it amuses us that the rightists, when confronted with reality, are able to twist things, no matter how implausible, to their favor.
case in point: the economic recovery is looking shaky, people keep dying in iraq, and both of these issues are bad for awol's re-election. so what do the rightists do? they tout "national security." from abc news:
republican party chief ed gillespie previewed the bush campaign's strategy in a speech thursday, calling into question kerry's national security credentials and charging that kerry would weaken the nation's defenses.
our question at skippy international is, why would a
wol want to brag about his national security credentials?
he presided over the biggest national security disaster in history. numerous warnings, both in
the intelligence communities (witness "the
phoenix memo), and all the way up to the
aug. 6 memo describing bin laden's plans for "hijacking," were swirling around prior to 9/11, for anybody to take a gander at.
now, we're not saying awol was compliant in 9/11. we're saying he was complacent. he did not exert due diligence as commander in chief to stop this terrible disaster.
it's rather like a bank president saying, "keep me in my job, i'm so good at protecting the assets, remember when there was that big bank robbery under my watch? boy, i sure was macho in the following days!"
and yes, we know, there are rumors that awol is planning a big afghanistan push to find bin laden. it's only been 3 years since he knocked down our towers. good idea! not enough soldiers have died in afghanistan yet.
and speaking of dying soldiers, that brings us to our other question about awol's credentials for "national security." what's the deal with iraq?
awol constantly harped to american that saddam was a threat. turns out he wasn't. and no links to al qaeda either.
what does awol do? blame the intelligence communities. again.
so, let's review. awol couldn't get his act, or acts of the the departments under him, together enough to prevent, or at least warn us about 9/11. awol couldn't get the right info to go to war with, and thusly spent billions of dollars and hundreds of american lives (not to mention iraqi lives) for an operation that turns out to be unnecessary in terms of america's safety.
so tell us, again, what's so great about this guy's "national security" credentials? trust us, if we had an employee whose record was so bad, and especially if that record was the one thing the employee was bragging about at his yearly review, we'd can his ass.
so, america, that's what we must do.
let's can his ass.
cross-posted on the american street and our own secure blog.