Politics

According to the usual anonymous sources… Bush administration officials say regime change in Iraq had been U.S. policy since 1998, when President Clinton was in office, and insist removing Saddam by force was a last resort. This will come as a surprise to John Bolton, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz — some of whom, I believe, have a role in the Bush administration. They may even be Bush administration officials. If they are to be trusted, Clinton “failed to provide sound leadership” and was “unwilling either to adopt policies that would remove Saddam or sustain the credibility of its own policy of containment.” In fact, he “placed us on a path that will inevitably free Saddam Hussein from all effective constraints.”

The killer combo is the War College report on the foolhardiness of war on Iraq plus the unsurprising revelation that Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq from day one. The first story confirms that Iraq is a distraction from the dangers of Al Qaeda. The second story explains why Bush would allow himself to be distracted. It’s time to give up on the claim that Bush knows things we don’t about Iraq’s danger to the United States. ...

For your contemplation, I offer a letter from a soldier in Iraq (original).

Say what you will about Dean’s mythical temper (Real Video, will likely go away soonish), but I can’t see how he was out of line here. You get up at a Democrat’s stump speech, you call the candidate pompous and mean-mouthed, and then you try to interrupt him when he responds to you — perhaps just maybe you ought to expect to be told to sit down.

The IMF, noted tool of the socialist movement, notes that the US is looking like it might take down the world’s economy. That’s warming news.

A couple of weeks ago, the Sunday Mirror ran an article claiming that Bush and Blair were arguing. The Mirror is a tabloid and not exactly trustworthy; however, there were elements of the story which might prove true later on: Presidential advisers in Washington wanted Mr Bush to be the sole leader to make a Christmas visit to troops in Baghdad and urged Downing Street to postpone any visit. The US refused to co-operate on security arrangements for a Christmas visit by Mr Blair, who is going to spend the festive season with his family in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh. ...

The RNC wants MoveOn to apologize (original) for letting an ad comparing Bush to Hitler slip into their contest. Enh. I don’t particularly think MoveOn needs to apologize; they can if they want to, and people can form whatever opinion they care to form as a result of that decision. The only person who has the right to ask for an apology here is Bush. Last time I heard, he was a big boy, and surely doesn’t need us to act on his behalf. After all, cowboys do their own work. ...

“There’s a hell of a lot of suffering and ‘injustice’ in the world, but no one besides Muslim Arabs (and non-Arab Muslims they’ve recruited) seem to be responding in this way.” Ah, Steven (original). Shining Path, Aum Shinrikyo, FARC, the Basque terrorist groups, Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the Tigers of Tamil, 17 November, and of course our own homegrown militia groups. Oh yeah. And I heard there was some kind of terrorist group operating out of Ireland these days. ...

Phil Carter notes new rules for military tribunals (original) (PDF), including a right of review, and does a far better job of analyzing them than I would. So go read him (original).

Hey, look: more right-wing cop-killers (original). But remember, it’s the left which is the problem. Arthur Bixby is just another exception. Edit: I’m going to expand on this, because I jotted it off a bit too quickly. If you look at Bixby’s history (original), you’ve got a pretty iconoclastic guy who doesn’t respect the legitimacy of the United States government. The problem is the violence. The other problem is the strange alternative government people like Bixby make up. Being an anarchist is one thing; inventing new rules and expecting people to live under them is another. ...