Bush admin fails by outing kahn

Excellent work, Bush admin.

Terror is up.
Deficits are up.
International anger is up.
Security is down.
Personal rights are down.
The economy is down.

Sounds like a winner we've got.

Of course the ghastly liberal media has jumped on this grave breach of trust for political reasons that has compromised the search for bin Laden just as hard as they jumped on Sandy Berger for taking photo copies of documents he helped to author. And they have done a balanced job of reporting every wild slander that the left might attribute to Bush's lapse, just as they did with Berger (he's covering up for Clinton! He's a mole for Kerry!).

Oh wait...

It sounds like this was a Condi deal. (she was the one who confirmed the story)

Could this be why Colin Powell is ducking the G.O.P. convention? Has he finally had enough?

It's pretty sad when the Pakistanis call you out on screwing the pooch in the fight against terror.

Don't worry.

The Bush administration will go after the outing party with the same vigour it promised and displayed in finding the White House source for the outing of CIA Agent Plame.

Oh wait...

Terror is flat, at worst.

Deficits are up, and with some reason.

International anger is up because the US is...GASP..acting in its own interests.

Security is not down. Please explain that to me.

Personal rights are not down. Please illustrate one right that you personally have lost as a result of this administrations policies?

The economy is not down. It's growing quite steadily, thank you.

If Terror is flat, that means Bush hasn't done enough to make things safe.

C'mon SDW....stay current...terrorism is UP,
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1960582


Everything has a reason. The Bush tax cuts (for the wealthiest Americans) are the reason, just admit it.


C'mon now. Acting in its own interests? Now we're heard it all. Since when is it in America's interests for much of the rest of the world to disrespect or even start hating us? Or you prefer we generate a bunch of enemies? Our macho belligerent stomping around the world like a bunch of drunken soccer hooligans is doing just that.


http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/22/homesec.tm/


Never heard of "free speech zones"?


define 'the economy' please.

SDW: "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! There is no school tomorrow mommy. Look see, Fred told me there wasn't and he is my friend. NO NO NO NO NO!"

You guys are classic. All the same folks who were posting that the terror alerts are fake are now complaining about Khan being known as captured.

Of course Bush had to mention Khan being captured so that idiots like Moore, and his groupies here would stop complaining that all the terror alerts were bogus, based on old information.

Let me see if I follow the ever changing "I'm right because I'm on all sides of the issue" reasoning displayed by most here.

Bush issues terror alert

"Aw that's just to stop Kerry's momentum from the convention. There's not a real threat."

Bush releases some older information that justifies terror threats.

"See we told you Bush is a hack. This is old information. The terror alerts are from three year old information. Bush is a liar."

Bush releases that Khan was arrested and this new information in conjunction with older led to terror alerts.

"Geesh look at how stupid Bush is because he gave us the information we asked for concerning terror alerts. What an idiot! Now that guy can't be used to extract anymore information from terrorist networks since he is known to be compromised. Why did they tell us that they had him? We would have believed the information without knowing who provided it or when."

100% Grade A, Bullshit. You guys claim continual lying and a need for proof. You are given it. Then use the proof as "proof" of incompetence when it is exactly what you have been begging for all along.

Nick

well one of the last two theories has to be correct

The White House tends to politicize everything.

I'm going to think it's general incompetence at this point, in both instances (the alert, and the release of this guy's name) were done prematurely. When in both cases a little patience would have done the administration well.

incompetence and over-eagerness, i say.

There is no winning when it comes to warning people about terrorist activity. You're either being too obtuse, vague and political or you're blowing further intelligence, inciting fear, and showing your cards to the terrorists. It's like eating porridge I guess. Will someone tell me when we get it just right?

Expect whoever is President in 2005 to suffer the same problem, and whoever is that president's successor. Everyone is of course welcome to criticize in this regard, and will probably argue both sides of it at some point, but don't think that Kerry will somehow avoid this situation if elected. I'm not voting for him with the expectation that that this will change, and if people are, they're in for a big disappointment. I do find it ironic that people effectively accuse Kerry of "waffling", and apparently the Bush admin is guilty of the same in this matter. I think both this argument like the "waffling" one are off base to a fair degree.

There's some indications that Pakistani officals actually outed the guy and the Bush admin compounded the issue by confirming as much. There's also some indications that this Kahn guy was suspected by others in Al Qaeda to be giving them up. Since more recent arrests have been based on his knowledge, he might have been the common denominator, and they might have been figuring that out.

The question is in the end, would you allow any plots to continue and maybe even succeed in order to catch the bigger fish down the line? During WWII, the British deliberately allowed some German planning to go through so that they wouldn't suspect they had cracked the German codes. That meant that some men died and ships sank in the short term but in the long term, they got the best of the Nazis. I would think this approach would serve us better down the line, but we are dealing with politicians, and no matter who we elect, that factor won't change.

The administration's failures have become systematic. It's part of the daily routine.

It amazes me how so many of you have such a vile and bitter hatred for the President. You really fear him don't you?

Americans just don't trust the warning system anymore. The Bush administration doesn't help it's cause by changing the rules on a whim. it's nation wide, it's localized.
We'll give you specifics, we won't give you specifics.
I think the current alert is based on solid evidence, but they didn't communicate it very well. Just like everything else, I'm pretty tired of the "it is because we say so" bullshit from these people.

just like everything else, it's systematic i tell ya!

Maybe so common boy, maybe so.
Perhaps he has finally found a way to bring the U.S. together.
Through our vile hatred of him, and how he's screwed this country, economically, environmentally and politically we will come together in November and unemploy him.

Translation: giant always launches into a personal attack when he is shown to be wrong.

Nick

Sadly you become so unable to defend yourself that you purposefully manipulate the quoting system to change people's words.

Nick

And you always avoid the issue by taking a very very small slight, (and in this case it wasn;t even a slight, merely a 'heads-up' to what you tend to do) and concentrating on that while letting the ball drop . . . or really, dropping it because your position is untenable.

My position was quite clearly explained and makes perfect sense. We have a two page thread here with people calling the terror alerts politically motivated due to the information being old, or just a pure lack of proof. Then when the justification is given, they decry that as well.

There's nothing hard to follow about that. What's hard for folks like giant, and others to swallow is that their continual political pessimism which powers Moore and his ilk has proven that their motivation isn't about safety, but pure politics.

They can't decry the timing claiming politics, then have justification provided and decry the fact that it was actually provided. They ASKED for it and got it.

Nick

yes they can, because the administration has been guilty of both things!
they've trumped up intel to the point where no one trusts anything that comes from anyone in the administration, and they've politicized everything as well.

So again, they don't trust them and ask for proof. They get the proof and decry the fact that it was provided.

You cannot decry that which you have asked for. The Bush administration tried to release older, less sensitive information first. All that did was create even more mistrust and more calls for more recent, more sensitive information.

Nick

From my perspective, your position seems muddled and confused-- a problem compounded by the opinion that your writing fails to "quite clearly" explain much at all. No one "asked" for the outing of the Pakistani double agent, as you've repeatedly argued otherwise.

I think everyone's capitulated on the terror alert thing, but the Bush administration mishandled the communication of it.
Ridge muddled for a day or two before setting it straight.
You can't blame people for thinking it was political.

This was definitely political and much will be made of it in the coming weeks.

It is clearly possible to not have cared a whiff about the supposed political-ness of the terror alert and its timing
BUT THEN
To care a very great deal about the idiotic outing of this agent as a desperate effort to cover their butts

and then the following possibilities then become tenable:
Its possible to not care about the timing issue but to still care about the outing-and-leaking administration

or, it is possible that someone who did not believe, or care too much, about the timing of terror alerts and their supposed political-ness, sees this desperate, hurried, hands-in-their-pants-zippers-down-porn-tapes-rolling kind of panic, and then begins to see politics where it might not have been seen . . .

. . that is my position: I didn't think too much about the 'political timing' until the administration, in a guilty panic, used one of its most despicable but effective weapons: leaks to the media . .

. .. but really they don't just 'use' this weapon, they 'misuse' it!!!

Well, I can see there's no point in talking about it since everyone has made up their minds and have settled into attacking one another. Surprise! It's just the same old crowd who feel more free to beat up on each other like it's a little cock fighting ring in here. Too bad.

Well I'm sure that much in life is muddled and confused from your perspective. That's really not my problem.

Nick

You make a good point pfflam. I'll also grant that in the other thread you did at times appear to withhold judgement on the "politicalness" of the terror alerts.

However it also doesn't appear that there were multiple updated sources that confirm the earlier information. As so far as we know, this is the person and latest information they were using to confirm the earlier information which was part of the rational for the terror alerts. It doesn't appear they have any other means of confirming the earlier information but to divulge this information.

My view is that they were painted into a corner, and simply had no other means of getting out without divulging the most up to date information to silence the partisan critics. I'll be happy to entertain other views though. If you can give me a plausible scenario that would have silenced those claiming the terror alerts were political but did not expose who gave us this latest information, I'll be happy to consider it.

Also please don't say that Bush could have just ignored the critics. When people begin not taking the alerts seriously or doubting their intent, it puts us in harms way. It creates the same sort of casual attitude that helped 9/11 to happen. (Box cutters, who cares about box cutters)

Nick

23 minutes later, responding to a legitimate complaint about the clarity of the point he's making:


The outing of Khan was a mistake and desired by no one. You can't justify it by blaming the mistake on critics of the color-coded alert system.

And the LIBERAL MEDIA will certainly demand closure to these stories because they are such LIBERALS.


Common Man:


I fear for the safety of many people who would otherwise be safe were it not for President Bush. Like our own troops.


trumpt:


You realize, of course, that engaging in ad-hominem makes your complaints against ad-hominem less compelling?

Perhaps in most cases, but anyone who hangs around here knows Shawn's pattern. He complains about a lack of clarity, tries to force you into minutia and then uses anything, even a typo or grammatical mistake to drag the thread into an attack on the messenger instead of the message.

I really don't care to go down that path with him any more. Especially, since when asked to do the reverse he refuses.

Nick

such equivocation
such self deception
. . . its a beautiful thing

And I think to myself... I took this person off ignore?!?


Nick

Yes, fear he's going to do something extra stupid that can't be fixed.