I can't believe Bob Novak wrote this.

[doc03]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak31.html

[Syrinx]

1. maybe he's feeling guilty

Nah. Must be some other explanation.

[demosincebirth]

2. Sounds a little unpatriotic to me

How dare him say something against a war we are fighting

[DEMVET-USMC]

3. Other high profile GOP media types highly critical of Admin.s War efforts

Mark Hekprin writes in a Wall Street Journal editorial: "the inescapable fact that the war has been run incompetently with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought, with too little regard for the American soldier, whose mounting casaulties seem to have no effect on the boastfulness of the civilian leadershp. Quite a list of other quotes by Republican media types is given by Eric Alterman who is a columist with : The Nation. I am becoming convinced some important big time consevatives have decided Bush has to go. ...Oscar

[MnFats]

4. it's ass-saving time....

....and even that dumbfuck, traitorous cro-magnon realizes it.

[wtmusic]

5. Novak is schizo

"Afghanistan constitutes George W. Bush's clearest victory since the terrorist attacks of 9/11"

in a column titled:

"U.S. is lost in Afghanistan"

(clear as mud)

[AndyTiedye]

7. in Iraq we Know Exactly Where We Are

>US is lost in Afghanistan

whereas in Iraq we Know Exactly Where We Are

up shiite creek without a paddle.

[struggle4progress]

6. "Don't blame me. This wasn't what I had in mind."

[LondonAmerican]

8. I don't understand the confusion

since the paleo-conservatives (and Novak is one) have by and large been antiwar during the entire Bush administration.

[myopic4141]

9. The result of diversion.

If a better example can be found of the consequences from diverting the war against terrorism by invading Iraq, I cannot not think of it. The democratization of the Middle East could have began in Afghanistan where the US had the sympathy and support of the world shortly after 11Sep01. Instead, the nation is bogged down on two fronts, each on the verge of failure. Further proof of the squandered opportunity by an Administration fraught with incompetence and tunnel vision. Almost three years and a multitude of lives for naught in the realm of betterment. A sad commentary about extremely sad leadership.

[coda]

10. " I can't believe Bob Novak

."

[HamdenRice]

11. Bush family narco-trafficking returns

Is it just a coincidence, or does narco-trafficking explode everywhere a Bush gets involved in international relations?

There was Papa Bush and the crack cocaine financed war for "freedom" in central America; his near "outing" as lead drug dealer by Manuel Noriega, leading to the Panama invasion.

And now the dauphane invades Afghanistan, bringing back 1960s levels of opium production in that country, which, no doubt, we will soon be seeing on the streets of American cities.

Coincidence?

[doc03]

12. I thought the paper had Novak and Col. Hackworths columns

mixed up when I first read this. Hack has been criticizing Bush* in
in Afghanistan and Iraq since the outset.

[meow2u3]

16. That's it: bring in the dope

and then dare people to use it--then afterwards, lock up the users and low-level dealers for long stretches at a time, while the real drug traffickers get off scot-free. That's the Bush way!

[Mountainman]

13. The rats are jumping ship.

I think that many repubs are looking to the post Bush era and getting in position to say "I knew it all along."

They no longer feel the need to prop up Bush to keep their positions. Bush is a liability now.

[orthogonal]

14. The column seeks to justify Rumsfeld's disavowal of the Geneva Conventions

The whole point of that column is to slip this paragraph in:

It is a strange war, with the JAGs -- Judge Advocate General military lawyers -- given a hand in military decisions. My sources tell of commanders, despite credible intelligence of enemy forces, calling off air strikes on the advice of JAGs. This is the kind of restraint the U.S. military has experienced starting with the Korean War, when as a noncombat Army officer, I knew our forces had their hands tied behind their backs.

Novak is trying to accumulate anecdotal "evidence" that we've allowed cowardly, nit-picking lawyers to hamstring our military; this is just another attempt to justify Rumsfeld's evil and foolhardy jettisoning of the Geneva Conventions -- which was opposed by the military Judges Advocate General -- as smart and patriotic.

[Martin Eden]

15. what Bob Novak needs to write:

The names of the White House officials who committed the federal crime of exposing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

[democracyindanger]

17. I can

This is the key sentence:

"Most important, they are appalled by the immense but fruitless effort to find Osama bin Laden for purposes of U.S. politics."

See, the search for OBL is just for good press back home. So when we abandon Afghanistan, it's okay, because it was just for political points, anyway.