Bush, Rumsfeld have both said there will not be a draft. Rumsfeld in particular has always been ann advocate of smaller, higher-tech military rather than a mass of conscripts.
However I think it is a fair question to ask of Kerry. Although he has stated that he is against a draft he vowed in his acceptance speech to increase the number of soldiers by 40,000. Meanwhile his Democratic allies in the senate have introduced a bill to reinstate the draft.
I suppose you could argue that Kerry isn't serious about the additional 40,000 troops and that the Democrats in congress are only kidding. Still... if the draft comes up as an issue in the campaign it's only fair that the party actively introducing bills to that effect in congress and running on increasing the number of active duty personnel should be the one answering this question.
Is it your argument that Saddam Hussein would have slain 10,000 more people in this time period?
Not necessarily, though there were time-spans of similar length in which he slew a great many more. I don't think an argument about casualties in a single, essentially arbitrary time-span without consideration of future or past is legitimate. Consider the case of the passengers on flight 93... their actions resulted in the deaths of 40 people as an immediate consequence. Would it be legitimate to criticize them because if they hadn't acted there wouldn't have been 40 deaths "in that time period"? Of course not.
You can, and should, make the argument that no likely consequences merited the war we waged. But the number of casualties in a single "time period" without regard to the future consequences is a red herring.
With our proven experience in successfully occupying other countries (Germany, Japan), why did we stumble so badly in Iraq?
The true answer that W can't say: Because we bombed those two countries into the stone-age killing many millions of civilians and obliterating their entire infrastructure... for the most part they had no more will to fight... Just relief that the fighting was finally over.
In Japan there is also the reason that they had an emperor. A symbol of ultimate authority who surrendered and we co-opted putting ending the legitimacy of any insurgency.
In Germany a year into it the occupation was a "failure" with extreme poverty & suffering, millions of refugees, widespread resentment of the occupation, an active Nazi resistance, which staged guerrilla attacks into 1947. There was no approved plan for reconstruction. There was debate over competing plans ranging from the rejected, harshly punitive Morgenthau plan to the ultimately adopted and successful Marshal Plan which was launched in 1948 three years after the occupation began. Up until that point there was no plan and no effective reconstruction.
I rather doubt that Iraq will ever be the kind of success that Germany is. But only one year into the occupation we are pretty closely tracking our "success" in Germany. Should elections actually take place we would be years ahead of our experience in Germany (at least as far as political reform goes). Should we manage to spend some of that ear-marked reconstruction money we would be a couple years ahead on that count as well.
If drugs ever are legalized it will be done by Republicans. There are plenty of conservative intellectuals that have advocated decriminalization for a long time. The ideological groundwork has been laid. This isn't the case on the left which seems to be trending in the other direction - pushing for de facto criminalization of tobacco, fatty foods etc.
Second is the public perception. Republicans are the party of conservative morals and of "law and order" have their political flank covered. The same sort of dynamic that said: "only Nixon could go to China."
Another point. Perhaps there is growing disillusionment among those taking casualties. But Iraq as bad as it now is, is not that bloody a conflict by any historical standard. In 1966 when U.S. forces were in Vietnam at same number as what we have now in Iraq the death rate was 16 soldiers per day. We had been there longer at that point while things were going from bad to worse, and it still took a few more years of that level of fruitless struggle before the disillusionment truly set in.
This is the scary ghost that haunts Iraq. I'm sure every soldier has that "quagmire" possibility in his mind. But it is premature to label it as such yet. There have been profound setbacks, the Sunni uprising is escalating and growing in sophistication, there is a new indigenous Shiite uprising, there is interference from both foreign Wahabbi islamists and Iran. But there has been some progress and signs of hope. First, the Shiite uprising is small, relatively unpopular with most shiites and opposed pretty strongly by the most powerful Shiite clerics who forced Al Sadr to withdraw from Najaf. This group remains the more serious threat since it is rooted in the large Shiite majority. Should the bulk of Shiites adopt Al Sadr's cause we are toast. Fortunately Al Sadr is seen as a rebel not only to the USA and provisional government but also to the authority of senior and more importantly *popular* Shiite clerics. The Sunni situation is a more immediate and sharper problem. But even there I think we have a pretty big stick to use. Threaten them with the reality of what would happen if we DID leave. Sunni's are a hated minority, in the long run they have more invested in peace and stability than they currently realize. Threaten them with an election among all peaceful provinces... A legitimized super-majority of Shiites with 50 years of grievances who are just reasonable enough for us to work with. Against that delegitimized Sunni's painted in American public opinion with the broad brush of radical Wahabism? I think we could convince more than a few of the more reasonable Sunni tribal leaders and politicians that the consequences of such an arrangement would be catastrophic for them.
Anecdotal evidence is interesting, but all of us tend to be in cocoons of like minded people. Remember the famous quote from New Yorker commentator Pauline Kael about Nixons record landslide victory in 1972: "I don't understand how he won. I don't know anyone who voted for Nixon". Thats because she only knows a small group of people who are mostly just like her, and in that case exceptionally unlike the sweeping majority
Polls are often wrong and skewed, but anecdotal evidence is even worse when you are talking about huge, sprawling populations with myriad subcultures. I'd imagine that Kerry will do very well with Air Force techies at Hanscom AFB, but rather less well among Marine corps officers from Alabama. Anecdotal evidence from either source will skew the perceptions. The story was about a nice big chunk of military voters. 30%-40% is a large group and will generate plenty of anecdotal evidence to those they talk to suggesting a Kerry surge in the military... but it's still only 30-40% of the total vote.
I also suspect that in your analysis you are projecting your values and beliefs onto people that do not necessarily share them. You are imagining your response, believing what you do, with the values you have if you were in their shoes. But they are not you and their thoughts informed by different presuppositions are liable to be quite different. You think about how you would feel if it was your buddies getting shot up for "no good reason" without acknowledging that no matter how much you disagree with them a lot of these guys don't see it as "no good reason". Say they've "swallowed the kool-aid" or bought the propaganda... but those poor souls suffering under that nefarious misapprehension are going to come to different conclusions that will affect their vote.
At least 80% of the time, I'd give out a flunking grade, as the answer segues into whatever talking point the politician had, and ignores the question.
I've seen why this is from the other side. The saying in campaigns is "if you don't say it they can't print it". Reporters usually go out with a predetermined storyline. They don't ask questions to get answers, they ask questions to get quotes that will fit in the story they have already decided to write. Or have in fact already written aside from the blank space for the expected quote to go in.
I've seen a politician give a long, detailed, speech on an issue filled with new policy proposals (It's rare but it happens). After the event a reporter asks a completely unrelated question about the opponent... fishing for a quote. The politician (a rookie... a medical doctor who has never run before) makes the fatal mistake of answering the question. Next day the headline is "Candidate X comes out swinging against his Opponent Y. At a speech before group A candidate X was harshly critical of..." the next six paragraphs go on about the campaign of mudslinging just launched by candidate X, candidate Y's response and it ends with a lament that nobody (particularly candidate X) is talking about the issues. I have witnessed this first hand - and saw the candidate get hell from his campaign staff for making the rookie mistake of answering questions. Days during which the candidate had hoped to talk about one issue were instead occupied with the back and forth generated by an essentially dishonest news report. Sadly this is the norm, not the exception.
Don't get me wrong, politicians shouldn't have total control over the terms of the debate. They should not dodge questions. But the questions should be honest. Journalists should report on what happens, not make things happen so that they can then report on what they engineered. All politicians have been the victims of "gotcha" ambush style journalism. They have learned to stick to their "talking points" because if you don't say anything else the press is forced to report what your are trying to communicate.
Let's suppose your theory is true. That Karl Rove is the forger. If CBS had made ANY attempt at fact checking, displayed ANY skepticism about a deeply partisan and embittered source, had even displayed some simple common sense... the evil scheme would not have worked.
These documents are NOT forgeries... they simply aren't good enough to merit that term. The "forger" didn't even try. It was done in MS word, using the default settings. The only "forging" done was to run it through the copier a few times to make it look old. If CBS had displayed any level of skepticism they would not have run with the documents.
IF your theory is true... then good for Karl Rove! Bravo! His dirty trick has inadvertantly done a great service to his nation. GWB skipping out on weekend drills in 1972 is not anywhere near as big a scandal as the kind of shoddy journalism displayed by CBS. Think about the other implications of that shoddiness! The deceptions... not just the forgeries but the exculpatory testimony left on the cutting room floor, the experts whose testimony was mischaracterized, the complete failure to follow up on suspect documents. etc. etc. etc. All this came out only because CBS put the documents up on the web where other people could examine them, and only because the forger didn't own a typwriter. What if the forger had had a brain? What about all those stories before the web when you only got a three second glimpse on the TV screen?
I can't believe the "Rove did it" story not because I don't think Rove capable of such a thing, but because he couldn't know how CBS would treat the documents. They might not have put them on the web... and then what does Rove do? How does he discredit them?
Why on earth do you imagine he is any less clueless today than he was then?
Because at least half of your perception that he came across as clueless is a result of your partisanship and is not shared by either Republicans (obviously) or undecideds. The other half, where Bush really was "clueless" was largely confined to foreign policy which is an area where Bush has focussed almost all of his attention for the last three years. That hole in his knowledge has been filled.
In a way the best help Bush is getting for the debates is from criticisms like this from the left. You set him up with an easy soft-ball, talking down his intelligence to the point where people are surprised he can pronounce his own name correctly. With that set up all he has to do is deliver a half-way informed discussion on the issues and he appears to have knocked it out of the park. Kerry on the other hand is lauded as brilliant, a master of complexity and nuance, any failure on his part is devastating since part of his argument is that he is smarter than Bush. I'm sure that will be the consensus view in Ann Arbor, San Francisco and Cambridge MA, but whether that view will be shared in Peoria is the important question.
Exactly my point. A perfectly fair knock on Bush was his lack of "intellectual curiosity" a disdain for bookish learning and abstract knowledge unrelated to his own current situation. This hurt him in 2000 because he was not terribly familiar with, or interested in foreign policy. He had "crammed" on it for the campaign and the superficiality of his understanding came through. He did markedly better on domestic issues that he was familiar with as a governor. In that case his "dumb" comments were less "dumb" but more a case of conservatives and liberals talking past each other, each seeing the other as "dumb" because they are arguing from different premises.
My point is that this time around what had been the biggest hole in Bush's knowledge in 2000 has been filled by his experiences of the past four years. I very much doubt that he will come across as ignorant as he sometimes did against Gore. Those that disagree with him of course will see him as dumb no matter what... it is the undecided voters though who's opinions count in these things.
To you your political views are self-evident. It is beyond your imagination to conceive that someone intelligent and knowledgeable could possibly hold views counter to your own. So any disagreement must be from either stupidity, ignorance or dishonesty. You push all those that disagree with you into one of those three categories. If someone honestly holds to another view they are stupid (Bush), or they have been deceived (voters). If they are obviously smart and well informed their disagreement MUST be dishonest (Rove, Rumsfeld, Perle et al). They are evil manipulators pursuing some secret agenda for which their lying ideology is only a tool for manipulation.
That sounds about right. A recent Newsweek poll had the military vote going to Bush by 58%. I don't remember what Kerry got but there was still a decent "undecided" number as well so as I said before you are talking a pretty solid Republican demographic.
I think there is a strong conservative bent even among enlisted personnel, it's just obscured by the countervailing influence of being disproportionately minority. Any group that is 46% minority (according to an NPR report I saw) but that ends up voting the roughly same as the general population is showing a strong conservative bent.
Bush proved himself to be a complete idiot in the debates
Well, he didn't come across as the sharpest knife in the drawer. But I think you are overstating it. We tend to perceive people who disagree with us as dumb. After all, how smart can they be if they don't see things that are obvious to us? I'm just guessing that you probably disagree with W so his intelligence would suffer in your perceptions no matter what. On the other hand the opposite is just as true for those on the other side of the fence so their estimation of Bush's intelligence was somewhat inflated. "Hey Bush is not very erudite, but he came to the "right" conclusion so how dumb can he be?"
Gore for his part did remarkably poorly in the debates. He came across as obnoxious. His problem was that roughly half the country either disagreed with him (Republicans) or could at least see the Republican point of view as reasonable even if they aren't fully convinced (swing voters). When Gore rolled his eyes and sighed he wasn't just mocking Bush's intelligence, but the intelligence of the voters who didn't see anything unreasonable about whatever it was Bush said (even if Bush wasn't terribly articulate in saying it). So while Gore may have won on points he managed with his little theatrics to alienate the swing voters he needed to put the election away.
As an aside. Gore never struck me as the sharpest knife in the drawer either. He's got more polysyllabic words in his vocabulary but that isn't the same thing as being smart. Between those two I think we picked two of the dumber people out of the top tier politicians in either party.
Bush & Co. have managed, quite well, to conflate the indigenous resistance in Iraq with al Qaeda
On this point they have had plenty of help from the fact that Al Queada is in fact there. Not all of the insurgents are al Queada but some are.
The nature of the war, whether it was wise, whether it makes us safer in the long run, etc. are debatable. In fact that is what the debate is about. Don't chalk up people disagreeing with your view as mere ignorance which can be cleared up by better communication. Kerry's job isn't simple - criticism only gets him so far... at some point he has to offer an alternative course of action. Once he does that his alternative course is just as subject to criticism.
Read the headline: "A Strident Minority". The same article mentions this statistic: 56% of the military is Republican. One would assume there are some independents that lean (R) as well, and with an over representation of rural southerners in the military there is probably a fair number of Democrats more along the lines of Zell Miller than John Kerry. Sure you can find a statistically significant group to write an article about. Those (maybe 25%?) that opposed the war but end up over there are obviously going to be alienated & further polarized by the experience, thus the "strident" part of the title. Democrats can try to mine this 30-40% for a few extra votes, they have an opening for some counter-intuitive outreach, but the Republicans are still going to work hard to try and get this demographic to the polls in November.
I also think that Kerry goes into these debates at a little bit of an "expectations" disadvantage. The meme is still strong out there that Bush is a blithering idiot. In 2000 there was plenty of truth to the idea that Bush lacked "intellectual curiosity" and was sometimes woefully ignorant of issues that had previously been of little interest to him (like foreign policy). But since then he has been living with these issues every day, and shaping many of them. He doesn't seem very knowledgeable about issues outside of his immediate concern, but he is perfectly capable of having a detailed, knowledgeable conversation about issues that are right in front of his face for the past four years.
I think there is a decent chance that Kerry may be the one to commit a verbal faux pas. He has made a few notable blunders in the not too distant past. If Bush manages to come of as *better* informed than Kerry, a real possibility, then Kerry is finished.
I think most of these will benefit Bush, which makes sense since for the most part they are points he won as concessions for conceding to a third debate.
#1 will NOT benefit Kerry. Everyone knows that Iraq is a mess. It's well illustrated every night on the evening news. The issue is already "priced in" to the equation - already knowing that Bush supporters are bush supporters and undecideds remain undecided. Kerry can maybe gain a bit marginally by restating the critique. His problem is that Bush's support is unified, Kerry's support is only unified in thinking Bush screwed up but NOT about exactly what should have been done instead or what should be done about it now. That's fine as long as Kerry limits himself to only criticizing Bush, but the moment he outlines his own position he risks alienating some part of his own support. Of course constant equivocation on the topic bleeds support as well and is unlikely to be sustainable during a debate. Kerry has to bite the bullet, chose whether he is a hawk with a different plan, or a dove... lose a bit of support and then try to build it back with a coherent message from here on out. Of course after months of equivocation and fuzziness he has left a bunch of statements out there Bush can use to attack him using his own words.
The other points are all pretty minor, #2, 4, 5 and 6 seem designed to prevent Bush getting ambushed. #3 seems designed to play to Bush's rhetorical style (short, blunt, sometimes witty in a folksy way, sometimes uninformed) and against Kerry's (wonkish, detailed, sometimes longwinded, given to equivocations, caveats, provisos...) If Kerry gets too wordy in the debate he'll be only half way through his point when the little light goes on.. visible to the audience, cuing them in that he has exceeded his time limit and implying that he is being rude. Bush is far less likely to fall foul of that little trap.
No, all four (six really*) are fake. They all have the same typographical anachronisms. The White House "released" all four, initially without comment. But, they made clear in response to inquiries that they were just forwarding the memos that CBS had provided to them to the other news agencies.
At worst the only Republican dirty trick you can reasonably infer from this is that after having them for a few hours they concluded they were fake and assisted CBS in gathering sufficient rope to hang themselves with.
More likely though the WH press office was simply extending a courtesy to the WH reporters present who, aside from the CBS reporter, would be unlikely to have documents that were going to be much discussed. This makes a lot of sense as part of damage control because having a bunch of aggressive reporters asking questions about "incriminating" documents that they don't actually have the text of or fully understand is a sure-fire way of getting a lot of miscommunication and misunderstandings that would result in dozens of different not-quite-right accusations in the news and dozens of fires for the press office to put out rather than just one. Better to get the one accusation out there to all of the press accurately no matter how apparently damaging.
*interesting side note: CBS actually had SIX memos, they kept two back though in the aftermath they acknowledged they had them. USA Today had also gotten all six independently from CBS. The question is why didn't they include these two in their original report? One of the document examiners they hired that spoke out against CBS had examined only one of these two unreported documents. The tin-foil hat possibility this little fact raises is the possibility that CBS had suspicions about the docs themselves but wasn't willing to nix the story so they shopped around for agreeable experts by having different experts each examine only one or two docs so that one bad opinion would only invalidate one doc rather than the whole parcel while a good report on just one could by be extended to the whole parcel as they did with Marcel Matley (who only examined two docs but was reported as having authenticated all four). The bad report came in on that one or two docs, so they were cut from the story. "Shody" doesn't begin to describe the situation if that is the case.
The story was well researched, includes a lot of interviews
No, it wasn't, and what interviews? Ben Barnes? (Kerry campaign Vice Chair and number three fund-raiser) Bill Burkett? (Democratic activist with a personal animus towards Bush who has retracted some of his past accusations). Hodges? (who claims they misrepresented what he said - given their misrepresentation of the document experts that is only too believable).
The only credible testimony is the secretary who wasn't interviewed during the "five years of research" and the original story but only came up after a local paper researched it for maybe a week. Even in her case CBS ignores any evidence (such as her own partisanship or the fact that she was a pool, not a private secretary) that undermines their predetermined storyline.
On the other side of the ledger is the interviews they chose not to include in their report. Killian's family, several of Bush's fellow pilots as well as Staudt. Certainly their testimony is just as liable to be suspect due to partisanship, personal friendships etc. But it seems more than fair to call such a report "one sided" or even "biased". The story of Bush's status as a "fortunate son" is a LOT more ambiguous than the CBS/DNC account.
Finally, i don't think that a major news organization pushing forged documents in an attempt to influence an election is a insignificant "shiny toy." I'm sure if ABC News and the Wall Street Journal pushed a major story blasting Kerry based on crudely forged documents from an "unimpeachable" source that turned out to be John O'Neill and the testimony of a Bush fundraising "Ranger" you would think it was an important issue - even if they found a secretary to confirm the documents as "fake, but accurate" (and as an aside mentioned that Kerry was a "flip-flopper" she just didn't trust)
In order to collect damages for defamation, you generally have to prove that the publishing agency acted with the clear knowledge that the information wasn't true
OR... that you display "a reckless disregard for the truth". If the testimony of the document examiners is true Bush could have a case. Bush would never sue since it would be bad politics and as a public figure he is VERY unlikely to have a case. But Staudt could sue, as could Killian's family under a law that allows the estate of a dead person to sue for libel on behalf of the deceased. (one of the memos mentions Killian committing a felony in falsifying military records by backdating a report)
Certainly such suits are very hard to win, though Killians family and Staudt as private individuals would have a better chance than Bush. Even if they would likely fail the have enough given what we know to credibly make the argument and get their day in court if they so choose.
It would be interesting what would happen if they do lawyer up. All of a sudden the considerations over at CBS would be different. The network would be more interested in covering it's own ass instead of covering Rather's. Internal documents would be subject to subpeona. That "I hate Bush" memo may actually exist for all we know, it would certainly explain some things.
Read the second half of the sentence you put in bold...as it was aired. He would still have aired the story, he just would have told it differently, still plenty of room in that statement for the "fake, but accurate" line Rather has taken in recent days.
It doesn't bother me so much that CBS was duped, but that they were so EAGER to be duped. The appearance of the documents raises red flags. The "unimpeachable" source is anything but (a very partisan Democrat with a personal animus towards Bush and towards the Texas National Guard, who has had to retract some previous accusations). The partisan nature of the other key source Ben Barnes who is a Vice Chair of, and a top fundraiser for, the Kerry campaign. I am not a big believer in "bias" but I can't imagine that Rather would have run with a similarly partisanly sourced hit piece against Kerry.
Yes. A number of "bloggers" who are also lawyers (which seems to be most of them) have looked into this idea. There are three different laws (AFIAK) that could apply.
There is a Texas law regarding falsifying government records. The fake TexANG letterhead on the forgeries qualifies these documents. Even if they were "private" memos they were the private memos of a National Guard officer in his capacity as such. One of them purports to be an official order so that one definitely qualifies.
There is a Texas forgery law regarding forgery with the intent to defraud or harm another. "Harm" is pretty broadly defined, certainly tarnishing a reputation or two (Bush, Staudt) qualifies.
Beyond those laws there is the potential for a civil suit. Bush certainly has grounds though he would never sue because of the politics of it. Staudt could sue. I believe Killian's widow and son could sue under a Texas law which allows the estate of a dead person to sue for libel on the deceased's behalf. One of the memos mentions Killian committing a felony by backdating (that is, falsifying) a government document a violation of laws number two and three above.
Finally, tangentially related, the two document analysts that came forward to ABC & the Washington Post may have a claim against CBS since in a public statements CBS said those experts "misrepresented" their communications to CBS. Given the nature of their profession the accusation that they misrepresented themselves (i.e. "lied") is a pretty serious accusation and if false is probably actionable.
It's sad to see everyone jump on the bandwagon and dunp on the French
Deriding the French is an old American pastime that we inherited from the English. From Shakespeare to Al Bundy the figure of the effete Frenchman is as engrained in our culture as "the moronity of the typical ugly American" appears to be in yours. Are such stereotypes unfair? Sure, but they also summarize conflicting cultural values that DO exist - notice how nicely the two stereotypes dovetail.
Wired had a story about their approach to technology a few years ago that was very interesting. They are NOT all-around luddites. They evaluate any technology against it's likely impact on society and reject those they believe to be negative. Phones for instance are not allowed INDOORS because they believe phones disrupt the relationships in the home by allowing anyone to interrupt at any time - phones obligate you to be rude to the people you are actually with. But phones are allowed OUTSIDE the home and are used in conjunction with voice mail and/or fax machines to facilitate communication without being ruled by it.
Also their prohibitions are not iron-clad. If they have good reasons to do so they will override their day-to-day prohibitions.
"You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir", said Alice. "Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem 'Jabberwocky'?"
"Let's hear it", said Humpty Dumpty. "I can explain all the poems that ever were invented--and a good many that haven't been invented just yet."
This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"That's enough to begin with", Humpty Dumpty interrupted: "there are plenty of hard words there. 'Brillig' means four o'clock in the afternoon--the time when you begin broiling things for dinner."
"That'll do very well", said Alice: "and 'slithy'?"
"Well, 'slithy' means 'lithe and slimy'. 'Lithe' is the same as 'active'. You see it's like a portmanteau--there are two meanings packed up into one word."
I see it now", Alice remarked thoughfully: "and what are 'toves'?"
"Well, 'toves' are something like badgers--they're something like lizards--and they're something like corkscrews."
"They must be very curious creatures."
"They are that", said Humpty Dumpty: "also they make their nests under sun-dials--also they live on cheese."
"And what's to 'gyre' and to 'gimble'?"
"To 'gyre' is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To 'gimble' is to make holes like a gimlet."
"And 'the wabe' is the grass plot round a sun-dial, I suppose?" said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity.
"Of course it is. It's called 'wabe', you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it--"
"And a long way beyond it on each side", Alice added.
"Exactly so. Well then, 'mimsy' is 'flimsy and miserable' (there's another portmanteau for you). And a 'borogove' is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round--something like a live mop."
"And then 'mome raths'?" said Alice. "If I'm not giving you too much trouble."
"Well a 'rath' is a sort of green pig, but 'mome' I'm not certain about. I think it's sort for 'from home'--meaning that they'd lost their way, you know."
"And what does 'outgrabe' mean?"
"Well, 'outgribing' is something between bellowing an whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you'll hear it done, maybe--down in the wood yonder--and when you've once heard it, you'll be quite content. Who's been repeating all that hard stuff to you?"
Slashdot Mirror
Bush, Rumsfeld have both said there will not be a draft. Rumsfeld in particular has always been ann advocate of smaller, higher-tech military rather than a mass of conscripts.
However I think it is a fair question to ask of Kerry. Although he has stated that he is against a draft he vowed in his acceptance speech to increase the number of soldiers by 40,000. Meanwhile his Democratic allies in the senate have introduced a bill to reinstate the draft.
I suppose you could argue that Kerry isn't serious about the additional 40,000 troops and that the Democrats in congress are only kidding. Still... if the draft comes up as an issue in the campaign it's only fair that the party actively introducing bills to that effect in congress and running on increasing the number of active duty personnel should be the one answering this question.
Is it your argument that Saddam Hussein would have slain 10,000 more people in this time period?
Not necessarily, though there were time-spans of similar length in which he slew a great many more. I don't think an argument about casualties in a single, essentially arbitrary time-span without consideration of future or past is legitimate. Consider the case of the passengers on flight 93... their actions resulted in the deaths of 40 people as an immediate consequence. Would it be legitimate to criticize them because if they hadn't acted there wouldn't have been 40 deaths "in that time period"? Of course not.
You can, and should, make the argument that no likely consequences merited the war we waged. But the number of casualties in a single "time period" without regard to the future consequences is a red herring.
With our proven experience in successfully occupying other countries (Germany, Japan), why did we stumble so badly in Iraq?
The true answer that W can't say: Because we bombed those two countries into the stone-age killing many millions of civilians and obliterating their entire infrastructure... for the most part they had no more will to fight... Just relief that the fighting was finally over.
In Japan there is also the reason that they had an emperor. A symbol of ultimate authority who surrendered and we co-opted putting ending the legitimacy of any insurgency.
In Germany a year into it the occupation was a "failure" with extreme poverty & suffering, millions of refugees, widespread resentment of the occupation, an active Nazi resistance, which staged guerrilla attacks into 1947. There was no approved plan for reconstruction. There was debate over competing plans ranging from the rejected, harshly punitive Morgenthau plan to the ultimately adopted and successful Marshal Plan which was launched in 1948 three years after the occupation began. Up until that point there was no plan and no effective reconstruction.
I rather doubt that Iraq will ever be the kind of success that Germany is. But only one year into the occupation we are pretty closely tracking our "success" in Germany. Should elections actually take place we would be years ahead of our experience in Germany (at least as far as political reform goes). Should we manage to spend some of that ear-marked reconstruction money we would be a couple years ahead on that count as well.
If drugs ever are legalized it will be done by Republicans. There are plenty of conservative intellectuals that have advocated decriminalization for a long time. The ideological groundwork has been laid. This isn't the case on the left which seems to be trending in the other direction - pushing for de facto criminalization of tobacco, fatty foods etc.
Second is the public perception. Republicans are the party of conservative morals and of "law and order" have their political flank covered. The same sort of dynamic that said: "only Nixon could go to China."
Another point. Perhaps there is growing disillusionment among those taking casualties. But Iraq as bad as it now is, is not that bloody a conflict by any historical standard. In 1966 when U.S. forces were in Vietnam at same number as what we have now in Iraq the death rate was 16 soldiers per day. We had been there longer at that point while things were going from bad to worse, and it still took a few more years of that level of fruitless struggle before the disillusionment truly set in.
This is the scary ghost that haunts Iraq. I'm sure every soldier has that "quagmire" possibility in his mind. But it is premature to label it as such yet. There have been profound setbacks, the Sunni uprising is escalating and growing in sophistication, there is a new indigenous Shiite uprising, there is interference from both foreign Wahabbi islamists and Iran. But there has been some progress and signs of hope. First, the Shiite uprising is small, relatively unpopular with most shiites and opposed pretty strongly by the most powerful Shiite clerics who forced Al Sadr to withdraw from Najaf. This group remains the more serious threat since it is rooted in the large Shiite majority. Should the bulk of Shiites adopt Al Sadr's cause we are toast. Fortunately Al Sadr is seen as a rebel not only to the USA and provisional government but also to the authority of senior and more importantly *popular* Shiite clerics. The Sunni situation is a more immediate and sharper problem. But even there I think we have a pretty big stick to use. Threaten them with the reality of what would happen if we DID leave. Sunni's are a hated minority, in the long run they have more invested in peace and stability than they currently realize. Threaten them with an election among all peaceful provinces... A legitimized super-majority of Shiites with 50 years of grievances who are just reasonable enough for us to work with. Against that delegitimized Sunni's painted in American public opinion with the broad brush of radical Wahabism? I think we could convince more than a few of the more reasonable Sunni tribal leaders and politicians that the consequences of such an arrangement would be catastrophic for them.
Anecdotal evidence is interesting, but all of us tend to be in cocoons of like minded people. Remember the famous quote from New Yorker commentator Pauline Kael about Nixons record landslide victory in 1972: "I don't understand how he won. I don't know anyone who voted for Nixon". Thats because she only knows a small group of people who are mostly just like her, and in that case exceptionally unlike the sweeping majority
Polls are often wrong and skewed, but anecdotal evidence is even worse when you are talking about huge, sprawling populations with myriad subcultures. I'd imagine that Kerry will do very well with Air Force techies at Hanscom AFB, but rather less well among Marine corps officers from Alabama. Anecdotal evidence from either source will skew the perceptions. The story was about a nice big chunk of military voters. 30%-40% is a large group and will generate plenty of anecdotal evidence to those they talk to suggesting a Kerry surge in the military... but it's still only 30-40% of the total vote.
I also suspect that in your analysis you are projecting your values and beliefs onto people that do not necessarily share them. You are imagining your response, believing what you do, with the values you have if you were in their shoes. But they are not you and their thoughts informed by different presuppositions are liable to be quite different. You think about how you would feel if it was your buddies getting shot up for "no good reason" without acknowledging that no matter how much you disagree with them a lot of these guys don't see it as "no good reason". Say they've "swallowed the kool-aid" or bought the propaganda... but those poor souls suffering under that nefarious misapprehension are going to come to different conclusions that will affect their vote.
At least 80% of the time, I'd give out a flunking grade, as the answer segues into whatever talking point the politician had, and ignores the question.
I've seen why this is from the other side. The saying in campaigns is "if you don't say it they can't print it". Reporters usually go out with a predetermined storyline. They don't ask questions to get answers, they ask questions to get quotes that will fit in the story they have already decided to write. Or have in fact already written aside from the blank space for the expected quote to go in.
I've seen a politician give a long, detailed, speech on an issue filled with new policy proposals (It's rare but it happens). After the event a reporter asks a completely unrelated question about the opponent... fishing for a quote. The politician (a rookie... a medical doctor who has never run before) makes the fatal mistake of answering the question. Next day the headline is "Candidate X comes out swinging against his Opponent Y. At a speech before group A candidate X was harshly critical of..." the next six paragraphs go on about the campaign of mudslinging just launched by candidate X, candidate Y's response and it ends with a lament that nobody (particularly candidate X) is talking about the issues. I have witnessed this first hand - and saw the candidate get hell from his campaign staff for making the rookie mistake of answering questions. Days during which the candidate had hoped to talk about one issue were instead occupied with the back and forth generated by an essentially dishonest news report. Sadly this is the norm, not the exception.
Don't get me wrong, politicians shouldn't have total control over the terms of the debate. They should not dodge questions. But the questions should be honest. Journalists should report on what happens, not make things happen so that they can then report on what they engineered. All politicians have been the victims of "gotcha" ambush style journalism. They have learned to stick to their "talking points" because if you don't say anything else the press is forced to report what your are trying to communicate.
Let's suppose your theory is true. That Karl Rove is the forger. If CBS had made ANY attempt at fact checking, displayed ANY skepticism about a deeply partisan and embittered source, had even displayed some simple common sense... the evil scheme would not have worked.
These documents are NOT forgeries... they simply aren't good enough to merit that term. The "forger" didn't even try. It was done in MS word, using the default settings. The only "forging" done was to run it through the copier a few times to make it look old. If CBS had displayed any level of skepticism they would not have run with the documents.
IF your theory is true... then good for Karl Rove! Bravo! His dirty trick has inadvertantly done a great service to his nation. GWB skipping out on weekend drills in 1972 is not anywhere near as big a scandal as the kind of shoddy journalism displayed by CBS. Think about the other implications of that shoddiness! The deceptions... not just the forgeries but the exculpatory testimony left on the cutting room floor, the experts whose testimony was mischaracterized, the complete failure to follow up on suspect documents. etc. etc. etc. All this came out only because CBS put the documents up on the web where other people could examine them, and only because the forger didn't own a typwriter. What if the forger had had a brain? What about all those stories before the web when you only got a three second glimpse on the TV screen?
I can't believe the "Rove did it" story not because I don't think Rove capable of such a thing, but because he couldn't know how CBS would treat the documents. They might not have put them on the web... and then what does Rove do? How does he discredit them?
Why on earth do you imagine he is any less clueless today than he was then?
Because at least half of your perception that he came across as clueless is a result of your partisanship and is not shared by either Republicans (obviously) or undecideds. The other half, where Bush really was "clueless" was largely confined to foreign policy which is an area where Bush has focussed almost all of his attention for the last three years. That hole in his knowledge has been filled.
In a way the best help Bush is getting for the debates is from criticisms like this from the left. You set him up with an easy soft-ball, talking down his intelligence to the point where people are surprised he can pronounce his own name correctly. With that set up all he has to do is deliver a half-way informed discussion on the issues and he appears to have knocked it out of the park. Kerry on the other hand is lauded as brilliant, a master of complexity and nuance, any failure on his part is devastating since part of his argument is that he is smarter than Bush. I'm sure that will be the consensus view in Ann Arbor, San Francisco and Cambridge MA, but whether that view will be shared in Peoria is the important question.
There is intelligence and there is knowledge
Exactly my point. A perfectly fair knock on Bush was his lack of "intellectual curiosity" a disdain for bookish learning and abstract knowledge unrelated to his own current situation. This hurt him in 2000 because he was not terribly familiar with, or interested in foreign policy. He had "crammed" on it for the campaign and the superficiality of his understanding came through. He did markedly better on domestic issues that he was familiar with as a governor. In that case his "dumb" comments were less "dumb" but more a case of conservatives and liberals talking past each other, each seeing the other as "dumb" because they are arguing from different premises.
My point is that this time around what had been the biggest hole in Bush's knowledge in 2000 has been filled by his experiences of the past four years. I very much doubt that he will come across as ignorant as he sometimes did against Gore. Those that disagree with him of course will see him as dumb no matter what... it is the undecided voters though who's opinions count in these things.
To you your political views are self-evident. It is beyond your imagination to conceive that someone intelligent and knowledgeable could possibly hold views counter to your own. So any disagreement must be from either stupidity, ignorance or dishonesty. You push all those that disagree with you into one of those three categories. If someone honestly holds to another view they are stupid (Bush), or they have been deceived (voters). If they are obviously smart and well informed their disagreement MUST be dishonest (Rove, Rumsfeld, Perle et al). They are evil manipulators pursuing some secret agenda for which their lying ideology is only a tool for manipulation.
That sounds about right. A recent Newsweek poll had the military vote going to Bush by 58%. I don't remember what Kerry got but there was still a decent "undecided" number as well so as I said before you are talking a pretty solid Republican demographic.
I think there is a strong conservative bent even among enlisted personnel, it's just obscured by the countervailing influence of being disproportionately minority. Any group that is 46% minority (according to an NPR report I saw) but that ends up voting the roughly same as the general population is showing a strong conservative bent.
Bush proved himself to be a complete idiot in the debates
Well, he didn't come across as the sharpest knife in the drawer. But I think you are overstating it. We tend to perceive people who disagree with us as dumb. After all, how smart can they be if they don't see things that are obvious to us? I'm just guessing that you probably disagree with W so his intelligence would suffer in your perceptions no matter what. On the other hand the opposite is just as true for those on the other side of the fence so their estimation of Bush's intelligence was somewhat inflated. "Hey Bush is not very erudite, but he came to the "right" conclusion so how dumb can he be?"
Gore for his part did remarkably poorly in the debates. He came across as obnoxious. His problem was that roughly half the country either disagreed with him (Republicans) or could at least see the Republican point of view as reasonable even if they aren't fully convinced (swing voters). When Gore rolled his eyes and sighed he wasn't just mocking Bush's intelligence, but the intelligence of the voters who didn't see anything unreasonable about whatever it was Bush said (even if Bush wasn't terribly articulate in saying it). So while Gore may have won on points he managed with his little theatrics to alienate the swing voters he needed to put the election away.
As an aside. Gore never struck me as the sharpest knife in the drawer either. He's got more polysyllabic words in his vocabulary but that isn't the same thing as being smart. Between those two I think we picked two of the dumber people out of the top tier politicians in either party.
Bush & Co. have managed, quite well, to conflate the indigenous resistance in Iraq with al Qaeda
On this point they have had plenty of help from the fact that Al Queada is in fact there. Not all of the insurgents are al Queada but some are.
The nature of the war, whether it was wise, whether it makes us safer in the long run, etc. are debatable. In fact that is what the debate is about. Don't chalk up people disagreeing with your view as mere ignorance which can be cleared up by better communication. Kerry's job isn't simple - criticism only gets him so far... at some point he has to offer an alternative course of action. Once he does that his alternative course is just as subject to criticism.
but is the military vote really republican?
Read the headline: "A Strident Minority". The same article mentions this statistic: 56% of the military is Republican. One would assume there are some independents that lean (R) as well, and with an over representation of rural southerners in the military there is probably a fair number of Democrats more along the lines of Zell Miller than John Kerry. Sure you can find a statistically significant group to write an article about. Those (maybe 25%?) that opposed the war but end up over there are obviously going to be alienated & further polarized by the experience, thus the "strident" part of the title. Democrats can try to mine this 30-40% for a few extra votes, they have an opening for some counter-intuitive outreach, but the Republicans are still going to work hard to try and get this demographic to the polls in November.
I also think that Kerry goes into these debates at a little bit of an "expectations" disadvantage. The meme is still strong out there that Bush is a blithering idiot. In 2000 there was plenty of truth to the idea that Bush lacked "intellectual curiosity" and was sometimes woefully ignorant of issues that had previously been of little interest to him (like foreign policy). But since then he has been living with these issues every day, and shaping many of them. He doesn't seem very knowledgeable about issues outside of his immediate concern, but he is perfectly capable of having a detailed, knowledgeable conversation about issues that are right in front of his face for the past four years.
I think there is a decent chance that Kerry may be the one to commit a verbal faux pas. He has made a few notable blunders in the not too distant past. If Bush manages to come of as *better* informed than Kerry, a real possibility, then Kerry is finished.
I think most of these will benefit Bush, which makes sense since for the most part they are points he won as concessions for conceding to a third debate.
#1 will NOT benefit Kerry. Everyone knows that Iraq is a mess. It's well illustrated every night on the evening news. The issue is already "priced in" to the equation - already knowing that Bush supporters are bush supporters and undecideds remain undecided. Kerry can maybe gain a bit marginally by restating the critique. His problem is that Bush's support is unified, Kerry's support is only unified in thinking Bush screwed up but NOT about exactly what should have been done instead or what should be done about it now. That's fine as long as Kerry limits himself to only criticizing Bush, but the moment he outlines his own position he risks alienating some part of his own support. Of course constant equivocation on the topic bleeds support as well and is unlikely to be sustainable during a debate. Kerry has to bite the bullet, chose whether he is a hawk with a different plan, or a dove... lose a bit of support and then try to build it back with a coherent message from here on out. Of course after months of equivocation and fuzziness he has left a bunch of statements out there Bush can use to attack him using his own words.
The other points are all pretty minor, #2, 4, 5 and 6 seem designed to prevent Bush getting ambushed. #3 seems designed to play to Bush's rhetorical style (short, blunt, sometimes witty in a folksy way, sometimes uninformed) and against Kerry's (wonkish, detailed, sometimes longwinded, given to equivocations, caveats, provisos...) If Kerry gets too wordy in the debate he'll be only half way through his point when the little light goes on.. visible to the audience, cuing them in that he has exceeded his time limit and implying that he is being rude. Bush is far less likely to fall foul of that little trap.
No, all four (six really*) are fake. They all have the same typographical anachronisms. The White House "released" all four, initially without comment. But, they made clear in response to inquiries that they were just forwarding the memos that CBS had provided to them to the other news agencies.
At worst the only Republican dirty trick you can reasonably infer from this is that after having them for a few hours they concluded they were fake and assisted CBS in gathering sufficient rope to hang themselves with.
More likely though the WH press office was simply extending a courtesy to the WH reporters present who, aside from the CBS reporter, would be unlikely to have documents that were going to be much discussed. This makes a lot of sense as part of damage control because having a bunch of aggressive reporters asking questions about "incriminating" documents that they don't actually have the text of or fully understand is a sure-fire way of getting a lot of miscommunication and misunderstandings that would result in dozens of different not-quite-right accusations in the news and dozens of fires for the press office to put out rather than just one. Better to get the one accusation out there to all of the press accurately no matter how apparently damaging.
*interesting side note: CBS actually had SIX memos, they kept two back though in the aftermath they acknowledged they had them. USA Today had also gotten all six independently from CBS. The question is why didn't they include these two in their original report? One of the document examiners they hired that spoke out against CBS had examined only one of these two unreported documents. The tin-foil hat possibility this little fact raises is the possibility that CBS had suspicions about the docs themselves but wasn't willing to nix the story so they shopped around for agreeable experts by having different experts each examine only one or two docs so that one bad opinion would only invalidate one doc rather than the whole parcel while a good report on just one could by be extended to the whole parcel as they did with Marcel Matley (who only examined two docs but was reported as having authenticated all four). The bad report came in on that one or two docs, so they were cut from the story. "Shody" doesn't begin to describe the situation if that is the case.
The story was well researched, includes a lot of interviews
No, it wasn't, and what interviews? Ben Barnes? (Kerry campaign Vice Chair and number three fund-raiser) Bill Burkett? (Democratic activist with a personal animus towards Bush who has retracted some of his past accusations). Hodges? (who claims they misrepresented what he said - given their misrepresentation of the document experts that is only too believable).
The only credible testimony is the secretary who wasn't interviewed during the "five years of research" and the original story but only came up after a local paper researched it for maybe a week. Even in her case CBS ignores any evidence (such as her own partisanship or the fact that she was a pool, not a private secretary) that undermines their predetermined storyline.
On the other side of the ledger is the interviews they chose not to include in their report. Killian's family, several of Bush's fellow pilots as well as Staudt. Certainly their testimony is just as liable to be suspect due to partisanship, personal friendships etc. But it seems more than fair to call such a report "one sided" or even "biased". The story of Bush's status as a "fortunate son" is a LOT more ambiguous than the CBS/DNC account.
Finally, i don't think that a major news organization pushing forged documents in an attempt to influence an election is a insignificant "shiny toy." I'm sure if ABC News and the Wall Street Journal pushed a major story blasting Kerry based on crudely forged documents from an "unimpeachable" source that turned out to be John O'Neill and the testimony of a Bush fundraising "Ranger" you would think it was an important issue - even if they found a secretary to confirm the documents as "fake, but accurate" (and as an aside mentioned that Kerry was a "flip-flopper" she just didn't trust)
In order to collect damages for defamation, you generally have to prove that the publishing agency acted with the clear knowledge that the information wasn't true
OR... that you display "a reckless disregard for the truth". If the testimony of the document examiners is true Bush could have a case. Bush would never sue since it would be bad politics and as a public figure he is VERY unlikely to have a case. But Staudt could sue, as could Killian's family under a law that allows the estate of a dead person to sue for libel on behalf of the deceased. (one of the memos mentions Killian committing a felony in falsifying military records by backdating a report)
Certainly such suits are very hard to win, though Killians family and Staudt as private individuals would have a better chance than Bush. Even if they would likely fail the have enough given what we know to credibly make the argument and get their day in court if they so choose.
It would be interesting what would happen if they do lawyer up. All of a sudden the considerations over at CBS would be different. The network would be more interested in covering it's own ass instead of covering Rather's. Internal documents would be subject to subpeona. That "I hate Bush" memo may actually exist for all we know, it would certainly explain some things.
Read the second half of the sentence you put in bold ...as it was aired. He would still have aired the story, he just would have told it differently, still plenty of room in that statement for the "fake, but accurate" line Rather has taken in recent days.
It doesn't bother me so much that CBS was duped, but that they were so EAGER to be duped. The appearance of the documents raises red flags. The "unimpeachable" source is anything but (a very partisan Democrat with a personal animus towards Bush and towards the Texas National Guard, who has had to retract some previous accusations). The partisan nature of the other key source Ben Barnes who is a Vice Chair of, and a top fundraiser for, the Kerry campaign. I am not a big believer in "bias" but I can't imagine that Rather would have run with a similarly partisanly sourced hit piece against Kerry.
Oops, regarding Killian's families potential to sue the last sentence should read "...laws number ONE and three above"
Yes. A number of "bloggers" who are also lawyers (which seems to be most of them) have looked into this idea. There are three different laws (AFIAK) that could apply.
- There is a Texas law regarding falsifying government records. The fake TexANG letterhead on the forgeries qualifies these documents. Even if they were "private" memos they were the private memos of a National Guard officer in his capacity as such. One of them purports to be an official order so that one definitely qualifies.
- There is a Texas forgery law regarding forgery with the intent to defraud or harm another. "Harm" is pretty broadly defined, certainly tarnishing a reputation or two (Bush, Staudt) qualifies.
- If the culprit is subject to the UCMJ there is a forged military documents law.
l got this from www.indcjournal.comBeyond those laws there is the potential for a civil suit. Bush certainly has grounds though he would never sue because of the politics of it. Staudt could sue. I believe Killian's widow and son could sue under a Texas law which allows the estate of a dead person to sue for libel on the deceased's behalf. One of the memos mentions Killian committing a felony by backdating (that is, falsifying) a government document a violation of laws number two and three above.
Finally, tangentially related, the two document analysts that came forward to ABC & the Washington Post may have a claim against CBS since in a public statements CBS said those experts "misrepresented" their communications to CBS. Given the nature of their profession the accusation that they misrepresented themselves (i.e. "lied") is a pretty serious accusation and if false is probably actionable.
It's sad to see everyone jump on the bandwagon and dunp on the French
Deriding the French is an old American pastime that we inherited from the English. From Shakespeare to Al Bundy the figure of the effete Frenchman is as engrained in our culture as "the moronity of the typical ugly American" appears to be in yours. Are such stereotypes unfair? Sure, but they also summarize conflicting cultural values that DO exist - notice how nicely the two stereotypes dovetail.
Wired had a story about their approach to technology a few years ago that was very interesting. They are NOT all-around luddites. They evaluate any technology against it's likely impact on society and reject those they believe to be negative. Phones for instance are not allowed INDOORS because they believe phones disrupt the relationships in the home by allowing anyone to interrupt at any time - phones obligate you to be rude to the people you are actually with. But phones are allowed OUTSIDE the home and are used in conjunction with voice mail and/or fax machines to facilitate communication without being ruled by it.
Also their prohibitions are not iron-clad. If they have good reasons to do so they will override their day-to-day prohibitions.