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.
I had a very spirited conversation this morning in which I had to convince a number of Kerry supporters that polls this close don’t mean shit. They were feeling frustrated that the horserace consistently shows Bush slightly ahead and their gut says that it must mean he is going to win. I wish I had had the following post from DonkeyRising handy, which is pointed at those same nervous Democrats. I’m printing it out for future reference:
It’s time to revisit the thrilling polls of yesteryear to get a sense of just how much the polls in 2000 tended to overestimate Bush’s strength and underestimate Gore’s. I believe, for reasons I have discussed at length, the polls are likely overestimating Bush’s strength this year as well. But this year, Kerry is doing better in the polls than Gore did at the equivalent point in the 2000 race. Therefore, if current polls are overestimating Bush’s strength by the same amount as in 2000, Kerry should wind up doing better than Gore on election day–and Gore won the popular vote by half a point. And that’s not even factoring in the likelihood that, with Bush as the incumbent, Kerry will receive the bulk of undecided voters’ support on election day.
So let’s take that stroll down memory lane.
Start with this nugget from Alan Abramowitz:
During the final week of the 2000 campaign, 43 national polls were released, including multiple releases by several polling organizations such as Gallup. George Bush led in 39 polls, Al Gore in 2. Bush’s average lead in the polls was 3.6 percent. Something to keep in mind when people complain that so far (two days) in this final week Kerry has “only” had small leads in the DCorps poll, the Harris Poll and the WP/ABC tracking poll twice (LVs and RVs)!
And here are some readings from specific 2000 polls:
1. The ABC tracking poll averaged a 4 point Bush lead in the last week and its final poll had a 3 point Bush lead.
2. Bloomberg News final poll (October 29) had a 3 point Bush lead.
3. Final Time poll (October 26) had a 6 point Bush lead.
4. Gallup’s tracking poll had Bush ahead by an average of 4 points in the final week and by 2 points in its final poll.
5. Marist College’s final poll (November 2) gave Bush a 5 point lead.
6. Final NBC/WSJ poll (November 5) had Bush up by 3 and their mid-October poll had him up by 6.
7. Final Newsweek poll (November 2) had Bush up by 2 and their October 27 poll had him up by 8.
8. Final Pew Research poll had Bush up by 2.
9. A November 4 CBS/NYT poll had Bush up by 5 (though the final CBS poll was dead-on, with a 1 point Gore lead).
10. Final ICR poll had Bush up by 2.
11. Voter.com Battleground survey (this year called GWU Battleground) averaged an 8 point Bush lead in the final week and its final poll gave Bush a 5 point lead.
12. TIPP tracking poll gave Bush a average 6 point lead in the final week and a final poll lead of 2 points.
13. Prior to its well-known final reading of a 2 point Gore lead, Zogby’s tracking poll gave Bush an average 3 point lead in the final week.
14. Final Hotline poll (November 5) gave Bush a 3 point lead.
If anyone thinks that Democrats are less enthusiastic and motivated than they were in 2000, they are kidding themselves. As 2000 showed, polling is an imprecise science. When they’re this close you just put your head down and get out the vote.
I don’t know how many of you have ABC News Now, but if you do, tune it in. They are showing the entire Kerry rally in Madison. Springsteen is singing No Surrender as we speak. Kerry’s about to come on. It’s one of those rare hair on the back of your neck political moments.
I just saw Marc Racicot babble like a two year old on ABC News Now when confronted with Rudy Giuliani’s footage blaming the troops for the looting of munitions on Good Morning America. They really need to work on those talking points. This didn’t look good.
Sam Donaldson wryly noted that nobody is really blaming the troops. As it was in Vietnam, the blame lies with the policy makers. hah.
On an isolated Indonesian island, scientists have discovered skeletons of a previously unknown human species — tiny, Hobbit-sized figures who lived among dwarf elephants and giant lizards as recently as 12,000 years ago.
There must be something in the water this year in Beantown. The Yankee machine had the Sox down and they battled their way back and back and back to get into the series. And then they won with authority, dammit!
That righteous Boston mojo took them all the way and it’s going to take John Kerry right through next Tuesday. And he’s going to win with the same decisiveness that the Red Sox won the series. No bullshit and no question about who won.
And a certain faux Texan is going to get a chance to run for the office he always wanted — baseball commissioner.
Listen, before I want to say something, I’m traveling with a guest and a friend who represents thousands of people all across this country who are affiliated with the Democrat Party.
In fact, I believe my opponent is running away from some of the great traditions of the Democrat Party.
The Democrat Party has also a great tradition of defending the defenseless.
If you’re a Democrat, and your dreams and goals are not found in the far left wing of the Democrat Party, I’d be honored to have your vote.
Those Republics sure know how to reach across the aisle.