March 19, 2007
Pure Horserace: War, Who Is It Good For?
White House Candidates Keep Iraq At Arm's Length
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Play CBS Video Video Bush: War In Iraq Can Be Won CBS News RAW: On the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq, President Bush said American security would be at risk if U.S. troops came home without securing Iraq.
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Video Bush Asks For Patience On Iraq Marking the four-year anniversary of the Iraq war, President Bush called for increased funding and patience. Meanwhile, Democrats and protesters call for an end to the conflict. Gwen Belton reports.
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Video Notebook: Bush's 2-Term Blues Only On The Web: Second-term presidents often see their agendas get sidetracked by scandals. Katie Couric says in this regard George Bush has proved himself the rule, not the exception.
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(CBS)
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Who's Who 2008 Democratic Hopefuls Clinton, Obama and Edwards lead the chase for the Democratic nomination.
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Who's Who 2008 Republican Hopefuls McCain and Giuliani head up the Republican pack chasing the presidency.
Candidates in both parties have balancing acts to pull off. For Republicans like Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney, the war threatens to overshadow every other issue for voters next year and unless things dramatically improve in the public's eyes, little else may matter.
Republicans can't afford to directly criticize President Bush's decision to go to war because it remains popular among those crucial activists who will determine the party's nominee. All they can do is what they've done criticize around the edges. McCain has had harsh words for the post-invasion planning on the part of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for example.
Democrats have much more freedom to be critical of both the initial decision to go to war and the execution of it, and they have been. But they run the risk of being pushed too far in that direction. Core voters in their party are increasingly insistent on purity on Iraq. Not only do they want U.S. troops out now they want their candidates who supported it in any way to issue public apologies.
Thus far, Hillary Clinton has refused to go as far as the rest of the field and apologize for her vote authorizing the war. She has paid for that refusal with plenty of criticism within her party. Beyond the nomination, however, Democrats don't want to be seen as pure doves. Despite the unpopularity of this war, 9/11 still resonates and voters may reject a pure anti-war party.
No candidate for president can go long without discussing Iraq; that's just a reality of our politics. And for the handful of them serving in Congress, there will be plenty of opportunities to assert themselves on the issue. But for all these candidates, it's safest to let Iraq continue to be the president's problem for as long as they can.
Rage Against The Machine: Her husband is sometimes called "Big Dog" among Democrats, but if Hillary Clinton wants her own giant-sized nickname, she might have to settle for "Big Brother" if a popular YouTube clip is any indication.
The clip, which artfully inserts Clinton into the role of Big Brother in Apple's landmark "1984" Super Bowl ad and shows a woman in a Barack Obama shirt hurling a hammer at Clinton's visage, has been making the rounds since early March. But it has blown up in recent days thanks to some page one coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle and high placement on The Drudge Report.
Obama's campaign has denied any involvement with the fake commercial. But assuming thats true, the ad's popularity again raises the question of how campaigns can control their message in the Internet age. In YouTube's case, maybe they'll end up taking a page out of Viacom's playbook after all, that Obama logo seen in the ad is copyrighted.
Riddles Wrapped In Enigmas: There are two main schools of thought concerning the primary calendar as it appears to be shaping up. Iowa and New Hampshire will almost certainly retain their positions as the lead-off contests, with South Carolina and, Nevada perhaps squeezing in to grab some of the attention.
Then comes what is being called "Super-Duper Tuesday" Feb. 5, a day that could see 20 or more states voting and possibly end the primary season. With so much at stake that day delegate-rich states like California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and maybe even New York and Florida what strategies should campaigns pursue?
Joe Trippi, a veteran Democratic strategist who managed Howard Dean's 2004 campaign, told CBSNews.com last week he believes those early contests will remain supremely important. Wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, Trippi argued, will give a candidate enough momentum to carry them through those big states. Even those who have resources will have no time to recover, the thinking goes.
The other school of thought cautions against a campaign focused solely on the early states. Some candidates may raise as much as $100 million by next January and, used wisely, that could buy a lot of organization, media attention and TV ads in some of the bigger Feb. 5 states. With that date probably coming just three weeks after New Hampshire, early efforts could establish a firewall of sorts in these larger states that even momentum can't breach.
In the end, most of this "strategery" is probably most useful as a time-killing device for political junkies. We may see a candidate like Rudy Giuliani effectively skip Iowa or another of the four early states but almost certainly campaign hard in the rest of them. The real calculations will probably be a little more simple those with the resources will spread them as far and wide as they can, while those without will bank on a breakthrough in the first contests.
Lost In Translation: Republican candidates' efforts to reach out to Hispanic voters have met with mixed results, but for decades they have enjoyed success with one group: Cubans. That's why Republican Mitt Romney, to paraphrase famous Cuban Desi Arnaz, might have some 'splainin' to do.
Campaigning last week in South Florida, Romney denounced the regime of Fidel Castro and his brother Raul hated figures among a Cuban population that has remained loyal to the GOP and its strong anti-communist stance. But the Miami Herald reports that the crowd didnt exactly shower Romney with applause when he ended his speech with the rallying cry "Patria o muerte, venceremos! "
The phrase, which means "Fatherland or death, we shall overcome!" in English, has been used by Fidel Castro to end his bombastic speeches for years. Its prospects for showing up in future Romney speeches are not nearly as bright.
By Vaughn Ververs
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See all 32 CommentsThe President finally has his Iraqi exit strategy in place. After the 2008 elections he's going to Disneyland.
That's right, they'll all get in their canoes and paddle across the Pacific Ocean to attack us in our homes... We must give more money to Haliburton so we can be safe!
Posted by huskerarmy
LOL!
One idiot even posted something the other day about how the Islamists are going to be running through our neighborhoods.
LMAO!!
Can't you just see them running down the sidewalk on your block shooting guns in the air and yelling that yell they do...
LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA
ROFLMAO!!!
That's right, they'll all get in their canoes and paddle across the Pacific Ocean to attack us in our homes... We must give more money to Haliburton so we can be safe!
seniorengine
well, it's true. And too many still believe Saddam and Al-Qaeda attacked us on 911.
this is because our pres/vp told the whole country not once, or twice, but dozens of time on national television & radio. We were lied to, pure and simple.
Now to cover up their misdeeds, they tell us - forget about saddam & al-qaeda - we have to fight them ovver there, to avoid them coming here!
Baloney!!!
- Russian proverb
Again, here lies the problem, they want to take care of themselves, rather than do what is right. It makes no difference - Dem. or republican - take care of out political future, and let our men die.
Americans let's do what is right when you vote for these people, make Nixon a write-in candidate.
"shock and awe" and if it had gone different they would all be claiming their share of the glory. The pity and terrible thing about this is all the killing and sufferin that is going on and the people in Washington only care about an election, won't allow the people to see the casalties returning,and twist all the facts backwards.
me what are supposed to do after Sep/11/2001?.
Say, thank you Osama,and please our country is
yours. They will (DEMONCRATS,LIBERALS,TRAITORS)
and all kind of sewer rats.
Posted by j02281 at 05:46 PM : Mar 19, 2007
The idea that nobody wanted this war is ridiculous. Bush and the neoconservatives wanted this war very very much and had plans in place for it even before they moved into the White House. You can be sure that on 9-11 there was dancing and joy in the White House as the towers came down because they then had their excuse to put their plans into action. This war has been a complete and rousing success from their point of view. They have made hundreds of billions of dollars in profits off from it and the longer it drags on the more taxpayer money that gets funneled through defense contractors and big oil companies and into their pockets. They are getting richer and our troops are dying and both are just fine by them. As long as the money flows so will the blood.
oh geez.
Posted by coffeehead at 07:33 PM
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I do know that. And I wasn't trying to make a comparative analogy, but when I read 1984 with backdrop of the Bush Administration, I feel like Orwell is describing our government with Big Brother.
When I posted that statement after you posted the Chalmers Johnson, I meant that it made my hair stand on end. I don't know who he is. In a different way, but no less profound, that piece from Johnson is describing exactly what is happening now. I just wanted to know where that quote came from. And do you know when he wrote it?
Fredgrad: Your entire premise is off base. The current instability is NOT a contrived plan by al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda plays a relatively minor and insignificant role in the current affair. That assumption, fed to you repeatedly by the administration and its minions simply has no basis in reality. Al-Qaeda WAS NOT in Iraq before the war; the Sunni Baathist consistently hewed a secular line. The Kurds and Shiites both consider the radical Sunni elements as enemies. This notion that al-Qaeda would have a safe haven is ludicrous! Where? The Shiites will eradicate them in their areas; the Kurds will do the same in the north. The Sunnis will not tolerate foreign al-Qaeda elements if U.S. do not exist as a target. You need to embrace the reality of the politics of the region and quit buying George Bush's seventh grade geography fantasy.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."
-President Theodore Roosevelt
Another insightful comment from those who think that out of all American media, only Fox Noise, er, Fox "News" has no bias. Must be hard to breathe in that rarified atmosphere, but at least there aren't too many others out there to suck up the little oxygen remaining.
The majority of Iraqis (and the majority of Americans too) believe we should get out of Iraq my friend. And there's really no reason to think that Bush - who hadn't even been out of this country before he became President - has insight superior to people actually living in the country we've invaded and currently occupy.
oh geez.
"What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security ...
To live in the process is absolutely not to notice it -- please try to believe me -- unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, regretted.
Believe me this is true. Each act, each occasion is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.
Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we did nothing) ... You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair. "
German professor after World War II describing the rise of Nazism to a journalist
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Authors/QuotationsToMakeUSThink.html
We can't look to SCOTUS to jerk up sharply on Bushit's choke collar. The rich people who own America love Bushit--more war profits for them. Congress--see above. What is else there (hint: try looking in the mirror).
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