basis. I’m glad there are people out there, like the people in here, that simply aren’t going to take it any longer.
In the end, all we can do for ourselves, and our nation, is not put up with their B.S.
JK
Leave it for the guy who runs the fan site for the national security advisor whose dawdling helped lead to September 11th to be completely disconnected from reality.
“Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war”. Except that those preperations didn’t actually include enlisting. Perhaps those conservatives should start preparing now…we are woefully in need of fresh recruits.
Frank D, your incoherent anecdote about a dJ on 9-11 has convinced me that I am, in fact, a traitor. No facts, no attempt to address the congressional record, just slurs! That’s good trollin!
Oliver ponders … I wonder if the media will ignore this?
Maybe you would be willing to explain why Trent Lott’s comments were a national story for a long long long time, ultimately resulting in Republicans forcing him to apologize, repeatedly, and give up his position, but when DICK Durbin compares a detainee being bound by chains, being cold, being hot, listening to rap music, etc … to Nazi’s, the gulags, and Pol Pot, it receives scant national attention from the mainstream media, and when he kind of apologizes, even though the left thinks he had nothing to apologize for, they ignore his words, and generally applaud them.
Let us compare the column inches and TV time on the major networks, major dailies, and cable networks for this little dust up to the Durbin scenario, and see who gets hammered on harder.
First of all, TomY, there was nothing incoherent about it… That’s how it happened. Unless, of course, you want to call me a liar now.
My point me was that he was not alone. Lots of liberals said those things in the month that followed 9/11.
I don’t know how that makes you a traitor, but it sure made them look pretty wimpy
Oliver, you can call it a fan site if you want — I couldn’t care less. The only reason your weblog isn’t a “fan site” is because you’re not a fan of anyone or anything. You’re just anti-Bush and anti-Republican. Big deal.
The slur doesn’t work if I don’t take the bait.
You see, being opposed to something is a lot easier than proposing something.
Why do you think I enjoy posting here?
JD, I think it’s because most people’s gut reaction was, “yeah, Trent Lott probably does think segregation was okay,” but did not think that Durbin thinks that our troops are Nazis. You had to really twist his statement to make it mean that, but Lott’s comments were self evident.
I find it encouraging that they are sending out the Queen Bee Karl…they only send him out when they are in trouble.
We SHOULD have gone after the folks behind 9/11 – we MAY have made the world a better place if we had.
Instead we get this hogwash about Iraq – and what do we do – we let the perps go, we make the world a more dangerous place…IRAQ is an amazing oppotunity for a terrorist – they can learn new ways to kill!
Where is the outrage?
Did anyone catch Cindy Sheehan on the News last night? Powerful stuff – a brave mother of a brave young man that was killed five days into his arrival in Iraq.
Frank…I’m sure you have no real appreciation of how angry it makes liberals to hear you say such a stupid thing. Do any of us DENY what Rove said??? What kind of a human being are you?
Almost every American who saw what happened on 9/11 was angry. And if they weren’t…well, we live in a free society, don’t we? Our forefathers, grandfathers, fathers, sons and daughters have fought and died so people can voice their views, however misguided they might be.
THIS liberal has served his country. Have you? My uncle served in WWII as a pilot and was in fact shot down over the South Pacific. He survived to run as a Democratic candidate for Lt. Governor in Vt. Bob Kerrey lost a leg. Max Cleland. I could go on. Liberals and Democrats fight and die for their country every day.
So, do what you need to do. Trash liberals, trash Democrats, trash everyone who doesn’t agree with you.
In the end…you’re the one that’s weak, my friend.
JK
What liberals wanted to attack Afghanistan? The majority of us, who were suckers and believed George Bush when he said he would hunt down the people who knocked down those towers, the 99.999999% of us in Washington, who voted to give Bush the power to hunt down the killers in Afghanistan. Those liberals.
JL: I feel great about making liberals angry. What are you going to do about it? Lay down in front of my apartment building? Sue me?
Let’s face it. The liberals after the ’60’s were eviscerated by the Viet Nam war.
Show me where the angry liberals wanted Bush to attack Afghanistan after 9/11.
And yeah, I was in the Army. So? Now what? Are you going to picket me?
My Grandfather’s cousin was elected Governor of Ohio. Was yours?
My father, three of my uncles, and my father’s cousin all served in combat in World War II. My Grandfather was gassed in World War I. I was in Viet Nam.
I signed up for the Army, as a gesture, online, on Sep 12, 2001. I gave blood on Sep 13.
Do I have enough credentials for you?
Voting for the bill was politically easy for the liberals, it would have been policial suicide to have voted against it, so out of political expediency, they supported it. However, from the get-go, there was all this talk about finding out the root causes, how our foreign policy decisions could have caused 9-11, etc … standard mealy-mouthed BS. Ever since their political votes, the liberals have consistently made their intentions clear. They have fought the war on terror at every turn. Heaven forbid that somebody call them on it.
Notice how all of these Democrats that normally call themselves centrists, mainstream, or moderates, are all up in arms that Rove said something about liberals?
Frank_D is right!! Angry liberals DIDN’t want Bush to attack Afghanistan …. they wanted Bush to attack Afghanistan AND GET BIN LADEN…and of course Bush failed.
“Voting for the bill was politically easy”….
That’s because liberal voters and liberal politicians agreed it was the right thing to do, including me and every other person who’s posted here. Until you have facts, cease your slurs. Anecdotal evidence won’t cut it.
I know I will not get anything remotely resembling a rational response, but I still hope against hope.
How does the 1700 figure compare to other wars? Vietnam? WW2? Or is simply trotting out a number your only way of showing your disdain for the war?
I agree that to this point, we have failed to capture Bin Laden. However, is it a touch disingenous to make that the only assessment? Is he travelling freely? Coordinating attacks? Does our failure to have him in captivity mean we are not trying, or have not yet been successful ?
WMD? Do artillery shells filled with Sarin gas count as WMD? If Saddam did not have WMD, why did he no produce the evidence that he had destroyed them, thus averting the war altogether?
Failure to defeat an insurgency? You are kidding, right? We could carpet bomb the Sunni Triangle, and end this now. Our own desires to minimize casualties are actually keeping us from simply eliminating the “insurgency”. Screw that word. They are terrorists. They come from countries all over the Middle East to fight us, and they lose. They are cowards, fighting from mosques, posing as citizens, attacking civilians, the list goes on …
Frank…so you admit you like making liberals angry? Well, it’s easy to feel great about making liberals angry behind the comfort of your keyboard, isn’t it?
You’re a first-class coward.
Democrats in Congress were overwhelmingly behind Bush post 9/11. The voting record if proof positive, and you know it. Rove is, was, and will always be flat out wrong.
Then you read JD’s pablum. See, folks…if you’re a Democrat…you’re damned it you do, and damned if you don’t. If you voted FOR the war, it was out of political expediency. Against it, and you’re a commie.
So, we’re in here debating whether or not Democrats can be blamed for being too “sensitive” to the whims of terrorists. Crazy talk…but even if it were true, would it have a damn thing to do with the utter failure of the prosecution of this failed war?
You have the Congress. You have the White House. Stop blaming Democrats. Blame yourself, and blame your leadership for the following:
-1,700 Dead American Troops, countless disabled, maimed and injured.
-Failure to capture the central Figure of the 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden.
-Failure to locate, find, and destroy Weapons of Mass Destruction that served as the initial justification for the war in Iraq.
-Failure to defeat the Iraqi Insurgency, and failure to locate and capture the mastermind behind it.
YOU have failed. Not us. YOU.
JK
The “20 – 20 Hindsight Brigade” is in full throat, I see…
You mean like MoveOn.org? ANSWER? Michael Moore?
Some of us realize that the war on terror is not the same as the pursuit and capture of bin Laden, and some of us realize that the GWOT will not be over when he is captured or found dead.
“You re a first-class coward,” types JK, behind the comfort of his keyboard.
I doubt that’s true, but even if it were, you have to live long enough to be malnourished, something which might not have happened under the Hussein regime.
1700 American deaths compares pretty well when they could have been avoided in the first place if the supposed leader of the United States didn’t lie to get us in to a war that had been planned years in advance in the first place.
Minimize casualties? You do realize that more then 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by US bombs and thousands more are homeless. Not to mention the fact that malnutrition is at it’s highest peak among children then before the war.
I’m sure the families of Iraqi’s killed by the US would find it odd that you claim our desires are to minimize causalities.
JD Bleats
“I agree that to this point, we have failed to capture Bin Laden. However, is it a touch disingenous to make that the only assessment? Is he travelling freely? Coordinating attacks? Does our failure to have him in captivity mean we are not trying, or have not yet been successful ?”
So your premise is that he is contained? Sounds like another Arab leader, hmm, can’t think of his name, it’s right at the tip of my tongue, oh yea, Saddam Hussein!
But we HAD to go to war with him NOW, even though he had never attacked us.
On the other hand, OBL did attack us and we did go to war, but abandoned the search after he escaped from Tora Bora. Then Bush lost interest and sent troops to slaughter in a country which was no threat.
Who was more of a threat to the US? OBL or Saddam Hussein? Be honest. Remember, Saddam had no WMD, now.
“Some of us realize that the war on terror is not the same as the pursuit and capture of bin Laden”…now I see where you are coming from Frank…and it all makes perfect sense.
JD,
1 American troop is too many when it’s for the wrong reasons.
How’s that for a number?
JK
Hmm. In a couple of entries Oliver and the left are raging about remarks from Rove concerning liberals, well liberal attitude towards terrorism. They are outraged!! Outraged, I tell you! How dare anybody question their patriotism!!!
Then Oliver blithely says:
“Leave it for the guy who runs the fan site for the national security advisor whose dawdling helped lead to September 11th to be completely disconnected from reality. ”
Anybody but me feel just a little sense of irony here?
Dugger
evergreen: I wish I could say the same about your comment…
I suppose you would have said, in the 1920’s, that the war on organized crime was over, when Al Capone was found guilty of tax evasion.
Karl is only doing his job. As chief architect of disinformation and propaganda, he specializes in the deft and clever smear of the political opposition. It is a lesson I wish the tone deaf democrats in Washington would emulate. My favorite quotation from Aristotle sums it up nicely:
The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief.”
They’ve stolen two elections, one by chicanery, and another by fear. The economy sucks, the patriot act is still law, and the war on terror is forever. A job well done I’d say