Tag Archives: neocons

Mitt Romney isn’t qualified to run U.S. Foreign Policy

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When conservatives want to put another version of George W. Bush in charge of U.S. foreign policy:


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OFA: In a series of interviews, Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Senator John Kerry, Admiral John Nathman (ret.), and Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy explain why Mitt Romney is not prepared to be commander-in-chief. They each lay out how President Obama’s leadership has made America stronger, safer and more secure while Mitt Romney has nothing to offer except bluster, chest-thumping, and a commitment to endless war. As Monday’s debate will demonstrate, blunder and bluster are no substitute for strong leadership.

And this:

Mitt Romney’s Neocon War Cabinet: “Romney is loath to mention Bush on the campaign trail, for obvious reasons, but today they sound like ideological soul mates on foreign policy. Listening to Romney, you’d never know that Bush left office bogged down by two unpopular wars that cost America dearly in blood and treasure. Of Romney’s forty identified foreign policy advisers, more than 70 percent worked for Bush. Many hail from the neoconservative wing of the party, were enthusiastic backers of the Iraq War and are proponents of a US or Israeli attack on Iran. Christopher Preble, a foreign policy expert at the Cato Institute, says, “Romney’s likely to be in the mold of George W. Bush when it comes to foreign policy if he were elected.”

The clear difference between wingnuts and liberals

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Stupid Right-Wing Tweets: “Today, you see a clear difference between wingnuts and liberals. After Obama clearly lost the first debate, liberals said so. Loudly. But wingnuts are physically incapable of acknowledging reality, even when it’s staring them in the face. So, Joe Biden lost because…because we said so, that’s why. Expect Romney to “win” the next two debates in similar fashion, regardless of the actual results. There is no truth or falsehod, comrades! Only service and loyalty to the party!”

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CBS News: “Fifty percent of uncommitted voters who tuned into Thursday night’s vice presidential debate in Danville, Ky., said they see Vice President Joe Biden as the winner over Mitt Romney’s GOP running mate Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis… 31 percent deemed Ryan the winner, and 19 percent said they felt it was a tie.”

“Romney’s likely to be in the mold of George W. Bush when it comes to foreign policy”

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“Romney is loath to mention Bush on the campaign trail, for obvious reasons, but today they sound like ideological soul mates on foreign policy. Listening to Romney, you’d never know that Bush left office bogged down by two unpopular wars that cost America dearly in blood and treasure. Of Romney’s forty identified foreign policy advisers, more than 70 percent worked for Bush. Many hail from the neoconservative wing of the party, were enthusiastic backers of the Iraq War and are proponents of a US or Israeli attack on Iran. Christopher Preble, a foreign policy expert at the Cato Institute, says, “Romney’s likely to be in the mold of George W. Bush when it comes to foreign policy if he were elected.”

— Mitt Romney’s Neocon War Cabinet (via wilwheaton)

Defending Willard Romney: The Cream of the Rightwing Extremist Crop

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John Cassidy | The New Yorker: So far, just about the only statements of support Romney has managed to elicit have come from discredited neocons (Bill Kristol, Liz Cheney), paleo-cons (Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton), and nutty-cons (Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint). Meanwhile, John McCain and Condoleezza Rice, arguably the G.O.P.’s two most influential voices on foreign policy, have conspicuously failed to criticize Obama, while paying tribute to Ambassador Chris Stevens, the longtime foreign-service officer who was killed.

Kaili Joy Gray | DKos: That giant catastrophe of a statement from Mitt Romney about the attack in Libya? And his follow-up catastrophe of a public statement that just made it worse? Yeah, well, you might think it demonstrated just how not-ready-to-be-president Mitt Romney is, but you’d be wrong. Because the real leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, says so:

Mitt Romney, who is the only guy that looked presidential in all of this, who had the guts to go out and characterize this statement from the embassy accurately.  And the media is now saying that Romney jumped the gun, launched a political attack before the facts of the embassy violence were known, and then issues a vague foreign policy vision.

Sure, Rush. It is interesting to note what Rush was saying about his presidential-looking candidate on Monday, 9/10, though:

…I hate to tell you this. I mentioned this on the air some time ago. Romney, the best thing he can do is remember this election isn’t about him. He may as well be Elmer Fudd as far as we’re concerned. We’re voting against Obama. I don’t care who they put on the ticket, we’re voting against Obama. That has not changed, and there are more people now than in 2010 who are gonna vote against Obama. — Media Running Campaign To Dispirit You | RealClearPolitics

Click to enlarge: note the faces of the press:

11 years: What did Bush know, and when did he know it? (More and earlier than we realized)

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Posted in full without comment:

Bush Knew More About Bin Laden’s Plans Than We Realized

Now, 11 years later, new details of the attack on the World Trade Center continue to emerge from the government’s vault of classified documents and the journalists who’ve gained access. This year, the reporter with the jaw-dropping scoop is Kurt Eichenwald, a former Timesman and present contributing editor at Vanity Fair. After reading more than one tweet with the simple instructions “Read this,” we clicked on the link to Eichenwald’s powerful op-ed, due to be published in The New York Times on September 11. In it, Eichenwald goes into teeth-grinding detail about how the Bush administration had even more advance notice about Osama Bin Laden’s attack than we previously realized. You should read it, too.

With the infamous August 6 White House briefing as a focal point, Eichenwald walks through the months and years of warnings leading up to the September 11 attacks. Some of these are events and reports that remain classified, but Eichenwald says he’s “read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed.”

Again, we already knew that Bush had some advance warning. We just didn’t realize how much. This passage from Eichenwalds piece reads like a nightmare:

An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

That was in June of 2001. Three months later, the White House didn’t have the luxury of avoiding reports about Bin Laden any more.

Read Eichenwald’s piece in full.