Krauthammer: Ted Kennedy, Losing It

[central scrutinizer]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2670-2003Sep25.html

Get your barf bags out before reading this one.

excerpt:

To accuse Bush of going to war for political advantage is not just disgraceful. It so flies in the face of the facts that it can only be said to be unhinged from reality. Kennedy's rant reflects the Democrats' blinding Bush-hatred, and marks its passage from partisanship to pathology.

[realFedUp]

1. barf bags enabled and fully contained...

Love how this guy paints Bush as a hero for doing the
wrong thing...taking a lemon and making sauerkraut juice...

snip

A year ago Bush was riding high. He decided nonetheless to put at risk the great political advantage he had gained as a successful post-9/11 leader -- an advantage made obvious by the Republican gains in last year's elections -- to go after Saddam Hussein.

Politically, the war promised nothing but downside. There was no great popular pressure to go to war. Indeed, millions took to the streets to demonstrate against it, both at home and abroad. Bush launched the war nonetheless, in spite of the political jeopardy to which it exposed him, for the simple reason that he believed, as did Tony Blair, that it had to be done.

You can say he made a misjudgment. You can say he picked the wrong enemy. You can say almost anything about this war, but to say that he fought it for political advantage is absurd. The possibilities for disaster were real and many: house-to-house combat in Baghdad, thousands of possible casualties, a chemical attack on our troops (which is why they were ordered into those dangerously bulky and hot protective suits on the road to Baghdad). We were expecting oil fires, terrorist attacks and all manner of calamities. This is a way to boost political ratings?

continued

[Richardo]

2. Sooooo...that IWR being right before the election wasn't political?

We're not that stupid, Krauthammer, you unipolar PNAC shithead.

[qanda]

3. One look at *'s poll numbers during the war and

his aircraft carrier stunt after the war is enough evidence to convince me that waging this war had a lot to do with political gains. Whoever wrote this is a first class idiot!

[Beetwasher]

4. Wow, this guy is delusional

He's using the fact that they failed miserably to say there was no political advantage in the war...Hindsight is 100% I guess...What an idiot. There was amazing political advantage to the war and if they weren't incompetent, there probably still would be. The advantages: A major jump in approval and the opportunity to shut up the admins critics and smear them as unpatriotic. If they were successful in the war, which in their hubris they assumed they would be without even really trying very hard, they would be seen as pulling off a major victory...They were just too lazy and incompetent through and through though to pull it off successfully..

[PROGRESSIVE1]

19. Krauthammer belongs in the Hague along with...

this entire administration!!!!!


:puke:

[RobertSeattle]

5. I hope someone can research "Imminent threat" pre war

Perhaps Bush didn't explicitely say it, but I'm pretty sure every RW talking head and radio show host said virtually the same thing in the push for war - and the Bush Administration never "corrected" them.

[tlb]

16. Looking it up, Bush and Blair said there was no " imminent threat"

"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?" - Bush, State of the Union Address.


"Well, it is tough because people don't see an immediate threat arising from Saddam and it's, it's my job as Prime Minister to say to people, there may not be an immediate threat in the sense that Saddam's about to launch a strike against Britain, but this issue of weapons of mass destruction is a huge question for the world " - Blair, on Breakfast with Frost


"Some of our critics have tried to put into our mouths words and criteria we never ever used," Mr Straw said. "We did not use the words 'immediate' or 'imminent'... We did not use that because plainly the evidence did not justify that. We did say there was a 'current and serious' threat and I stand by that completely." (BBC-June 24, 2003

[teryang]

6. Krauthammer is projecting

He is clearly unhinged from reality. Always has been.

[dfong63]

7. BWAHAHAHA

[many a good man]

8. "The possibilities for disaster were real and many"

Gee, maybe the real intelligence showed Iraq's capacity for self-defense was not that real...

I think most Congresspersons and citizens figured * would actually exercise SOME shred of diplomacy and actually TRY to create world consensus and a coalition. A credible threat would resume inspections, settle the WMD issue, and lift sanctions. 70% of Americans wanted a UN resolution. * played the game but once the elections were over he showed everyone that the neocons were really in charge.

I hope to see a strong rebuttal in print...

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[qb]

10. It reminds me of Cheney's "Beyond the pale" quote

When they have no facts, they just pull out the adjectives like "ridiculous", "disgraceful", "unfair", etc.

[Bridget Burke]

11. "Inconceivable!"

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

[Classical_Liberal]

12. I already did that two weeks ago

when Krauthammer admitted George stole the election and then acted like the left was being petty for complaining about it. Then he went on to claim the thieves constituted a very progressive administration.

[Cocoa]

13. "the war was an act of political courage"

One look at a graph of Bush's poll numbers over time will show that Bush only goes down, except for dramatic spikes due to terrorism and war.

War is the only thing this guy has.

Krauthammer neglects to mention the courage of the soldiers dying, and neglects to mention the courage of the people criticizing Bush when he was very popular, and when criticizing Bush brought consequences, like the Dixie Chicks as a famous example.

[Swede]

14. By who?

Bush hits the rack by 10 pm every night. That's so he can fire off some commands and read some newspapers.

[Hand]

15. Yawn...

Ignore this tiresome fellow. Well, unless he starts foaming at the mouth, in which case euthanize the brute before he bites someone.
}(

[swinney]

17. Kraut should reread what he wrote demening Clinton.

Kraut honest I ez POPE.

[baby_bear]

18. Is he stupid or trying to pull the wool over our eyes?

I mean, does he nothing about PNAC and how the powers that be in the W administration planned this war way before 9/11? Or does he just hope that his readers don't have a clue that they were (and continue to be) taken to the cleaners?

I suspect the latter. He can't be THAT dumb, or that much of a True Believer, can he?

Maybe he can.

s_m

[Loyal]

20. I can't stand Krauthammer

n/t