Why People Shoyuldn't Take Bill Kristol Seriously

Bill Kristol penned his latest opus stating that President Bush should ignore Congress and stay in Iraq.

The best strategy for the president is to hold firm. There is every reason to believe that he can survive the current calamity-Janes of the Republican party (does anyone really imagine that a veto-proof majority will form in the Senate this week or next?). This nonsense will pass, Congress will go on recess, and Petraeus will have a chance to continue to produce results--and the president and his allies will have a chance to gain political ground here at home. Why on earth pull the plug now? Why give in to an insane, irrational panic that will destroy the Bush administration and most likely sweep the Republican party to ruin? The president still has a chance to emerge from this as a visionary who could see what the left could not--but not if he gives in to them. There is no safety in the position some in the Bush administration are running towards.

Kristol is really desperate. To say that Republican defecting is "nonsense" is nonsense. If he really believes that Bush can regain political ground on Iraq than I love to see him bet his life savings on it. Otherwise, he is just full of shit. If Kristol would make that wager than he is as delussional as many thinks he is. I'm going with the former.

The bigger question is why should the President or anyone else take advise form the son of neoconservative founder Irving Kristol. He has been wrong on too many occasions to list. Here are a few classics.

"There's a fair amount of evidence that Iraq had very close associations with Osama bin Laden in the past."

"There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America … that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all," he reassured NPR listeners in April 2003. "Iraq's always been very secular."

Kristol on Abu Ghraib.

"...it is insane for this country to be obsessed about a small prisoner-abuse scandal."

Kristol is such a horrible editor that the Weekly Standard has never been able to make a profit. The magazine stays a float because of Ruport Murdoch.

The Weekly Standards lean staff of twenty-- seven was having its editorial meeting around a conference table that owner Rupert Murdoch salvaged from Mirabella, his defunct fashion magazine. Six blocks east at The New Republic, owners Martin Peretz and the New York businessmen Roger Hertog and Michael Steinhardt shrunk; much of the staff voluntarily took a 10 percent salary cut.

I'm not sad to see the New Republic have the same financial problems. TNR also endorsed the Iraq war and demonized people who were against it.

Update: A reason to show why Kristol is dishonest. This is less about securing Iraq and more about securing Congressional seats for the GOP.

Why on earth pull the plug now? Why give in to an insane, irrational panic that will destroy the Bush administration and most likely sweep the Republican party to ruin?

Republicans wouldn't be in this position if they didn't listen to people like Bill Kristol and his neoconsefvative buddies. Kristol wants to continue the bloodshed to maintain power. The man plots with the viciousness of Michael Corleone.

The Right Goes After Harry Reid

The Right is going after Harry Reid for saying the Iraq war is loss. Bill Kristol is going after Reid's scalp on Fox News

Kristol: What Harry Reid said is much more disgraceful than anything Trent Lott said, and I do think Democrats should ask Harry Reid to step down.

Juan Williams: Brit [Hume] says it’s ‘laughable,’ you say it’s a ‘disgrace.’ I think what he said is the truth. I mean, it’s unavoidable,” Williams said. “Most Americans think we should have never gone in there, so he’s speaking in a voice that represents the majority of the American people.

Brad Delong laid out the 4 planks of the neoconservative movement.

That the Soviet Union was winning the Cold War, which the west needed to heat up and wage it with harsher methods--nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, and death squads rather than limp-wristed Carter-Ford focus on international economic prosperity, democratization, and human rights.

That Likud should be encouraged to drive Palestinians into their existing homeland of Jordan as soon as practicable.

That taxes should be cut, (military) spending raised, and budgets balanced--and that anyone who pointed out that this didn't add up needed to be shouted down.

And:

That African-Americans got too easy a ride in modern America, and needed to be made poorer and less powerful.

Bill Kristol should stay away from the Trent Lott comparisons. Why are people still listening to what he has to say about Iraq? He has been wrong for so long. It's amazing the news talk shows will allow him to continue to come on.

Reid fired back at the attacks from the White House.

In his remarks, Reid criticized Bush and called Vice President Dick Cheney the president's "chief attack dog," lacking in credibility.

He likened the president to Lyndon Johnson, saying the former president ordered troop escalations in Vietnam in an attempt "to save his political legacy," only to watch U.S. casualties climb steadily.

Bush, he said, "is the only person who fails to face this war's reality — and that failure is devastating not just for Iraq's future, but for ours."

The Lyndon Johnson comparison is apt. Bush is putting his selfish needs over that of America.