E.J.Dionne: Another Set of Scare Tactics

[maddezmom]

Mr. President, it won't work this time.

With a Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll finding 57 percent of Americans agreeing that George W. Bush "deliberately misled people to make the case for war with Iraq," the president clearly needs to tend to his credibility problems. But his partisan attacks on the administration's critics, in a Veterans Day speech last week and in Alaska yesterday, will only add to his troubles.


Bush was not subtle. He said that anyone accusing his administration of having "manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people" was giving aid and comfort to the enemy. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will," Bush declared last week. "As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them."

You wonder: Did Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the Valerie Plame leak investigation, send the wrong signal to our troops and our enemy by daring to seek the indictment of Scooter Libby on a charge of perjury and obstruction of justice? Must Americans who support our troops desist from any criticism of the use of intelligence by the administration?

There is a great missing element in the argument over whether the administration manipulated the facts. Neither side wants to talk about the context in which Bush won a blank check from Congress to invade Iraq. He doesn't want us to remember that he injected the war debate into the 2002 midterm election campaign for partisan purposes, and he doesn't want to acknowledge that he used the post-Sept. 11 mood to do all he could to intimidate Democrats from raising questions more of them should have raised.


more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/14/AR2005111401018.html

[MarianJack]

1. This Is the Same Crap the nixon Aministration Tried...

...during the Vietnam war. If you oppose the war, you're a traitor.

It was bullshit then, it's bullshit now.

The biggest mistake we made then, as now, is letting the right co-opt the flag. This only makes "Joe Six-Pack" think that we AREN'T patriots, even though the troops are only in harm's way because of a pack of lies!

[TimeToGo]

2. Good one n/t

[liberal N proud]

3. And they say there are no parallels with Hitler and the Nazis

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and or military consequences of the lie.
It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
Joseph Goebbels - Nazi Propaganda Minister (Hitlers KKKarl Rove)

[indepat]

4. Indeed, a ruthless enemy is out to destroy our way of life: truer words

possibly were never spoken.

[occuserpens]

5. They want to exterminate dems. What else is new?

[Neil Lisst]

6. 22 Senators voted NO, even with cooked intel by Bush

and some Dems weren't even in the Congress in 2003.