Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Bob Graham - 90 Miles from Home
Well, it took me a few hours but I finally found someone to take the "Boris Crown" away from Hugh Hewitt (who has been reduced to bitter ex-Catholic): Bob Graham (but only for tonight since Hewitt will probably launch his War of the Roses on Friday).
The former (a reason to give thanks tomorrow) Senator from Florida has gone off the deep-end in the promotion of his new book Intelligence Matters (and the Amazon website is slashing prices for it) by giving a phone interview to Mother Jones. This is a man who has put a target on his forehead asking to be hit over the head with a loaded Salvation Army red bucket (but not communist red... settle down!).
Here is one of his gems: "Our new adversaries, however, speak languages that we hardly understand and come from cultures where we’re even more ignorant."
HUH?
They hate us, they hate our culture, and they want to kill us. Let me be clear: not all Muslims are terrorists, but the vast majority of terrorists today are Muslim. The first people that "they" would line up and shoot or behead would be the folks at Mother Jones and those who give them interviews (yes, I know, I am next in line, or first since I cannot run too fast).
Another of Graham's insightful points: "In terms of a shorter-term thing, the United States is the most diverse nation on earth, and we have significant numbers of people from almost every ethnic and cultural background. There are, for instance, approximately seven million Americans whose heritage is from the Arab Middle East. It has been very difficult to date to get people with that heritage cleared to serve in the intelligence services; there is almost a profiling that has kept them out. I think we need to develop new ways of evaluating the patriotism and credibility of Arab Americans so that we can take advantage of people who are more likely to have a knowledge of the languages and an understanding of the cultures of our principal threat areas today."
Yo, Bob! Approximately 70% of our population is (dare I type it) WHITE, with a Judeo-Christian background. Until the mid-1960s, the focus of this country was on assimilation of immigrants to the culture.
What the heck do you mean by "a sort of profiling." If you are going to slam our security, be specific. It appears that you do not even know what is going on in your own state!
Of course it is equally irritating that Graham accepts the thesis of the following question as posed by Mother Jones as true: "MJ.com: When did you first realize that the administration was shifting its focus away from Al Qaeda and Afghanistan and toward Iraq instead?" Graham's response, that includes his leftist view of General Franks' (Ret.) role, accepts the thesis that the is no Global War on Terror, and that we are unable to conduct a war against more than onethird-world terrorist nation at a time. How defeatist is that?
And then there is the new B1-Bob dropping bombs on the Bush Administration by calling him a liar in a politically polite way:
"BG: I would say it was the willingness of the intelligence agencies to be co-opted for political reasons. As early as the spring of 2002, the White House had called CIA representatives down to begin preparing what would be a public document to make the case that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, weapons that could be used on an immediate basis and therefore required pre-emptive action to eliminate. When we got into the hearings on that issue in the August/September period of 2002, we were aware that what the intelligence community was telling us privately was not the same as what they were telling the American people publicly; that conditions and limitations that were being given in a closed session were eliminated in the public documents. Comments on Saddam Hussein’s actual willingness to use weapons of mass destruction -- assuming he had them -- were much more restricted in private briefings than what the administration was releasing to the American people. That was one of the reasons I voted against the authorization to go to war when it came before the Senate in early October of 2002."
It reads as if Graham has Michael Moore on the other line listening in, and that Moore is feeding Graham the "correct" (I initially wrote "right") response.
Oh, it gets worse:
"MJ.com: How can the government shift focus back to Al Qaeda and terrorism?
BG: Well, that’s a very good question to which there is no good answer. We’ve gotten ourselves so bogged down in the quagmire of Iraq that we’ve allowed our principal enemies to regroup, to recruit thousands of new terrorists, to diversify into a much more flexible and nimble organization."
Translation: it's all our fault.
To be fair, I have to give Mother Jones some credit (and they may have fired Jeff Fleischer by now) since he asked questions that seem to think that Al Qadea and Syria might actually be guilty of something that is not the direct result of U.S. oppression. But my guess is that the editors will rectify/clarify that soon.
Maybe ol' Bob is upset that he was not a part of the 9/11 commission. Who knows? MJ never asked that question.
The former (a reason to give thanks tomorrow) Senator from Florida has gone off the deep-end in the promotion of his new book Intelligence Matters (and the Amazon website is slashing prices for it) by giving a phone interview to Mother Jones. This is a man who has put a target on his forehead asking to be hit over the head with a loaded Salvation Army red bucket (but not communist red... settle down!).
Here is one of his gems: "Our new adversaries, however, speak languages that we hardly understand and come from cultures where we’re even more ignorant."
HUH?
They hate us, they hate our culture, and they want to kill us. Let me be clear: not all Muslims are terrorists, but the vast majority of terrorists today are Muslim. The first people that "they" would line up and shoot or behead would be the folks at Mother Jones and those who give them interviews (yes, I know, I am next in line, or first since I cannot run too fast).
Another of Graham's insightful points: "In terms of a shorter-term thing, the United States is the most diverse nation on earth, and we have significant numbers of people from almost every ethnic and cultural background. There are, for instance, approximately seven million Americans whose heritage is from the Arab Middle East. It has been very difficult to date to get people with that heritage cleared to serve in the intelligence services; there is almost a profiling that has kept them out. I think we need to develop new ways of evaluating the patriotism and credibility of Arab Americans so that we can take advantage of people who are more likely to have a knowledge of the languages and an understanding of the cultures of our principal threat areas today."
Yo, Bob! Approximately 70% of our population is (dare I type it) WHITE, with a Judeo-Christian background. Until the mid-1960s, the focus of this country was on assimilation of immigrants to the culture.
What the heck do you mean by "a sort of profiling." If you are going to slam our security, be specific. It appears that you do not even know what is going on in your own state!
Of course it is equally irritating that Graham accepts the thesis of the following question as posed by Mother Jones as true: "MJ.com: When did you first realize that the administration was shifting its focus away from Al Qaeda and Afghanistan and toward Iraq instead?" Graham's response, that includes his leftist view of General Franks' (Ret.) role, accepts the thesis that the is no Global War on Terror, and that we are unable to conduct a war against more than onethird-world terrorist nation at a time. How defeatist is that?
And then there is the new B1-Bob dropping bombs on the Bush Administration by calling him a liar in a politically polite way:
"BG: I would say it was the willingness of the intelligence agencies to be co-opted for political reasons. As early as the spring of 2002, the White House had called CIA representatives down to begin preparing what would be a public document to make the case that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, weapons that could be used on an immediate basis and therefore required pre-emptive action to eliminate. When we got into the hearings on that issue in the August/September period of 2002, we were aware that what the intelligence community was telling us privately was not the same as what they were telling the American people publicly; that conditions and limitations that were being given in a closed session were eliminated in the public documents. Comments on Saddam Hussein’s actual willingness to use weapons of mass destruction -- assuming he had them -- were much more restricted in private briefings than what the administration was releasing to the American people. That was one of the reasons I voted against the authorization to go to war when it came before the Senate in early October of 2002."
It reads as if Graham has Michael Moore on the other line listening in, and that Moore is feeding Graham the "correct" (I initially wrote "right") response.
Oh, it gets worse:
"MJ.com: How can the government shift focus back to Al Qaeda and terrorism?
BG: Well, that’s a very good question to which there is no good answer. We’ve gotten ourselves so bogged down in the quagmire of Iraq that we’ve allowed our principal enemies to regroup, to recruit thousands of new terrorists, to diversify into a much more flexible and nimble organization."
Translation: it's all our fault.
To be fair, I have to give Mother Jones some credit (and they may have fired Jeff Fleischer by now) since he asked questions that seem to think that Al Qadea and Syria might actually be guilty of something that is not the direct result of U.S. oppression. But my guess is that the editors will rectify/clarify that soon.
Maybe ol' Bob is upset that he was not a part of the 9/11 commission. Who knows? MJ never asked that question.
