Month: April 2006
Poll: Half the Country Wants War with Iran — But 54% Do Not Trust Bush to Decide
Addicted to terror: Support for war on Iran has slipped significantly from the February 2006 CNN/Gallup poll cited here that said 80 percent of Americans favored bombing the Persian country if it developed nuclear weapons. Acccording to a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll:
Fifty-four percent said they did not trust President Bush to make the right decision about Iran.
Asked whether they would support military action if Iran continued to produce material that could be used to develop nuclear weapons, 48 percent of the poll’s respondents, or almost half, said yes; 40 percent said no…
In a telling reflection of Bush’s erosion in public support, 54 percent said they did not trust him to “make the right decision about whether we should go to war with Iran,” while 42 percent of respondents said they trusted him to do so.
That was a reversal of public sentiment since 2003, on the eve of Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, when 55 percent of respondents said they trusted him to make the right decision over whether to go to war.
FL-11: Castor Gets Schiavo Endorsement
TerriPAC, the political committee created by Michael Schiavo in honor of his late wife, Terri, whose linger coma caused controversy last year, has endorsed Hillsborough County Commissioner Kathy Castor (D) in Florida’s 11th Congressional District:
Castor is vying for the seat left vacant by Rep. Jim Davis (D-Fla.), who is leaving Congress to run for governor. Castor is leading in money with $392,089 on hand. Her closest rival, state Sen. Les Miller (D) had $173,209 on hand at year’s end.
Michael Schiavo recently met Castor and came away impressed, prompting the TerriPAC endorsement. In a statement, he said, “Kathy Castor has proven she will take the lead and stand up for our privacy and freedom and against powerful interests.”
TerriPAC is due to endorse candidates in the Florida governor’s race soon, as well as congressional races in California, Pennsylvania, Colorado and elsewhere.
WSJ’s John Fund, Renowned Clinton-Hater: GOP Is ‘Unprincipled’ and ‘Rudderless’
Way back in the last century, the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund made a name for himself on cable news as one of the leading spittle-spewin’, hyperventilatin’ Clinton-haters. (And like so many outspoken GOP moralists from the Clinton wars, he has a peccadillo or two in his closet.)
“Even President Bush recognized the dangers of untrammeled earmarks.”
— John Fund
— John Fund
Back then, Fund’s message was clear: liberals and their libertine ways are the cause of all America’s problems. If Republicans ruled the world, he and his cohorts seemed to say, all our problems would be solved.
Well, listen to John Fund now:
From their scramble to ram through a national legislative solution to Terri Schiavo’s plight, to their overreaction to Hurricane Katrina, to their failure to recognize the public’s disgust with pork-barrel projects, to the Dubai Ports deal, Republicans have appeared to the world to be as unprincipled and rudderless as the politicians they campaigned against back in 1994. Unless they change course dramatically in the seven months between now and Election Day, they may well find themselves facing the same fate as the Democratic political dinosaurs of that year that they replaced.
He even takes a mild swipe at his Dear Leader (emphasis mine):
Even President Bush recognized the dangers of untrammeled earmarks.
Kwiatkowski: U.S Has Permanent Mega-Bases In Iraq
Fort Iraq: On April 2, retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski appeared on C-Span’s “Q&A,” and gave a long and very frank interview about her 20-year military career, her work at the Pentagon and the lead-up to the Iraq invasion. Besides very clearly articulating her reasons for opposing the war, Kwiatkowski did a good job of connecting the dots between neoconservatism, the military-industrial complex and the administration’s rush to war.
She also said the U.S. is in Iraq to stay:
I think, for guys like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, a lot of the neoconservatives, even George W. Bush and certainly Cheney, the vision is that we are not really a republic anymore. We’re certainly not a limited state. We are the world’s most important and all-powerful state, and that we have certain rights. Yes, we have certain responsibilities, but I think the rights are what drive them. And those rights include the right to do what we want, to get what we need, to have what we want to have.
I think that’s what it is and, you know, we’ve built very massive mega-bases, permanent. These are permanent military bases in Iraq. We’ve done that in other places, as well, in the Middle East, but certainly these — this construction project in Iraq — in fact most of the [reconstruction] money has been for military construction of [facilities] for our use. I think that’s a big part of it, shifting our footprint.
‘We’ve built the bases, and we’re not leaving Iraq.’
— Lt. Col. Karen KwiatkowskiAnd certainly, even long before George W. Bush, the Pentagon has been interested in, from a global perspective, shifting and reshaping our global military footprint, and Mesopotamia is just absolutely, you know, wonderful. It is the most strategic location. I don’t care if you’re talking about water, trade routes, oil, our neighbors, our friends, people that may be threats in the future that we want to leverage. Iraq is perfect for all those things. And so, from their perspective, from the neoconservative perspective, there is this geopolitical reshaping that needs to go on, and Iraq is part of that. And so, we make the decision and we do the thing, and we did the thing. And we’ve built the bases, and we’re not leaving Iraq for the, you know, for all that.
Now, there is the kind of universal value-driven issue with the neo-conservatives about global democracy and that everyone has a right to self-government, but that to me seems very, very superficial because, certainly, you look at our allies, and of course this has been brought up numerous times. But, I mean, the friends that we have are those that do what we say, and if they’re Saudis or if they’re guys like Musharraf, who conducted a military coup, or other people that are less than savory and they’re not Democrats, that’s OK if they do what we need to do.
Quote du Jour
Anti-Semitism is a social disease …. Anti-Semitism is an excellent diagnostic device to use in studying the health and well-being of society. It is a harbinger of war, the fear of inadequacy that, in moments of crisis, breeds havoc and social panic.
— Carey McWilliams, (1905-1980), editor of “The Nation”
Spengler: Bush Will Bomb Iran in October to Flip Election to GOP
“Spengler” is an anonymous writer for Asia Times who appears to have been weirdly prescient about Bush’s actions so far:
Americans rally around a wartime commander-in-chief, and Bush will have bombed Iranian nuclear installations by October.
One hears not an encouraging word about US President George W Bush these days, even from Republican loyalists. Yet I believe that Bush will stage the strongest political comeback of any US politician since Abraham Lincoln won re-election in 1864 in the midst of the American Civil War.
Two years ago I wrote that Bush would win a second term as president but live to regret it. Iraq’s internal collapse and the president’s poll numbers bear my forecast out. But Bush’s Republicans will triumph in next November’s congressional elections for the same reason that Bush beat Democratic challenger John Kerry in 2004. Americans rally around a wartime commander-in-chief, and Bush will have bombed Iranian nuclear installations by October.
One factoid encapsulates Bush’s opportunity: in a February 14 CNN/Gallup poll, 80 percent of respondents said they believed that Iran, if it had nuclear weapons, would hand them over to terrorists; 59 percent said Iran might use nuclear weapons against the United States. A slight majority of those polled, to be sure, did not wish to use military action against Iran, but that should be interpreted as “not yet”, for two-thirds said they worried that the US would not do enough to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Americans are a misunderstood people. Only one in five owns a passport, and a tiny fraction of non-immigrant Americans learns a foreign language. US apathy regarding what might plague the rest of the world is matched only by US bloodlust when attacked. President Bush earned overwhelming support by toppling Saddam Hussein, a caricature villain who appeared to threaten Americans, but earned opprobrium by committing American lives to the political rehabilitation of Iraq, about which Americans care little.
The Party’s Over Lieberman But He Won’t Go Home
Independents everywhere might want to give more thought to signing on with one of the two major parties. CBS is reporting that Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman is considering running for re-election as an Independent.
Lieberman isn’t going down alone but plans to take the whole party with him.
“I have not foreclosed the option,” Lieberman said at a news conference at the Capitol. “If I wanted to run as an independent, I would. I’m running as a Democrat. I’ve been a Democrat all my life.”
Well, maybe not quite all his life.
I always wondered what Al Gore was thinking in 2000. It was bad enough to be stuck running against Bush. But to be running with Lieberman? Why?
“I feel very strongly the world is safer without Saddam Hussein in power. We have to complete the job in Iraq,” Lieberman said.
Are they sure Lieberman said that? I know I’ve heard every member of the Bush White House say it too.
Lieberman isn,t going down alone but plans to take the whole party with him. In a year when Democrats finally have a chance at gaining ground in both the Senate and the House, Joe is thinking of himself first, and staying in the race even if “his” party backs someone else.
Ned Lamont, a Democratic activist and anti-war candidate, is challenging Lieberman for the party’s nomination this year. He has been garnering support from some Connecticut Democrats dissatisfied with Lieberman’s stance on Iraq and his perceived closeness with President Bush’s administration…
Paul Streitz, who is seeking the Republican nomination, said he would gain if Lieberman is upended by Lamont and runs as an independent.
“A Republican would win, obviously,” he said. “It would split the Democratic vote.”
I bet Zell Miller is proud. Or jealous.
Poll: Most Disappprove of Bush’s Authorization of Leak in Plame Case
Bush’s approval rate is unchanged at 37 percent in the new Gallup poll.
This first look at public reaction to the news that President Bush authorized a leak of government intelligence in order to discredit a critic shows that the White House spin that the president did nothing illegal did not get much traction with an increasingly skeptical public:
Overall, 63 percent of Americans believe Bush did something either illegal (21 percent) or unethical (42 percent), while 28 percent say he did nothing wrong. While many more Democrats are critical, 3 in 10 Republicans also find that Bush did something illegal or unethical.
The more closely people are following the issue, the more likely they are to say he did something illegal rather than merely unethical…
Despite the latest turns in the CIA leak case, and news from Iraq, the president’s overall approval rating did not fall still further, hanging on at 37 percent, which is in line with most other polls.
