Political Quotes of the Day

[Dardedar]

"There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? ... It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq. ... And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? ... Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right." -- Dick Cheney, 1994

Video

[Dardedar]

Regarding the upcoming report on the surge...

"Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government."

LA Times

[Dardedar]

Careful control of the surge message:

"Senior congressional aides said yesterday that the White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration’s progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense."

Washington Post

[Dardedar]

A little MSM help on this:

"For months President Bush has been asking us to wait for a report from General Petraeus. How many times have we heard that phrase? “Wait for the report from General Petraeus.” Now we learn that the White House is going to write that report - the White House - and that the General will testify publicly before Congress only after the report’s been written by Bush’s people. Is this a sign of something we’ve seen before, is the Bush Administration going to politicize that critical September report instead of letting the General deliver a full and honest raw assessment to the American people?" --Chris Matthews, Hardball, link

[Dardedar]

At least Thompson is big.... From C & R:

"In May, Rep. Zack Wamp (R-Tenn.) said Thompson is qualified for the presidency because he’s tall. A month later, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews got a little creepy in praising Thompson, complimenting the former senator’s odor:

TAP’s Garance Franke-Ruta spoke to a “leading figure in the Iowa Republican Party” about the actor-lobbyist-senator, who explained why so many conservatives are excited about a Thompson campaign.

“Can you imagine what debates are going to be like with great big Andrew Jackson-looking Fred and Hillary on her stubby little legs, stamping her feet?” Thompson, if elected, would be the tallest president ever. Republicans are not just looking for the usual John Wayne-type signifiers as they go about selecting a candidate, but thinking about who can best loom over Hillary Clinton and make her look like a shrill, small, silly little woman. Thompson’s booming voice will make her “sound like Madame Defarge.”

In other words, the GOP wants a big guy. Not in terms of stature or intellect, but in physical size."

LINK

[Savonarola]

In other words, the GOP wants a big guy. Not in terms of stature or intellect, but in physical size."

Maybe they want to move away from the image of the little monkey man?

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

So they go for a gorilla instead? Anybody checked the IQ of mainstream America lately?

[Dardedar]

Passed along...

"John Edwards' reply to a question about whether the candidates on the stage thought that prayer "helps."
Edwards said that he had prayed for his recovery when his son was in an automobile accident, but he died anyway and that he had prayed for his wife's recovery from cancer, but her cancer had returned. He then said something like, "We just have to recognize that sometimes nothing helps."
I thought that was a refreshing change from the way that politicians constantly try to cater to the religious right."
--Farrell Till

[Dardedar]

On Bush using Vietnam as a reason for staying in Iraq:

"Well, he may well have stirred a hornet’s nest among historians, because there are so many differences between this struggle and what we faced in past, and I think by just invoking Vietnam, something he has tried not to do. He’s tried all along to say this is not Vietnam. By invoking Vietnam he raised the automatic question, well, if you’ve learned so much from history, Mr. President, how did you ever get us involved in another quagmire? Why didn’t you learn up front about the perils of Vietnam and what we faced there?And Vietnam and Korea, of course, were not victories for America. Korea ended in a draw and Vietnam ended in a loss."
--David Gergen, yesterday

[Dardedar]

More Iraqis Flee Since Troop "Surge"

James Glanz and Stephen Farrell report for The New York Times, "The
number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has soared since the American troop
increase began in February, according to data from two humanitarian
groups, accelerating the partition of the country into sectarian enclaves."

LINK

[Dardedar]

Hoekstra Says Iraq Democracy Strategy Is Doomed to Fail

Chris Christoff writes in the Detroit Free Press, "Hoekstra, the
ranking Republican on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said as the Iraqi government flounders, he's changed his original support for the
Bush administration's stated goal of molding a democratic Iraq as a
means to stabilize the Middle East."

LINK

[Dardedar]

"Cheny is the single greatest threat to American and international security in the world today. Not Osama Bin Laden. Not the ghost of Saddam Hussein. Not Ahmadinejad or Kim Jung Il. Not al-Qaida, the Taliban, or Jose Padilla himself. Not even Bush can lay claim to this title. It is Dick Cheney’s alone. Operating in a never-never land of constitutional ambiguity which exists between the office of the president and the Congress of the United States, Cheney’s office has made its impact felt on American policies as had no vice president’s office before him. Granted unprecedented oversight over national security and foreign policy by executive order in early 2001, many months prior to the terror attacks of 9/11, Cheney has single-handedly steered America away from being a nation among nations (albeit superior), operating (roughly) in accordance with the rule of law, and toward its present manifestation as the new Rome, a decadent imperial power bent on global domination whatever the cost.

The absolute worst of the rot that has infected America because of the policies and actions of the Bush administration has originated from the office of the vice president. The nonsensical response to the terror attacks of 9/11, seeking a “global war” versus defending the rule of law at home and abroad, taking the lead in spreading the lies that got us involved in Iraq, legitimizing torture as a tool of American jurisprudence, advocating for warrantless wiretappings of U.S.-based communications (regardless of what the Fourth Amendment says against illegal search and seizure), and pushing for an expansion of America’s global conflict into Iran—all can be traced back to the person of Cheney as the point of origin. --"Why Cheney Really Is That Bad", Scott Ritter

LINK

[Dardedar]

"Bush is saying, essentially, that 58,000 dead in Vietnam weren't quite enough, that maybe we should have twice as big a tragic memorial on the Mall."
And who's saying it? A man who chose not to serve, took steps, used family friends to get out of serving in Vietnam, didn't even show up for his own Guard duty, so that better, braver men could fight that war." --Paul Begala

LINK

[Dardedar]

"FOX News is famous for switching R’s to D’s when Republicans get into trouble or they don’t like what they hear from one, but they changed up their tactics in the case of Senator Lavvy Craig’s potty scandal. Instead of assigning him to the bad, naughty, nasty Democratic party, in the below article from their website FOX chose to completely leave out his political affiliation altogether. That’s right, nowhere in the article will you see the word REPUBLICAN attached to Senator Larry Craig’s name. The article also quotes numerous Republicans stating their disdain for the Senator’s actions — attempting to give the impression they weren’t talking about a fellow Republican."

LINK

[Dardedar]

From the New York Times

"(F)ully aware of his standing in opinion polls, Mr. Bush said his top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would perhaps do a better job selling progress to the American people than he could."

The presidency of the United States as a used car dealership...

And thrown out almost as an aside:

Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.”

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ” But, he added, “Again, Hadley’s got notes on all of this stuff,” referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.

[Doug]

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ” But, he added, “Again, Hadley’s got notes on all of this stuff,” referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.

DOUG
Bush is such a liar. We conquer a country and decide to keep the military intact, but someone accidentally dissolves it? What bull.

[Dardedar]

"We're in an ideological struggle against people who use murder as a weapon to achieve their vision." --Bush

***
Regarding a recent trip to Africa, Bill Clinton told Letterman:

"I saw female lions go after warthogs while the male lions just lay there and watched. Which I thought was good preparation for my future."

[Dardedar]

From Tom Delays Blog

“It is my firm belief and abiding conviction that we as Republicans are a party devoted to setting moral standards and committed to creating a national culture of personal accountability. Democrats, on the other hand, are absent these foundational principles as they prove time and again that they are only interested in misguided allocation of blame, abrogation of personal responsibility and the cultural quandary that is moral relativism.”

[Savonarola]

From Tom Delays Blog ...

It might be possible to be more hypocritical in one short paragraph, but I wouldn't bet on it. Astounding.

[LaWood]

Democrats, on the other hand, are absent these foundational principles"
DeLay

One supposes he never heard of George Washington carrying on with his slave women, nor the escapades of Thomas Jefferson. But the die was cast early on in Am history when word of war profiteering by those who refused to show up and serve reached Washington's troops desertion became his number one problem. Foundational Principles indeed.
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