It's by Bill Kristol. I know, just hold your nose and read it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38029-2003Jul23.htmlHe's a very, very important person within the neo-con movement. He and Fred Barnes (both are editors of the Weekly Standard) frame a lot of the debates you hear on TV or read in mainstream newspapers. Kristol's editorial here explicitly lays out the repubs. talking points and frames the debate. Notice he tries to walk on dems. ground and take it back from them.
Key passage:
"But Gephardt has laid down an extraordinarily clear marker for judging the Bush administration: He claims we're less safe and less secure than we were four years ago.
Is this the case? Were we safer and more secure when Osama bin Laden was unimpeded in assembling his terror network in Afghanistan? When Pakistan was colluding with the Taliban, and Saudi Arabia with al Qaeda? When Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq? When demonstrations by an incipient democratic opposition in Iran had been crushed with nary a peep from the U.S. government? When we were unaware that North Korea, still receiving U.S. food aid, had covertly started a second nuclear program? When our defense budget and our intelligence services were continuing to drift downward in capacity in a post-Cold War world?
Are we not even a little safer now that the Taliban and Hussein are gone, many al Qaeda operatives have been captured or killed, governments such as Pakistan's and Saudi Arabia's are at least partly hampering al Qaeda's efforts instead of blithely colluding with them, the opposition in Iran is stronger, our defense and intelligence budgets are up and, for that matter, Milosevic is gone and the Balkans are at peace (to mention something for which the Clinton administration deserves credit but that had not happened by July 1999)?
Is it reasonable to criticize aspects of the Bush administration's foreign policy? Sure. . . ."
He kindly finds fault with the administration's handling of post-war Iraq. This is a nifty move. He knows this is THE catlyst for the media attraction to the WMD story. By admitting the mistakes, he hopes to move on and to ask the BIGGER questions. Are we safer? Ahhhhhh. Remember, any questions that harm the repubs. platform are the unimportant questions. These only mask deeper concerns--national security (the fear card) and the dems. motives in asking questions (the patriot card). It's the same two-step manifested in different arguments.
Please don't post: "Why do you read this crap? You're an idiot to read anything the repubs. have to say." Well, then, how do I know what they're saying? How do I know how they're framing their arguments? Therefore, how I do I know how to reframe their argument and be ready to do so? It's like walking into the middle of a chess game: you can look at where you are but have NO idea how you got there, how your opponent works, what he was willing to sacrifice (in pieces or board position).
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