Jim Webb Gets It

Webb has a new TV ad and it’s terrific. It effectively conflates Bush and Allen and their “stay the course” theme for Iraq. But more important and effective is that the candidate himself delivers the message and does so in an authoritative manner. I think in today's climate, where voters are looking for responsibility, candidates who deliver the message themselves win a lot of votes. Best of all, he delivers a succinct message that, for the life of me, I don’t understand why it hasn’t become the mantra for Democrats this year: “The people who failed to prevent this disaster are not the ones you can count on to fix it.”

The Bush administration also likes to say that critics of the Iraq War are Monday morning quarterbacks. “Let’s not play the ‘blame game’,” they say. One, that belies their mantra about others who should accept responsibility for their actions. You’ve often heard that from conservatives vis-à-vis welfare recipients. They should take responsibility for their actions, but the president won’t accept responsibility for his. But also, as Webb says, given the monumental disaster that Bush’s foreign policy has been and the outlandish costs, destruction of America’s integrity and loss of life, that we shouldn’t expect this gang that can’t shoot straight to get us out of this quagmire.

Another point I think needs to be addressed is this spin that comes from the Bush administration that we all thought Iraq had WMD. I heard it last night from Fran Townsend, assistant to the president for homeland security, who said,

What I‘m saying is, the intelligence that was provided in the NIE suggesting that Iraq was a threat to the region and to the world, was believed on by—on both sides of the aisle, that formed the basis of our going into Iraq. The intelligence turned out to be wrong. That said, we are safer as a result of not having Saddam Hussein in power.

The only reason “both sides of the aisle” believed there were WMD is because the Democrats only knew what the administration told them and what they told them was wrong, some say a lie. Either way, you can't say with any intellectual honesty that both sides believed in the WMD charge.

Comments

[Brian]

We're going in circles. See my first 9/28 comment.

[Bob]

And my point is that Clinton didn't enflame the Middle East as did Bush.

[Brian]

My point was that Clinton did nothing to calm the Middle East.

[Bob]

It calmed the Middle East?

[Brian]

Yeah, Brian, I guess the Iraqi War really calmed the Middle East, huh?

It calmed the Middle East about as much as anything Clinton did (or didn't do.)

The Middle East was plenty inflamed as it was. Anything that might spark long-term change there is probably worth thinking about if not doing.

[Bob]

Yeah, Brian, I guess the Iraqi War really calmed the Middle East, huh?

[Brian]

Whatever the reasons for the letter -- and I'm sure you can tell me all the details -- the difference between the two adminsitrations is that Clinton didn't lead us into a war that has destroyed our moral foundations, made our world a lot more dangerous, inflamed the Middle East and cost at least 20 times the number of lives lost on 9/11.

Neither did President Bush. Tha last point may be close, however.

[Brian]

The only reason “both sides of the aisle” believed there were WMD is because the Democrats only knew what the administration told them and what they told them was wrong, some say a lie. Either way, you can't say with any intellectual honesty that both sides believed in the WMD charge.

I was responding to the above passage from your post. I should have quoted it in my earlier post.

[Bob]

I'm familiar with neither the letter nor the circumstances under which it was written.

However, what's your point?

If it is, as so many on the right like to suggest, that if a Democrat before them made a mistake or had bad intelligence, that somehow justifies this administration's colossal failure in Iraq, where there is ample evidence that it deliberately misrepresented the facts.

Whatever the reasons for the letter -- and I'm sure you can tell me all the details -- the difference between the two adminsitrations is that Clinton didn't lead us into a war that has destroyed our moral foundations, made our world a lot more dangerous, inflamed the Middle East and cost at least 20 times the number of lives lost on 9/11.

If you think that that means both sides are eqaully culpable, you have some strange more scales.

[Brian]

Here's the last graf of letter that some Senators wrote to the President:

"We urge you, after consulting with Congress and consistent with the US Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions, including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
-Letter to President Clinton Signed by Senators Levin, Lieberman, Lautenberg, Dodd, Kerrey, Feinstein, Mikulski, Daschle, Breaux, Johnson, Inouye, Landrieu, Ford and Kerry on October 9th, 1998

I suppose they were misled by the Clinton Administration.