Posted on 11/22/2005 11:10:46 AM PST by wagglebee
A close adviser to President George Bush says the administration must keep up its attacks on critics of the Iraq war.
Mark McKinnon, who was Bush’s chief media adviser during the 2004 presidential election campaign, acknowledged that this strategy is dangerous because it keeps alive debate over whether the administration manipulated intelligence in the run-up to the war.
But in a speech at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, he insisted it’s vital because Bush can’t afford damage to what McKinnon called his key appeal: "his honesty.” Said McKinnon: "Bush is perceived as honest but the Democrats have had some success in selling that the intelligence was flawed or tampered with. He’s been a little late in pushing back but he has to and is saying we all saw the same intelligence.
"There has to be an acknowledgement that the pre-war intelligence was wrong.”
He added: "Things are not going well in Iraq. We have to face reality.”
Vice President Dick Cheney recently stepped up the attack on administration critics, saying in Washington that the contention that the White House manipulated intelligence on Iraq was "one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.”
McKinnon, president of Maverick Media, also said in his address that the press is "enormously biased toward conflict.” In its perpetual quest for new angles, the media in three months will start to produce "Bush comeback stories,” he predicted.
McKinnon admitted exasperation over what he called the administration’s "incredible message discipline,” according to the Web site of the Poynter Institute, a Florida school for journalists.
"It drive me crazy sometimes. Nobody says anything without getting clearance” and therefore sometimes the press quotes people "who don’t know what they’re talking about.”
The pundit disclosed that President Bush never reads polls and doesn’t care about newspaper headlines. McKinnon, on the other hand, tried to escape the "Beltway mentality” during the 2004 campaign by reading newspapers from 25 cities across the country.
"There has to be an acknowledgement that the pre-war intelligence was wrong.”
Bush needs to go on prime time TV and give a speech in which he shows pictures of the WMD's and WMD materials that we have found. He also needs to show pictures of the gas attacks from the 80's and 90's and point out to everybody that these materials did not just vanish.
Bush needs to go on prime time TV and give a speech in which he shows pictures of the WMD's and WMD materials that we have found. He also needs to show pictures of the gas attacks from the 80's and 90's and point out to everybody that these materials did not just vanish.
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That's what I'm waiting on...why doesn't he come out swinging when this information comes to light? Why allow only the bloggers to get this info. out? You are right, he needs to be much more aggressive. Keep the heat on the dems...they are lying of course.
B.S.
I think things are going very well in Iraq. The fact that a few thousand nut-jobs can screw up the media front doesn't mean we aren't winning everything else.
POLL NEEDS FREEPING.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10118733/site/newsweek/
Idiot.
Things are going better than anyone ever predicted in Iraq.
the fact that an actual constitution was approved in a referndum and that there will be elections for a permanent parliament in a few weeks is an achievement of almost unprecedented proportions, comparable only to MacArthur's success in transitioning Japan to demcoracy.
We need to go to war against the enemy at home with the same vigor as we have against the enemy abroad.
We need to turn the issue - from a debate over the rightness of the war to a debate about the patriotism (or, more accurately, the lack thereof) of those who oppose it.
It would be very helpful if some of those who have taken more extreme actions and made more extreme anti-American statements could be arrested for treason or sedition.
Beyond that, we need to realize that war opponents are a cancer upon the nation - a cancer that is metastasizing rapidly and destroying previously-healthy tissue. In order for us to win, that cancer needs to be eliminated.
POLL NEEDS FREEPING.
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That poll is a joke. Looks like only the kool-aid drinking, stuck-on-stupid crowd has been voting. But the MSM has been known to LIE now and then (/sarcasm).
Imagine John Kerry's 1947 Senate speech.
Talk about your quagmire...
It sounds like you are saying that opponents of the Iraq war should be imprisoned or perhaps exiled or even killed.
Exile would be a good start for some of them. It was practiced during the Civil War. Let's take people like Cynthia McKinney (who voted for an immediate withdrawal) and send them to Iran, if they love our enemies so much.
And yes, those who have committed active acts of treason - who have provided aid and comfort to our enemies - ought to be made examples of. After a proper trial and conviction, of course.
It's like Ann Coutler said, we should have executed John Lindh as a way of physically intimidating liberals - of reminding them that there is a price for treason.
Ok, I freeped it.
Freep it anyway....
Your post is a nice dodge. I was asking about your comment on opponents of the war. Not those who have committed, as you call it, 'active acts' of treason. But those who oppose the war, and say so. Your word was 'eliminated,' and I was wondering if you will say what you mean by that.
BTW - execution of a US citizen as a means of sending a message to prospective political enemies is not a particularly good idea, even if it did come from such a pretty little head.
I'm not sure that I agree with this approach. Attacks on critics under the circumstances inadvertently validate the criticism, not because it’s true but because the criticism is repeated multiple times in the process of attacking it. In the viewers mind the criticism becomes more familiar and familiarity is often mistaken for truth. To counter critics of the war President Bush should give a speech that develops an appropriate context to refute the criticism…
I was discussing this topic with [family/friends] and described to them the types of terror attacks occurring in Iraq and the type of instability one should expect as a dictator falls. The context for the war should be put in terms of progress of freedom of expression and in terms of the number of new newspapers and television stations now open and so on. Improving the Iraqi infrastructure to support freedom will bring real stability to Iraq. Right now the administration is focusing on turning the war over to the Iraqis and this is OK but it keeps the debate centered on “physical security” and casualties.
What Iraq needs is ideological security and that is what we’re working for. Ideological security is at the heart of winning the GWOT. The goal is stability through freedom which is not directly proportional to stability through troops and x-number of Iraqi police. Iraq under Saddam was more stable than today… but who cares, that was oppression and isolation. The context President Bush needs to refute his critics does not sit with argumentative attacks on critics but annihilating his critics arguments with the realities associated to any society transitioning from an oppressed society to a free society.
I agree. Bush has to respond vigorously and continually. His honesty shines through when he does this.
I'd like to see an address to Congress live and in prime time. He should lay out all the facts and he can regain the momentum.
Honestly, I don't think that would be necessary at all. What needs to be done is these people need to be exposed for what they are. The American people, if aware of the truth, would vote these anti-American politicians out of office without a second thought. The challenge is in educating American voters.
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