WP: Fresh Initiatives Sought On Iraq, Domestic Issues

[kskiska]

Fresh Initiatives Sought On Iraq, Domestic Issues

By Dana Milbank and Jonathan Weisman
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A01

After three years of sweeping actions in both foreign and domestic affairs, the Bush administration is facing complaints from the conservative intelligentsia that it has lost its ability to produce fresh policies.

The centerpiece of President Bush's foreign policy -- the effort to transform Iraq into a peaceful democracy -- has been undermined by a deadly insurrection and broadcast photos of brutality by U.S. prison guards. On the domestic side, conservatives and former administration officials say the White House policy apparatus is moribund, with policies driven by political expediency or ideological pressure rather than by facts and expertise.

Conservatives have become unusually restive. Last Tuesday, columnist George F. Will sharply criticized the administration's Iraq policy, writing: "This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts." Two days earlier, Robert Kagan, a neoconservative supporter of the Iraq war, wrote: "All but the most blindly devoted Bush supporters can see that Bush administration officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow, much less a month from now."

The complaints about Bush's Iraq policy are relatively new, but they are in some ways similar to long-standing criticism about Bush's domestic policies. In a book released earlier this year, former Bush Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill described Bush as "a blind man in a room full of deaf people" and said policymakers put politics before sound policy judgments.

Echoing a criticism leveled by former Bush aide John J. DiIulio Jr., who famously described "Mayberry Machiavellis" running the White House, O'Neill said "the biggest difference" between his time in government in the 1970s and in the Bush administration "is that our group was mostly about evidence and analysis, and Karl , Dick , Karen and the gang seemed to be mostly about politics."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13027-2004May9.html

[bemildred]

1. Yeah, that's what we need, some new bullshit initiative. nt

[alcuno]

2. It took a long time to turn the Titanic.

And look what happened there. They made it worse.

[mhr]

3. I Told Sam Johnson (republican Collin County, Texas) Personally

on Saturday that we are no longer drinking the koolaid.

I also told him that he has a problem and he doesn't even know it.

I said that unemployed hi-tech professionals like myself are well educated and hi-tech savvy. Many of us have email trees that regularly send devastating articles to all our acquaintances.

My email tree has Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. I told him that none of the republicans have asked to removed. I told him he can continue to sell God, Motherhood, and Apple Pie but the sheen is wearing off and many now understand how bad Bushco really is.

Needless to say it was a message he did not want to hear.

[saigon68]

4. THEY'D BETTER CLEAN UP THE MYERS-MESS FIRST

SCHINDLER'S LIST



Ralph Fiennes plays a chilling Amon Goeth in the movie, and plays him to the point that some
people have had trouble distinguishing him from the real thing.

Poldek Pfefferberg, one of the Schindler Jews, famously said, "When you saw Göeth, you saw
death."



GENERAL MYERS TRIBUTE TO AMON GOETH



THIS IS GOING OVER REAL WELL IN EUROPE

[The_Casual_Observer]

5. conservative intelligentsia

Ok, stop right there.