Posted on 11/04/2006 9:38:42 AM PST by drzz
After having read that Vanity Fair had "pointed out" the Neocon rebuttal of Bush's policy in Iraq, I wrote to David Frum this message :
drzz Sent : Saturday, November 4, 2006 7:55 AM To : David Frum I discovered a claim in my local newspaper that you and some neoconservatives said critics about the Bush administration. According to the website of Vanity Fair, you said that Bush "says the words but doesn't understand the ideas." I have read also Richard Perle said the Iraq war was a mistake.
I hardly believe these comments come from neoconservatives, and I write to you to know wether it is true or not. It is just a question from one of your daily reader who finds "Vanity Fair"'s claim very suspicious.
My best regards,
He then wrote a new article on his blog which denies Vanity Fair's lies.
"My most fundamental views on the war in Iraq remain as they were in 2003: The war was right, victory is essential, and defeat would be calamitous.
And that to my knowledge is the view of everybody quoted in the release and the piece: Adelman, Cohen, Ledeen, Perle, Pletka, Rubin, and all the others. "
See the whole article on : http://drzz.over-blog.org
bttt
This is great. The dems are pulling lie after lie out of their pointy hats, which they wear on their pointy heads.
American Thiner will be running Perle's response later this afternoon. How anyone could believe the VF piece wasn't a distorted hit job is beyond me.
Is this Frum's endorsement of Bush's Iraq policy? With friends like these, Bush must be wondering,....
IF this turns into CHAOS, ONLY the DEMOCRATS will be to blame for not backing our effort!!
The U.S. could lose, especially with the cut and run Democrats calling the shots.
http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGIyM2M4NzFlNTQwN2QxNzU0MDg4MjNiMjMwYjk4Zjk=
Makes the following interesting points:
When I talk in the third quotation above about failures "at the center," for example, I did not mean the president. If I had, I would have said so. At that point in the conversation, I was discussing the National Security Council, whose counter-productive interactions produced bad results.
And when I talked in the second quotation about "persuading the president," I was repeating this point, advanced here last month. In past administrations, the battle for the president's words was a battle for administration policy. But because Bush's National Security Council malfunctioned so badly, the president could say things without action following - because the mechanism for enforcing his words upon the bureaucracy had broken.
He is talking about a disconnect between (1)the President's words, the policy ideas he seems to reflect in those words, and (2) the administrations actions, the "implementation" of policy which, to Frum appeared to NOT reflect the President's ideas.
And where is it that he is talking about that disconnect taking place? At the National Security Council. And who was in charge of the National Security Council? Condi Rice. And what have I been noting here in Freeper land for ages now? Ever since Condi became head of the State Department and appointed Nicholas Burns as her Deputy Undersecretary for Political Affairs, the State Department policy, particularly in the Middle East with respect to Israel, Syria, and Iran has seemed at a disconnect with the President's words and the ideas he promoted in his first term - your'e either with us or against us. Day by day, Condi has taken our foreign policy to the extremes of everything Kerry promoted in the 2004 campaign (when Nicholas Burns was his cheif foreign policy advisor) - talk and retreat, talk and retreat, talk and retreat.
I think that Condi remains a source of where the "Neocons" have concerns with the administration. Bush speaks one thing, while the implementation, the actual actions by Condi and Burns works at cross purposes to what Bush thought went he spoke of his policy goal. Why should we be surprised; her political mentor was Chuck Hagel.
I'd like to see those remarks from American Thinker, too.
bttt
Seven news cycles left before election day...almost all on the weekend. Not good.
Frum and the other the Neocons are searching for a new host on which they can serve as parasite, just like when the switched from the Democrats to the GOP. I think Frum was mainly bothered that this was published before the election. He is hedging his bets and some freepers are buying it hook, line, and sinker.
"all but Joe Lieberman,"
And Zell Miller.
Those two should start a third party.
Sorry, I have not kept up with whatever history is driving your animus towards Mr. Frum.
I think you should take your confirmed bias concerning him out of the issue and look at the specifics of the facts and ideas and, on that basis, decide if his comments have merit.
I have been pointing out, for a long time here, how the new State Dept under Condi has, week by week, month by month, relfected what has seemed to me like a disconnect between Bush's ideas and State's actions. I thought only a John F. Kerry State Department could - in the midst of the standoff between Israel and Hizbolla - demand that no cease fire was worth having if it returned everything to the "status quo ante" and then deliver just such a result, and worse. Yet, that is the kind of ineffective, feckless State Department Condi has delivered and nothing about her chuminess with Palestinian terrorists is reflected in any words from Bush. She seems to be running her own foreign policy.
What does this matter, with respect to David Frum's comments. Part of his comments noted the same kind of diconnect between Bush and the actions of the National Security Council - when Condi was in charge there.
If they misquoted Adelman, Cohen, Ledeen, Perle, Pletka, Rubin, it will be...interesting to watch.
Nothing yet.
No. He's traveling and it may take a while.
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