More Unsurprising News

Since we are noting the obvious today (yes we are in a recession), here's something else that won't surprise anyone:

Bush Says He was 'Unprepared for War', by Steve Bennen: We've heard Bush express some various regrets in recent years, but I think this one is a first.

Looking back on his eight years in the White House, President George W. Bush pinpointed incorrect intelligence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction as "biggest regret of all the presidency."

"I think I was unprepared for war," Bush told ABC News' Charlie Gibson in an interview airing today on "World News."

"In other words, I didn't campaign and say, 'Please vote for me, I'll be able to handle an attack,'" he said. "In other words, I didn't anticipate war. Presidents -- one of the things about the modern presidency is that the unexpected will happen." ...

The president added, "I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess." Asked if he would have gone to war if he knew Iraq did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, Bush said, "That is a do-over that I can't do." ...

Nah, there was nothing in the 2000 election about Bush being strong on national defense:

In the 2000 election George W. Bush, who had shirked military service, succeeded in presenting himself as more reliable on national security than Al Gore. This was despite Gore's service in Vietnam, his seven years on the Senate Armed Services Committee, his four years on the House Intelligence Committee, his help in brokering a deal to dismantle the nuclear arsenal of former Soviet republics, and his creation of binational commissions with Russia, South Africa, Egypt, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine to deal with issues ranging from AIDS to disarmament.

He didn't say the exact words "Please vote for me, I'll be able to handle an attack," that's true, but he certainly implied it:

Bush's 2000 Acceptance Speech: ...We will give our military ... a commander-in-chief who ... earns their respect. A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam: When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming.

I will work to reduce nuclear weapons and nuclear tension..., my administration will deploy missile defenses to guard against attack and blackmail. Now is the time not to defend outdated treaties but to defend the American people.

By his own admission, he got fooled by false evidence, evidence he wanted to believe in so he did, then he went to war based upon that evidence even though he was not prepared to do so.  But as I said, we are noting the obvious today. [Update: comments say what is obvious is that he knew the evidence was false, but used it anyway.]

Update: Thinking it over, what were they prepared for? War? Hurricanes? An economic crisis? And worse, in every case, even after the event occurred they seemed to have great trouble coming up with a plan of action, let alone having plans ready in advance. Broadly, and again obviously, they were unprepared to govern.

Comments

[Bruce Wilder]

Bush lied.

[ken melvin]

He thought of himself as being born to the manor. What else could've mattered?

[Curmudgeon]

This smells a lot like the right wing's claim that Reagan couldn't have possibly had anything to do with Iran-Contra because he was too mentally incompetent to understand what his underlings were doing. Being mentally incompetent or stupid enough to 'get fooled by bad evidence' is not a defense. It is rather an indictment of unsuitability for office.

[memory]

"I think I was unprepared for war,". How nice that he finally noticed.

Bruce Wilder, above, is right. Bush wasn't fooled by the evidence; he faked the evidence.

[Patricia Shannon]

And what does this say about those whose wealth put these people in power. They are simply traitors.

[oops]

He didn't say he was fooled by the evidence. He said he wishes it had been different. There is a difference. He wanted the biggest part of the war's marketing campaign to be true. That does not mean that is why he wante the war.

Wars are fought for strategic reasons and sold to the populace on simplistic terms. That holds for democracies as well as dicatorships.

Bush was just the first president to face large scale broadband access by his voters.

It should be interesting to see how all of the new experts on foreign policy fare when they learn the term neo-lib. That is who will be taking over for the neo-cons.

He is a hint. When Pres. Clinton and Albright wanted to do Kosovo they came up with a bunch of mass grave stories that totalled over 10K. The UN wouldn't approve so NATO became the benchmark. When the FBI sent teams over to find the bodily remains they found virtually nothing.

He is another hint. Sec States Albright and Rice are reported to lunch together frequently.

Here is a third. Dana Priest (pulitzer winner for breaking the roving secret prisons of the cia) wrote in her '04 book that Pres. Clinton wanted to invade Iraq and ordered that fighter pilots been sent in harms way so that he could justify an Iraq war. She is no neo-con apologist. There has been virtually no critism of going to Iraq by former pres. Clinton. Please find and post some if you have any.

So you guys make sure you keep up that foreign policy interest. The next 8 years will be a nice learning experience for you.

[Bill Jefferys]

Agreed, Bruce Wilder is right.

And, thanks to Paul O'Neill, we know that Bush was itching to take out Saddam Hussein well before 9/11. This puts the lie to his lies.

[OhNoNotAgain]

I'm going to second (third ?) Bruce's assertion. Bush and Cheney both knew that what they were saying about the WMDs was 100% fiction.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Wow, oops. I can't say I've read anything more despicable here before. What a pile of crap. In your little warped world, the fact that a third party claims that Clinton wanted war with Iraq is equivalent to Bush *actually invading Iraq* and causing the loss of 4000+ American lives and possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

[Beezer]

First, I want to note I'm a Democrat who voted for Obama. I think the Republican's ideology re: economics was incredibly flawed.

But this Iraq baloney bothers me. First, no one foresaw 9/11. Second, Saddam had used weapons of mass destruction previously. No one knows where they went, yet. Everyone knows they were there.

And what would have happened had we not gone into Iraq? No one knows. To assume everything would have been hunky dory is simply BS. What if Iran had closed the Hormuz Straight with no US troops nearby to deter them? And by the way, what's it going to cost when Iran does close the Hormuz Straight once we're gone?

Ever try to mobilize a fighting force to protect American interests overseas while the Hormuz is closed? Think it's cheaper than already having troops there?

This is not meant as a defense of Bush, so much as it's meant to point out that the unknown is unknown, and anyone who pretends to know what "would have happened" is totally full of BS.

So cut the cr**p. We still don't know what's going to happen in that tinderbox called the Middle East. No one does. Bush made his decisions and we know what happened, so far. Beyond that no one has a clue.

Sort of like economics.

[bruce Humbert]

Where do I go to get these 20-20 hindsight glasses that you idiots all have - and why was I passed up the first time around?

Since you all are so convinced Bush lied then why is Obama not pulling our troops out in his first 90 days?

When will we see is deep defense cuts - and why all those recycled Clintonians in his administration...

Simpletons

[Patricia Shannon]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28001417/

Associated Press updated 1 hour, 38 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.

“Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories,” California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

“These mortgages have been considered more safe and sound for portfolio lenders than many fixed rate mortgages,” David Schneider, home loan president of Washington Mutual, told federal regulators in early 2006. Two years later, WaMu became the largest bank failure in U.S. history.

The administration’s blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of a philosophy that trusted market forces and discounted the need for government intervention in the economy. Its belief ironically has ushered in the most massive government intervention since the 1930s.

“We’re going to be feeling the effects of the regulators’ failure to address these mortgages for the next several years,” said Kevin Stein of the California Reinvestment Coalition, who warned regulators to tighten lending rules before it was too late.

Many of the banks that fought to undermine the proposals by some regulators are now either out of business or accepting billions in federal aid to recover from a mortgage crisis they insisted would never come. Many executives remain in high-paying jobs, even after their assurances were proved false.

In 2005, faced with ominous signs the housing market was in jeopardy, bank regulators proposed new guidelines for banks writing risky loans. Today, in the midst of the worst housing recession in a generation, the proposal reads like a list of what-ifs:

* Regulators told bankers exotic mortgages were often inappropriate for buyers with bad credit.
* Banks would have been required to increase efforts to verify that buyers actually had jobs and could afford houses.
* Regulators proposed a cap on risky mortgages so a string of defaults wouldn’t be crippling.
* Banks that bundled and sold mortgages were told to be sure investors knew exactly what they were buying.
* Regulators urged banks to help buyers make responsible decisions and clearly advise them that interest rates might skyrocket and huge payments might be due sooner than expected.

Those proposals all were stripped from the final rules. None required congressional approval or the president’s signature.

[bakho]

"Thinking it over, what were they prepared for?"

Looting the treasury. I thought it was obvious.

[Carolyn Kay]

Bush told his biographer before he became president that he wanted to attack Iraq.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1028-01.htm

What a liar.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

[Beezer]

OK, I've vented re: Iraq. On to other questions.

Why am I not reading posts about the economics of transforming our energy infrastructure?

Physicist Bartlett's question was, basically, we have two potentially wrong answers so which one do we choose? One assumes unlimited resources, one assumes finite resources. Bartlett believed one should assume finite resources because, if that was wrong, less harm would come from choosing the finite course versus the infinite one, if in fact resources were infinite.

Am I at the wrong blog? Are all the economists posting here unconcerned about the fundamental question of our age?

Why don't we price fossil fuels at the price which would provide renewable, clean energy? What are the economic impacts of such a policy? At $50 per barrel oil, that would impose a significant tax on oil in order to accomodate the future cost of energy reformation, would it not?

What are the economic impacts here? Anyone got a Phd in that?

What are the economic impacts of forcing 100% recycling, and 100% use of negawatts? Anyone got a Phd in that?

I admire those who post here. Plenty of smarts and erudition. I just can't help wondering if we've been teaching the right things. Or if we have, this knowledge is being applied to the right problems.

Can anyone help me here? Can anyone point me to the economists who are working on these incredibly important issues?

[OhNoNotAgain]

"Second, Saddam had used weapons of mass destruction previously. No one knows where they went, yet. Everyone knows they were there."

Except that they weren't there. And that is exactly what the inspectors (and the Iraqis) were saying *before* we went in.

"And what would have happened had we not gone into Iraq?"

What the hell does one thing have to do with the other ? Are you implying that Iraq was some sort of master-stroke to prevent the ascendancy of Iran ? Newsflash: the Iraq War has done more to further the goals of the radicals in Iran and Al Quaeda than any of them could have accomplished on their own.

"Since you all are so convinced Bush lied then why is Obama not pulling our troops out in his first 90 days?"

Can we at least get somebody with some logic to comment from the other side ?

[OhNoNotAgain]

Damnit, I knew I typed that wrong: Al Qaeda

[Lee A. Arnold]

Beezer: "no one foresaw 9/11"

"There were lots of warnings." -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (Parade Magazine interview, Defense Department Website, Oct 12, 2001)

"They don't have any excuse because the information was in their lap, and they didn't do anything to prevent it." -- Senator Richard Shelby, member of the joint intelligence committee investigating 9/11 ("Another Dot That Didn't Get Connected," San Francisco Chronicle , June 3, 2002).

"I don't believe any longer that it's a matter of connecting the dots. I think they had a veritable blueprint, and we want to know why they didn't act on it." -- Senator Arlen Specter, emerging from the same Senate intelligence hearings ("FBI, CIA Brass in a Sling," New York Daily News , June 6, 2002).

"[T]he least understandable argument of all is the line first used by Rice in May of 2002, that no one could have foreseen that terrorists would hijack airplanes and crash-fly them into buildings. It is especially odd coming from the coordination person in the White House. . . It is also odd coming from the official who had an administration plan for actions against Al Qaeda on her desk on the day of the attacks." -- Thomas Oliphant ("Prejudging the 9/11 report," the Boston Globe , Dec. 21, 2002)

"US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. . . . It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with airplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House." -- former British environment minister Michael Meacher, ("This War on Terrorism is Bogus," The Guardian, Sept. 6, 2003)

"As each day goes by we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before September 11th than it has ever admitted." -- Former Senator and 9/11 commissioner Max Cleland ("9/11 Commission Could Subpoena Oval Office Files," The New York Times , Oct. 26, 2003)

"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done. This was not something that had to happen." -- 9/11 head Thomas Kean, ("9/11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable," CBS News, Dec. 18, 2003)

And we now know that the 9/11 commission did not get all the evidence they requested, and that some of the commissioners no longer believe the official story...

[Beezer]

Re: Patricia Shannon.

Not to be picky, but visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs and watch this video. It's not the Republicans squawking about more regulation of mortgage lending, it's the Democrats. Point it, there's plenty of blame to spread around for both parties.

[Beezer]

re: OhNoNotAgain:
They actually used them, for heaven's sake. That they "disappeared" once it looked like we were going to bring the party down is what, surprising?

Re: Lee A. Arnold I'm an expert in political spin. Done plenty of it in my time. Citing post mortem finger pointing as fact is nothing but political spin. The unexciting truth is the President sits down at the White House and listens to his "experts" (the White House is plastered with Phd's in everything). It really isn't any more complicated than that. If they'd had any clue that 9/11 was about to happen, they'd have acted. To suggest anything else (like my experts are better than yours) is juvenile. You should have outgrown this long ago.

[odograph]

I think he wants us to forget the Downing Street Memos, and intelligence fixed around policy.

[ken melvin]

Guy De Maupassant: "I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing."

Sinatra: "... I've had quite a few."

Miss Piggy; "Moi?"

[Lee A. Arnold]

Beezer, you just disqualified yourself as an "expert in political spin." Why would Republican senators spin it? The rest of your comment is called "argument from authority," and as for "juvenile?" YOU are the authority you are citing!

[Beezer]

"What the hell does one thing have to do with the other ? Are you implying that Iraq was some sort of master-stroke to prevent the ascendancy of Iran ? Newsflash: the Iraq War has done more to further the goals of the radicals in Iran and Al Quaeda than any of them could have accomplished on their own."

Not sure. Why don't you find the few Al Qaeda still alive in Iraq and ask them?

[Beezer]

Beezer, you just disqualified yourself as an "expert in political spin." Why would Republican senators spin it? The rest of your comment is called "argument from authority," and as for "juvenile?" YOU are the authority you are citing!

Let's see. What was Senator Hillary saying recently about Obama?

Not "argument from authority" but "argument from experience."

Don't misunderstand. I don't agree with Bush's policies re: Irag or our economy. My point is not to learn the wrong lessons. Ideology is important. That it informs analysis is a fact. But ideology doesn't really change the facts at any given point in time.

To assert a series of events that didn't actually happen, is merely conjecture. Like what would have happened had we not gone into Iraq and overthrown that Dictator. Or what would have happend had we not nuked Hiroshima.

It may make you feel better by pointing a finger of "blame" on anyone at any given time. You can do that. What you absolutely cannot do is assume events otherwise. Just a guess on your part, which is fine. But please don't try to pass it off as fact to a Beezer (old geezer and bastard).

[X Man]

Saddam was well boxed in all through the late 90s and into early 2003. He posed no imminent threat to anyone outside his borders. Iraq's economy was on the ropes and he couldn't fart in the no-fly zone without us knowing about it. There's absolutely no reason we couldn't have tightened the screws on him over the next few years and eventually negotiated some sort of deal (a la Libya) that removed the threat and improved the human rights situation. Instead we started an unnecesary war and you know the rest.

[Patricia Shannon]

We had military planes based in Iraq before the start of the war, for goodness sakes. The U.N. inspectors kept finding nothing. What real reason was there to attack at that time, especially when we were already fighting in Afghanistan?

[memory]

"Second, Saddam had used weapons of mass destruction previously."

The phrase "weapons of mass destruction" is one of my pet peeves. It's a rhetorical device intended to associate poison gas with nuclear weapons in horror.
This is a false equation. Nuclear weapons are so much more destructive than anything else that they are in a class of their own.

[Lee A. Arnold]

Beezer, Now you're claiming argument from experience? I didn't blame anybody. (The attackers are to blame.) You wrote, "no one foresaw 9/11." From statements by Senators after a closed door hearing by the Intelligence committee, and by statements from respected public servants on the 9/11 commission, as well as other evidence which can be adduced, that is demonstrably false. Are you talking about the date, the time?

[benamery21]

Umm folks. 9/11 almost happened in 1993. We just got lucky that it took until 2001 for them to get it right. It could happen again, any day. You can't stop terrorism in a free society. It isn't possible. Quibbling about who knew what when or whether a specific attack could have been blunted is stupid. Attackers only have to get it right once. Defenders have to get it right every time.

I wish to live in a free society. The tiny extra fraction of death risk is the price of freedom. The price of freedom is NOT giving up that freedom in the name of safety and security or taking it away from others under whatever pretext is current today. I hope that our new government makes those choices as befits the "leaders of the free world". If not, we'll give it another shot in 4 years.

BTW: BUSH LIES. There is no past tense necessary. I have on credible (sources personally known to me) authority first-hand reports (before the war started) that Bush told prominent Republican donors before the 2000 election that we would go to war in Iraq in his first term while simultaneously portraying himself publically as practically isolationist with respect to military intervention.

[Lee A. Arnold]

"Quibbling about who knew what when or whether a specific attack could have been blunted is stupid."

That's not what my argument is about. The argument is about making accurate statements. Without accurate statements, discourse (as we see here) becomes almost incoherent.

In the comments above, we also read that everyone knew the WMDs were in Iraq (that is wrong; Hans Blix and the UN inspectors thought the situation was well under control; and the Downing Street memo shows that the Brits believed the Bush Administration was "fixing the intelligence" in order to go to war;) and that the Iranians are not principal beneficiaries of the changes in Iraq (that is also wrong, possibly dangerously wrong.)

The real issue is, again, the posting at the top: the astonishing unpreparededness of this dismal Administration. The Clinton Administration was well aware of the threat of domestic attack (from 1993) and instructed the incoming Bush security advisors. The very capable Richard Clarke stayed on, but was then sidelined by the Bushies. We simply do not know what the Bush Administration was doing on counterterror before 9/11, and no public official will go near it. We know what they WEREN'T doing: Richard Clarke wrote the book.

[jeff hoffman]

"Am I at the wrong blog?"
Yes
"Can anyone help me here?"
No.
"Old geezer and bastard"
You forgot blowhard.

[jeff hoffman]

"I'm an expert in political spin"
I guess that qualifies for blowhard, on a couple of levels.

[OhNoNotAgain]

"They actually used them, for heaven's sake. That they "disappeared" once it looked like we were going to bring the party down is what, surprising?"

Used them *when* ? In the Iran-Iraq war ? Somehow we managed to get CIA personnel into Iran in the 70's to disrupt their whole country and put the Shah back in power, but now all of a sudden we can't get any intelligence on whether Iraq destroyed their weapons stores back in the early 90's after the first Gulf War ? What the hell kind of foreign policy/intelligence apparatus are we running now ? Are we going to have to send several hundred thousand troops into every single country that we suspect may be up to no good, just to take a peek ? I suspect that is going to get expensive.

[oops]

ohnonotagain- dana priest isn't some uninformed third party. if you form your views based on newspaper and party spin you are simply lazy. that's fine if you aren't interested in the topic but don't comment on it and call my post despicable. he is a link for you.

http://www.amazon.com/Mission-Waging-Keeping-Americas-Military/dp/0393325504/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228225368&sr=1-1

and i'm still waiting for where former pres. clinton opposed the iraq invasion before it took place.

or for him to dispute dana priest's claims

[OhNoNotAgain]

oops,

I gave you the reason why I used the word despicable, and I stand by it: you're trying to equivocate something that Clinton might have done to something that Bush *actually* did, with disasterous results. It's another example of Bush apologists like yourself wanting to make the conversation all about the Clintons and the 90's as a tactic to direct blame from where it belongs, on the Bush administration.

[oops]

it is another example of laziness to call me a bush apologist. it is about policy and strategy.

in other words, would the invasion have happened had someone else been in the whitehouse. there are countless interventionist careerist with advanced degree in the field that advise and hold positions across several presidencies. the answer is yes.

your simplton "apologist", "some third party" garbage that you are throwing out rather than actually studying policy across presidencies is laziness.

here's another "apologist" book for you:
the pentagon's new map- war and peace in the 21st century.
http://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-New-Map-Twenty-first-Century/dp/0425202399/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228240628&sr=8-1

oh wait, he's a neo-lib iraq war supporter that doesn't like bush and voted obama. also has a phd from the jfk school at harvard.

but don't bother. it is easier to be lazy and say that no one with those credentials could exist unless they were an "apologist" for bush isn't it?

[Patricia Shannon]

We can't eliminate terror attacks, but we can reduce them. But we can't do that by ignoring evidence.

Why would anybody expect good decisions from people who denigrated the politics of reality? Any good decisions such people made would be a pleasant surprise.

And I don't believe Gore would have invaded Iraq under the circumstances that existed. The idea is ridiculous.

[Detlef]

The president added, "I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess." Asked if he would have gone to war if he knew Iraq did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, Bush said, "That is a do-over that I can't do."

UNMOVIC Security Council briefing March 7, 2004

...

Inspections in Iraq resumed on 27 November 2002. In matters relating to process, notably prompt access to sites, we have faced relatively few difficulties and certainly much less than those that were faced by UNSCOM in the period 1991 to 1998. This may well be due to the strong outside pressure.

...
As I noted on 14 February, intelligence authorities have claimed that weapons of mass destruction are moved around Iraq by trucks and, in particular, that there are mobile production units for biological weapons. The Iraqi side states that such activities do not exist. Several inspections have taken place at declared and undeclared sites in relation to mobile production facilities. Food testing mobile laboratories and mobile workshops have been seen, as well as large containers with seed processing equipment. No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found. Iraq is expected to assist in the development of credible ways to conduct random checks of ground transportation.

Inspectors are also engaged in examining Iraq's programme for Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs). A number of sites have been inspected with data being collected to assess the range and other capabilities of the various models found. Inspections are continuing in this area.
...
How much time would it take to resolve the key remaining disarmament tasks? While cooperation can and is to be immediate, disarmament and at any rate the verification of it cannot be instant. Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items, analyse documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It would not take years, nor weeks, but months.
...

Downing Street Memo July 23, 2002

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq
(Foreign Affairs - March/April 2006)

Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

[kthomas]

Burn, baby!

[Icarus]

I think most of us would agree (I hope) that Bush, and his ilk, should be tried at the ICC. No different than any genocidal killer.

But...would any of you agree that former president Clinton should as well be tried on similar terms, for the illegal bombing of Kosovo, and even the "wag the dog" bombing in Iraq (during the monica lewinsky fiasco)?

Bush haters tend to have selective amnesia in their valorization of the former democratic regime. How many did Clinton have to unnecessarily kill in Kosovo in order to qualify as a mass-murderer?

[OhNoNotAgain]

"it is another example of laziness to call me a bush apologist. it is about policy and strategy."

Yes, and before Bush II, we had a policy that did *not* include pre-emptive warfare. That was the Bush administration, 100%. Pretending that a fictitious Democratic administration that never existed would have done the same is pure crap, when the one that existed for 8 years prior to that did not engage in such policy.

And BTW, education credentials don't mean shit when it comes to right and wrong, and invading sovereign nations under the guise of some bullshit doctrine of pre-emption is plain wrong. It has made us much less secure and diminished our role in the world. That is a fact. But, no worries, Bush has also managed to bankrupt the country so that such little adventures will be less likely in the future. I guess that is one good thing that we get to take away from this whole mess.

[kthomas]

Icarus, President Clinton was staring history in the face with Kosovo. That is, a repeat of WWI.

Germany was militarily best-suited to deal with the situation, but EVERYONE in Europe still hates them.

Clinton had a choice: bomb the crap out of the Serbs, or let Europe plunge into chaos. He made the right choice, and the Hague would see it similarly.

Are you supporting Serbian aggression or playing the Devil's Advocate?

[OhNoNotAgain]

"Bush haters tend to have selective amnesia in their valorization of the former democratic regime. How many did Clinton have to unnecessarily kill in Kosovo in order to qualify as a mass-murderer?"

More equivocating. Where is anyone defending Clinton's actions while in office ? I'm most certainly not. I'm saying that the idea that a Gore administration would have, for certain, invaded Iraq is crap when, by all accounts, there is absolutely zero evidence to support this assertion:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-23-gore_x.htm

[Icarus]

Kthomas,

No, I'm not just playing devil's advocate.

I suggest you look at Tariq Ali's book, "Master's of the Universe : Nato's Balkan Crusade". It dispels some common liberal diatribes about humanitarian intervention, and looks deeper at the politics of the US bombing.

Noted left leaning critical intellectuals such as Edward Said and Giovanni Arrighi write convincingly. I suggest a read.

This was an illegal bombing, and deserves as much critical scrutiny as any other form of mass-murder.

[Icarus]

Ohnonotagain,

The point isn't that no one was defending Clinton while in office...the issue is that he was able to illegally bomb territories without the critical scrutiny of the progressive left. We tend to valorize the 1990s, and yet, we see that unemployment at times was on par with today's rate...we did bomb without UN authority, and some of the seeds of financial deregulation and welfare reduction were born out of the 1990s.

The fundamental shift this decade with the current terrorist regime in the white house is palpable..but, are they a straw man? Should we not look at the deeper structures of US power/foreign policy? Was Bush the exception, or simply a continuation of a pattern?

Bush didn't create the financial mess we're in...he presided over it. Bush didn't create preemptive intervention...he abused it. Bush didn't create corporate greed...he simply partnered with it (like every other executive). Bush didn't even create gas guzzlers and the death of the auto industry...he simply coordinated the funeral.

These seeds are a deeper part of US existence, and the solutions go far beyond demonizing Bush.

[kthomas]

Icarus, thanks.

However, I don't see you making any suggestions about what President Clinton should have done, given the circumstances. You only seem intent on making sure we judge him as harshly as President Decider, which is never going to happen.

I'm sure President Bush would have acted similarly, with reagards to Kosovo. (Nobody really cared about the Serbs, or the Albanians, Croats, etc. They've been murdering one another since....well, forever.)

[Patricia Shannon]

Professor Thoma, even a ctrl+r is not getting me a fresh page in FireFox. In fact, it appears I got an older page, as comments have disappeared off the side bar. As you said, apparently a cache problem. (I am familiar with that from deploying new versions of our software). I hope they fix the problem. I wanted to see what kthomas had to say, and keep getting Icarus!

[OhNoNotAgain]

Icarus,

Look, I agree with everything that you're saying here. I was not a fan of Clinton at all. In fact, I was a Republican at that time, so it was forbidden. I think that Bush I had the correct policy: step out of line and you're going to get a beat-down from everyone, otherwise it isn't our concern.

My point is that the Iraq War is solely a Bush creation. It can only be thought of as a continuation/intensification of Clinton policy toward Iraq if you think that the incoming Democratic administration would have done the same thing as Bush, which is something that does not stand up to scrutiny. One simply cannot assume that Gore would have continued Clinton's policies towards Iraq at all, let alone invaded and occupied Iraq, given his public comments on the matter. I think we can use the foreign policy differences between Bush I and Bush II as an example of this.

Also, my apologies for my language in the comments on this subject.

[Icarus]

Ohnonotagain,

Agreed. I have a gut feeling that Gore would not have illegally invaded Iraq, using ground forces. He may have bombed Iraq in order to divert attention from some Green Funding scam he'd get into, but, a few bombs on innocent people are part and parcel of American activity, independent of which party is in power.

I guess I'm just reacting to this easy binarism I sense on this blog: Bush = Evil, and everything Democrat = Force of Goodness. The recent evidence is so much more complex. Sometimes, the liberal left is as clumsy and as dependent on easy charicature as the Fox news right. Our blogger Anne is the inversion of Anne Coulter.

The bombing of Kosovo is simply a replay of a laundry list of violence which involve nations across the globe, spanning all US executives, from pre Andrew Jackson, to the recent Bush.

The disbelief in our current incarnation of evil, president Bush...is what offends me. Is US policy towards Palestine any less evil? This happened through many democratic presidents. Kosovo, IndoChina, Indonesia, El Salvador...the laundry list is endless. The common pattern is that the US kills innocents in the name of geo-politics, and calls itself a guardian of freedom, truth, and every other platonic ideal.

They make war and call it peace. They eat lettuce and call it salad.