[wvns] Bush Grasp of Reality Tenuous
Bush Grasp of Reality Tenuous
Juan Cole
Informed Comment
December 5, 2007
http://www.juancole.com/
Farideh Farhi, at our group blog, Global Affairs, says she listened to
Bush's press conference on Tuesday -- which was full of implausible
statements -- and now wants to know what George W. Bush has been
smoking. Uh, I don't think that substance is typically smoked so much
as snorted. Or maybe his current favorite is just a stong bottle of beer.
The Los Angeles Times notes a controversy over what the president knew
and when he knew it:
' Seven weeks ago, Bush said that in the interest of "avoiding World
War III" Iran should be prevented from gaining the knowledge needed to
make a nuclear weapon. That was roughly two months after J. Michael
McConnell, the director of national intelligence, reported to Bush
that he had "some new information" about Iran.
"He didn't tell me what the information was; he did tell me it was
going to take awhile to analyze," the president said. He said he was
not briefed on the report until last week, and that in the interim no
one had suggested that he tone down his language.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee and a candidate for the Democratic presidential
nomination, expressed incredulity that Bush, "who gets briefed every
morning, who is fixated on Iran," had not sought details of the new
assessment after learning of it in August.
"I can't believe that," he said in a phone call with reporters. '
Washington insiders say that Director of National Intelligence Mike
McConnell would certainly have been kept in the loop by the analysts
producing this NIE. McConnell briefs Bush and said this summer he had
new evidence coming in.
At his press conference Bush reverted to his old ploy of declaring
people and things dangerous even when there is no objective measure of
such things. He used to say that Saddam Hussein had been "dangerous"
even when it was discovered that Saddam had no chemical, biological or
nuclear research facilities. Now Iran is intrinsically dangerous,
regardless of whether it has a weapons program or not. Does anyone
still believe this sort of essentializing and fear-mongering?
Bush's circle is like a medieval court with scheming courtiers. His
subordinates apparently routinely do things that he doesn't (and the
other courtiers don't) know about until later. Take for instance when
then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered the Iraqi army
dissolved, with Bush only discovering it afterwards.
My guess is that Admiral William J. Fallon, the CENTCOM commander now,
and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen,
may well have cooperated with figures in the intelligence world to get
this report written and some of it released, especially since Congress
had mandated that it be completed and its findings conveyed to them by
a date certain.
Gareth Porter reported that
'A source who met privately with Fallon around the time of his
confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted Fallon as
saying that an attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch". Asked how
he could be sure, the source says, Fallon replied, "You know what
choices I have. I'm a professional." Fallon said that he was not
alone, according to the source, adding, "There are several of us
trying to put the crazies back in the box." '
Mullen has worried that the way the US military is bogged down in
Afghanistan and Iraq will prevent Washington from replying decisively
to any other foe or crisis.
Snow Bush with some occasional hints that the NIE has some new
findings, sure that he won't bother to ask for details or read any
actual document (he seldom does), then you could spring this thing on
the Cheneyites and blindside them.
Cheney clearly was making a push for war on Iran this fall. The real
puzzle is how the NIE got past his team of plumbers, which still
informally includes convicted perjurer Scooter Libby. That's why I say
there was moxie behind this NIE, of the sort an admiral has, or better
two admirals.
===
Military Families Question Iraq War as Support for Bush Slips
Christopher Stern
Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Kent Fletcher, an Iraq war veteran, says he
enthusiastically voted for President George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.
Now, he is a registered Democrat who questions the need for the war,
the way it has been managed and the treatment of returning veterans.
``Saddam Hussein wasn't a threat and the culmination of my career was
that war and it wasn't necessary,'' says Fletcher, 32, a financial
analyst in Bluffton, South Carolina, who served almost 10 years as an
officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.
A Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll shows that Fletcher's skepticism
about the war reflects a growing disenchantment within the broader
military community, long a bastion of support for the Bush
administration and Republicans. Among active-duty military, veterans
and their families, only 36 percent say it was worth going to war in
Iraq. This compares with an Annenberg survey taken in 2004, one year
after the invasion, which showed that 64 percent of service members
and their families supported the war.
The views of veterans and their families are now closer in line with
overall public sentiment. The poll shows that 32 percent of the
general population supports the war.
`Enormous Sacrifices'
The change isn't ``surprising,'' says Andrew Bacevich, a former Army
colonel and professor of international relations at Boston University
whose son was killed in Iraq in May. ``Military families have been
asked to make enormous sacrifices.''
The poll conducted Nov. 30-Dec. 3 also finds that 37 percent of
military-family members approve of the job Bush is doing as president,
a little more than the general population. The 2004 poll by the
University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications in
Philadelphia found that twice as many military families approved of
Bush's performance.
``I don't think our commander-in-chief has inclusive long- term goals
sketched out,'' said Victoria Colhouer, 49, of St. Petersburg,
Florida, whose son is serving in Iraq.
The same trend holds true on the question of the treatment of
active-duty military, veterans and their families. The poll finds that
only 29 percent of all poll respondents say they believe the Bush
administration is doing a good job handling those needs. Among
military families, who directly benefit from those programs, 35
percent say the administration is doing a good job.
Favoring Democrats
At the same time, a plurality of military-family members, 39 percent,
say they believe Democrats are likely to do a better job handling
those issues, compared with 35 percent for Republicans.
When it comes to candidates in next year's presidential election,
military families are less reliably Republican than in earlier
campaigns. Two Democrats, Senators Hillary Clinton of New York and
Barack Obama of Illinois run slightly ahead of former Republican
Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney among those voters, and both
Democrats trail only slightly former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
The survey of 1,467 adults nationwide includes 631 military family
members, active-duty personnel and veterans. The margin of sampling
error for all adults is plus or minus 3 percentage points; for the
military families it is plus or minus 4 points.
Max Ramos, 52, an Army master sergeant who was injured in Afghanistan
in 2002 and is set to retire next month after 28 years of service,
says he still supports Bush. At the same time, he understands that
soldiers are angry about a military health- care system that is
strained by the war.
`Person in Charge'
He says many of his military colleagues blame Bush because ``the
person that is responsible for everything is the person in charge.''
In 2005, Fletcher, the Marine who switched party affiliations,
published an editorial in the Huntington, West Virginia
Herald-Dispatch newspaper scolding critics of Bush, who he said were
also insulting the U.S. fighting forces.
``You don't have to spit on an Iraqi war veteran physically to spit on
one metaphorically,'' he wrote. ``We are part and the same with the
president's administration.''
Fletcher is now a member of Votevets.org, a group that promotes
political candidates, particularly veterans who are critical of the
Bush administration's Iraq war policies.
That shift in Fletcher's view may reflect a broader trend in the
military about dissent. The Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll finds
that 58 percent of military families -- the same margin as the overall
population -- believe it is appropriate for retired military personnel
to criticize Bush even in a time of war.
Separately, the poll also finds that almost half of Americans would
support some form of military action against Iran over its nuclear
program. The survey was conducted before the Bush administration
released an intelligence assessment this week that concluded Iran
halted nuclear-weapons development in 2003. The report has prompted a
fresh round of criticism by Democrats of Bush's stance that Iran is a
growing threat to the U.S. and its allies.
To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Stern in Washington
at cstern3 @ bloomberg.net .
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