Bush Plays Advice Columnist to Dems
Fri Sep 28, 2007 at 05:21:11 AM PDT
Bush has been calling the Democratic candidates with some free advice. About Iraq. And I really fear that, after watching the Dem debate the other night, Clinton, Obama and Edwards are actually listening to the one human being on this planet who has proved his ineptitude knows no limits:
Bush has even quietly sent advice through intermediaries to Clinton and other Democratic candidates, urging them to be careful in their campaign rhetoric so they do not limit their options should they win, according to a new book, "The Evangelical President," by Bill Sammon of the Washington Examiner. Bush has "been urging candidates, 'Don't get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically,' " White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten told Sammon.
(cont.)
While [Bush] no longer harbors hope of winning the war by Jan. 20, 2009, he wants to use his remaining time in office to stabilize the country, draw down some forces and leave his successor with a less volatile situation that would dampen domestic demands to pull out completely. If he can do that, he told television anchors during an off-the-record lunch this month, he thinks even Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), the Democratic front-runner, would continue his policy.
The goal, as national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley told the Council on Foreign Relations recently, is that "a new president who comes in in January of '09, whoever he or she may be, will look at it and say, 'I'm persuaded that we have long-term interests here. It's important we get it right. This strategy is beginning to work. I think I'll leave Iraq alone.' And so that a new president coming in doesn't have a first crisis about 'let's pull the troops out of Iraq.' "
Looks like Bush is well on his way to achieving at least this part of his legacy. Any sane person would run, not walk, as fast as he or she could 180 degrees in the opposite direction from any course of action recommended by this worst of American Presidents (and the competition is no longer even close). Yet we witnessed the other night the top three candidates for the Democrats, one right after the other refuse to commit to removing all of our troops from Iraq before the year 2013. Indeed, they didn't even pledge that much. They merely set 2013 as an "aspirational" goal, at best.
Hillary Clinton, the leading candidate, reiterated her refusal to commit to a complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq by 2013. Her top contenders, Barack Obama and John Edwards, joined her in declining to speculate on hypothetical situations so far in the future.
"I think it's hard to project four years from now," Obama said Wednesday night during a debate at Dartmouth University in New Hampshire. [...]
Clinton said it was the "height of irresponsibility" for President Bush to leave office without ending the war, and she said her goal was to have troops gone within four years, but the New York Senator would not make any firm commitments because "we don't know what we're going to find" when the next president takes office.
Former North Carolina Sen. Edwards said he couldn't "make that commitment" to having all troops gone ...
In short, it appears that the leading Democratic candidates would rather listen to the guy whose strategy in Iraq the overwhelming majority of Americans have rejected (even after the testimony of General "I've found a pony in Iraq" Petraeus before Congress earlier this month), the man who lied and misled our nation into violating the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and the US Constitution, and the man who is trying desperately to inoculate himself from being prosecuted for war crimes, than to the people who have been right about Iraq all along.
It's enough to make someone into a conspiracy theorist, isn't it? It's certainly makes reasonable people doubt the sincerity of any Democrat who claims he or she opposes the war and wants to withdraw our troops from Iraq. Congress refuses to defund the war, or even to force Bush to continuously veto supplemental defense funding bills that would set a firm date for the withdrawal of our forces. Congress also refuses to even consider an impeachment investigation of Bush and Cheney, even in light of the recent disclosures in the Spanish press that Bush was flat out lying to Congress and the American people back in early 2003 when he claimed he hadn't made his mind up about invading Iraq (instead he told the Spanish leader, Aznar that he would invade with or without a UN resolution authorizing the use of force).
How much lower can the Democrats go? That used to be a question I asked of the Bush administration and the Republican party, but increasingly it makes sense to ask it of the "worst opposition party" in history. After all, what have they done to roll back the excesses of the Bush regime enacted prior to 2006?
Have they changed the Military Commissions Act to restore habeas corpus? No.
Have they changed the FISA law to make it impossible for a US President to spy on American citizens with out a warrant? No (instead they extended Bush's authority to do so).
Have they created laws which require oversight of the billions upon billions of dollars doled out to US contractors in Iraq? No.
Have they amended the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to make it crystal clear that Bush does not have the unilateral authority to attack Iran without a Congressional declaration of war, as required by the Constitution? No (instead they approved meaningless resolutions condemning Iran and advising Bush to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization, thus making it easier for him to rely on the AUMF to attack Iran whenever he so desires).
Did they vote to deny Bush the authority to escalate the war in Iraq? No.
Now the leading Democratic candidates for president won't commit to withdrawing our troops from the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States. And it looks as if they are following the advice of the current criminalcommander-in-chief who created this mess in the first place. If that doesn't make you utterly sick this morning, I don't know what will.
Al Gore, where are you when we need you?
(A slightly modified version of this piece is posted at Booman Tribune)
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