Senator Reid:
Tonight s address offered the President an excellent opportunity to level with the American people about the current situation in Iraq, put forth a path for success, and provide the means to assess our progress. Unfortunately he fell short on all counts.
There is a growing feeling among the American people that the President s Iraq policy is adrift, disconnected from the reality on the ground and in need of major mid-course corrections. Staying the course, as the President advocates, is neither sustainable nor likely to lead to the success we all seek.
The President s numerous references to September 11th did not provide a way forward in Iraq, they only served to remind the American people that our most dangerous enemy, namely Osama bin Laden, is still on the loose and Al Qaeda remains capable of doing this nation great harm nearly four years after it attacked America.
Stuart has a rapid response tool for you to use to educate the media about the administration’s failure.
I think Bush is better suited to ’soundbiting’ than to ’speeching’.
The Speech
Some perspectives on our president’s speech. Think Progress starts here and continues over several more posts so follow the links. Joe Gandelman is here. Michael Reynolds is here and here. Josh Marshall at TPM Cafe. Rantingprofs is here. PsoTD is
Maybe I’m jaded, but I just don’t expect to hear anything new or of value from Bush’s speeches these days. It’s not as though this administration has been shy about their talking points, while at the same time skimping heavily on details.
‘ Staying the course, as the President advocates, is neither sustainable nor likely to lead to the success we all seek.’
Unfortunate remarks from Reid. He does not want to stay the course. Doesn’t that mean he wants to cut and run. Is that the Democratic plan? “When the going gets rough, the Democrats get going - out of town”. “This is hard. We’re quittin’.” Who advised Reid on that. Chirac? Hope Genius Rove is taking notes.
Dugger
evergreen: If anybody is looking for a sound bite, it’s you. Last night’s speech was better than most (I’m not referring to the content — you’re a lefty, and have to object to the content). I think you had that comment on your clipboard, and pasted it in at 10:00 to pretend you heard the speech.
Frank. It was the same tired old speech. We all know Bush is a horrible orator. And many us make fun of him for it. I know I do. But, at the end of the day, it is still the content that matters. And yes we have a different perspective on the quality of content. I stand by my perspective …. as do you.
Dug. It is hard to know what Reid meant by ’staying the course’. But changing course does not , necessarily, mean ‘cut and run’. The situation in Iraq seems fairly stagnant as I’m sure most people will agree. Something clearly needs to change because ( I believe from my readings ) that the american people, the coalition forces and the Iraqi peeps are in various states of dissillusionment over our progress and our strategy.
Speak for yourself, EG.
What we do know is that he beat fast - talking Ann Richards in a Gubernatorial race, and won about 4 out of 6 — or was it 6 out of 8 — Presidential debates.
He may not meet the high standards of a Clinton, or a Reagan, but he is not a “horrible orator”.
And statements like “we all know” are just typical liberal ‘throwaways’ like “everybody knows”, which really mean the people who matter believe.
WE MUST STOP FUNDING THE ENEMY - AND THE ENEMY IS OUR CORPORATE MEDIA!
HELP RECLAIM THE NATION BY WITHHOLDING YOUR MONEY FROM THOSE WHO DO US HARM! IT IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE WEAPON WE HAVE!
WE CANNOT CONTINUE TO BATTLE THE BEAST WHILE WE FINANCE ITS VERY EXISTENCE!
Cancel all subscriptions to the corporately owned newspapers & magazines that have been complicit in deceiving the public about the many crimes committed by the Bush administration and about the many outrageous actions taken by our Congress to undermine our democracy, our environment and our civil rights while they put forth an agenda that is designed to hand ownership of our nation to a few wealthy individuals and corporations.
Call your cable company and cancel the following news channels: all CNN networks (CNN Headline News and CNN International), all FOX networks that air news including your local FOX affiliate. (It is all right to keep the entertainment based channels. Trash TV never resulted in fascism!), and all network and local stations that purport to air news, including ABC, NBC (including MSNBC), & CBS.
NOTE: You can have your cable company block any channel you request. You need not cancel the rest of your service. If there are massive cancellations our voices will be heard. Make sure that you tell them that you are canceling because you are tired of deception!
Where will you get your information if you comply with our request? You can replace the cherry picked news that is spoon fed to you by the corporate media with the news harvesters on the Internet who collect important news items from around the globe and compile them in one place so that you can get a real sense of what is going on.
Suggested sites for real news: (we apologize to the many other good sites not mentioned here ) : Whatreallyhappened.com, Buzzflash.com, Rense.com, Informationclearinghouse.com, uruknet.com, and TvNewsLIES.org s news portal.
What else must you do? Search the Internet for organizations or web sites that list the corporate sponsors of the news networks. Make every attempt to boycott goods and services produced by these companies. Seek out progressive, socially and environmentally conscious businesses and direct your business to them.
It is time to act! Stop supporting our enemies. Start supporting the people who have dedicated their lives to making this world a better place. If it inconveniences you, so be it. Make the sacrifice. If it costs you an extra dollar to subscribe to an independent newspaper, make the sacrifice and help us to regain our nation.
http://studio-c.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_studio-c_archive.html#111998169661503780
We all know his content is tiresome and his delivery is boring.
Umm, what debates did he win? I don’t remember him winning a single one, but hey, Republicans love to revise history when it suits them.
And wow Dugger, can you please stop superimposing your poorly thought out beliefs about liberals and applying them to everyone left of you? The only time we could have cut-and-run with any kind of support from the majority of the world would have been right after the elections in Iraq. Now that that moment has passed and isn’t as momentuous as you wanted it to be, just following the “more of the same” mentality is only going to get us further mired down in the quagmire that is Iraq.
Now that Republicans are touting the mantra that by “cutting and running” is degrading the deaths of our fine soldiers. That isn’t opening any new ideas or thoughts into the direction of the conflict, its just “more of the same” “more of the same” and a little bit of “more of the same”.
Ev,
Staying the course means sticking with it until the Iraqis do it. No timetable. I fail to see another viable alternative at this point to that course - unless Reid means escalating. I don’t believe the Rs or the Dem moderates would permit cutting & running. So what did he mean? BTW, I agree Bush is a bad speaker. In my lifetime the great Pres speakers were JFK (best) and Reagan. Good were Nixon (better than people may realize), Clinton. Not so good: both Bushes, Ford LBJ, Carter.
Hey Binky
Why do we need “world” support to cut and run. How is it that we are, per the left, going it alone and yet we can stop what we are doing alone w/o world approval. Makes no sense. Right or wrong the R position is that we stay until the Iraqis are ready. I’ve heard no viable altrenative from those to my left or the Buchanan-eers to my right.
And from here on out, I promise to superimpose only my well thought out positions on every one to my left ( a whole lot of people I might add) - this being the first. On you. You are now being oppressed by my superimposed positions. I am the (cyber) MAN.
Dugger, What We’ve Got Here is a Failure to Communicate
If this is a quagmire as you are all so often fond of doing, can you explain to this uneducated redstate rube what would happen if we simply announce that we will bring our troops home six months from today?
You are quick to claim that we are losing this war, but exactly what have we lost? Where are we suffering military defeats?
You are quick to throw out the number of deaths, but how about we compare the number of deaths in Iraq to the number of murders in a similarly sized and populated area of the US. I suspect that though Iraq is dangerous, it is not quite as horrible as you would have us believe.
How does some homicide bomber going on a kamikaze mission into a bunch of Iraqi civilians mean we are losing?
Dug.
Your right that we haven’t had a viable alternative offered. But that isn’t the issue. We don’t have a viable PLAN right now to achieve the goals you mentioned ( Iraqis doing it on their own ). Nothing. The whole country is insecure….its all…every last bit of it… chaos. Nothing works properly and their is no security ANYWHERE for ANYONE. So we can’t keep ’staying the course’. The ‘course’ has led us to where we are…. and its not progressing towards success. Now that is a bipart assessment if I’m not mistaken. We are working off the Bush Admin plan….and its failing…and badly.
Now I don’t want to get hung up on semantics about what the meaning of ’staying’ or ‘ course’ is…is. But some fresh ideas are needed and I haven’t heard this Administration provide any. They had a great opportunity last night and didnt. Maybe Bush admin should just drop the Pride and say ‘ Hey, anybody got any good ideas…cause were fresh out’. That is at least honest.
evergreen,
My friends in Basra would differ with your OPINION that it is in chaos. My brother in Baghdad would differ with your OPINION that it is in chaos. I know it probably makes you feel better to make your assertions as fact, but the simple fact is that you want to believe those things, so you do.
Really JD? There’s a city in the US where there has been 1,700 murders in a city the size of our force in Iraq (130,000)? Please point that city out, wouldn’t want to move there.
In NYC, we are on the pace for 465 homocides in a city of 8 million.
And if Iraq isn’t in chaos, why do our soldiers keep coming home in body bags? Why do soldiers (12,000) come home without limbs?
Hey, no one needs power over 15% of the time, even in 120 degree heat.
They also don’t need potable water, thats just for pussies.
Oh, and Dugger, every political action should be reviewed in the international forum, it serves as a check and a balance. Don’t bother asking yourself why France, Germany, Russia and a few other big countries said no to Iraq, immediately superimpose your beliefs of corruption and poof! you don’t have to care that they think anymore. You can go on your little way, believing in American superiority without ever really asking yourself how stupid you look from the outside.
Ev,
I think we do have a plan: train the Iraqis to take over. That is ongoing. If you want to argue it may not work or is going too slow, I probably would agree; but what else is there?
Just my $0.02, but if we put aside all of the Bush lied stuff and look at the war, there are viable, non-tin foil criticisms to be made. We had enough time to devise a master plan -if you will- “we go in under these circumstances and we leave under these circumstances”. That should have been stated ahead of time and there should have been a way stated for us to get out, I think (may be dead wrong here), short of a full-up, democratic Iraq, which may never happen. I am troubled that the neocons may be wrong here and that Iraq, though not a Vietnam-like quagmire (its really not close in most respects), is nevertheless, never going to (in our lifetime and our kids’ lifetime) - liberalize. At some point we have to pull the plug and leaver, and the people over there who are willing to die in droves and commit suicide and mass murder for their side - our enemy- will come out of thw woodwork, say “boo” and the new government will fall in their lap.
Dugger, Pessimist to the Core
That is indeed a pessimistic view, Dugger, but I think it’s the most probable outcome.
Now: how many more American soldiers should we ask to die for this result?
Dugger, do you believe that the elections created a milestone event which would have allowed the US to relieve it of some of the adminstrative burdens within Iraq, pull back to the permanent bases and began a slow pull out with the Iraqi government in full compliance (per our puppetry)?
Now I ask if another milestone can be created that would be equivalent in the future to give the same possibility of a “handoff”.
How does the US stop meddling in the Iraqi government and just pull out from here?
And this ignores the traps and pitfalls of “winning” or “losing”.
I think I know of a perfect timetable. President Bush should stand up in front of all of the moonbat reporters and naysayers, and say, when the bomb throwing homicidal terrorists announce their timetable for “We will quit murdering Americans and innocent Iraqis”, then the US of A will announce their timetable for our withdrawal from Iraq.
Hey JD, have you found that city with 1700 murders in two years yet, in a city of 130,000?
Last I checked, there were about 25,000,000 people in Iraq …
“Now: how many more American soldiers should we ask to die for this result? ”
Quaker,
Good question but the answer is greatly complicated by the fact that we are there - now, and that possibly/likely a precipitous US withdrawal would result in a bloody purge that would dwarf what has happened so far and encourage extremist movements around the globe. Or you and I may be flat wrong and the neos right. Bottom line: no easy answers anyplace. And probably no better answer than to train the Iraqis as best we can; phase them in while phasing us out, and then one day anounce we are leaving/have left - but actually leave a lot of “advisors” in place.
Binky,
The elections were a milestone but they did not create competency or stability and to use them as an excuse to pull out wouldn’t work. The unfortunate thing is that we can’t commit to “milestones” with a hard point in time - because we have no real idea how long (if ever, unfortunately) it will take to give the Iraqis a fair shot at maintaining stability - on their own. Again, I hope I’m wrong on this, but I can’t help thinking how we once thought Iran had liberalized under the Shah (and they seemingly had) and in one fell swoop they reverted back to a 19th century brutal theocracy. But rather than ask for a withdrawal timetable, maybe a fair question to put to the neos is when will we know? What is it that will tell us what our decison should be? X number of trained Iraqis? A major operation by Iraqi forces? Put it this way: I don’t think Bush can leave office without a hard number or date. If he does leave and all is up in the air, the Democrats will sweep the field.
But if I were a card carrying neocon I would say: we have established a major presence in Iraq, an area at the core geographically of the WW terrorist movement. We have overthrown a brutal dictator. We are near setting up a model, democratic government and once thats done, it will/may have a (good) domino effect in the mideast (as can be evidenced by Libya). So, says the neo, the price is high, but the long term payoff is even higher - the modernization of the mideast and the “curing” of the last major source of WW terrorism (the overall backward, brutal mideast).
Dugger, the Long Winded
More “fuzzy math” from JD- 1700 US SOLDIERS died in Iraq. There are only about 130000 US SOLDIERS in Iraq.
If you want to use the 25million Iraqis as a figure, then find me a city where there have been 30000 (conservative figure) homocides, or a city with that crime rate.
For NYC, 1/3 size of Iraq, they would need to have 10,000 homocides to equal the same rate.
Again, JD, find me a city as dangerous as Iraq, or admit you were wrong.
Alright, I will let you define it however you would like. Your figure of 130,000 is simply wrong though. It is my understanding that is the ballpark figure of how many troops are there at any given point in time. If you count troop rotations, and all of the people that have served there, I suspect the figures are significantly higher.
Neo and JD,
You both may have a point. Roughly 1700 US dead in Iraq over a 2.25 year period = 756 per year. Roughly 1/4 of those are non combat (-189) = 567 deaths per year. But total troop strength was higher. Say average of 150,000. That equals a combat death rate of about one per every 265. Wash DC is known as the murder capital of the US. In 1990, the city had 2,245 homicides. At about 600,000 people that equates to a rate of one homicide per every 267 people. Almost exactly the same for the Iraq war (US). But lately the homicide rate has been much lower, around 600, so the rates would not (now) be quite as comparable.
Dugger
According to the Defense Department, 1,740 killed, 397 by “non-hostile” causes. And why the “non-hostile” deaths don’t count in your little exercising is puzzling to me.
“And why the non-hostile deaths don t count in your little exercising is puzzling to me.”
I’m not sure what I’m exercising - something about the comaprative death rates of combat verus a US city - maybe.
To answer. Because non-hostile deaths occur stateside and are a by-product of a naturally dangerous peactime job (like fighter pilot). Check out my amigos at Joint Task Force 160 sometimes. But I would not argue that there may be a slightly higher probability of death from non-combat factors in Iraq than stateside - but not all that much. And I don’t question your figures (we’re close anyway). I found some quick numbers on a web cite and did some back of the envelope calculating. Its all when you tally the numbers.
Dugger