Ellington

Joe Conasan at Salon outlines 5 questions he'd like to ask the president. I'd love to hear the answer to these, too.

Previous Comments

ID

137017

Comment

Did anyone watch the Bush interview yesterday morning?

Author

kate

Date

2004-02-09T13:10:38-06:00

ID

137018

Comment

I didn't. Is there a link to a transcript? Also, the NY Times was not impressed. This is from their editorial today: "Right now, the questions average Americans are asking about Iraq seem much clearer than the ones Mr. Bush is willing to confront. People want to know why American intelligence was so wrong about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Mr. Bush didn't have a consistent position on this pivotal issue. At some points during his Oval Office interview, he seemed to be admitting that he had been completely wrong when he told the public just before the war started that the intelligence left "no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." At other moments he suggested the weapons might still be hidden somewhere, or that they may have been transported to another country. At times he depicted himself as having been misled by intelligence reports. But he insisted that George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, was doing a good job and deserved to keep his job. Average Americans are also asking themselves whether invading Iraq would have seemed like the right decision if we knew then what we know now. Mr. Bush doesn't seem willing to even take on this critical question. He repeatedly referred to Saddam Hussein as a dangerous madman, without defining the threat that even a madman, without any weapons of mass destruction, posed to the United States. At one point, his reasoning seemed to be that even if the dictator did not have the feared weapons, he could have started manufacturing them on a moment's notice. Read entire editorial

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2004-02-09T13:16:01-06:00

ID

137019

Comment

Doonesbury this morning defined 'weapons of mass destruction related programs' as 'bad thoughts.' Funny, and yet, it's Bush's policy taken down its logical path, and therefore, scary.

Author

kate

Date

2004-02-09T13:27:25-06:00

ID

137020

Comment

Right-wing media are even chronicling the conservative criticism of Bush, and the Meet the Press speech, and his policies. From John Podheretz in the NY Post: "Some of my fellow conservatives found his performance wanting. Or more than wanting. As the show was airing, National Review magazine's Web site was firing on all cylinders as participants in its blog, The Corner, threw brick after brick at the president. Talk-show host Michael Graham called it a "disaster." Rod Dreher, formerly of this paper and now of the Dallas Morning News, said Bush made him wince: "He looked nervous, defensive and intellectually insecure." The vituperative John Derbyshire called Bush "pretty dismal." This is fairly typical of attitudes expressed these days by conservative opinion leaders, who are upset with the administration for a variety of reasons. Some don't like his immigration proposal. Others are disgusted by the free spending in his budget, particularly on the matter of the prescription-drug benefit. As a frustrated White House official told me last week, everything the president has done to anger conservatives arises from proposals he made while he was running for president in 2000. They accepted his advocacy of the proposals then, so why are they complaining now? He did not run for president as a small-government conservative, and yet they backed him to the hilt four years ago. So why the enmity today?" Post column

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2004-02-09T14:10:50-06:00

ID

137021

Comment

Also, Kate, I would suggest that the administration has suspended the use of logic, alongside habeus corpus and various other civil liberties. Wasn't there an executive order? ;-)

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2004-02-09T14:16:09-06:00

ID

137022

Comment

"He looked nervous, defensive and intellectually insecure." - Michael Graham This is exactly what I was thinking while watching Sunday morning. He seemed childishly nervous as if caught in a white lie and fumbling to make things better. Others I talked to made similar remarks. He seems to have lost his casual yet forceful aura that was replaced with a nervous aura that makes me uncomfortable coming from any leader. Anyone see that MoveOn is now seeking censure?

Author

kaust

Date

2004-02-09T14:32:02-06:00

ID

137023

Comment

Knol, censure of what?

Author

kate

Date

2004-02-09T14:38:57-06:00

ID

137024

Comment

Very interesting piece by Galbraith on Bush's polling numbers over his term in office, over at Salon. That piece points to a very fun site, pollingreport.com. Those folks seem to be true data junkies. Anyway, the Galbraith piece is interesting - though I'm not a big fan of his conspiracy theory ending.

Author

kate

Date

2004-02-09T14:46:50-06:00

ID

137025

Comment

President Bush told our nation that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Now that the chief weapons inspector has revealed that that simply is not true, President Bush seeks to avoid responsibility by creating an investigation that will focus on the CIA. That's why we believe: "Congress must censure President Bush for misleading the country about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." - MoveOn.org http://www.moveon.org/censure/

Author

kaust

Date

2004-02-09T15:10:21-06:00

ID

137026

Comment

Knol said: "He seemed childishly nervous as if caught in a white lie and fumbling to make things better." He HAS been caught in a (not-so-big) white lie and is fumbling to make things better!

Author

Nia

Date

2004-02-09T15:59:35-06:00