Karl Rove: "My Biggest Mistake in the White House"

We agree President Bush should have answered back the charges leveled by the hypocritical Democrats, but we do not believe that started the politics of personal destruction -- Democrats were way ahead of the game. Even today, if you are a Democrat and cross this President, Obama will throw you under the bus so fast your head will spin. Ask Bolden from NASA to give an honest assessment of Obama's tossing him under the bus on the outreach by NASA to Muslims. When you are willing to throw members of your own party under the bus, it is nothing to Obama to throw Republicans especially President Bush under the bus. The Democrat mantra to this day is "Blame Bush" and take NO responsibility for their actions.

Unfortunately not answering back the charges made it much worse as the Democrats took more liberties with pounding day after day on President Bush knowing full well they had seen the same intelligence. There were WMD's -- any thinking person knows those convoys leaving Iraq prior to the invasion were not carrying groceries. The United Nations was useless as usual but the US kept going back for more resolutions so that gave Sadaam ample time to rid of the WMD's from Iraq before the invasion he knew was coming. Are the WMD's still in Syria or have the Russians removed them back to Russia?

It wasn't only the WMD's but they were the first issue of the not answering back charges. As the years went on and more charges were leveled on a host of issues, the President stayed quiet. He went from the President with a backbone of steel after 9/11 to being too nice in trying to get along with people from a party that wanted to destroy him.

This is why many of his most loyal supporters in 2000 still don't understand why he would never answer back the false charges and take the offensive not be on the defensive. Rove can take the blame, but the ultimate blame lies with President George W. Bush who allowed it to continue.

How the Democrats treated President Bush has zero impact on our comments against Obama. We do not like his agenda and frankly did not like the people he was friends with or mentored by for years. That doesn't even account for the fact that he will not release documents pertaining to his life from his birth to legislative record in Illinois and everything in between. He is a closed book which leaves people to speculate since he has spent almost $2M to keep his birth certificate a secret. Why?

The well was poisoned back in the 1992 campaign when the Democrats who had convinced President GHW Bush to raise taxes after his giving a pledge of "Read my Lips -- NO New Taxes" turned around and charged Pres Bush for breaking his pledge in ad after ad. Then in that 1992 campaign Carville convinced Ross Perot to get back in the race and siphoned votes away from Bush. Perot kept coming up with some of the strangest comments against President Bush that the media pushed. Politics took a nasty turn in 1992. You could say that James Carville brand of politics helped inflame the politics of personal destruction that we see today.

As long as Democrats rely on 'Blame Bush' and voter fraud to win elections, the poisoned well in DC will never get fixed.

OPINION JULY 15, 2010
My Biggest Mistake in the White House
Failing to refute charges that Bush lied us into war has hurt our country.

By KARL ROVE
Seven years ago today, in a speech on the Iraq war, Sen. Ted Kennedy fired the first shot in an all-out assault on President George W. Bush's integrity. "All the evidence points to the conclusion," Kennedy said, that the Bush administration "put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth." Later that day Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle told reporters Mr. Bush needed "to be forthcoming" about the absence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Thus began a shameful episode in our political life whose poisonous fruits are still with us.

The next morning, Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry and John Edwards joined in. Sen. Kerry said, "It is time for a president who will face the truth and tell the truth." Mr. Edwards chimed in, "The administration has a problem with the truth."

The battering would continue, and it was a monument to hypocrisy and cynicism. All these Democrats had said, like Mr. Bush did, that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD. Of the 110 House and Senate Democrats who voted in October 2002 to authorize the use of force against his regime, 67 said in congressional debate that Saddam had these weapons. This didn't keep Democrats from later alleging something they knew was false—that the president had lied America into war.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Bob Graham organized a bipartisan letter in December 2001 warning Mr. Bush that Saddam's "biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs . . . may be back to pre-Gulf War status," and enhanced by "longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." Yet two years later, he called for Mr. Bush's impeachment for having said Saddam had WMD.

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On July 9, 2004, Mr. Graham's fellow Democrat on Senate Intelligence, Jay Rockefeller, charged that the Bush administration "at all levels . . . used bad information to bolster the case for war." But in his remarks on Oct. 10, 2002, supporting the war resolution, he said that "Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose real threats to America."

Even Kennedy, who opposed the war resolution, nonetheless said the month before the vote that Saddam's "pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated." But he warned if force were employed, the Iraqi dictator "may decide he has nothing to lose by using weapons of mass destruction himself or by sharing them with terrorists."

Then there was Al Gore, who charged on June 24, 2004, that Mr. Bush spent "prodigious amounts of energy convincing people of lies" and accused him of treason, bellowing that Mr. Bush "betrayed his country." Yet just a month before the war resolution debate, the former vice president said, "We know that [Saddam] has stored away secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

Top Democrats led their party in making the "Bush lied, people died" charge because they wanted to defeat him in 2004. That didn't happen. Several bipartisan commissions would later catalogue the serious errors in the intelligence on which Mr. Bush and Democrats relied. But these commissions, particularly the Silberman-Robb report of March 31, 2005, found that the "Bush lied" charge was false. Still, the attacks hurt: When they began, less than a third of Americans believed the charge. Two years later, polls showed that just over half did.

Wall Street Journal

Frank Gaffney: Who Lost Iraq?

We remember when the Iraqi people went to vote the first time and were so proud to show everyone their purple fingers. Now candidates that ran in the last election are being faced with violence from the anti-democracy forces still in Iraq despite what Obama/Biden are saying that the War is over and We Won! We haven't won anything and looks like the Iraqi people who wanted democracy could end up the big losers. There was no reason to pull our troops out so rapidly and send them to Afghanistan except Obama didn't want the United States in Iraq. Who pushed him to get our troops out of Iraq which in part has set off a series of attacks? Why has he been against the Iraq War from Day One or standing up to Iran except with a few words?

Sadly, all other things being equal, that popular ambition seems unlikely to be realized. There is an unmistakable vacuum of power being created by President Obama's determination to withdraw U.S. "combat" forces no matter what, starting with the cities a few months ago and in short order from the rest of the country.

We never understood during the Bush 43 years why Cristopher Hill was involved in our foreign policy since he was an appeaser. Didn't make sense then and doesn't now why Pres GW Bush chose him to deal with the North Korean Leader. We needed a tough as nails type person who would negotiate not an appeaser who seemed to be afraid he might make the North Koren leader unhappy. You negotiate from strength not weakness which Hill never seemed to understand and now is the Obama Ambassador to Iraq.

The signal of American abandonment was made the more palpable by Team Obama's decision to dispatch Christopher Hill as its ambassador to Iraq. Hill is the diplomat best known for his determination during the Bush 43 years to appease, rather than thwart, the despot most closely enabling the realization of Iran's nuclear ambitions: North Korea's Kim Jong Il. The unreliability of the United States as an ally - a hallmark of the Obama presidency more generally - is reinforcing the sense that it is every man for himself in Iraq.

This last paragraph of the article posted below is truly frightening when you realize what is at stake with losing Iraq. Add to that Obama's appeasement of the Palestinians, verbal attacks on Israel, and tepid repines to a nuclear Iran and you have an area of the world ready to blow up while Obama twiddles his thumbs and bows to Muslims like the Saudi King. During the attempted overthrow of Iran by its people, Obama and Hillary were mostly silent. They seem to only find a voice when it is Freedom and Democracy at stake and then it is on the side of those against Freedom and Democracy.

There should be no doubt, however: The repercussions of the Obama administration losing Iraq will cost us dearly in the future as adherents to Shariah around the world are reinforced in their conviction of that our defeat and submission is preordained. Even if, at the moment, we cannot fully comprehend the implications of such a perception, we will know from here on out whose "great achievement" precipitated the resulting horror for America and the rest of what was once the Free World.

How Biden and Obama have the nerve to take credit for anything in Iraq is beyond us as they always opposed the United States being in Iraq. Not only a dark day for American when Obama was elected as more and more Americans are discovering but it was a dark day for Iraq as well as Israel.

Who lost Iraq?
Center for Security Policy Apr 05, 2010
By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Back in February, Vice President Joseph Biden declared: "I am very optimistic about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration." Even for a politician much given to strategic ineptitude compounded by foot-in-mouth disease, that was a doozy.

As has been pointed out innumerable times since, if Iraq turns out to be a truly "great achievement" in any ordinary sense of the word, Mr. Biden and Barack Obama - two of the most insistent opponents of George W. Bush's efforts to consolidate Iraq's liberation - are among the last people in Washington who should take such credit.

Worse yet, unfortunately for the Iraqi people and others who love freedom, it looks increasingly as though the Obama administration will have the loss of Iraq as one of its most signal accomplishments.

Three murderous suicide bombings in Baghdad over the weekend are but the latest indication of the renewed reality there: Those determined to use violence to destabilize the country, foment sectarian strife and shape Iraq's destiny can do so with impunity.

The fact that the Iranian embassy was one of the targets suggests Sunni extremist groups - perhaps including the once-defeated al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) - are responsible for this round of attacks. Elsewhere in the country though, Shiite death squads that may or may not have ties to the pro-Iranian factions currently running the country are ruthlessly liquidating prominent tribal leaders and others associated with the movement in Anbar Province known as The Awakening. The latter were instrumental to the success of the U.S. surge and to the opportunity thus created for an Iraqi future vastly superior to its despotic and chaotic past.

Among the objects of the growing violence are individuals who stood for office in the recent parliamentary elections. This amounts to post facto disenfranchisement of the Iraqi voters whose turnout of over 60 percent - in the face of threats by anti-democratic forces that voting would be deemed a capital offense - powerfully testified to their desire to exercise the right enjoyed by no others in the Mideast except Israelis: to have a real say in their government and future.

(snip)

Increasingly, that vacuum is being filled by Iran and its proxies on the one hand and, on the other, insurgent Sunni forces, both those aligned with al Qaeda and those that have, at least until recently, been suppressing the AQI. On what might be called the third hand, Iraqi Kurds are experiencing their own internal problems as well as an increasingly ill-concealed inclination to assert their independence from the rest of the country.

(snip)

The prospects of any "great achievement" in Iraq are being further diminished by the direction to the Pentagon to shift personnel and equipment from Iraq to Afghanistan. The President himself reinforced that commitment during his speech to U.S. troops at Bagram Air Base last week. The detailed planning and ponderous logistics associated with such a transfer increasingly foreclose options to change course. Our commanders will soon be hard pressed to preserve today's deployments of American forces in Iraq, let alone to have them take up once again the sorts of positions in the urban areas that they held to such therapeutic effect during the surge.

Excerpt: Read More at Center for Security Policy

TOP US Commander - Iran Still Supports Iraq Attacks

Note: The President invited Iranian diplomats to the 4th of July celebrations at our Embassies around the World, was very late in his remarks about the Government of Iran attacking protestors, and now we find out that Iran is still behind attacks in Iraq. Why does this President want to talk with this dictorial Iranian Government when our Commander on the ground believes they are behind the attacks in Baghdad?


Top US Commander - Iran Still Supports Iraq Attacks

The top U.S. military commander in Iraq says that Iran still supports and trains militants who carry out attacks _ mostly with mortars and sophisticated roadside bombs _ inside Iraq.

Gen. Ray Odierno says the attacks have been reduced but are still a problem.

He spoke on Tuesday at his base outside of Baghdad, as Iraqi forces took control of security in the Iraqi capital and other urban areas.

June 30 was the deadline for American troops to pull out of Iraqi cities under a U.S.-Iraqi security pact. The pullout was completed on Monday.

Odiero says Tehran is "still supporting, funding and training surrogates inside Iraq" and that he believes "many of the attacks in Baghdad are in fact done by individuals supported by Iran."

Hillary: I'll Ban Armed Private Contractors In Iraq

Monday, March 17, 2008
HILLARY CLINTON

Hillary: I'll Ban Armed Private Contractors In Iraq

Speaking this morning, Hillary hits Obama for not ruling out continuing to use armed private contractors in Iraq. She wants to ban such contractors.

Those contractors are protecting Iraqi government officials. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, as Hillary once called for threatening to take away Iraqi lawmakers' security if they didn't reach a deal. And at least one Democrat didn't find that to be a wise move:

Addressing Mrs. Clinton’s latest proposal to cap American troops and to threaten Iraqi leaders with cuts in funding, Mr. Biden lowered his voice and leaned in close over the table.“From the part of Hillary’s proposal, the part that really baffles me is, ‘We’re going to teach the Iraqis a lesson.’ We’re not going to equip them? O.K. Cap our troops and withdraw support from the Iraqis? That’s a real good idea.”The result of Mrs. Clinton’s position on Iraq, Mr. Biden says, would be “nothing but disaster.”

She goes on to talk about how she'll go after the favorite Democratic bogeyman, the infamous "no-bid" contracts.

"There's been a lot of talk about earmarks in this town (and she hasn't released her lists; credit Obama for going that far) but no-bid contracts are ten times more costly than earmarks. When I introduced my legislation, I could not get, as of this moment, Senator McCain's support for that."
03/17 09:49 AM

http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzZmYTJjMmM5ZWU5ZWExNjZjNDc0NzNiMGQwYmQzNDE=

“Brilliant” potential C-in-C blows Rockefeller’s record on the war

Update: Lame spin attempt flops
posted at 7:26 am on March 3, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

Barack Obama effusively praised the record of Jay Rockefeller after receiving a glowing introduction from the West Virginia Senator yesterday. Rockefeller called Obama “brilliant” and talked about what a great commander-in-chief Obama would make despite having no military experience nor any time on committees than handle military affairs during Obama’s three years in the Senate. Obama then complimented Rockefeller on his vote against the war — which proves that Obama isn’t as brilliant nor as ready as Rockefeller imagined:

Obama criticized Clinton expressly for failing to read the classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons capabilities, a report available at the time of her October 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war. “She didn’t give diplomacy a chance. And to this day, she won’t even admit that her vote was a mistake - or even that it was a vote for war,” Obama said.

“When it came time to make the most important foreign policy decision of our generation the decision to invade Iraq Senator Clinton got it wrong,” Obama said.
He said that Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a fellow Democrat from neighboring West Virginia, had read the intelligence estimate as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and had voted against the war resolution.

Rockefeller, who is now chairman of that committee, endorsed Obama on Friday and campaigned with him on Saturday.

Rockefeller called Obama “brilliant” and “well grounded” and prepared to take the reins as commander in chief.

Forget being commander-in-chief — Obama couldn’t even be researcher in chief at the Senate web site. If we look at the 2002 vote on the authorization to use military force in Iraq, we see Jay Rockefeller’s name in the “yea” column, not among the nays. He cast the same exact vote as Hillary Clinton, which was to support the invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein.

In fact, Rockefeller didn’t just passively vote “yea” in the Senate. He gave a speech on October 10, 2002, prior to the vote, exhorting his colleagues to support the AUMF and the invasion of Iraq. In that speech, he made it clear that his vote would be in support of war, if it came to that:

Saddam Hussein represents a grave threat to the United States, and I have concluded we must use force to deal with him if all other means fail. That is the core issue, and whether we vote on it now, or in January, or in six months time, that is the issue we all have to confront.

War, if it comes to that, will cost money I dearly wish we could use for other domestic priorities, to address the very real needs that West Virginia and other states face in this tough economy. But ultimately, defending America’s citizens from danger is a responsibility whose costs we must bear.

How does a “brilliant” candidate make such a huge error? The very point that Obama wants to make is that his judgment is somehow superior to Hillary Clinton’s — and John McCain’s — despite having almost no experience in national office and none at all in any kind of executive leadership position. Yet here he is, trying to use Rockefeller as an example of better judgment, and it turns out that Obama couldn’t be bothered to do a minute’s worth of research first.
Is that the kind of judgment and brilliance that America can trust in a crisis? When the phone rings at 3 am in the White House, do we want the person answering it to make decisions without actually knowing what the facts are first?

Hillary Clinton’s team pointed out the error to local reporters, but don’t expect her to be able to use this. It only underscores her support for Saddam’s removal, which in a rational arena would be a point in her favor. It’s another brick for John McCain to use in the general election, if he chooses to use it as yet another example of the callowness of his likely opponent.

UPDATE: Obama’s team tried to explain that Obama meant Bob Graham, not Jay Rockefeller.

However, Ben Smith has the full quote:

Now I have to say, when it came to making the most important foreign policy decision of our generation - the decision to invade Iraq - Senator Clinton got it wrong. She didn’t read the National Intelligence Estimate. Jay Rockefeller read it, but she didn’t read it. I don’t know what all that experience got her because I have enough experience to know that if you have a National Intelligence Estimate and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says, “You should read this, this is why I’m voting against the war,” you should read it. I don’t know how much experience you need for that.

Bob Graham, it should be noted, was the chair of the Intelligence Committee at the time. However, it seems rather obvious that Obama meant to contrast Clinton’s and Rockefeller’s judgment, when in fact Rockefeller not only voted to authorize the war but said essentially, “You should read the NIE, and it’s why I’m voting for the war.”

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/03/brilliant-potential-c-in-c-blows-rockefellers-record-on-the-war/

Remarks of Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama Against Going to War with Iraq

Note: Following is a speech given by Barack Obama in Oct 2002 while a member of the IL Legislature about the Iraq war while speaking to an anti-war rally and now this same person wants to be President? BTW, this speech is on his website so you could say he approved this message!

Remarks of Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama Against Going to War with Iraq

October 2, 2002

Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don't oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain. I don't oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the President today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let's fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil. Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not -- we will not -- travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.


http://www.barackobama.com/2002/10/02/remarks_of_illinois_state_sen.php
Note: My bold and highlighted

Obama Reads the Paper for Iraq News?

Feb 28, 2008

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain mocked Democrat Barack Obama on Wednesday for saying he would take action as president "if al-Qaida is forming a base in Iraq."

"When you examine that statement, it's pretty remarkable," McCain told a crowd in Tyler, Texas.

"I have some news. Al-Qaida is in Iraq. It's called `al-Qaida in Iraq,'" McCain said, drawing laughter at Obama's expense. Sen McCain, Tyler, Texas, Feb 28

AND the latest answer from Obama:

"McCain thought that he could make a clever point by saying ,'Well let me give you some news Barack, al Qaeda is in Iraq,' like I wasn't reading the papers, like I didn't know what was going on." Barack Obama, Feb 27, 2008

******

Why is a US Senator getting his information on the war from newspapers? Doesn't he have better intel than that available to him? I would hate to think that Obama would base his decisions as president on what he reads in the NY Times or the Chicago Tribune.