Comments on: Breaking: Obama “Not Ready” For 3am Call…

By: Mr. Left

Mr. Left — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:14:19 +0000

You have a good point–maybe Rice shouldn’t be on his team. And I heartily agree: we need to hold people accountable for their actions, I agree completely with that. But the irony is that the one person not held accountable is the President himself. Remember the phrase “The Buck Stops Here”? Well, apparently, the buck stops at the doorstep of advisers, not actually the president himself. And wasn’t Hillary his close confidant and adviser during this time as well?

Laying the blame for a President’s foreign policy failures on the people in the bureaucracy is a great approach, I have to admit. It basically exonerates a president from ever having to be accountable for anything his/her administration does, ever. By this logic, you can alleviate any blame assigned to Hillary for her vote–it’s because others gave her bad information. That the administration lied to her (forget the fact that Hussein and the Islamic extremists hated each other fervently, and he couldn’t trust them with nukes, even if he had had them). Any leader can blame others for their mistakes with this approach–bad information from inept advisers.

Judgment is important, but the President relies on several advisers, not just a discrete set of “yes/no” policy options–there’s State, CIA, NSC, JCS–wouldn’t they all have played a role in these decisions? You’d know better than I, but it would seem odd if they were discrete sessions with one or two people with a slate of options, and that was it. If that’s the case, we were in much worse hands in the ’90s than I thought (and I’ve been a fan of Clinton in the past).

By: Janet M

Janet M — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:50:38 +0000

I had a front seat at the Susan Rice/John Pendergast screw ups in Africa which ushered in the Al Qaeda scenario we face today. They were so sure that El Shifa, the now famous “aspirin” factory, was a secret bin Laden chemical weapons facility that they advised Pres Clinton to turn down captured Al Qaeda financial bagmen the Sudanese government apprehended. This happened 10 years ago in August. Think of how differently things would have turned out if. Instead of how it did.

The bombing of the US embassy in Dar Es Salaam? Nairobi? USS Cole? 9-11? The War on Terror? Afghanistan? Iraq? Pakistan?

Did Obama even consider the past actions of his team?

God help us all.

By: Janet M

Janet M — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:43:05 +0000

I had a front seat at the Susan Rice/John Pendergast screw ups in Africa which ushered in the Al Qaeda scenario we face today. They were so El Shifa, the now famous “aspirin” factory, was a secret bin Laden chemical weapons facility that they advised Pres Clinton to turn down captured Al Qaeda financial bagmen the Sudanese government apprehended. This happened 10 years ago in August. Think of how differently things would have turned out if. Instead of how it did.

By: Hillary Clinton Beats Out Obama on Foreign Policy « Hillary for President

Hillary Clinton Beats Out Obama on Foreign Policy « Hillary for President — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 02:22:08 +0000

[…] to Alegre for an insightful video clip that summarizes succinctly the inept incompetence of the Obama foreign policy team. Susan Rice, a […]

By: Make Them Accountable / Media

Make Them Accountable / Media — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:41:35 +0000

[…] Breaking: Obama “Not Ready” For 3am Call… (by Alegre, posting at No Quarter) …according to his senior foreign policy advisor, Susan Rice, when she appeared [Thursday] on MSNBC. Sen. Obama’s top foreign policy advisor came right out and said that he’s not ready to take that call. Click through to watch the video. Of course, Rice claims that neither Clinton nor Obama is ready to take that call, but security expert Larry Johnson disagrees with her about Clinton. See below. […]

By: Lynn

Lynn — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:08:36 +0000

Those inspectors were in Iraq *because* of the AUMF. Prior to that, it had been since 1998 that inspectors had been there. An AUMF is not a declaration of war, pre-emptive or otherwise. (Kennedy had one during the Cuban Missile Crisis.) There were qualifiers in the 2002 resoultion, such as the deployment of inspectors, especially into areas that Saddam had not heretofore allowed, and invasion as a last resort. As I understand it, BUSH broke that law by withdrawing the inspectors before their work was finished and beginning an invasion that Congress, thus, hadn’t properly authorized. Beyond that, from Bush’s point of view, he had authority to invade even without the AUMF based on the first Gulf War. His approval ratings were still stratospheric, and he was going to get his war with or without Congressional approval.

By: The Gringo's Wife

The Gringo's Wife — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:33:39 +0000

Clark has been a huge supporter. I wouldn’t be surprised to find he was the one who got the Flag Officers out for HRC.

And I have thought all along that he would be a very smart choice for running mate.

By: Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:02:54 +0000

CLINTON/CLARK..

Has a good Ring..That would be a Good Thing..

By: The Gringo's Wife

The Gringo's Wife — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:58:36 +0000

Hold on a little longer. It may still be Clinton/Clark.

By: alexei

alexei — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:00:09 +0000

Here is Hans Blix according to this link:
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/011884.php
“as recounted by Hans Blix - who was the Director General of the IAEA from 1981 to 1997 and the Executive Director of UNMOVIC from 2000 to 2003 in charge of the Iraq inspections team. Blix published a book “Disarming Iraq” in which he objectively recounted the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq as a high-level, third party, UN official who was closely involved both with US officials and Iraqi officials at the time. As you read the book you will notice that Blix tried his best to make the inspections work and he was not a supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. However, he repeatedly states in his book how important it was to establish a credible and unified threat of military force against Iraq to get Saddam to not just let inspectors back in but also agree to the stringent terms of the UN inspections regime without playing “cat-and-mouse” games with the inspectors and the UN. Indeed, Blix calls out how he specifically asked Colin Powell, in early Oct 2002, for help in getting a credible threat of force included in any resolution to make sure that Iraq would really comply with the UN inspections regime and not play games with the UN as they had historically done. I’m going to reproduce a few extracts from his book showing some of the chronology and I will follow that up with comments from other bloggers (from back in 2004) - to make it clear that it was a very legitimate argument that Democrats who voted for the resolution might have partly done so in order to make sure that the inspections regime against Iraq worked - the kind of inspections that Sen. Obama said he was very much for in his Oct 2002 speech. Put another way, without a credible and unified threat of force, Blix’s view was that it was rather unlikely that Iraq would have really agreed to an unimpeded inspections process, even though his view was that the threat of force should not have carried over into an invasion in March 2003. This view is not significantly different from that of Sen. Kerry or Sen. Clinton.”