{"id":137,"date":"2005-11-23T04:43:36","date_gmt":"2005-11-23T10:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/?p=137"},"modified":"2005-11-22T16:46:59","modified_gmt":"2005-11-22T22:46:59","slug":"another-set-of-scare-tactics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/another-set-of-scare-tactics\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Set of Scare Tactics"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Mexico’s Steve <\/p>\n

Pearce got some mention in the national press on the matter of Iraq — as yet another bullying demagogue. mjh<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another Set of Scare Tactics<\/a> By E. J. Dionne Jr.<\/p>\n

There is a great missing <\/p>\n

element in the argument over whether the administration manipulated the facts. Neither side wants to talk about the context in which Bush <\/p>\n

won a blank check from Congress to invade Iraq. He doesn’t want us to remember that he injected the war debate into the 2002 midterm <\/p>\n

election campaign for partisan purposes, and he doesn’t want to acknowledge that he used the post-Sept. 11 mood to do all he <\/p>\n

could to intimidate Democrats from raising questions more of them should have raised<\/strong>. …<\/p>\n

He pressured Congress for a <\/p>\n

vote before the 2002 election, and the war resolution passed in October. …<\/p>\n

Grand talk about liberating Iraq gave way to cheap <\/p>\n

partisan attacks. In New Mexico, Republican Steve<\/strong> Pearce ran an advertisement against Democrat John Arthur Smith <\/p>\n

declaring: “While Smith ‘reflects’ on the situation, the possibility of a mushroom cloud hovering over a U.S. city still remains.” Note <\/p>\n

that Smith wasn’t being attacked for opposing the war, only for reflecting on it. God forbid that any Democrat dare even think <\/p>\n

before going to war.<\/strong> …<\/p>\n

The bad faith of Bush’s current argument is staggering<\/em>.<\/strong> He wants to <\/p>\n

say that the “more than a hundred Democrats in the House and Senate” who “voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power” thereby <\/p>\n

gave up their right to question his use of intelligence forever after. But he does not want to acknowledge that he forced the war <\/p>\n

vote to take place under circumstances that guaranteed the minimum amount of reflection and debate<\/strong>, and that opened anyone who <\/p>\n

dared question his policies to charges, right before an election, that they were soft on Hussein.<\/p>\n

By linking the war on terrorism <\/p>\n

to a partisan war against Democrats, Bush undercut his capacity to lead the nation in this fight. And by resorting to partisan attacks <\/p>\n

again last week, Bush only reminded us of the shameful circumstances in which the whole thing started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Mexico’s Steve Pearce got some mention in the national press on the matter of Iraq — as yet another bullying demagogue. mjh Another Set of Scare Tactics By E. J. Dionne Jr. There is a great missing element in the argument over whether the administration manipulated the facts. Neither side wants to talk about … Continue reading Another Set of Scare Tactics<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}