{"id":445,"date":"2006-09-26T13:27:31","date_gmt":"2006-09-26T17:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/000af36.netsolhost.com\/wordpress1\/2006\/09\/26\/jim_webb_gets_i\/"},"modified":"2006-09-26T13:27:31","modified_gmt":"2006-09-26T17:27:31","slug":"jim_webb_gets_i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2006\/09\/26\/jim_webb_gets_i\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Webb Gets It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Webb has a new TV ad<\/a> and it\u2019s terrific. It effectively conflates Bush and Allen and their \u201cstay the course\u201d theme for Iraq. But more important and effective is that the candidate himself delivers the message and does so in an authoritative manner. I think in today’s climate, where voters are looking for responsibility, candidates who deliver the message themselves win a lot of votes. Best of all, he delivers a succinct message that, for the life of me, I don\u2019t understand why it hasn\u2019t become the mantra for Democrats this year: \u201cThe people who failed to prevent this disaster are not the ones you can count on to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bush administration also likes to say that critics of the Iraq War are Monday morning quarterbacks. \u201cLet\u2019s not play the \u2018blame game\u2019,\u201d they say. One, that belies their mantra about others who should accept responsibility for their actions. You\u2019ve often heard that from conservatives vis-\u00e0-vis welfare recipients. They should take responsibility for their actions, but the president won\u2019t accept responsibility for his. But also, as Webb says, given the monumental disaster that Bush\u2019s foreign policy has been and the outlandish costs, destruction of America\u2019s integrity and loss of life, that we shouldn\u2019t expect this gang that can\u2019t shoot straight to get us out of this quagmire.<\/p>\n

Another point I think needs to be addressed is this spin that comes from the Bush administration that we all thought Iraq had WMD. I heard it last night<\/a> from Fran Townsend, assistant to the president for homeland security, who said,<\/p>\n

What I\u2018m saying is, the intelligence that was provided in the NIE suggesting that Iraq was a threat to the region and to the world, was believed on by\u2014on both sides of the aisle, that formed the basis of our going into Iraq. The intelligence turned out to be wrong. That said, we are safer as a result of not having Saddam Hussein in power.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The only reason \u201cboth sides of the aisle\u201d believed there were WMD is because the Democrats only knew what the administration told them and what they told them was wrong, some say a lie. Either way, you can’t say with any intellectual honesty that both sides believed in the WMD charge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Webb has a new TV ad and it\u2019s terrific. It effectively conflates Bush and Allen and their \u201cstay the course\u201d theme for Iraq. But more important and effective is that the candidate himself delivers the message and does so in an authoritative manner. I think in today’s climate, where voters are looking for responsibility, candidates… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}