Bush's Prime Time Press Conference

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Ragusa,

Almost all of your post is a red herring.

I am not going to waste my time disputing it point by point.

"The war on terrorism". The President announced long ago that we would not stand for nations that continue to support terrorism. He never stated that this is a war on terrorist states that support attacks on the US, as that would make us hypocrites (like the French Government criticizing us while carrying on many non-UN endorsed military activities). Iraq was a unique opportunity to take out a regime that supported terrorism, flaunted the UN resolutions regarding their bio and chem weapons, was abusive to its citizens, was already a destabilizing factor in the Middle East, and (given the threat of N. Korea) a regime we could take without having to commit our entire military forces.

You have claimed that I am blinded by whatever group or person you happen to be taking issue with at the moment. Perhaps you should take a good look and make sure you are not blinded by your own government’s displeasure at the vast amounts of money it lost in potential contracts with Saddam's regime, because if wasn't for that I would bet that Germany would be a member of the coalition. It is truly amazing that the 3 nations that stand strongest against this war were the same 3 nations that had the most to lose monetarily.

Borrowing from Dendri:

Those against the war keep trying to pin the President down by saying the war was about just one thing, and half the time it wasn't even ever about that at all. One day it is "Mr. President, the only reason we went to Iraq because you said there were WMD's", then next it is, "Mr. President you lead us all to believe that Iraq was involved in the attack on 9/11", then when those lose their luster they switch to, "this war is only because Bush is avenging the assassination attempt on his daddy's life", or "Bush is just trying to finish what his daddy couldn't" (of course we could have, but the UN begged us to stop). These attempts to pin the decision to liberate Iraq down to being only about one issue are purely political and are morally and intellectually bankrupt, as well as being an insult to the men and women who have paid with their lives in an attempt to make the world a safer place.

Can you answer any one of these questions with a no?

Did Saddam sponsor terrorism?
Is the world going to be a safer place with Saddam out of power?
Were al Qeada members trained in Iraq?
Were high ranking al Qeada members given refuge in Baghdad?
Were tens of thousands of Iraqi's tortured and murdered under Saddam's regime?
Did Saddam refuse to honor the terms of the cease-fire?

Now that we know some of the reasons we went there, lets ask some other questions.

Did Saddam's regime owe Russia approximately $8 billion (or more)?
Did those overseeing the "Oil for Food" program for the UN make enormous amounts of money from those "humanitarian" activities?
Did the French sell prohibited weapons to the Saddam during the embargo?
Did Saddam's regime offer large contracts to Germany if they would oppose the war?

I have no personal problem with those who argue that the liberation of Iraq destabilizes the Middle East, and will only lead to more violence. Those opinions may turn out to be valid (though I will still argue that they will turn out to be wrong). But in my opinion, the rest of this crap is despicable.

 

Yes, and look at all the money American contractors received as a result of the war (our money by the way). Your accusation cuts both ways, Darkwolf.

 

As a matter of fact yes. The US and UK oversaw the Oil for Food program. Remember? They sit in the UN Security Council and they dispatched their people in the sanctions comitee.
And the US did iirc some 45% of the deals with Iraq in the Oil-for-Food program, much more than anyone else - all that while Saddam was well in power.

And no, my post is not a red herring. I didn't turn away from the topic, I replied to a point you made. And except for that: All the people who said there were no WMD were quoted real, and that no WMD have been found yet is a fact too and that it is about the actual consensus in the intel community that there likely have never been WMD in Iraq since, say, 1997, is a fact too (so, no imminent threat in 2003). And no, Saddam had no 911 links, despite all the people who still insist on that, because they want to - it is nonsense.

All that isn't a liberal conspiracy to piss you off or to bash Bush. It's reality. Have a peek.

I cannot understand how people can get so bloody hysterical about Bush and legitimate critique on his policy. On another board I recently saw someone weeping about "blind ignorance" - a benighted relative wanted to vote for Kerry !!!

[ April 16, 2004, 11:47: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Darkwolf, do you have any substance to your repeated claims that the inspectors were bribed? That is a vile accusation and I would be surprised if you have any foundation for it except your will to discredit anyone who doesnt follow the same beliefs as you. As for their offices being bugged, yup, that they were. The real issue is by whom? It wasnt Saddam or anyone else in the Middle East who bugged Blix and his team, it was the US and the UK.

 

joacqin,

I have to admit that I cannot locate the article that sited at least one of the UN inspectors being bribed. I have edited my post above to reflect this.

I have not given up on this though, and when I locate the article I had, or another one, I will post it. Unfortunately any web searches regaring bribery turn up a ton of articles alledging Iraq bribed those against the war (primarily Russia) and allegations that the Bush administration bribed almost everyone.

 

On the original topic of Bush's press conference, regardless of how I feel about Bush and his policies lately, from a political standpoint I think he did an excellent job.
There was really no other way he could have answered those questions.

and

also

Could you imagine all the sounds bites available? How many times would he be quoted by his opposition or even Kerry in campaign adds if he apologized or admited a mistake.
Not answering them or go around the question is the best thing any one could have done.

And why should he apologize for 9/11? He was not the one who flew the planes into those buildings.

 

Another great analysis from stratfor.com

Bush's Crisis: Articulating a Strategy in Iraq and the Wider War
Apr 15, 2004

Summary

President George W. Bush's press conference on Tuesday evening was fascinating in its generation of a new core justification for the Iraq campaign: building a democratic Iraq. It is unclear why Bush would find this a compelling justification for the invasion, but it is more unclear why the administration continues to generate unconvincing arguments for its Iraq policy, rather than putting forward a crisp, strategic and -- above all -- real justification.

Analysis

It is clear that the current crisis in Iraq was not expected by the Bush administration. That in itself ought not to be a problem. Even the most successful war is filled with unexpected and unpleasant surprises. D-Day in Normandy was completely fouled up; the German Ardennes offensive caught the Allies by surprise. No war goes as expected. However, in order to recover from the unexpected, it is necessary to have a clear strategic framework from which you are operating. This means a clearly understood concept of how the pieces of the war fit together -- a concept that can be clearly articulated to both the military and the public. Without a framework that defines where you are going, you can never figure out where you are. It becomes impossible to place the unexpected in an understandable context, and it becomes impossible to build trust among the political leadership, the military and the nation. This is why the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam was unmanageable -- yet the Ardennes offensive of 1944-1945 was readily managed.

In a January 2003 piece titled "Smoke and Mirrors: The United States, Iraq and Deception", we commented on the core of the coming Iraq campaign, which was that the public justification for the war (weapons of mass destruction) and the strategic purpose of the war (a step in redefining regional geopolitics) were at odds. We argued that: "In a war that will last for years, maintaining one's conceptual footing is critical. If that footing cannot be maintained -- if the requirements of the war and the requirements of strategic clarity are incompatible -- there are more serious issues involved than the future of Iraq."

During President George W. Bush's press conference this week, that passage came to mind again. The press conference focused on what has become the new justification for the war -- bringing Western-style democracy to Iraq. A subsidiary theme was that Iraq had been a potential threat to the United States because it "coddled" terrorists. Mounting a multidivisional assault on a fairly large nation for these reasons might be superficially convincing, but they could not be the main reasons for invasion -- and they weren't. We will not repeat what we regard as the main line of reasoning behind the invasion, because our readers are fully familiar with our read of the situation. We will merely reassert that the real reason -- the capture of the most strategic country in the region in order to exert pressure on regimes that were in some way enablers of al Qaeda -- was more plausible, persuasive and defensible than the various public explanations, from links to al Qaeda to WMD to bringing democracy to the Iraqi masses. Such logic might work when it comes to sending a few Marines on a temporary mission to Haiti, but not for sending more than 130,000 troops to Iraq for an open-ended commitment.

Answers and Platitudes

Bush's inability and/or unwillingness to articulate a coherent strategic justification for the Iraq campaign -- one that integrates the campaign with the general war on Islamists that began Sept. 11 -- is at the root of his political crisis right now. If the primary purpose of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was to bring democracy to Iraq, then enduring the pain of the current crisis will make little sense to the American public. Taken in isolation, bringing democracy to Iraq may be a worthy goal, but not one taking moral precedence over bringing democracy to several dozen other countries -- and certainly not a project worth the sacrifices now being made necessary.

If, on the other hand, the invasion was an integral part of the war that began Sept. 11, then Bush will generate public support for it. The problem that Bush has -- and it showed itself vividly in his press conference -- is that he and the rest of his administration are simply unable to embed Iraq in the general strategy of the broader war. Bush asserts that it is part of that war, but then uses the specific justification of bringing democracy to Iraq as his rationale. Unless you want to argue that democratizing Iraq -- assuming that is possible -- has strategic implications more significant than democratizing other countries, the explanation doesn't work. The explanation that does work -- that the invasion of Iraq was a stepping-stone toward changes in behavior in other countries of the region -- is never given.

We therefore wind up with an explanation that is only superficially plausible, and a price that appears to be excessive, given the stated goal. The president and his administration do not seem willing to provide a coherent explanation of the strategy behind the Iraq campaign. What was the United States hoping to achieve when it invaded Iraq, and what is it defending now? There are good answers to these questions, but Bush stays with platitudes.

This is not only odd, but also it has substantial political implications for Bush and the United States. First, by providing no coherent answer, he leaves himself open to critics who are ascribing motives to his policy -- everything from controlling the world's oil supply, to the familial passion to destroy Saddam Hussein, to a Jewish world conspiracy. The Bush administration, having created an intellectual vacuum, can't complain when others, trying to understand what the administration is doing, gin up these theories. The administration has asked for it.

There is an even more important dimension to this. The single most important thing that happened during the recent offensive in Iraq was that the United States entered into negotiations for the first time with the Sunni guerrillas in Al Fallujah. The United States has now traveled a path that began with Donald Rumsfeld's dismissing the guerrillas as a disorganized band of dead-enders and led to the belief (shared by us) that they had been fairly defeated in December 2003 -- and now to negotiations that were initiated by the United States. The negotiations began with a simple, limited cease-fire and have extended to a longer, more open-ended truce.

The United States is facing the fact that the Sunni guerrillas have not only not been defeated, but that they are sufficiently well organized and supported by the broader Sunni population that negotiations are possible with them. There is an organized Sunni command authority that planned and executed this operation and is now weighing U.S. offers on a truce. That is a huge change in the U.S. perception of the Sunni guerrillas. Negotiations are also something that the administration would never have contemplated two weeks ago, regardless of how limited the topic might be. The idea that the United States needed to negotiate anything was unthinkable.

This is not the only negotiation going on at the moment. There are negotiations with the Muqtada al-Sadr group. Negotiations with the Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani group. Discussions with the Iranians. Iraq is swirling with negotiations, offers, bluffs, double crosses and lies. It is quite a circus at the moment, with at least three major players (the Sunnis, the Shia, the United States) who are in turn fragmented in all sorts of fascinating ways -- and this doesn't even begin to include the Kurds and other minorities.

Making Alliances

The United States is going to have to make alliances. Its core alliance with the majority Shia has to be redefined in the wake of al-Sadr's uprising. Even if al-Sadr is destroyed with his militia, the United States and the Shia will have much to talk about. Far more important, the United States is now talking to the Sunni guerrillas. That might or might not lead anywhere, but it is vitally important to all sides, no matter what comes of it. The United States has recognized that the Sunni enemy is a competent authority in some sense -- and that changes everything.

The United States will combine military action with political maneuvering. That is logical and inevitable in this sort of war. But as deals are cut with a variety of players, how will Bush's argument that the United States is building democracy in Iraq fly? The United States will be building coalitions. Whether it is a democracy is another matter. Indeed, it was al-Sistani demanding elections (which he knew the Shia would win) and the president putting off elections -- declaring at the press conference that he would not bend to Shiite demands on a timetable.

The problem that Bush has created is that there is no conceptual framework in which to understand these maneuvers. Building democracy in Iraq is not really compatible with the deals that are going to have to be cut. It is not that cutting deals is a bad idea. It is not that the current crisis cannot be overcome with a combination of political and military action. The problem is that no one will know how the United States is doing, because it has not defined a conceptual framework for what it is trying to accomplish in Iraq -- or how Iraq fits into the war on the jihadists.

Bush Political Crisis

This is creating a massive political crisis for Bush domestically. The public knows there is a crisis in Iraq, but there is little understanding of how to judge whether the crisis is being managed. If the only criterion is the creation of democracy, that is not only a distant goal, but also one that will be undermined by necessary U.S. deal-making. Democracy -- by any definition that the American public can recognize -- is not coming to Iraq anytime soon. If that is the mark of success, Bush's only hope is that he won't be kept to a tight timetable. What is worse for Bush is that, in his news conference, he framed the coming presidential election as basically a referendum on his policy in Iraq. The less that policy is understood, and the more Iraq appears uncontrollable, the more vulnerable Bush will be to charges that the Iraq war was unjustified, and that it is a distraction from the wider war -- which the American electorate better understands and widely supports.

He is facing John Kerry, who has shrewdly chosen to call neither for a withdrawal from Iraq nor for an end to the war on the Islamist world. Kerry's enormous advantage is that he can articulate a strategy without having to take responsibility for anything in the past. He can therefore argue that Bush's impulses were correct, but that he lacked a systematic strategy. Stratfor said in its annual forecast that the election was Bush's to lose. We now have to say that he is making an outstanding attempt to lose it.

Obviously, the administration has a strategy in Iraq and the Islamic world. It is a strategy that is discussed inside the administration and is clearly visible outside. Obviously, there will be military and political reversals. The strategy and the reversals are far more understandable than the decisions the Bush administration has made in presenting them. It has adopted a two-tier policy: a complex and nearly hidden strategic plan and a superficial public presentation.

It could be argued that in a democratic society like the United States, it is impossible to lay bare the cold-blooded reasoning behind a war, and that the war needs to be presented in a palatable fashion. This might be true -- and there are examples of both approaches in American history -- but we tend to think that in the face of Sept. 11, only a cold-blooded plan, whose outlines are publicly presented and accepted, can work. We could be wrong, but on this we have no doubt. Even if the administration is correct in its assumption that there must be a two-tier approach to the public presentation of the war, it has done a terrible job in articulating its public justification.

The administration has held only three press conferences. Some explain this by saying that the president is too inarticulate to withstand public grilling. We don't buy that. He is not the greatest orator by any means, but he doesn't do that badly. His problem is that he will not engage on the core strategic question. Franklin Roosevelt, our best wartime president bar none -- who should be the model for any wartime president -- spoke on and off the record with reporters, continually and with shocking frankness when we look back on it. He did not hesitate to discuss strategy -- from Germany First to relations with Joseph Stalin. He filled the public space with detail and managed public expectations brilliantly, even during the terrible first six months of the war.

We are convinced that the Bush administration has a defensible strategy. It is not a simple one and not one that can be made completely public, but it is a defensible strategy. If President Bush decides not to articulate it, it will be interesting to see whether President Kerry does, because we are convinced that if Bush keeps going in the direction he is going, he will lose the election. The president's public presentation of the war is designed to exploit success, not to withstand reversals and hardships. What is fascinating is that political operatives like Karl Rove, the president's political adviser, can't seem to get their arms around this simple fact: The current communications strategy is not working. They seem frozen in place, seemingly hoping that something will turn up. We doubt strongly that building democracy in Iraq is the cry that will rally the American nation.