Hank Kalet

Juan Cole adds more to the discussion of the National Intelligence Estimate.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

So, the president has released a portion of an intelligence estimate that essentially proves what those of us opposed to the war have been saying since it began — i.e., that the war would be a magnet for new terrorists and that it would further enflame regional anger agains the United States.

The report is pretty explicit:

The Iraq conflict has become the .cause celebre. for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.

And yet the president still seems to believe that the war was an important front in the war against terror. His response, as Robert Scheer points out,

to the leaked conclusions of the shared assessments of both civilian and military intelligence agencies was the same old historically ignorant claptrap that leaves U.S. policies completely out of the equation.

As Dan Froomkin, who writes the White House Briefing column for The Washington Post, points out today: “President Bush’s all-important terror-fighting credentials are taking a bruising this week,” due in no small part to the report and to the Clinton TV appearance on Sunday.

This maybe true — and well-deserved — but I’m not convinced that the “bruising” is resonating with the public. I think it is likely, however, that the president’s fear tactics (see tomorrow’s Dispatches in the South Brunswick Post) will work — to the detriment of all.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

City Belt magazine, a new political and cultural magazine in New Jersey, offers my commentary on the recently concluded nurses strike at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Joan Didion, perhaps the keenest observer of the American political scene, gives us the real Dick Cheney in The New York Review of Books.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

I didn’t see it — not live, anyway — but President Bill Clinton’s exquisite hit (and here) on Chris Wallace gained him new respect in my eyes. Wallace, a moderate among fanatics on the conservative network, was preparing to follow the same script as was followed by ABC’s inane TV movie about 9/11.

What Wallace never expected was that the president would strike back and strike back hard.

Clinton laced into Wallace and the conservative and lapdog press that has allowed the canard of Clinton complicity in 9/11 to fester. The reality, as the ex-prez points out, is that Clinton made some efforts at capturing Osama bin Lade, ultimately failing; Bush, on the other hand, went into Afghanistan with the intention of tracking him down, got bored and opted to turn the Middle East into a chaotic blood bath.

I am no fan of Clinton — all anyone needs to do is read what I’d written during his eight-year tenure to know where I stand on his failed presidency — but now, six years into the disaster that is the Bush administration, the Clinton years look a whole lot better. (Check out Keith Olbermann on the verbal tussle.)

Another thing that struck me about the Sunday slugfest was the way it unmasked the press corps’ obsequiousness in the face of Bush — read John Nichols on this in The Nation:

The interview, which was broadcast over the weekend, got to the heart of what’s wrong not with the Bush presidency but with a media that covers that presidency from the on-bended-knee position.

It was boffo TV — but, unfortunately, it’s not likely to awaken the sleeping giant of the American press corps.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick