The Dish

We don’t get many real personal insights into the way George W. Bush thinks or was thinking during the Iraq war, but Pat Robertson’s remarks on the Paula Zahn show are extraordinary:

Pat Robertson, an ardent Bush supporter, said he had that conversation with the president in Nashville, Tennessee, before the March 2003 invasion. He described Bush in the meeting as “the most self-assured man I’ve ever met in my life.”
“You remember Mark Twain said, ‘He looks like a contented Christian with four aces.’ I mean he was just sitting there like, ‘I’m on top of the world,’ ” Robertson said on the CNN show, “Paula Zahn Now.”
“And I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, ‘Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.’ “
Robertson said the president then told him, “Oh, no, we’re not going to have any casualties.”

Did anyone believe that outside the presidential cocoon? The problem with this president is not that he doesn’t have the will to win. It’s that he seems to suffer from an inability to see reality. Any president who believed that there would be no casualties in the Iraq liberation is unqualified to be commander-in-chief. The same goes for a president who believes there will be casualties and tells a loyal supporter that there won’t be. The only way this isn’t damning about Bush is if Robertson is lying. But why would he?

Protesting the broadcasting of “Stolen Honor” on the public airwaves is one thing. Using threats to shut down a public screening of it is another. The Kerry people are being thuggish and illiberal in this. They should stop it.

He’s trying to warn his base that Bush might lose. Well, it’s a theory. And it has something to do with Samuel and Saul.

OHIO AND BUSH: The polls all show the same consistent finding: Bush is stuck at 47 percent. He’s around 48 percent nationally. Mystery Pollster applies the incumbent rule. Not good news for Bush.

A first-person account of his recent summary of the U.S. election.

Her reason? “In the hope that he will restore our alliances and reduce rabid anti-Americanism in this era of terrorism when international good will and cooperation are crucial.” That’s one good reason. One of my intellectual idols, Steven Pinker, is also for Kerry. His case? “The reason is reason: Bush uses too little of it. In the war on terror, his administration stints on loose-nuke surveillance while confiscating nail clippers and issuing color-coded duct tape advisories. His restrictions on stem cell research are incoherent, his dismissal of possible climate change inexcusable.”

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO SAFIRE? I’ve never thought of him as a purely partisan attack-dog, and his criticism of Kerry’s fear-mongering on social security and the draft is well-taken. But how is it possible to call the Kerry campaign the principal fear-mongers in this election? The entire premise of the Bush campaign has been that if Kerry is elected, the country will be blown to smithereens. I have lost count of the emails telling me that I have to back Bush because if I don’t, I won’t be alive to observe any elections or gay weddings. Cheney walked right up to the line earlier this year of saying that a catastrophe will occur if Kerry wins. Yesterday, he said:

“The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us – biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind to be able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.”

And Cheney subsquently argued that “I don’t think there’s any evidence to support the proposition that [Kerry] would, in fact” be the same type of aggressive counter-terror president as Bush. Isn’t the implication obvious? Vote for Kerry and get nuked. But, hey, it works in other areas. The candidate who avoided Vietnam has surrogates who impugn his opponent’s war medals. The candidate who favors stripping gay couples of all legal protections gets to call the other guy a gay-baiter. And the candidate who tells people he’s the only thing between them and Armageddon gets pundits targeting his opponent as the fear-monger.

“I will not kneel before these terrorists. If I don’t join the army, who is going to defend the country from the terrorists?” – an Iraqi recruit, after yet another hideous terrorist assault on an Iraqi National Guard building. He’s a hero – as are so many Iraqis trying to rebuild their country in the face of Jihadist and Baathist murder. I haven’t given up on Iraq. You have to believe that, given a real choice, Iraqis will vote for a democratic and free future, not the medieval depravity available in Iran and elsewhere. The elections are critical, of course. What tears me up is that we are responsible for protecting these people from such violence; and we have chosen to minimize our troop commitment at the very hour of their need. I hope they prevail. With the Falluja showdown looming, we all have to pray that they will.

MEANWHILE: Here’s a brief recap of the security situation in American-occupied Iraq yesterday:

*tA senior aid worker was kidnapped in Baghdad
*tTwo Iraqis were killed and three were injured when three car bombs exploded in the northern city of Mosul, the Associated Press news agency reported
*tA US contractor was killed and several people were wounded in a mortar attack on a US army compound in central Baghdad, the US military said
*tA key oil pipeline in northern Iraq was attacked and set on fire
*tMore than 100 suspected insurgents were arrested by Iraqi security forces, backed by US Marines, in raids in Babil province, south of Baghdad
*tA suicide car bomber attacked a US military convoy in the western town of Habbaniyah, police told the Reuters news agency. There were no reports of casualties.

Just the latest reality check.

AS USUAL: The Onion sums up where we may now be in Iraq.

Here’s the latest of a growing crowd of people who cannot reward what Bush has done these past few years. This is the editorial of the Tampa Tribune. Money quote:

As stewards of the Tribune’s editorial voice, we find it unimaginable to not be lending our voice to the chorus of conservative-leaning newspapers endorsing the president’s re- election. We had fully expected to stand with Bush, whom we endorsed in 2000 because his politics generally reflected ours: a strong military, fiscal conservatism, personal responsibility and small government. We knew him to be a popular governor of Texas who fought for lower taxes, less government and a pro-business constitution. But we are unable to endorse President Bush for re- election because of his mishandling of the war in Iraq, his record deficit spending, his assault on open government and his failed promise to be a ‘uniter not a divider’ within the United States and the world.

Here’s the catch: they don’t endorse Kerry either.

THE BEST LINE: Well, there are many in “Team America,” which I saw again last night. (Hey, it’s the only thing keeping me optimistic these days.) But my favorite was Susan Sarandon’s last words, before she is hurled over a balcony and smashes into bloody little bits on the ground (yes, the scene drew cheers in the movie theater both times). Her last words to “Team America” are the classic Fonda-esque: “You will die a peasant’s death.” You just know she reads the Nation.

“It is hard not to sympathize with the views expressed by your letter-writer who was stationed outside Fallujah. He does a good job of expressing the view from the trenches.
The trouble is that his ‘old military maxim’ is a brilliant position when it comes to tactics, and a hopeless one when it comes to strategy. Grunts in the field should execute decisively without second-guessing; but that mind-set is no virtue in generals, much less in national leaders.
Bush with his self-imposed blinders might well be a good man to have with you on patrol–though he studiously avoided the opportunity to find out–but a gung-ho patrol-leader may make an abysmal war-manager. Imagination, reflection, and the ability to learn from errors are needed by people at the top of the chain of command. In the field it may be more important to act in a split second, even wrongly, than to canvas for informed opinions, but in planning for a war, and in conducting a campaign over the course of years, those high-adrenalin errors will add up into strategic disasters like the one we are faced with now.” More feedback on the Letters Page.

RESISTING REUTERS: Canada’s Globe and Mail insists on using the term “terrorist” for people who target innocent civilians for political or religious ends. How shocking. CORRECTION: That should be the National Post, not the Globe and Mail. My bad.

THE GOODS ON KETCHUP: An oasis of calm in a troubled food world.

O’REILLY FOR PORN: His obsession has a long pedigree. Of course the correct answer is: so what? After the Clinton mess, I came reluctantly to the conclusion that I couldn’t support sexual harassment laws any more. Not that sexual harassment isn’t a problem and isn’t disgusting. It’s just that the violation of privacy that any legal investigation inevitably entails is just too intrusive. Die-hard feminists and theocons will disagree. But I pity O’Reilly for what is about to be done to him.

One of Oxblog’s finest makes the pro-war case for the Democrat. He homes in on my fundamental concern, the thing that has kept me from taking the plunge: Kerry’s “total resistance to making any positive statement about the importance of ensuring a democratic outcome in Iraq.” I worry about that too. I don’t think it’s too late to rescue the mission. I fear Kerry is too skeptical of democracy in Arab countries and doesn’t grasp how transformative it can be. But Adesnik makes an interesting case that this shouldn’t be dispositive. I’m still working on my own endorsement. I was planning on just abstaining. But that’s a cop-out.

Here’s a dilemma. Do I accept ads for “Stolen Honor,” the anti-Kerry propaganda movie being forced down the throats of Sinclair’s broadcasting networks? And the answer is … sure! It’s a free country and I have never believed in squelching views, however objectionable. Running an ad for a DVD raises no public airwaves questions, and funnels a few Sinclair dollars to the blog. Look, I have an ad from Ann Coulter. And George Soros. Just explaining …

SIGH: Jonah says I ignored his piece on the Mary Cheney affair. My apologies. I missed it. But, having read it, my point about his tacit approval of an analogy between lesbianism and adultery and/or alcoholism holds. On that very analogy, Jonah punts by saying “we can discuss all that another day.” Why not now? Here are his other analogies:

[W]hat if George W. Bush had said “divorce is a difficult issue. On one hand we all think society is healthier when marriages are healthier. On the other hand, we understand that good and decent people sometimes have irreconcilable differences. I’m sure if you asked John Kerry’s first wife, she would tell you that there are no easy answers…” Or if he had said, “I’m sure if you asked John Kerry’s lovely daughters whether it was easy for them to cope with their parents’ divorce…”

But divorce is almost always a sad thing. Even if it’s the best thing for the people involved, it still represents an obvious lapse from the hopes they had when they got married in the first place. No such thing should be said about being gay. There is nothing unfortunate about it at all – except for having to deal with incomprehension, hostility and prejudice on a regular basis. And that has nothing to do with homosexuality (a neutral or good thing) and everything to do with homophobia (an evil). Still, Jonah has a final analogy:

Or what if Bush had said, “America is a land of great opportunity for immigrants. I’m sure John Kerry’s second wife Teresa, who was born in Africa, would agree…”

That’s a much better analogy – because being an immigrant is not something we should disparage – but it is something that some bigots do disparage. And on this, I disagree with Jonah. I think it would be perfectly legitimate to mention it. As with Mary’s lesbianism, THK’s roots are publicly known; and there’s nothing wrong with them. In fact, deliberately not mentioning THK’s origins in order not to inflame nativists is buying into the bigots’ rationale and argument. Our leaders should not acquiesce in popular prejudice. They should challenge it when necessary. So I rest my case. I await an analogy that is not inherently distasteful or problematic that would render Kerry’s remark out of bounds.