Q (March 13, 2002): Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? . . .
Bush: So I don’t know where he is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him , Kelly, to be honest with you. . . .
Q: But don’t you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won’t truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?
Bush: Well, as I say, we haven’t heard much from him. And I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don’t know where he is. I — I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.
Maybe if he’d been a little bit more concerned about bin Laden and a little less obsessed with “takin’ out” Saddam, he might not be threatening us still today.
Is there any better reason to fire this asshole than this?
As Bush introduced the mother of a New York Port Authority police officer killed at the World Trade Center, a machine that was to blast confetti into the air at the end of the event went off prematurely with a loud, startling bang.
Bush flinched and paused, then resumed his speech as the confetti fell around him.
Bush had planned to campaign here with Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, a World Series hero with Kerry’s hometown team. Schilling’s presence was canceled at the last minute for what was described as an ankle problem.
Salon.com interviews a physicist who is an expert on imaging. It’s not good news for the Codpiece.
George W. Bush tried to laugh off the bulge. “I don’t know what that is,” he said on “Good Morning America” on Wednesday, referring to the infamous protrusion beneath his jacket during the presidential debates. “I’m embarrassed to say it’s a poorly tailored shirt.”
Dr. Robert M. Nelson, however, was not laughing. He knew the president was not telling the truth. And Nelson is neither conspiracy theorist nor midnight blogger. He’s a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis. Currently he’s engrossed in analyzing digital photos of Saturn’s moon Titan, determining its shape, whether it contains craters or canyons.
For the past week, while at home, using his own computers, and off the clock at Caltech and NASA, Nelson has been analyzing images of the president’s back during the debates. A professional physicist and photo analyst for more than 30 years, he speaks earnestly and thoughtfully about his subject. “I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate,” he says. “This is not about a bad suit. And there’s no way the bulge can be described as a wrinkled shirt.”
Being A Republican Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry
Atrios is mighty angry about this story and so should we all be. As I read it I got more and more enraged and I had toask myself why it was. After all, we’ve been hearing about this nationwide scheme to suppress the vote through dirty tricks and intimidation for the last month. What is it about this particular story that is so inflammatory?
After taking a few deep breaths I think I have figured it out. It’s that the Republican Party’s corruption has extended far into the grassroots. It’s not longer just the Nixonian Roger Stones or the Rovian Nathan Sproul’s, it’s average, everyday, pillars of the community who have joined in doing the sickening dirty work of a party that cannot win a majority legitimately. These weren’t operative sharpies. They were older Republicans willing to do the bidding of their corrupt party and they didn’t seem to care even when confronted with proof that their scheme was entirely unethical.
Of course, this little drama was really republican vs republican. There were decent republicans on the board who were disgusted by this underhanded plot and they did the right thing. But, they were few and far between. The state GOP was only sorry that they hadn’t sent in better lawyers to defend the miscreants.
I suppose that I thought that most average Republican voters were honest citizens with whom I disagree. I’ve always blamed the leadership for the modern party’s Nixonian reliance on dirty tricks and corrupt election practices. Once again I’ve been proven wrong. The sickness has flowed all the way down to the grassroots.
How long can the decent people like those two on the board hold out against a machine like this? I doubt they will. They will either go over to the dark side or leave the party. When average citizens are willing to be fronts for a dirty tricks operation there is no room left for decency.
Al Qaqaa was on a classified list of Iraqi weapons facilities that the CIA provided to Pentagon and military officials before the invasion, said the U.S. intelligence official.
But when the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command produced their own list of sites that a limited number of U.S. “exploitation teams” should search, priority was given to those identified by exiled Iraqi opposition groups, he said. Al Qaqaa wasn’t one of them.
Update: Haha. According to Atrios, Fox jumped the gun and aired the video already. And for some bizarre reason the freepers think the scary Halloween terrorist is gay. WTF?
Halloween Terror
How likely is it do you suppose, that FOX will run with the American Al Qaeda boogeyman tape before the week-end is out?
Ross and other ABC staffers say they believe that a Bush administration official leaked the story to Internet gossip Matt Drudge as a way of pressuring the network into airing the tape, which would heighten concerns about terrorism in the final week of the president’s reelection campaign. They note that whoever gave the information to Drudge had a transcript of the tape.
[…]
The debate may not be over. The officials say a source with access to the tape, apparently impatient with ABC, has offered it to another broadcast news organization, which has called the government for guidance.
Drudge said yesterday that a political motivation behind the leak was “possible,” but put the onus on ABC. “They haven’t authenticated previous al Qaeda tapes before airing them,” he said. “Why are they waiting to authenticate this? It’s election week.”
But Isham noted that previous videotapes featured Osama bin Laden or other al Qaeda leaders who could be verified by sight.
“It’s either a well-done hoax or a tremendous news story,” Ross said. “We’re not going to get stampeded.”
I love the fact that Drudge is lecturing the network on journalistic practices.
And, there’s only one network that would “call the government for guidance.”
I’ve mentioned this before, but I am still hungering for an explanation. Why is it that when Bush utters the words “tort reform” and “frivolous lawsuits” that the crowd reacts with an orgasmic roar that eclipses even the speaking in tongues they do over “tax cuts.” I’m assuming that this is just some kind of reflexive conditioning, but it consistently seems to get the biggest responses at Bush’s rallies.
Can someone explain to me why average citizens surge to their feet screaming and frothing at the mouth at the words “tort reform?” Is this really a code word for some underground fascist movement? It kind of freaks me out.
According to Carl Cameron, Kerry is on the run because the Al qaqaa story is hurting him badly. They even found a picture of a truck in the desert that is supposed to prove something, I’m not sure what.
But, back here on planet Earth, MYDD has the full compendium of Bush fuck-ups and nasty surprises — from just this week:
The doctored photo in the Bush ad is getting press, and will probably get more.
Republicans are on the defensive when it comes to explosion gate.
Red Sox win World Series (OK, I don’t know if this one counts)
It counts.
In other news, FOX is flogging a story about preparation for a “major offensive” in Fallujah. I’m sure the boys are happy to give up their lives (and the lives of many Iraqis) to help their Codpiece in Chief change the story line.
It seems that my favorite bucket of lukewarm spit has finally received the memo saying that supporting Commander Codpiece’s manly manliness is no longer de riguer in DC salons. How refreshing.
Via Atrios I see that Wes Clark is a little bit miffed with everybody’s favorite GOPHo, Rudy Giuliani:
For President Bush to send Rudolph Giuliani out on television to say that the ‘actual responsibility’ for the failure to secure explosives lies with the troops is insulting and cowardly.
The President approved the mission and the priorities. Civilian leaders tell military leaders what to do. The military follows those orders and gets the job done. This was a failure of civilian leadership, first in not telling the troops to secure explosives and other dangerous materials, and second for not providing sufficient troops and sufficient equipment for troops to do the job.
President Bush sent our troops to war without sufficient body armor, without a sound plan and without sufficient forces to accomplish the mission. Our troops are performing a difficult mission with skill, bravery and determination. They deserve a commander in chief who supports them and understands that the buck stops in the Oval Office, not one who gets weak knees and shifts blame for his mistakes.
Dana Bash on CNN just said that the Bush campaign told her that Giuliani may not have used the most “elegant” or “eloquent” terms but he just meant to say that it’s not the president fault. That doesn’t really pass the smell test since William Kristol on FOX News Live and Laura Ingraham all echoed this reprehensible line: They seem to be implying that this was a call by the officers on the ground and therefore, out of the hands of the civilian leadership.
KRISTOL: … [President] George [W.] Bush didn’t decide, you know, “skip that dump” [the Al Qaqaa military installation, where the missing explosives were supposedly housed]. That was 101st [Airborne Division] or the 3rd ID [Infantry Division], “skip that arms dump.” That’s not a decision made by the president, that’s made on the ground…
AND
STEVE MURPHY (FORMER MANAGER OF REP. DICK GEPHARDT’S (D-MO) PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN): Laura, Laura, John Kerry did not question the troops. John Kerry questioned the leadership of —
INGRAHAM: Oh, really? Who was looking for those weapons, Steve?
MURPHY: He questioned the leadership of George [W.] Bush. George Bush did not send enough soldiers.
[CROSSTALK]
INGRAHAM: Was George Bush on the ground there? The military commanders were on the ground there, Steve.
Man, we’ve sure come a long way from “the buck stops here.” Indeed, we’ve come a long way from the “responsibility era” that Junior has been hectoring us about for the last four years.
This Al Qaqaa disaster is 100% the fault of the civilian leadership of the Bush administration. One thing that has to be remembered about these early days was the insistence that the army push through to Baghdad at record speed, stopping not even for rest or refueling. Do you remember the embeds hanging on to the back of jeeps and humvees by their fingernails, looking like hell, as they raced through the desert to get to Baghdad (and then found that Baghdad was wide open?)
These lethal explosives are missing because Rumsfeld was using Iraq as an experiment for certain aspects of his Revolution in Military Affairs wet dream. He managed an impressive dash across the desert with a relatively small force but because he was trying to prove a theory rather than deal with a very real situation on the ground, his refusal to commit enough troops to the operation as a whole meant that they could not spare the manpower or the time to secure these weapons dumps.
I wrote about this crazy stuff back in March of 2003, when it was revealed that none other than Newtie Gingrich was advising the Pentagon, and had been doing so for a long time, with some very questionable new-age theories that his soul mate Rumsfeld was more than happy to put into practice. It’s not that there aren’t some aspects of this RMA that are very useful, it’s that like everything else in this administration they let their faith and their ideology overrule reality. Talking about Afghanistan, Newtie told the Hoover institute:
…their [old] answer has been to design campaign plans that are so massive – I mean the standard plan in Afghanistan was either Tomahawks or 5 divisions, and that’s why Rumsfeld was so important. Cause Rumsfeld sat down and said, “Well what if we do this other thing? You know, 3 guys on horseback, a B-2 overhead.” And it was a huge shock to the army. I mean, because it worked. Now I’ll tell you one guy who does agree and that’s Chuck Horner who ran the air campaign.
We now know that this “high tech horseback” plan was the one that let bin Laden escape. And it unfortunately informed the choices that were made in Iraq. The International Herald Tribune wrote this in the fall of 2002 about the Iraq invasion:
Gingrich, who also is a member of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, said he was confident that General Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, would not be swayed by suggestions that he include more reinforcements and plan a more cautious attack. He said that Franks, an army general, “will probably have a more integrated, more aggressive and more risk-taking plan.”
“If the chiefs wanted to be extremely cautious, extremely conservative and design a risk-avoiding strategy, that would be nothing new,” he said in an interview.
This was the mind-set that sent the troops barreling across the desert. It was a macho show of hi-tech modern strength designed to “send a message” not actually accomplish the task of securing the nation of Iraq. Relying on rose colored cakewalks, the civilian policy makers simply didn’t look any further than the images they wanted to see — the statue falling, Bush in his flyboy costume. And, that is actually the crux of Gingrich and Rumsfeld’s “third wave information warfare” scheme — you don’t have to actually fight wars, you just have to be seen to be winning them.
Clearly, this little experiment in faith-based warfare has been a disaster. The looting of Al Qaqaa is just the most recent example of reality raising its ugly head and biting these starry eyed, ivory tower neocons right in the ass.
And, let’s not forget that not one single member of that civilian leadership has been called to account for the disaster in Iraq. Since the boss won’t do his job, the only thing Americans can do is fire the boss.
Great minds and all that update: I see that Josh marshall makes much the same point here. And, Yglesias has some other thoughts along this line as well.
It’s always interesting trying to unravel the reasoning behind Bush’s decisions. Every single time you find that it is opaque and unknowable because there are so many compting and complimentary philosophies that led to the same catastrophic result. Historians are going to have a field day with this administration.
