Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Sorry I've been off-I have a cold and my head is a bit swimmy-But in my haze I was up to my usual tooling around my web haunts and in reading Joe Coanson's JournalI hit a link he had to a commentary in The Scotsman by Andrew Neil. This sentence in Mr. Coanson's column was what made me read the Scotsman article-
"A former Tory Party staffer who has worked in America, Neil has ample conservative credentials -- and during the months leading to the invasion of Iraq, he established himself as one of the United Kingdom's most voluble hawks. The former Murdoch editor is rightly concerned about the progress of the war against Islamist terror, and he doesn't flinch from admitting that he is deeply disturbed by what he learned during a recent visit to Washington[.]"
The story is baisically a first hand account of off the record intelligence briefings about the war on terror that Mr. Neil observed during a recent trip to Washington. Here's a bit of what he heard-
"President Bush’s bold Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad gave US troops a much-needed fillip and he said all the right things. But behind the scenes the war on terror is going badly wrong in its two main theatres. "In both places it is worse than you think," I was warned before arriving in the US capital for a series of off-the-record briefings. The warning was accurate."
That's not remotely all, of course, and the whole article is what I would file under required reading. But the passage that caught my attention as "should be common knowledge" was a quote from Ahmad Chalabi about the recent administration rush to hand over power in Iraq to the Iraqis-
"The whole thing [the speedier transfer of power] was set up so President Bush could come to the airport in October [2004] for a ceremony to congratulate the new Iraqi government."
Remember that-If the handoff goes to shit after the first tuesday in November he's already reelected-or some other poor schmuck will have to deal with the fallout-I call on all concerned to contact your representatives in Washington and tell them the transfer of power in Iraq can't be used solely for political gain, and a sloppy job will further the cause of terrorism and endanger American interests around the world. This is too important to be a campaign ad. Read the article yourself. Then decide if the term leadership applies to any of these people in Washington now who want your vote next November. And speaking of campaign ads-remember this article when you start getting bombarded with Bush ads in a few months saying how he's the man to protect us from terror...I don't feel particularly safe-do you?
"A former Tory Party staffer who has worked in America, Neil has ample conservative credentials -- and during the months leading to the invasion of Iraq, he established himself as one of the United Kingdom's most voluble hawks. The former Murdoch editor is rightly concerned about the progress of the war against Islamist terror, and he doesn't flinch from admitting that he is deeply disturbed by what he learned during a recent visit to Washington[.]"
The story is baisically a first hand account of off the record intelligence briefings about the war on terror that Mr. Neil observed during a recent trip to Washington. Here's a bit of what he heard-
"President Bush’s bold Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad gave US troops a much-needed fillip and he said all the right things. But behind the scenes the war on terror is going badly wrong in its two main theatres. "In both places it is worse than you think," I was warned before arriving in the US capital for a series of off-the-record briefings. The warning was accurate."
That's not remotely all, of course, and the whole article is what I would file under required reading. But the passage that caught my attention as "should be common knowledge" was a quote from Ahmad Chalabi about the recent administration rush to hand over power in Iraq to the Iraqis-
"The whole thing [the speedier transfer of power] was set up so President Bush could come to the airport in October [2004] for a ceremony to congratulate the new Iraqi government."
Remember that-If the handoff goes to shit after the first tuesday in November he's already reelected-or some other poor schmuck will have to deal with the fallout-I call on all concerned to contact your representatives in Washington and tell them the transfer of power in Iraq can't be used solely for political gain, and a sloppy job will further the cause of terrorism and endanger American interests around the world. This is too important to be a campaign ad. Read the article yourself. Then decide if the term leadership applies to any of these people in Washington now who want your vote next November. And speaking of campaign ads-remember this article when you start getting bombarded with Bush ads in a few months saying how he's the man to protect us from terror...I don't feel particularly safe-do you?
