Comments on: Fred Thompson’s “Holiday From History”

By: Veritas78

Veritas78 — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 23:02:33 +0000

This “blame Clinton for Al-Qaeda” meme is now essential for their belief system. It’s so easy to claim that we were asleep during the 90s. It allows them to pretend that Al Gore and his terrorism task force weren’t hitting every panic button, and that the entire Clinton administration wasn’t warning BushCo of the imminent danger.

What a short step for Rudy to claim that Ike promised a man on the moon and Nixon delivered. Either Rudy doesn’t remember (a bad sign) or we don’t (worse).

By: tanbark

tanbark — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:05:25 +0000

TimR; good post!

She, and her family were not saints; far from it. Read Steve Coll’s “Ghost Wars”, if you want the skinny on her tenure as PM.

But, I certainly would have preferred her, to Musharraf, to lead there, and she undoubtedly had a lot more popular support than he does.

Lastly; her personal courage is undeniable.

Pakistan and the world, are the worse, for her death.

By: tanbark

tanbark — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:58:56 +0000

Re: the genuflecting to junior:

Some polls are showing Obama surging 10 points ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire. If that’s true in “safe for her” New Hampshire, it will be a DAGGER to her campaign.

And it will have far-reaching implications in this election.

Barring another 9-11, Hillary is the GOP’s last chance to salvage something from 8 years of george bush’s bloody, miserable, “leadership”.
Without her to run against, they’re done for. She’s their lifeboat, and if she sinks, there will be a lot of gooper rats facing a LONNNNNG swim to shore.

McCain seems willing to go down with the ship, but look for Willard and Giuliani and Huck to start distancing themselves from bush’s clusterfuck. In the general, without Hillary for them to talk about as THE issue, Iraq moves front and center.

Obama may be mumbling “bipartisanship”, but he’s a politician, and he knows where the jugular is, and if he runs the table (All those black voters in South Carolina! :o) )I believe he’ll go for it, knowing what’s at stake, in the general. I sure hope so.

By: timr

timr — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:48:32 +0000

This is off topic, but I think I saw something here by a blogger after her death. I know that no one here likes Time Magazine, but I would like to draw your attention to a viewpoint piece by William Dalrymple on page 46 titled Martyr Without a Cause, about Benazir Bhutto. His column is the only one that I have seen anywhere that tells the truth about Banazir Bhutto. She was very corrupt when she was PM. Her husband was charged with many crimes, her own brother-a political rival-was gunned down by her police when she was PM. IOW, the US backed(once again)someone who never was in favor of democracy. Someone whose reign as PM was a study in corruption, whose secret service-ISI-under her watch helped arm the Taliban and facilitate its rise to power in Afghanistan. She did nothing to stop the ISI from training Islamist jihadis to do the ISI’s dirty work elsewhare in the region. Above all she was a fudal landowner, and while she talked a good game about helping the poor and uneducated, she did nothing to back it up. I have no idea why rice pushed so hard to get Bhutto put back in charge, she never was any kind of a friend to the US(she favored $$$ only) either when she was PM or when she was in exile. And she was arrogant, her final act, in her will, was to hand her party to her husband and son, as if it were her personal family fief. My guess would be that rice bought into her retoric, and never bothered to read anything that was reported to foggy bottom when she was PM. Her entire family is crooked and corrupt, her husband could never be elected to anything, he still has many charges of theft and corruption hanging over his head(the investigation was started while she was still PM, so Musharraf had noting to do with it) Amnesty International accused her govt of having one of the worlds worst records of custodial deaths, abductions, killings, and torture.

By: egregious

egregious — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:40:36 +0000

I can just see the little Iranian gunboats circling the U.S. warships with the Iranians shouting things like, “I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster! You feelthy Americans!”

I was thinkin more like “get the fuck out of our territorial waters”

By: rwcole

rwcole — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:40:05 +0000

Richmond-

The story line is that Hillary and Romney are both on the ropes- a couple more defeats away from elimination.

Of course there have been no “closed” primary which may favor them.

By: Richmond

Richmond — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:36:54 +0000

Earlier I noted, that someone at Think Progress thinks the timing also might be linked the Rethug campaign (pro guiliani or McCain, anti-Huckabee). And, of course, as I noted earlier, William Cristol (right finally Biodun?) is threatening with a Bloomberg entry for the Neocons if the Rethugs pick Huckabee. My sense is that they are VERY despirate. The amount of pressure they must have put on the NYT for Cristol must have been considerable. And Bobo Brooks is clearly pissed. He called Cristol something like a pseudo-Conservative.

By: HelplessDancer

HelplessDancer — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:36:25 +0000

I wonder what sort of ROI they are operating under. You know that people out are gonna be a bit on the proddy side.

By: puravida

puravida — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:34:11 +0000

I can just see the little Iranian gunboats circling the U.S. warships with the Iranians shouting things like, “I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster! You feelthy Americans!”

By: Richmond

Richmond — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:33:29 +0000

OT. New Rasmussen poll has Obama’s reach extending nationally. Clinton is now ahead of him 33-29; In the lat pole it was Hillary beating him 41-24. (you want the source? [alas, it is cited via Drudge).