The Dish

Senator Kennedy kicks the troops in the teeth and betrays the Iraqi people by voting against any aid to Iraq. For what? Pure partisanship. Whatever you feel about this war, leaving the innocent people of Iraq to fight terror on their own is morally unconscionable. Kennedy is a disgrace. He believes we should pay no price, shirk any burden to defend liberty around the world.

More people are getting jobs.

Don’t miss this mini-fisk. (Hat-tip: Glenn.)

Some reminders of how some people’s memories are short. Here’s Maureen Dowd on March 9 of this year:

The case for war has been incoherent due to overlapping reasons conservatives want to get Saddam. The president wants to avenge his father, and please his base by changing the historical ellipsis on the Persian Gulf war to a period. Donald Rumsfeld wants to exorcise the post-Vietnam focus on American imperfections and limitations. Dick Cheney wants to establish America’s primacy as the sole superpower. Richard Perle wants to liberate Iraq and remove a mortal threat to Israel. After Desert Storm, Paul Wolfowitz posited that containment is a relic, and that America must aggressively pre-empt nuclear threats. And in 1997, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Fox News, and other conservatives, published a “statement of principles,” signed by Jeb Bush and future Bush officials — Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and Elliott Abrams. Rejecting 41’s realpolitik and shaping what would become 43’s pre-emption strategy, they exhorted a “Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity,” with America extending its domain by challenging “regimes hostile to our interests and values.”

And on June 4, only three months later, we discover that

For the first time in history, Americans are searching for the reason we went to war after the war is over… Conservatives are busily offering a bouquet of new justifications for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq that was sold as self-defense against Saddam’s poised and thrumming weapons of mass destruction.”

So what was it? An incoherent set of multiple reasons or a single, crude one, i.e. self-defense against the “imminent” threat of WMDs? It doesn’t really matter to Dowd, of course. Whatever the Bush administration does, she will criticize it. When it offered many reasons, she lambasted it for incoherence. If it had merely offered one, she’d be making the same inane case today that they weren’t complex enough. They can’t win. And she merrily goes on criticizing whatever it is they will do tomorrow.

“AN EXPANSIVE VISION”: She’s not the only one. Only recently, the New York Times cited the “imminent threat” canard as the sole justification used for war. Here’s another trip down memory lane:

President Bush sketched an expansive vision last night of what he expects to accomplish by a war in Iraq. Instead of focusing on eliminating weapons of mass destruction, or reducing the threat of terror to the United States, Mr. Bush talked about establishing a ‘free and peaceful Iraq’ that would serve as a ‘dramatic and inspiring example’ to the entire Arab and Muslim world, provide a stabilizing influence in the Middle East and even help end the Arab-Israeli conflict. The idea of turning Iraq into a model democracy in the Arab world is one some members of the administration have been discussing for a long time.

Sounds like my retroactive defense of what the White House said and did. But that was, in fact, the New York Times editorial on February 27. How quickly the anti-war brigade changes its tune. Here’s liberal columnist E. J. Dionne in January, making a very similar point:

Bush still has a problem that goes beyond style: We don’t know if this war is primarily about (1) taking weapons of mass destruction out of Saddam Hussein’s hands, or (2) removing Hussein from power, or (3) bringing democracy to Iraq and revolutionizing the politics of the Middle East. Supporters of war argue that all three goals are compatible. In principle, they are. But because the administration has gone back and forth about which of these goals matters most and how they fit together, its policy has been open to easy challenge.

So the administration actually provided a whole welter of reasons to go to war; it didn’t simply focus on one thing – WMDs – although that was always a part of the case. But, again, if all that is true, how can we take today’s one-note criticism seriously? It’s not the administration that should be having a credibility problem these days. It’s their critics.

The disingenuousness of some anti-war critics is a piddling matter compared to the left’s now-explicit campaign to leave Iraq in the lurch. Here’s a Moveon.org direct email letter sent out this week:

Something incredible is happening. Just a week ago, it appeared that President Bush would get $87 billion for the Iraq war and occupation in a landslide vote. But thanks to hundreds of thousands of emails, tens of thousands of calls, and constituent visits by thousands of Americans, more and more members of the House and Senate are declaring that they will vote No.
This is big news. It appears that members of Congress are standing up and demanding that the President face the facts and make real changes to his Iraq policy. Members of Congress need to know that if they take a leap of faith here and do the right thing, we’ll be behind them. With the vote scheduled for tomorrow in the House and Friday in the Senate, it’s critical that they hear from us TODAY.
Over the next 48 hours, we’re working with Working Assets and True Majority to deliver a flood of phone calls and emails to Congress telling them to take a stand. Please take a moment to call your Representative and both your Senators right now. Let them know that you expect them to vote AGAINST Bush’s additional $87 billion request for Iraq.
Over the weekend, Senator John Kerry announced he’s inclined to vote against the request. Yesterday, Senator John Edwards declared in strong language that he will also vote no: “This mission will never be successful unless the president dramatically changes course.” Even Senate and House leaders Tom Daschle and Nancy Pelosi have signaled that they may well vote against the bill.
President Bush and Republican leaders are trying to portray the $87 billion package as the only way to help the troops in Iraq. But it’s the President’s failed policies that put the troops in harm’s way, and it’s the President’s refusal to work with the UN that keeps them there. It’s time for Congress to draw a line in the sand and tell the President that for our national security, the safety of the troops, and the stability of the Middle East, he must change course. A strong vote against the $87 billion will demonstrate just that.

Well, we’re working with the U.N. already, and have just reached an agreement with Russia, China and Pakistan. What, one wonders, does Moveon want? They want Rumsfeld fired, immediate withdrawal of American and allied troops, no aid to the Iraqi reconstruction effort, and abandoning Iraq to a United Nations that has no ability to run it. What this means is complete chaos, a chaos in which the Baathist thugs of the old regime, together with their terrorist allies around the region, can use Iraq as a new base for international terror. No sane person of good will can justify that – except as pure domestic politics, with an entire country as a play-ball. This is the morality of the left?

There’s a chance that the British Tory leader may have to resign in a petty expenses scandal combined with general malaise. Is there a Churchill-figure on the wings?

IMMINENCE WATCH: More distortion from Jules Witcover in the Baltimore Sun:

When President Bush went to New Hampshire the other day with his current justification for invading Iraq, he seemed to have forgotten those missing weapons of mass destruction he insisted earlier posed such an imminent threat.

Witcover also archly implies that the president asserted a direct link between Iraq and 9/11. He didn’t. Last night, the lie continued on “60 Minutes.” According to CBS News:

Greg Thielmann tells Correspondent Scott Pelley that at the time of Powell’s speech, Iraq didn’t pose an imminent threat to anyone – not even its own neighbors.

Grrr.

A discussion thread calling for the assassination of president Bush. A new low for the anti-war British paper.

“About Rush. I was very much addicted to Oxy – not by prescription – and it took me two years to finally quit – it’s been a year this last July. I never want to go through that again. It’s true. It starts out as one or two and can easily escalate up to 10-20 pills a dose depending on the mg. In the ’80s I did a lot of powder and was able to just stop when it came time to do so w/out a hitch. But the withdrawls from this pill are the worst and from what I read and experienced the closest thing to actually being on Smack. Odd that being in possession of 1 doobie is deemed worse than having a bottle of this serious drug. Of course you get high. After you take your dose fix for about an hour or two the feeling is an intense sense of euphoria and you are so verbal and happy and warm. Your whole aim is to keep that wonderful high. It’s when the drug stops it happy moment that things get ugly and you start planning your next dose.
I, too, have been thinking of what Rush was doing, thinking, and feeling during those broadcasts much like I used to think of what events were going on simultaneously while Clinton was behind closed doors no doubt discussing cigars. At this moment Rush is hating life and he can’t sleep, think or eat. All he wants is that good feeling to return. Remember that scene in “Riding Cars with Boys”? The guy forget his name tells his wife Drew Barrymore, after realizing that he can’t kick the habit, that he has it all figured out. His eyes are all glassy and he’s happy and on top of the world. ‘I just want to take enough to get by’ and then all will be well. Excellent example of what’s going on.
I’m counting on Rush to be more sympathetic to those whom he’s lambasted all these years. A toned down more humble Rush. If he doesn’t, then not much has changed, really. I used to look down on those people as weak, and selfish. Not anymore. I’ve been there.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

THE BBC CORRECTS: They now credit the United States with actually separating conjoined Muslim twins, after a bunch of emails from you and others taking them to task. Here’s the email from the Beeb:

Thank you for your email. We have now updated this story to make it clear that the operation took place in America. We did report in the fact box at the side of the page that the boys had flown to Dallas for the operation. Our further coverage of this story did mention the location of the operation. – see links below [here and here]. Thank you for your interest in the BBC News website.

Blogs get results! Keep at it.

ASNER UPDATE: Earlier this week I linked to a first person account by one Kevin McCullough of a conversation he had with Ed Asner. Since it was a first person account, I trusted it. McCullough has now withdrawn the gist of his claim about Asner’s reverence for Stalin. It appears he distorted Asner’s remarks; and has now partially retracted. He says he misquoted even himself. I apologize for linking. You can read the actual interchange here. McCullough has a radio show. Let’s hope he doesn’t distort things as readily on the air as he does in print.

“But the BBC’s Orla Guerin says it is not clear whether the easily identifiable convoy was deliberately targeted.” – from the BBC. Even Arafat is quoted as condemning “this ugly crime targeting American observers as they were on a mission for security and peace.” The BBC – finding more excuses for terror than Arafat.