L!ve From > DC

The Bush bounce: End of Kerry

What is the significance of the Bush bounce as reported by a LA times poll?

Nothing. Yet. National polls take a backseat to state-by-state and here, Rasmussen projects Kerry ahead, however, with many states in the toss-up column.

What this means, perhaps, is that the anti-Kerry campaign by Vietnam Swift Boats veterans has been successful in planting the seed of doubt: Is Kerry trustworthy?

Rasmussen polls on this question put Bush comfortably ahead.

And Bush would probably beat Kerry had the question been about patriotism--which is defined variously depending on which party you support. With American athletes flying high in the Olympics and the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks around the corner, the country is torn between celebration and the desire to feel more contemplative about its role in the world, but there will be felt, by most Americans, a need to unite around something common, to feel more patriotic.

Could it be Iraq which still consumes American lives? Positive opinion in the media about Iraqi gratitude and competence is in short supply, in contrast to comparisons to Vietnam which have been flung about by the Kerry campaign and top-ranking Democrats like Ted Kennedy.

Yet, such is the power of Vietnam that even those opposed to the Iraq operation do not wish a repeat of that debacle. The unfinished business in Iraq following Gulf War 1 did not provide a satisfying antidote to the "Vietnam syndrome" and Gulf War 2 must be won at all costs, some voters must be thinking.

Retreat in the face of Iranian-backed thugs and Baathist terrorists bankrolled by Saddam's vast missing fortune will be the sort of defeat no patriotic American can stomach.

However, a swift unilateral withdrawal from Iraq, as Kerry imagines, while imprudent, may save American lives, leaving Iraq to sort itself out.

Kerry, who returned from Vietnam to urge a withdrawal from the jungles of South East Asia, does not appear entirely convinced himself that Iraq is Vietnam. This is where the Democratic supporter feels let down. Kerry fans want their candidate to outline an Iraq strategy that isn't authored by Bush.

Meanwhile, despite the onslaught of negative publicity about his every move in office, Bush has managed to project an unusually stubborn optimism about the future.

That, perhaps, is Bush's greatest strength--no matter how bleak things look, he holds out the promise of a better tomorrow. And no one has ever lost an election for being more optimistic.

Kerry: What has he done for the economy?

Twenty-two states reported a drop in payroll jobs last month, double the number for June, according to new Labor Department statistics. Among them were six of the states that could decide this fall's presidential election.

The declines in most cases were slight, but they drove home the frailty of the jobs recovery and highlighted risks to President Bush's re-election strategy. The White House has been counting on consistent, robust growth by now to restore confidence in the economy and counter grim news from Iraq.

Trust the Democrats to celebrate the misfortunes of fellow Americans.

Who cares that 22 states reported a drop in payrolls as long as six of them happen to be so-called battleground states, a fact self-declared liberals cannot look beyond because they think this somehow improves the electoral chances of their candidate who has done...exactly what, again for the American economy--or for that matter security, two issues foremost on the minds of voters this election?

In his two decades in the Senate, Kerry voted to slash funding for major defense weapons systems--upto $50 billion in Pentagon spending--which would have resulted in the loss of thousands of high-tech jobs.

Worse, Kerry channeled his contempt and loathing for the CIA by proposing cuts in intelligence funding--voted against the creation of good jobs and against training and equipping good people in critical language skills, which could have helped prevent the terrorist attacks of 9/11. (Now he is suddenly pro-intelligence).

Kerry also voted for NAFTA, which sent thousands of jobs overseas. (Now he assails Benedict Arnold CEOs and swears he will punish corporations that export American jobs.)

And just recently, he voted against President's tax cuts--cuts which even the most embittered Bush critic will agree have aided the recovery. Even on this issue, however, he has shifted toward Bush--threatening tax increases on those who make over $200,000--those who drive the economy--but sustaining Bush's reductions on middle-class Americans.

"What he's saying is that even though I'm criticizing Bush, I've got the same goal he does," notes Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a non-partisan Washington group that focuses on deficit reduction. "Kerry does a good job explaining why deficits matter, but I think the actual numbers he's putting out don't necessarily match the rhetoric."

Troop Redeployment

The inimitable Charles Krauthammer doles it out lavishly.

Democrats accuse the administration of politicizing the redeployment by bringing it up as a campaign issue. This truly is precious. The Democrats turned their convention into a four-day teach-in celebrating the Swift boats of the Mekong River circa 1968 -- and then question the legitimacy of raising as a campaign issue for the consideration of the nation the most significant redeployment of U.S. troops abroad since the Korean War.

And yes, a New York times editorial actually tried to defend the status quo arguing, "the military will also lose the advantage that comes with giving large numbers of its men and women the experience of living in other cultures."

As Krauthammer notes: "Seventy-thousand GIs parked in Stuttgart, practicing their German and listening to Wagner. Finally, a military deployment the New York Times can support."

Possible candidates for future US redeployments--Bulgaria, Poland, and Uzbekistan--the other "other cultures" have a right to feel insulted by the Times.

Bush to withdraw troops from Europe, Asia

Bush haters are desperately spinning conspiracies about this move (election year ploy, etc), but it is both smart and long overdue.

However, it may take up to 10 years to complete the withdrawal, which is disappointing.

Nearly 14 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US will open bases in the territories and satellites of the old Evil Empire: Poland, Bulgaria, and Uzbekistan, to name three. Now that's progress.

Yes, the German economy may suffer and they may dislike us more.

But it is what it is.

Bush's Albatrosses

David Broder today:

The factors that make President Bush a vulnerable incumbent have almost nothing to do with his opponent, John F. Kerry. They stem directly from two closely linked, high-stakes policy gambles that Bush chose on his own. Neither has worked out as he hoped.

The first gamble was the decision to attack Iraq; the second, to avoid paying for the war. The rationale for the first decision was to remove the threat of a hostile dictator armed with weapons of mass destruction. The weapons were never found. The rationale for the second decision -- the determination to keep cutting taxes in the face of far higher spending for Iraq and the war on terrorism -- was to stimulate the American economy and end the drought of jobs. The deficits have accumulated, but the jobs have still not come back.

"The weapons were never found."

And they will never, ever be sought after, developed and deployed against unsuspecting humans by Saddam or his sons or his extended family. The Hussein mafia is the albatross.

In his recent court appearance, Saddam announced defiantly that Kuwait belonged to Iraq. A few minutes later he was led away in chains. Quite a stunning change in fortune from 1990 when a similar statement preceded a possibly drug-induced invasion and annexation of Kuwait. America was forced to deploy 660,000 troops--42% of the US military--to the Persian Gulf to confront this nuiscance. Nearly 200 Americans never made it back from the desert war.

Bush 43 wasn't the one who made the mistake--repeat a thousand times David Broder: it was a ghastly, costly mistake--of sparing Saddam in 1991. Nearly a million Iraqis died from the subsequent sanctions while American tax payers footed the bill ($10 billion annually) of stationing troops in Saudi Arabia, angering Bin Laden who later attacked America. A lot of very bad things radiated from Saddam.

"The deficits have accumulated, but the jobs have still not come back."

Wrong. Good jobs are here for the taking. Technology, especially, is the place to be again. IT spending has gone up across both commercial and government sectors.

The real bad news is that we have a shortage of qualified labor, not good paying jobs.

A recent study by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) reported that as many as 425,000 high-tech jobs would go unfilled in coming years.

Corporate America will do whatever it needs to ensure that the work that needs to be done gets done. In the nineties, the Y2K scare and the Internet boom (or mirage) forced the US to recruit foreign labor--H1-B visas were thrown about like confetti.

When the recession hit, many of these workers were laid off and sent back home. Some stayed and waited it out. When the economy rebounded, these foreign workers were well-positioned for a more competitive technology environment, and some did, it could be argued, take jobs away from Americans.

Shortage of qualified labor at home, advances in communication technology, abundance of high-skilled, cheap technologists overseas (China, India)--these are the real reasons why outsourcing became big.

The antiquated public education system Bush inherited is the albatross.

Enter Bush's technology agenda: "Promoting Innovation and Competitiveness":

# Improved Math and Science Education. President Bush signed into law legislation that provides $160 million in 2002 for a new math and science partnership program. These funds are a down payment on an ambitious, five-year $1 billion initiative. This program will link elementary and secondary schools with technology-savvy colleges and universities, strengthening math and science teaching and education at all levels.

# Strengthened Corporate Research and Development. The Administration has proposed broadening access to the research and experimentation tax credit to make it easier for companies to deduct many costs associated with developing new technologies and drugs. This reform will take effect by mid-2002, and the Administration continues to strongly support making the tax credit permanent.

# Strengthened Federal and University Research and Development. To encourage increased innovation, President Bush helped push federal R&D funding over $100 billion for the first time in history. The President signed into law funding increases for science and technology at the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Departments of Energy, Agriculture, Interior, Commerce and Transportation.

Would Kerry vote for the Iraq War Today?

Challenged by President Bush to explain whether he would he have supported the removal of Saddam knowing what we now know, John Kerry unloaded another nuanced cop-out:

"Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have."

Bush supporters perceive this as a victory for the President. It is--because it proves once again that Kerry is incapable of a straight answer.

The Senator's statements over the last few years reveal his position on Iraq to be this: He considered Saddam to be extremely untrustworthy, dangerous, prone to deadly miscalculation, and addicted to WMD. But Kerry would have preferred to sustain the sneaky, low-intensity war of containment--sanctions and inspections--collective punishment of millions of Iraqis in violation of the spirit of the Geneva Conventions--than embark upon a politically risky full-fledged military action to bring about regime change in Baghdad. Kerry would have used force only after exhausting the inspections path and only if it could be accomplished with a broadercoalition of allies acting with UN Security Council authorization. And even if the UNSC had balked, approval of the use of force and participation by France and Germany would have satisfied Kerry's criteria for "broader coalition".

Kerry ignores--perhaps he doesn't know better, but most likely he does and he is feigning ignorance--the geopolitical factors that led to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

One of his chief complaints is that Bush alienated allies and the UN. However, truth is that UN Permanent Security Council Members Russia and China are staunch allies of Saddam (from the Cold War era) and would have never approved the Iraqi dictator's removal. Even if France (a Permanent SC member) could somehow have been persuaded to align itself with the US and UK (also Permanent SC members), a single veto by either Russia or China would have scuttled any resolution authorizing force against Saddam. In fact, over the course of 12 years leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Russia and China had demonstrated opposition to all US and British proposals for a tougher tone with Saddam.

Just two months ago, Russian President Putin revealed that Russian intelligence sources had gathered information that suggested Saddam had planned terrorist attacks on American soil "and beyond its borders on American military and civilian targets".

"After the events of 11 September 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times received such information and passed it on to their American colleagues," Putin revealed. Despite this, Putin maintained his opposition to the US-led operation.

John Kerry, a senior member of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, has either seen the information the Russian President is referring to and is being deliberately tight-lipped about it or he has missed it due to his spotty attendance.

Kerry's case of campaign amnesia might prevent him from recalling that in December 1998, following a heated debate at the UN that culminated in the failure to secure the Security Council's authorization (Russia, China, and France all voted against) for a targeted military strike, President Clinton and Tony Blair launched Operation Desert Fox, a US-British--not a multilateral--effort designed to degrade Saddam's WMD capability and to punish Baghdad for rebuffing UN inspectors. Both Russia and China immediately condemned the operation. France also issued a rebuke.

Earlier that same year, Clinton's frustration with the UN led him to back the Iraq Liberation Act, officially acknowledging "regime change" as the US goal. Five years later, a month before Operation Iraqi Freedom, France threated to veto any UN resolution aimed at Saddam's removal, proving the Bush team's own public --and perhaps Kerry's private--conclusion that the UN process was a dead-end.

Second, Kerry knows that containment--sanctions and inspections--was not the answer in 1991 and more than a decade and a million dead Iraqis later, the strategy that was the result of frustration, compromise (the UN opposed Saddam's ouster in 1991), and fear (Bush Sr. was petrified about the prospect of overthrowing the Iraqi dictator and occupying Iraq) had all but lost its aim. The primary objective of (or the political end state desired by) the strategy was regime change. However, on Clinton's watch, Saddam and his allies on the UN Security Council managed to hijack the containment effort. By the late nineties, Russia, China, and France were openly lobbying the UN for a lifting of the sanctions against the tyrant!

While the US was engaged in a low-intensity war with Iraq, three other Permanent Security Council members--whom Kerry has yet to criticize--were all too determined to embrace Hussein.

And while he has frequently condemned the financial cost of the operation to remove Saddam--voted against funding troops in Iraq, in fact--Kerry has yet to admit that the military component of containment was costing American--not French or German--taxpayers between $10-20 billion every year (this included the cost of maintaining an action force and military bases in the Persian Gulf region, patrolling the 'No Fly Zones', routine airstrikes). In all, over $120 billion was spent on containment between 1991 and 2003 and yet Saddam remained firmly in power.

From a moral perspective, imposing a genocidal embargo regime on Iraqis already suffering under the Hussein regime was simply wrong and it devastated America's standing on the Arab street. Over the 12 years of containment, the US-led UN sanctions stripped Iraq off its sovereignty, consumed a million innocent Iraqis--most of them children and the elderly--destroyed the Iraqi economy and the middle class,and triggered widespread anti-Americanism in the region--which Bin Laden shrewdly exploited to recruit jihadists against America. Saddam and his sons, meanwhile, built lavish palaces, terrorized their own citizens, dispatched millions of dollars to Islamist terrorists, and worked to derail the Middle East peace process.

In a sense, the US went to war to remove Saddam not only because we didn't trust him, but also because we didn't trust our allies. In theory, Saddam could have been contained without sanctions and without a single shot being fired. All we needed to do was to persuade his traditional military outfitters Russia, China, France, and Germany to stop supplying him. But the truth is that during the nineties, the UN's own Security Council Members let us down spectacularly. They openly sent Saddam proscribed weapons. China, for example, upgraded Saddam's radar and missile control systems with fiber-optics which enhanced his ability to target US and British planes patrolling the 'No Fly Zones'. In his first month in office, Bush bombed these facilities, reportedly while Chinese workers were inside, angering the regime in Beijing, which retaliated by bringing down a US spy plane.

Clinton coolly glossed over such infractions by UN SC members because it was more important for him to present a facade of global unity--to show that multilateralism and the UN process worked.

The United States couldn't rely on the very nations who came together to support the embargo to play by the rules. Bush knew that if he lifted sanctions with Saddam in power, the Iraqi dictator would have quickly rearmed. The President understood that there was little he could do to stop Russia or China from replenishing Saddam. In the mid-nineties Clinton-Gore couldn't get Russia to stop selling arms to Iran so they cut a secret deal, the result of which is a nuclear Iran.

The Bush doctrine as it applies to the 'Axis of Evil' states (Russia and China are the primary weapons suppliers to all nations that figure on the State Department's list of rogue nations) thus is this: If you cannot stop the suppliers, eliminate the buyers.

As John McCain masterfully observed shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom, the containment of Saddam was a litany of "intellectual, practical, and moral" failures.

"Proponents of containment claim that Iraq is in "box". But it is a box with no lid, no bottom, and whose sides are falling out," McCain said, lamenting the absence of real allies. "For a policy of containment to work, as it did in the Cold War, four components are necessary: reliable allies; a clear goal with a consistent doctrine; the economic and military capability to enforce the doctrine; and the political will to support the demands of the policy. We had each of these assets--allies, doctrine, capabilities, and political will--during the Cold War, when a policy conceived in the 1940s endured over four dangerous and tumultuous decades until our adversary collapsed. We enjoy none of these assets today with regard to Iraq."

Launching a scathing attack on the nations that John Kerry claims share the same non-proliferation goals as the United States. McCain noted:

"Successful containment also requires cooperation from our great power allies. Our Cold War alliances with Japan and South Korea in the East, and a unified NATO in the West, underscored allied resolve and unity in the daily shadow of Soviet power. Compare our great power allies in the Cold War with those with whom we act today in dealing with Iraq.

* France has unashamedly pursued a concerted policy to dismantle the UN sanctions regime, placing its commercial interests above international law, world peace and the political ideals of Western civilization. Remember them? Liberte, egalite, fraternite. It withdrew from enforcing the "no-fly zones" and did not participate in Operation Desert Fox to punish Iraq for expelling UNSCOM. France abstained from Security Council Resolution 1284, which created a weakened UNMOVIC successor to UNSCOM, because it knew that Saddam Hussein would otherwise refuse to steer lucrative Iraqi contracts under the oil-for-food program to Paris. France was among the first countries to violate the U.N. ban on air travel into Iraq after Saddam signaled that future oil-for-food contracts were contingent on making sanctions-busting commercial flights. Today, the French foreign minister, who voted for Resolution 1441 and warned of the serious consequences Iraqi defiance would entail, says that "Nothing justifies military action" against Iraq. And President Chirac, who once approved the sale to Iraq of a nuclear reactor knowing that in a country floating on a sea of oil it could have only one real purpose, today says he sees no irrefutable proof of Iraq's WMD program.

* Like France, Russia opposed Operation Desert Fox, abstained on Resolution 1284, and was the first to take advantage of Saddam's invitation to break the U.N. ban on air travel into Iraq. Russia has sold Baghdad gyroscopes for its advanced missile programs. Today, Russia opposes enforcing the terms of Resolution 1441 in the face of Iraq's defiance. Just as Soviet envoy, Yevgeny Primakov, tried to come to Saddam's rescue on the eve of the Gulf War, today Russia joins a coalition of the willing to find "peace at any price" for Baghdad.

* Gerhard Schroeder's Germany looks little like the ally that anchored our presence in Europe throughout the Cold War. A German Rip Van Winkle from the 1960s would not understand the lack of political courage and cooperation with its allies on the question of Iraq exhibited in Berlin today. Does the Schroeder government demonstrate anything approaching the kind of resolve that helped Germany and the United States successfully contain Soviet power?

Third, Kerry argues that he would have let inspections to run their course. For what? For Saddam to prove that he did not have stockpiles of WMD? That he had given up on WMD?

Why allow Saddam this opportunity? This is a bit like releasing a mass murderer because you couldn't find the murder weapon.

What would have prevented Saddam from going clean short-term to meet the UN's criteria for lifting sanctions and then re-acquiring WMDs after the restrictions expired?

In January 2004, David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, the organization tasked with assembling a complete picture of Iraq's WMD program testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that Saddam and his sons had every intention of resuming WMD production. They were simply waiting for the sanctions to be lifted.

(Kerry cannot resist portraying Saddam as reasonable and Bush as trigger-happy and unpredictable. In a recent court appearance, however, Saddam insisted that Kuwait belonged to Iraq.)

Fourth, it could be argued that Bush timed the military action to catch the dictator at his weakest . When inspectors returned from Iraq in December 2002 with no conclusive evidence that Saddam was stockpiling WMD, it perhaps convinced the Bush team that this was the right time to go in and do what should have been done in 1991. Better now than when Saddam equipped himself with conventional and non-conventional arms. The doctrine of pre-emption, after all, explicitly calls for early and forceful action--before the threat becomes imminent and more deadly.

Kerry should thus be pleased about the timing of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Bush critics argue that none of these nuances and tactics were explained by the administration prior to the launch of military operations. To a degree, they are right to complain--the Bush team focused excessively and aggressively on building a case to show that Saddam was stockpiling WMD and they failed to communicate effectively and frequently about the various other factors that necessitated a change in the American policy toward Iraq.

However, had President Bush spoken as plainly as McCain, he would have been accused of straining ties with allies. No American President would stand up and reveal war strategies, explain geopolitical benefits, or accept responsibility for humanitarian suffering that results from some misguided policy.

In this, Kerry has Bush at a disadvantage, which the President can greatly mitigate by acknowledging that America was wrong to have sustained draconian sanctions on millions of innocent Iraqis for so long. Bush should not shy away from saying that by removing Saddam when it did, the United States has not only made the region and the world safer, but that it has also atoned for its mistakes.

While the President's nuanceless rationale for going into Iraq has landed him in an awkward position in the runup to the elections, his challenger, who has had a long political career that involved membership in various intelligence committees, has been fundamentally and intellectually dishonest about the Iraq crisis--one reason, perhaps, why he couldn't get John McCain to run on a unity ticket.

The more potential voters educate themselves about the complexities regarding this issue, the less satisfying they are likely to find John Kerry's various explanations.

Senseless NY Times Rants

This pile of extreme left BS, titled "Tyranny in the Name of Freedom," rips into the Patriot Act for provisions that are too harsh on terrorists and their sympathizers.

A second provision, already deemed unconstitutional in one federal court, was used to prosecute Sami Omar al-Hussayen, a Muslim graduate student at the University of Idaho who was charged with using the Internet to offer "expert advice or assistance" to terrorists by posting fatwahs and hyperlinks to a Hamas Web site. He was acquitted by a jury this summer, partly because the judge warned jurors that speech - even speech advocating the use of force or the breaking of laws - is constitutionally protected, unless directed toward inciting imminent lawless action.

Dahlia Lithwick (caution, this link to her bio contains her pic), fails to mention that Hamas's little helper is a Saudi. The last time I looked, Saudis are not protected by the US constitution. Which is why we have a few of them lounging around in orange jumpsuits at Gitmo.

Dahlia is going to be infesting the opinion section for a few weeks, warns the Times: "while Thomas L. Friedman is on leave until October, writing a book."

Bush-Cheney '04 Commercials

I feature in the new BC '04 commercials, titled "Home Ownership" and "Together":

"Home Ownership": Windows Media

"Together": Windows Media

No Bounce

It didn't happen--no dual-digit bounce. Kerry now trails Bush 50%-46% among likely voters.

Analysts say the lack of a bounce may reflect the intensely polarized contest.

Not really. As I noted here, Kerry's Jan-July poll numbers reflect the best he will do--the bounce was already factored in and it largely reflected anticipation of the addition of the more likeable Edwards to the Kerry ticket.

In other words, had Edwards not been at the back of most voters' minds, Kerry would not have polled as well as he has so far.

Visibility cannot possibly help Kerry-- the more the voters learn about him--as they soon will--the Bush-Cheney marketing blitz will launch shortly--the less likely they are to be enamored by his candidacy.

But it was nonetheless surprising, the first time since the chaotic Democratic convention in 1972 that a candidate hasn't gained ground during his convention.

Indeed.

90% of Afghan electorate now registered to vote

The UN says 8.7 million of the estimated 9.8 million eligible voters have signed up - 41% of them women. Full story here, but conspicuous by its absence in John Kerry's "all things to all people" speech in Boston earlier.