Month: December 2006

Poodle Talk

by digby

Tom Schaller over at TAPPED notes something I’ve been observing for a while as well: the precipitous loss of Tony Blair’s rhetorical skills:

MARKETERS-IN-CHIEF. Regarding the Blair-Bush press conference this morning, is it just me or is Tony Blair becoming less eloquent and coherent the more he stands side-by-side with Bush?

I thought it was just me. It’s rubbing off, and not just in Bush’s presence. Here’s an excerpt from his Labour Party speech in September:

And of course, the new anxiety is the global struggle against terrorism without mercy or limit.

This is a struggle that will last a generation and more. But this I believe passionately: we will not win until we shake ourselves free of the wretched capitulation to the propaganda of the enemy, that somehow we are the ones responsible.

This terrorism isn’t our fault. We didn’t cause it.

It’s not the consequence of foreign policy.

It’s an attack on our way of life.

It’s global.

It has an ideology.

It killed nearly 3,000 people including over 60 British on the streets of New York before war in Afghanistan or Iraq was even thought of.

It has been decades growing.

Its victims are in Egypt, Algeria, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Turkey.

Over 30 nations in the world.

It preys on every conflict.

It exploits every grievance.

And its victims are mainly Muslim.

This is not our war against Islam.

[…]

If we retreat now, hand Iraq over to Al Qaida and sectarian death squads and Afghanistan back to Al Qaida and the Taleban, we won’t be safer; we will be committing a craven act of surrender that will put our future security in the deepest peril.

Of course it’s tough.

Not a day goes by or an hour in the day when I don’t reflect on our troops with admiration and thanks – the finest, the best, the bravest, any nation could hope for.

They are not fighting in vain. But for this nation’s future.

I’m sure it sounds better in a british accent but it’s still Bush boilerplate. I’m surprised he didn’t say that that until 9/11, England had always thought the oceans would protect her.

I have concluded that while we have all been trying for years to figure out just what in the hell Blair thought he was doing, the simplest answer is probably the right one. He’s just as dumb as Bush on this matter. He believes this crap. Now that all the early rationales that made his rhetoric sensible lie moldering in the historical compost heap, he’s left with nothing but the puerile ad copy that Junior’s team concocted to make these people believe they had been anointed by God to fight a grand struggle between good and evil. Sad.

Update: “I know it’s tough”

In case anyone missed Bush’s little tantrum this morning, here it is:

Q Mr. President, the Iraq Study Group described the situation in Iraq as grave and deteriorating. You said that the increase in attacks is unsettling. That won’t convince many people that you’re [not] still in denial about how bad things are in Iraq, and question your sincerity about changing course.

PRESIDENT BUSH: It’s bad in Iraq. Does that help? (Laughter.)

Q Why did it take others to say it before you’ve been willing to acknowledge for the world —

PRESIDENT BUSH: In all due respect, I’ve been saying it a lot. I understand how tough it is. And I’ve been telling the American people how tough it is. And they know how tough it is. And the fundamental question is, do we have a plan to achieve our objective. Are we willing to change as the enemy has changed? And what the Baker-Hamilton study has done is it shows good ideas as to how to go forward. What our Pentagon is doing is figuring out ways to go forward, all aiming to achieve our objective.

Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die. I understand there’s sectarian violence. I also understand that we’re hunting down al Qaeda on a regular basis and we’re bringing them to justice. I understand how hard our troops are working. I know how brave the men and women who wear the uniform are, and therefore, they’ll have the full support of this government. I understand what long deployments mean to wives and husbands, and mothers and fathers, particularly as we come into a holiday season. I understand. And I have made it abundantly clear how tough it is.

I also believe we’re going to succeed. I believe we’ll prevail. Not only do I know how important it is to prevail, I believe we will prevail. I understand how hard it is to prevail. But I also want the American people to understand that if we were to fail — and one way to assure failure is just to quit, is not to adjust, and say it’s just not worth it — if we were to fail, that failed policy will come to hurt generations of Americans in the future.

And as I said in my opening statement, I believe we’re in an ideological struggle between forces that are reasonable and want to live in peace, and radicals and extremists. And when you throw into the mix radical Shia and radical Sunni trying to gain power and topple moderate governments, with energy which they could use to blackmail Great Britain or America, or anybody else who doesn’t kowtow to them, and a nuclear weapon in the hands of a government that is — would be using that nuclear weapon to blackmail to achieve political objectives — historians will look back and say, how come Bush and Blair couldn’t see the threat? That’s what they’ll be asking. And I want to tell you, I see the threat and I believe it is up to our governments to help lead the forces of moderation to prevail. It’s in our interests.

And one of the things that has changed for American foreign policy is a threat overseas can now come home to hurt us, and September the 11th should be a wake-up call for the American people to understand what happens if there is violence and safe havens in a part of the world. And what happens is people can die here at home.

So, no, I appreciate your question. As you can tell, I feel strongly about making sure you understand that I understand it’s tough. But I want you to know, sir, that I believe we’ll prevail. I know we have to adjust to prevail, but I wouldn’t have our troops in harm’s way if I didn’t believe that, one, it was important, and, two, we’ll succeed. Thank you.

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Exfoliating The Bushes

by digby

I was reading Christy Hardin Smith’s piece this morning about my congressman Henry Waxman and how the republicans changed the rules back in the 90’s to give the the chairman of the house Government reform Committee unilateral subpoena power. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, my friends.

In her post she points out something that I think everyone should memorize and be prepared to quote every time these Republicans start to whine a cry about the Democratic witchhunt:

The House took 140 hours of sworn testimony to get to the bottom of whether Clinton had misused the White House Christmas-card list for political purposes, but only 12 hours on prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

It would probably be very helpful to have at the ready a handy list comparing all the subpoenas and investigations during the Clinton administration as compared to Bush. The Republicans are going to portray the Democratic congress as an out of control lynch mob. It’s important that we remind everyone of what a bunch of slackers they have been under a Republican president and what a non-stop slavering freakshow they ran the last time government was divided.

But when I read that thing about the Christmas card list it also reminded me of something else I recently became aware of. If you’ll recall, during the Clinton administration there was a big scandal over the selling of the Lincoln Bedroom. Everyone agreed that campaign donors had been invited to spend the night in the White House since the time it was built, but what bothered everyone was how mercenary the whole thing seemed, how the hippie hicks from Arkansas were disrespectful toward the nation’s great heritage.

Here’s a pretty decent example of the tone of the complaints:

LEE CULLUM, Dallas Morning News: Yes, it is crass. It’s vulgar. It’s terrible taste. The Dallas Morning News had two editorials this week, not one but two, calling for a special prosecutor in this matter. You know, the White House has simply gone too far. I’m not naive…this has been a systematic selling of the White House in bits and pieces. It’s gone too far, and it’s way out of hand. It is crass.

When Bush ran on “restoring honor and integrity” to the White House, he wasn’t just saying he would avoid interns; the tabloid political press and the GOP congressional committees had been portraying Clinton as a cheap used car salesman, selling out the People’s House, for years. They even accused him of stealing the hand-towels on AirForce One.

So imagine my surprise when I see this on CNN the other day:

When the Secret Service phoned Lesa Glucroft, they were calling about hand lotion. Officials wanted to know if the Calabasas businesswoman was interested in sticking the U.S. presidential seal on her lotions and powders and selling them as “America’s Legacy” at the White House gift shop. At first she thought it was a hoax. “I certainly didn’t think it was a serious call,” said Glucroft, a registered Democrat. But the inquiry, from a licensing agent for the U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division Benefit Fund, was genuine. And now a line of toiletries bearing the presidential insignia is about to hit the gift shop’s shelves. The antibacterial hand wash, glycerin soap, after-shave and other products come in bottles embossed with the distinctive presidential seal: a vigilant eagle holding an olive branch and arrows in its talons and encircled by stars and the words “The President of the United States.”

You know, I don’t deny the Secret Service a right to have a Benefit Fund. More power to them, they do a fine job. They’ve run a little gift shop in the basement of the White House for years where they sell little tchotckes and they have a little fundraising program to sell ChristmasOrnaments door to door. (Who knew?)

But where did they get the right to exclusively license the sacred People’s House for toiletry items — which they are selling to the public all over the internet? I can’t help but wonder what other intimate products are adorned with the presidential seal these days.

It seems to me that the bluenose society mavens might find all this “crass,” “vulgar” and “in terrible taste,” if not entirely inappropriate. I guess not. In fact, I’m girding myself for the soon-to-begin paeans to the “graciousness” and “class” that the Bush’s brought to the social scene in Washington. They might have been the most destructive presidency in history but at least they weren’t a bunch of no-class hick liberal elites who didn’t know their place.

Update: Dave Niewert says:

I don’t know about you, but the symbology of the Bush White House marketing official presidential hand cleaner strikes me as a flagrant bit of unintentional self-revelation.

Click here for the punchline.

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Wise Men Were Wiser Then

The following is an excerpt from Rick Perlstein‘s upcoming book Nixonland: The Politics and Culture of the American Berserk, 1965-1972

The President began to look almost demented. At a March 25th speech to AFL-CIO Building Trades Department, as North Vietnamese troops made their deepest penetration into the South so far, he cried:

“Now, the America we are building”–he paused, and hit the words deliberately for emphasis–“would–be–a–threatened–nation if we let freedom and liberty die in Vietnam…

“I sometimes wonder why we Americans enjoy punishing ourselves so much with our own criticism.

“This is a pretty good land. I am not saying you never had it so good. But that is a fact, isn’t it?”

He pulled himself close to the podium, and stared into the audience, his eyes as wide as saucers.

That night, the bipartisan mandarinate known formally as the Senior Advisory Group began preparing at the Pentagon for a meeting with the President. Among them were advisors who’d steered the course of the Cold War before the Cold War had even been named. The last time the “Wise Men” had met, on November 2, they told the President to stay the course. Now, the head of counterinsurgency briefed them that because Americans had killed 80,000 enemy soldiers, Tet was a famous U.S. victory. UN Ambassador and former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg questioned his figures. Wasn’t the usual ratio that you could count on four times as many soldiers getting wounded than had died in a battle?

The briefer acknowledged that was so.

Then, Goldberg replied, that meant some 320,000 Communists had been removed from the field of battle. But the general had also told them that the Communists had only 240,000 soldiers. So we’d wounded 133 percent of the enemy.

Another briefer was more forthright. He said progress on the ground in Vietnam would take five to seven years. Clark Clifford asked him if the war could ever be won: “Not under present circumstances.” Clifford asked him what he would do if he were president: “Stop the bombing and negotiate.”

Which was exactly what President Johnson had been going around telling audiences he’d never do.

They met with Johnson the next morning. “Mr. President, there has been a very significant shift in most of our positions since we last met,” McGeorge Bundy began. He raised the name of Truman’s legendary secretary of state, a man to make any Democratic president quiver: “Dean Acheson summed up the majority feeling when he said that we can no longer do the job we set out to do in the time we have left, and we must begin to take steps to disengage.”

Lyndon left, then raged to wise man George Ball: “Your whole group must have been brainwashed!” It was a kind of last gasp. He was finally beginning to get the picture: he had to prepare the American people for the reality of eventual disengagement from Vietnam.

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Embracing The New Conservatism

by poputonian

David Sirota writing in the December issue of In These Times:

Candidates all over the country talked about how corporate lobbyists have manipulated our trade policy to crush workers, our energy policy to harm consumers and our health care policy to hurt families. Polls show populism (a.k.a., challenging corporate economic power) is the “center” position for the voting public, even though it may not be the “center” position in a K-Street-owned Washington, D.C.

Since the election, Washington’s elite have tried to deny progressives credit and to downplay a mandate that threatens their agenda. These revisionists say the election was about Democrats pretending to be Republicans, billing people like Virginia Senator-elect Jim Webb as a “conservative.” Yet here is what this “conservative” wrote in a Nov. 15 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Class Struggle”:

The most important—and unfortunately the least debated—issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. … The top 1 percent now takes in an astounding 16 percent of national income, up from 8 percent in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

If that is the new “conservative,” progressives won an even bigger victory than we thought.

Yupperz. He goes on:

This is a difficult time for Beltway lobbyists and corporate front-groups like the Democratic Leadership Council. It hurts them to see how populism was the Democrats’ ticket. But the elite are not contrite, rather they babble—”Vital dynamic center! Vital dynamic center!” We can understand their outbursts—it hurts to be rejected—but they are just going to have to deal. As winning candidates from Virginia to Kansas to Montana proved, the strategy of repeating lobbyist-written talking points to win red states belongs in the historical scrap heap. It’s the Era of Populism now.

Read his brief article at the link. (Sorry for the typo in the post title.)

State Of Failure

by poputonian

I can’t remember if it was Stewart or Olbermann who spot-lighted Bush’s recent speech where he repeated the slogan “sectarian violence” about a hundred times. The boy-President was repudiating his own responsibility for said violence (by blaming it on Al-Qaeda) but was also refusing to acknowledge what others were calling a civil war. On this latter point, I think he might be on to something. From Christy quoting Joe Wilson:

The problem is we are so far down the road on the way to chaos that there may not be any way to stop this until all sides are exhausted. The question is not whether the situation has become a civil war but rather whether it has degenerated from a civil war to out and out anarchy and a failed state.

What Joe said.

Natural Allies

by digby

TPM Cafe’s Election central thinks that John Edwards’ decision to appear at Pasadena’s All Saints Church (which is being investigated by the IRS for an anti-war sermon) is a maneuver to get the anti-war vote.

It may be, but I think it also might be a more general (and savvy) move to curry favor with liberal Christians. They are starting to organize themselves in a more explicitly political way — partially to save themselves from a rightwing onslaught, but also because the left in general is simply organizing itself in a whole lot of new ways. If Edwards is smart enough to be looking for these organizing mechanisms and making a direct appeal, good for him. I believe that Democratic candidates who are looking beyond the usual suspects are going to be better positioned for 2008. The action is outside the beltway.

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Be Careful What You Ask For

by digby

St John’s not getting much sleep tonight.

In a surprise twist in the debate over Iraq, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, the soon-to-be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops as part of a stepped up effort to ‘dismantle the militias.’

McCain’s the big tough guy who’s been saying 20,000 more troops is the answer. What happens if he gets them? Does he flip flop and say it was too late after all when things don’t go well? Does he blame the troops for not being able to get the job done? It’s quite the dilemma for the man who thought he had a fool proof way to run as the only one in Washington who knew how to fight and win the war like a man.

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Space Cookies

by digby

Kevin Drum wonders why NASA is all excited about going to the moon.

Valuable minerals? Manufacturing of rocket fuel and “other materials”? Scientific laboratories? Did they crib this stuff out of a science fiction novel from the 50s? The scientific community seems barely able to think up anything useful to do with the International Space Station, and that even has zero gee as a selling point.

I love the space program, but if we’re going to spend a few hundred billion dollars on this program shouldn’t they at least pretend that they’re going to accomplish something?

Oh, they are. They are:

Space Policy.

Though the Bush administration’s attempts to realize a Pax Americana in the Middle East is the subject of sustained international debate, there’s been less attention to the White House’s dream of American hegemony in space. (This isn’t an accident: The current National Space Policy was released to the public at a moment when few reporters were around—5 p.m. on October 6, the beginning of Columbus Day weekend.) The Defense Department now has orders to “deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests.”

Exactly what this means in practical terms remains to be seen. But as Aviation Week and Space Technology recently reported, the new directive now has “military space commanders… discussing ‘space control’ and ‘space superiority’ issues with unusual candor” after years of those “politically sensitive terms [being] off limits.” Among the few Democrats who appear to have taken notice is Al Gore, who, according to the magazine, told the audience at a recent private conference that this “may be the most serious strategic error in the entire history of the United States of America.” Will Bob Gates be sympathetic, opposed, or indifferent to letting generals with stars in their eyes push the new policy to the limits? Stay tuned.

Never let it be said that the Republicans are not focused. No matter what happens they just keep right on going with every harebrained scheme any crazed wingnut ever dreamed up on a AEI week-end acid trip.

Maybe somebody needs to ask St. John McCain about this.

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Understanding The Moment

by digby

Chris Bowers wrote a very poignant post about Barack Obama that expresses the bewildered dismay I think I lot of us feel when we read or hear our leaders still using us as a foil to distance themselves from their own base. It’s so disheartening to see someone we hope will be a brilliant leader make the mistake of running against the Party just when it is finding a new sense of unity — and the other side is having an identity crisis.

It’s worth recalling where these “Sistah Souljah” impulses came from and look at whether they make any sense in today’s politics. The term applies to Bill Clinton’s repudiation of some hot rhetoric after the LA riots, which happened smack in the middle of the presidential campaign. Souljah, a political activist and writer/rapper, had been widely quoted (out of context) in the mainstream media as saying, “if Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?” Clinton responded to that comment with “If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black’ and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech.”

This was interpreted as part of his “centrist” campaign to be tough on crime and welfare, which, after twelve years of Welfare Queen and Willie Horton demagoguing, was deemed to be a necessary step to Democrats taking back the presidency. (In those days, remember, the GOP lizard brain appeals were more directly racial. They hadn’t yet adopted their new language of religious code to obscure their regional and racist strategy.) Clinton had made the calculation that if he could neutralize those issues and run on an economic message aimed at the middle class, he could win. (It was also an attempt to marginalize Jesse Jackson, at that time a major institutional player in the party, and widely considered to be a drag on the Democrats’ presidential chances in the south.) The three days of televised riots presented a very serious threat to that plan.

So, he did what he did and received huge plaudits from the punditocrisy. Jesse had a fit and that made everyone even happier. And Clinton won, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the candidacy of Ross Perot. (Whether you agree that Perot took votes from Clinton or Bush, there’s no doubt he scrambled that election.) It became, however, a matter of conventional wisdom that Democrats needed to distance themselves from their “special interests” and liberal base in order to win elections.

Now, fifteen years later, it’s become a tic, a reflexive point that is no longer used for any specific purpose but rather serves as a political ritual designed to assure the conservative political establishment that the candidate does not associate himself or herself with undesirable liberals. The members of the base who have been used for a decade and a half as the human sacrifices to the pundit Gods of the beltway are starting, quite naturally, to rebel. It’s not, however, just because they are sick of being scapegoated; it’s because it’s become part of the predictable “braindead politics” of Washington that Clinton so rightly ran against in the first place.

I don’t blame Bill Clinton for doing what he did. Indeed, I give him credit for having the guts to point to a specific act instead of adopting the modern mealy mouthed rhetoric (“some on the left need to stop …”) which at least allowed for an honest debate about something identifiable and real. And, in the wake of the riots, as part of a serious national debate about “law and order” and race in the middle of a presidential campaign, it made sense for a Democrat to try to thread that needle.

At that point it had been two decades of Republicans running against amnesty, acid, abortion — and, of course, civil rights. Democrats were ready to try new things. And Clinton already had all the liberal heuristics in his corner. He was only 46 years old and the first baby boomer candidate. He had extremely respectable anti-war and civil rights credentials. He listened to rock music and had a feminist wife and and a marriage of equality. He had even run McGovern’s campaign in Texas. Most importantly, he was comfortable with modern life, which after Reagan and Bush senior, had the fresh whiff of the future. (After all, the boomers, unlike most generational cohorts had been very politically active since they were teen-agers and had been waiting to take the reins for a long time.) Because of all those signifiers, he was forgiven all this tacking to the right because we believed that in his heart he was one of us. The passing of the torch to our generation stood in for liberalism.

The conditions that made that work were unique and it was a fleeting moment of liberal satisfaction anyway. Instead of being able to calm the waters, Clinton’s presidency immediately ushered in an unprecedented surge of right wing extremism — helped along by an unexpectedly hostile press and an emerging partisan media machine. They were anything but mollified by his rightward tack and used all the subtle, symbolic characteristics that we liberals all liked so much, to assassinate his character. Perhaps it was inevitable. Bill Clinton, or someone like him, was probably needed to exorcize the perceived sins of the liberal left.

But in that process, modern conservatism also began to discredit itself with the public. They never again reached the high water mark of 1994 and despite their very sophisticated efforts to portray George W. Bush as the “good” Clinton in 2000 they didn’t manage to convince a majority of the people to vote for him. The conservative era that began a quarter century ago had started to sputter. 9/11 momentarily stalled the progression (and perhaps even changed its direction in some unexpected ways now that Bush has so thoroughly discredited the Republicans’ greatest political strength — national security.) Bush’s grand failure has accelerated a process of political rejection I thought would be much slower. Today it is the right that requires the litmus tests and demands that their candidates show fealty to the extremist elements in their midst. It is those radicals, not the exaggerated hippie chimera the beltway keeps trying to conjure, who are making average Americans recoil.

So my problem with Democrats these days is not what they did back in the 90’s. That’s water under the bridge. It’s that they are failing to seize the moment right now. The most recent (imperfect) analogy I can think of is 1980. The Republicans seized that moment of national “malaise” and discontent to go mainstream. After that election it became a matter of faith among millions of Americans that “they didn’t leave the Democratic party, the Democratic party left them.”

The Republicans understood that the ship had finally made its turn, that many of the folks were unnerved by all the social and economic change of the previous 15 years. (And they knew they could leverage that discontent against everybody’s favorite scapegoat in times of trouble — African Americans, who also happen to be Democrats.) Over time they convinced a lot of people that they actually were “conservatives” but in that moment it was all about simply identifying with the great swath of Americans who were tired and fed-up — and pointing the finger at the opposition.

Today, it’s the Republicans who are seen as captives of their own worst impulses which is why it is so out of sync and dissonant for Obama and others to still be triangulating against their own base. It feels odd — discordant. The Democratic rank and file are no different than millions of average people in this country who are feeling uncomfortable with the radicalism, incompetence, hubris and corruption of the Republican party after six years of one party rule — and a quarter century of conservative consensus. And the activist base from which these politicians are trying to distance themselves is where the energy and future of this new majority party rsides. Why would you run from them just when the other side’s consensus is starting to fray? It’s far more politically useful to present them to the public as the average people they really are. We’re all just like you — regular everyday citizens who believe that the country needs a new direction.

As we have seen, triangulating can sometimes be the politically smart thing to do. But not right now. This is the political moment for the Democrats to seize the mantle of the mainstream — to argue that we are the big tent, where people of conscience from all over the political spectrum are coming together, concerned about our nation, ready to work in common cause. The Republican party has abandoned the concerns of the American people. The Democratic party is the party that will secure the future.

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Check Their Hands

by poputonian

With eager Democratic candidates edging toward the starting blocks, be sure to check their hands for blood. John Edwards, Evan Bayh, and Hillary Clinton each made a fundamental error in judgment that should cost them any chance for the Democratic nomination. They traded 700,000 human lives, give or take, to build their own presidential credentials, to appear “strong on defense” and “tough on terror.” But they all flunked the judgment test.

Wesley Clark, as inexperienced politically as he might be is a better choice for the Democratic nominee.

So is Al Gore, even though he thought Joe Lieberman would be a good running mate. Oops.

So is Howard Dean, although he sometimes gets loud and lets it all hang out.

Even Barack Obama with his religious pandering is a better choice.

In fact, instead of categorizing the candidates as Republican and Democrat, why not go with Clean Hands and Bloody Hands as the name of each group. Doing so would put all the Republicans and the Democrats who sold out into one bucket, and those with sound judgment in another. Seems easy enough.

But just to be fair, let’s double-check to see how a Senator might have processed the known information at the time of the Iraq War vote:

But, Mr. President, I am increasingly troubled by the seemingly shifting justifications for an invasion at this time. My colleagues, I’m not suggesting there has to be only one justification for such a dramatic action. But when the Administration moves back and forth from one argument to another, I think it undercuts the credibility of the case and the belief in its urgency. I believe that this practice of shifting justifications has much to do with the troubling phenomenon of many Americans questioning the Administration’s motives in insisting on action at this particular time.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about the spectacle of the President and senior Administration officials citing a purported connection to al Qaeda one day, weapons of mass destruction the next day, Saddam Hussein’s treatment of his own people on another day, and then on some days the issue of Kuwaiti prisoners of war.
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But the relentless attempt to link 9-11 and the issue of Iraq has been disappointing to me for months, culminating in the President’s singularly unpersuasive attempt in Cincinnati to interweave 9-11 and Iraq, to make the American people believe that there are no important differences between the perpetrators of 9-11 and Iraq.

Mr. President, I believe it is dangerous for the world, and especially dangerous for us, to take the tragedy of 9-11 and the word “terrorism” and all their powerful emotion and then too easily apply them to many other situations — situations that surely need our serious attention but are not necessarily, Mr. President, the same as individuals and organizations who have shown a willingness to fly planes into the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon.

Let me say that the President is right that we’ve got to view the world, the threats and our own national security in a very different light since 9-11. There are shocking new threats. But, Mr. President, it is not helpful to use virtually any strand or extreme rhetoric to suggest that the new threat is the same as other preexisting threats. Mr. President, I think common sense tells us they are not the same and they cannot so easily be lumped together as the President sought to do in Cincinnati.
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I’m not hearing the same things at the briefings that I’m hearing from the President’s top officials. In fact, on March 11 of this year, Vice President Cheney, following a meeting with Tony Blair, raised fears of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists. He said, “We have to be concerned about the potential” — potential — “marriage, if you will, between a terrorist organization like al Qaeda and those who hold or are proliferating knowledge about weapons of mass destruction.” So in March, it was a potential marriage.

Then the Vice-President said, on September 8, without evidence — and no evidence has been given since that time — that there are “credible but unconfirmed” intelligence reports that 9-11 ringleader Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official several months before 9-11. We’ve seen no proof of that.

And finally then, the Secretary of Defense follows on September 27 of this year and says, “There is bulletproof evidence of Iraqi links to al Qaeda, including the recent presence of senior al Qaeda members in Baghdad.” I don’t know where this comes from, Mr. President. This so-called potential marriage in March is beginning to sound like a 25th wedding anniversary at this point.

The facts just aren’t there, or at least they have not been presented to me in the situations where they should have been presented to me as an elected Member of this body. In other words, the Administration appears to use 9-11 and the language of terrorism and the connection to Iraq too loosely, almost like a bootstrap.

For example, I heard the President say in Cincinnati that Iraq and al Qaeda both regard us as a common enemy. Of course they do. Well, who else are we going to attack in the near future on that basis alone?

Or do we see an attempt to stretch the notion of harboring terrorists? I agree with the President, if any country is actively harboring or assisting the terrorists involved in 9-11, we have to act against them. But I don’t think you can bring within the definition of harboring terrorists the simple presence of some al Qaeda members somewhere in Iraq. After all, Mr. President, apparently we have al Qaeda agents active in our country as well. They are present in our nation as well. How can this be a sufficient basis on its own?

Therefore, Mr. President, without a better case for al Qaeda’s connection to Saddam Hussein, this proposed invasion must stand on its own merits, not on some notion that those who question this invasion don’t thoroughly condemn and want to see the destruction of the perpetrators of 9-11 and similar terrorist attacks on the United States.

An invasion of Iraq must stand on its own, not just because it is different than the fight against the perpetrators of 9-11 but because it may not be consistent with, and may even be harmful to, the top national security issue of this country. And that is the fight against terrorism and the perpetrators of the crimes of 9-11.

In fact, I’m so pleased to see one of the most eloquent spokesmen of this viewpoint here in the Senate chamber, Senator Graham, who has done a terrific job of trying to point out our top priorities in this area. He said, “Our first priority should be the successful completion of the war on terrorism. Today we Americans are more vulnerable to international terrorist organizations than we are to Saddam Hussein.”
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In any event, I oppose this resolution because of the continuing unanswered questions, including the very important questions about what the mission is here, what the nature of the operation will be, what will happen concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as the attack proceeds and afterward, and what the plan is after the attack is over. In effect, Mr. President, we’re being asked to vote on something that is unclear. We don’t have answers to these questions. We’re being asked to vote on something that is almost unknowable in terms of the information we’ve been given.
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Mr. President, we need an honest assessment of the commitment required of America. If the right way to address this threat is through internationally-supported military action in Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s regime falls, we will need to take action to ensure stability in Iraq. This could be very costly and time consuming, could involve the occupation — the occupation, Mr. President, of a Middle Eastern country. Now, this is not a small matter. The American occupation of a Middle Eastern country. Consider the regional implications of that scenario, the unrest in moderate states that calls for action against American interests, the difficulty of bringing stability to Iraq so we can extricate ourselves in the midst of regional turmoil. Mr. President, we need much more information about how we propose to proceed so that we can weigh the costs and benefits to our national security.
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I do believe that the American people are willing to bear high costs to pursue a policy that makes sense. But right now, after all of the briefings, all of the hearings, and all of the statements, as far as I can tell, the Administration apparently intends to wing it when it comes to the day after or, as others have suggested, the decade after. And I think, Mr. President, that makes no sense at all.

So, Mr. President, I believe that to date the Administration has failed to answer the key questions to justify the invasion of Iraq at this time. Yes, September 11 raises the emotional stakes and raises legitimate new questions. This makes the President’s request understandable, but it doesn’t make it wise.

I am concerned that the President is pushing us into a mistaken and counterproductive course of action. Instead of this war being crucial on the war on terrorism, I fear it could have the opposite effect.

And so this moment — in which we are responsible for assessing the threat before us, the appropriate response, and the potential costs and consequences of military action — this moment is of grave importance. Yet there is something hollow in our efforts.
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We are about to make one of the weightiest decisions of our time within a context of confused justifications and vague proposals. We are urged, Mr. President, to get on board and bring the American people with us, but we don’t know where the ship is sailing.

That’s good judgment by Senator Feingold. Other Senators gave similar speeches. Each Senator now running for president had an opportunity to hear Feingold’s floor speech. But for some, presidential ambition carried more weight and clouded their thinking.And now they have blood on their hands.