"And There's More"

by DemFromCT

Andrea Mitchell from NBC on even more Iraq memos:

And there's more. To prepare Blair for a meeting at the president's ranch in April 2002, a year before the war, four other British memos raised more questions.

After a dinner with President Bush’s then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Blair's former national security adviser David Manning wondered, “What happens on the morning after” the war?

In yet another 2002 memo, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw asked, “What will this action achieve? Can (there) be any certainty that the replacement regime will be better? Iraq has had no history of democracy.”

Monday, Rice, now U.S. secretary of state, told Chris Matthews from MSNBC-TV's “Hardball,” “I would never claim that the exact nature of this insurgency was understood at the time that we went to war.”

Vice President Dick Cheney also told a National Press Club luncheon Monday, “Any suggestion that we did not exhaust all alternatives before we got to that point, I think, is inaccurate.”

In fact, current and former diplomats tell NBC News they understood from the beginning the Bush policy to be that Saddam had to be removed — one way or the other. The only question was when and how.

This, of course, won't stop Bush and Cheney from continuing to lie straight into the camera. But they can only do it for so long. The American people are souring on the war, including Republicans. From Gallup:

Seventy-six percent of Democrats say they would be upset if Bush sent more troops to Iraq, more than double the percentage of Republicans (32%). Independents (61%) are more aligned with Democrats than Republicans on this matter.

More generally, 72% of Democrats say they favor a partial or complete withdrawal from Iraq, along with 65% of independents and 41% of Republicans. Forty-two percent of Democrats favor a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

The tipping point has been reached.  When the President of the United Republicans starts losing his base, he's somewhere between a lame duck and a dead duck on the war. There'll be some carry-over to other issues, but say hello to the credibility gap on Iraq. Lyndon Johnson could tell you all about it.

[UPDATE] ; Terry Neal (WaPo.com) on the DSM series of memos.

Comments

[demtom]

I hope you're correct, DemfromCT, but there's a school of thought that relentless denial, rather than owning up to problems, is, politically, more helpful than hurtful. The brazenness of Ollie North help Iran-Contra fizzle without major damage to the Reagan administration. I've heard it said that many in the Bush administration feel that had anyone -- esp. a high-up figure like Rumsfeld -- had resigned over Abu Ghraib, the issue might have registered high enough on the scandal meter to cost the election.

In the view of these pig-headed folk, it was the Johnson administration's tacit or explicit acknowledgement Vietnam was a losing enterprise -- evidenced by peace initiatives throughout 1968, Humphrey's late advocacy of a bombing halt -- that lost the public once and for all on the issue. This current bunch seems to think insisting black is white is a better strategy when you've got a losing hand.

As I say, I hope you're correct: that the reality-based community will turn out to be a majority of the country, that the Bush gang will ultimately pay the same price for saying Victory is at hand that Hoover did for saying prosperity was just around the corner. But we'll have to enduring a gripping (and grueling) experiment in thought-suggestion before we know if that's the case.

[Crab Nebula]

The opinion tipping point has been reached. But that's not the important tipping point, which is when people begin to not merely doubt their elected's judgement, but are willing to punish them for a feeling of betrayal (as in an ethics scandal). Don't see signs of that yet, just signs of disappointment and disagreement.

Like Demtom I'm not sure that kind of attitude has any permanence among voters. But in an atmosphere of economic stagnation, what might otherwise be a marginal effect on voters should become a bigger one. I have no doubt that were the economy good, there would be a near zero chance of this effecting '06. But that won't be the case.

Longer term, though, there may be a negative trust effect, an increase in cynicism, conservative and right-leaning base that we can't measure now. This whole debacle may have changed some fundamental opinions about what is and isn't possible to achieve with military intervention, and it may have marginally weakened the hold of false patriotic appeals in key segments of the GOP base.

[DemFromCT]

I think both demtom and Crab Nebula underestimate how many folks have family and friends serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. There's something very personal about that betrayal that polls and other media instruments just don't pick up.

It has, I agree, not translated yet into Bush anger the way we feel it, but it's simmering below thge surface. I know it from the families whose kids are over there... I hear it every day.

Longest journey starts with smallest step.

[Meteor Blades]

The good news is - if only the Dems will run with it - that we now have solid documentary evidence of their chicanery. Before when Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and all the others of their ilk denied that they had any intention of going to war without trying all the other options first, we just had Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Clarke and PNAC white papers to point to, and the RwMM helped the Administration obscure and deny the relevance of all that. demtom may be right that relentless denial - not to mention nonstop lying - will turn out to protect these guys from political retribution. But I think their task has been made a little more difficult thanks to these documents.

[DemFromCT]

In the end, though i believe Lincoln was right... you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

[Redshift]

Don'cha just love the "Democratic consultants" quoted in the Neal piece? "Everyone knows the President lied, but you can't say he lied, or that he lied malevolently, because that turns people off."

Guys, did you ever look up from your focus groups and think that maybe it's because you don't say it enough? If you keep saying it, some people will, whether they consciously believe it or not, start considering it when new information comes out. The Republicans manufactured "it's the lying that matters" out of nothing, and you brilliant 'strategists' can't make something out of this?

If I didn't already believe in "fire the consultants," I sure would now!

[Crab Nebula]

Redshift, people weren't ready to believe that last year. There was the "hope" of the coming Iraqi election, and the temporarily declining body count as the winter approached. They played the war masterfully, and crying "Liar!" would have painted the cryer as a complainer without solutions.

The "Truth" in campaigns doesn't work like you think it does.

[Redshift]

I'm not saying it would have worked because it's the truth; if I had meant that I wouldn't have compared it to the Republican campaigns to paint Clinton as dishonest. The fact that it's true is just a bonus (and makes it palatable to many our side who don't like the "make shit up" approach of modern Republicans.) I'm saying that hammering on your opponent's flaws is a way of making people believe, and waiting around until they're "ready" is all too often a way to avoid taking chances, and we've seen where that's gotten us. Personally, I think a lot more people were ready and primed on this when "Fahrenheit 911" was drawing record crowds.