As the debates draw closer, one of my major concerns is that the Democrats haven't yet established a few key facts in voters' minds. This is something we could've accomplished during the convention if we weren't so concerned about being positive. But we didn't, so now we have to go into the debates with lots of undecided voters being aware of the following two facts in particular:
-The weapons inspectors were on the ground in Iraq, successfully getting Saddam to destroy some minor banned weapons, when Bush went ahead and started war. (My guess is that most Americans believe Saddam hadn't caved and allowed the inspectors at that time. If they knew inspections were going on, Bush's line about defending America vs. taking the word of a madman would be revealed as empty.)
-We had Osama pinned down in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, when Bush shifted military planners away from catching him and towards preparing for the Iraq war. (My guess is that most Americans think we never had any idea where Osama was in Afghanistan, and don't know that focus on Saddam made it harder to get him. If people were aware that the relation between capturing Osama and deposing Saddam was closer to an exclusive disjunction than a biconditional, they'd see how the Iraq war was a distraction from fighting terrorism.)
-The weapons inspectors were on the ground in Iraq, successfully getting Saddam to destroy some minor banned weapons, when Bush went ahead and started war. (My guess is that most Americans believe Saddam hadn't caved and allowed the inspectors at that time. If they knew inspections were going on, Bush's line about defending America vs. taking the word of a madman would be revealed as empty.)
-We had Osama pinned down in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, when Bush shifted military planners away from catching him and towards preparing for the Iraq war. (My guess is that most Americans think we never had any idea where Osama was in Afghanistan, and don't know that focus on Saddam made it harder to get him. If people were aware that the relation between capturing Osama and deposing Saddam was closer to an exclusive disjunction than a biconditional, they'd see how the Iraq war was a distraction from fighting terrorism.)
3 comments:
Yeah, I like that one a lot! But as for "canonical cartoon of the election," I hope that's not the one, 'cuz our boy loses if it is.
Kerry really hit the second of those points home, and he managed to do so while avoiding the phrase "closer to an exclusive disjunction than a biconditional." He gets big points for that.
He passed on the first point, though, even though Bush set it up for him by talking about how Saddam had no intention to disarm and so forth. Apparently, Kerry thinks it would make his Iraq message too complicated or not tough enough on Saddam to point out that Saddam was cooperating and that he did not actually have significant banned weapons.
As you see above, I do not claim that US troops were diverted to Iraq -- merely that US military planners were told to focus on Iraq at that time, and that this decreased their ability to properly plan Osama's capture. And given that 2,000 US troops were in the Arabian Sea and Pakistan at the time to capture Bin Laden, it's inexcusable that the escape routes to Pakistan weren't closed off.
If you're going to criticize things I didn't say and advance arguments that are based on complete factual confusion, at least be polite about it.
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