The truth hurts

[DOGS THAT BARK]

apologize my ass--simply telling it like it is!!!!!!!!!!

washingtonpost.com
Democrats Say Rove Should Apologize or Resign
White House Defends Advisor's Comments

By JIM ABRAMS
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 23, 2005; 11:01 PM



WASHINGTON -- Democrats said Thursday that White House adviser Karl Rove should either apologize or resign for accusing liberals of wanting "therapy and understanding" for the Sept. 11 attackers, escalating partisan rancor that threatens to consume Washington.

Rove's comments _ and the response from the political opposition _ mirrored earlier flaps over Democratic chairman Howard Dean's criticism of Republicans, a House Republican's statement that Democrats demonize Christians and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin's comparison of the Guantanamo prison to Nazi camps and Soviet gulags.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan came to Rove's defense, saying the president's chief political adviser was "simply pointing out the different philosophies and different approaches when it comes to winning the war on terrorism."

"Of course not," McClellan said when asked by reporters whether President Bush will ask Rove to apologize.

Rove, in a speech Wednesday evening to the New York state Conservative Party just a few miles north of Ground Zero, said, "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Conservatives, he said, "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."

He added that groups linked to the Democratic Party made the mistake of calling for "moderation and restraint" after the terrorist attacks.

During the 2004 campaign, Bush dismissed the notion of negotiating with terrorists and said, "You can't sit back and hope that somehow therapy will work and they will change their ways."

Rove's comments quickly escalated the bitter divide between the parties that could get worse as Congress prepares for what may be a drawn-out political fight, possibly this summer, over a Supreme Court nominee.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer said Rove "took something that is virtually sacred to New Yorkers" _ the tragedy of the Sept. 11 attacks _ "and politicized it for political, opportunistic purposes."

"Karl Rove is not just another political operative," added New York's other Democratic senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton. "He sits in the White House, a few doors down from the president."

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday, Clinton urged Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to repudiate the "insulting comment."

Rumsfeld replied that it "is unfortunate when things become so polarized or so politicized."

Schumer and Clinton joined the four Democratic senators from Connecticut and New Jersey in a letter to Rove requesting that he immediately retract his comments. "To try to score partisan, political points at the expense of the 3,000 victims and their families was unacceptable and opportunistic," they wrote.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., wrote a similar letter to Rove from House Democrats.

Schumer said Rove's comments might have been made in the heat of the moment and he was willing to accept an apology. But "if they try to stonewall," he said, "then I think resignation would be called for."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also said Rove, the political mastermind behind Bush's election victories, should fully apologize for his remarks or resign. Dean said Bush should "condemn Karl Rove's desperate and divisive attempt to help the Republicans regain their political footing."

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., went to the Senate floor with Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., whose son served in Iraq. Until America becomes safe, Kerry said, "don't dare question the patriotism of Americans who offer a better direction."

Republicans, meanwhile, have recently condemned House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for calling the Iraq War a "grotesque mistake," and demanded and finally got an apology from Durbin for his linking detainee abuse and Nazis.

And they were unapologetic about Rove's comments.

Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman, speaking in Puerto Rico, said there was no need to apologize because "what Karl Rove said is true." White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, asked about the Rove dispute on CNN, noted, "We have seen pretty hot rhetoric from both sides of the aisle lately."

White House communications director Nicolle Devenish said Rove was speaking "very broadly about the liberal movement" and that he never referred to Democrats. "I think the Democrats are misguided in their attacks on Karl Rove," she said.

Increasing public doubts about the Iraq war have emboldened Democrats to challenge the president's policies. Republicans, in turn, contend that criticism undermines the war on terror.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican running for re-election in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, issued a statement urging both sides to keep politics out of the war on terrorism. "We owe it to those we lost to keep partisan politics out of the discussion and keep alive the united spirit that came out of 9/11," he said.

___

 

[kosar]

It's funny how certain elements point to 'the democrats all authorizing the war' and in the same breath make and/or agree with comments like Roves.

 

[BobbyBlueChip]

Three years after the fact and the insinuation that Iraq has something to do with 9/11 is still right there.

The only thing that Rove and his ilk did to "Prepare for War" was push through a tax cut. Every single one is a chicken hawk.

 

[Master Capper]

Rove and Cheney are still trying to sell the American people that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 when the concrete evidence shows that is a lie! I get tired of guys like Rove and Cheney whom have never served a day in their life in the military and tucked tail when they had a chance telling us how the military should be run. Didn't the Republicans just demand a apology from DUrban for comparing our retention prison to a Gulag? Why should they demand a apology for someone speaking the truth? The way we treat our prisoners is the way we must accept that American's will be treated in the future when they are held captive. I think it is time to for all to come clean and just admit that entering Iraq was a bad move and that we screwed up, and get out of nation building.

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

"Republicans just demand a apology from DUrban for comparing our retention prison to a Gulag? Why should they demand a apology for someone speaking the truth?"

Your statement is exactly what I mean and how we differ
We both are defensive of seperte issues--myself the defamation of our troops by politicians and media--and you-----

"Rove and Cheney are still trying to sell the American people that Iraq had something to do with 9/11"
--kinda of like the wmd issue liberals like to harp on.

For some odd reason I and most other americans thought the whole ordeal of us and U.N. and going to war was their failure of Saddam to comply to resolutions--Hmmm maybe your liberal media spliced quotes again and had Bushes final ultmatum to Saddam to avoid connected to terrorist leaving there somehow??????
I think that whats defined as spin!!

As we have found out in oil for food scandal --Saddam thumbed his nose because of France and Germanys assurance they would veto.
Saddams mistake was Clinton wasn't in office and Kerry wouldn't be there in future to help in "asking perrmission" Saddam-the french ect never thought about a pres with hair on his nuts.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I Don't Get It

Sith Lord Karl Rove, once again proving his uncanny ability to manipulate the minds of Democrats, has sent them into a drunken rage:
Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, said in a speech Wednesday that "liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Conservatives, he told the New York state Conservative Party just a few miles north of Ground Zero, "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."

Rove said the Democratic Party made the mistake of calling for "moderation and restraint" after the terrorist attacks.
Harry Reid says Rove should "apologize or resign", with Dean, Clinton, Pelosi and the whole gang going totally nuts.

Putting aside that Rove was obviously not talking about moderate Democrats, given that he was talking to the Conservative Party of New York and specifically chose the words "conservatives" and "liberals", there's just one thing someone needs to explain to me: What, exactly, did Rove say that made them so mad? Is there some other quote that isn't being cited here? Did Rove compare liberals to Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot? Did Rove claim that Democrats knew about 9/11 but let it happen?

I only ask because, well, it's a fact. Indeed, this is exactly what liberals have been saying about themselves for years, claiming it as the moral high ground. As an example, I refer to Columbia University Professor Todd Gitlin's thoughts in the San Jose Mercury News in October 2001.
The terrible paradox of the late '60s and early '70s was that as the war became less popular, so did the anti-war movement. Partly because of the movement's cavalier anti-Americanism, pro-war Republicans emerged triumphant. Ronald Reagan took over in 1981, and conservatives have wielded enormous power ever since....

So why does much of the left look, in Cooper's words, "traumatized and dysfunctional''? Because anti-war absolutists cannot leave behind the melodramatic imagination of noble white hats in the "Third World'' at war with imperial black hats. They have a hard time seeing America as a wounded party and seeing totalitarian Islamist groups like Al-Qaida as world-class menaces....

One version of liberal dogma -- at least a consistent one -- is the pacifist's view that force must never be used. But the fundamentalist left does not oppose the use of force absolutely. Some go so far as to treat the slaughter of thousands at the World Trade Center as an event in the history of revolt by the oppressed against their oppressors. These hard-left supporters act as if Saudi Arabian and Egyptian fundamentalists were entitled, as victims of imperialism, to a touch of vengefulness. (But if injuries at American hands were the causes of revenge attacks on the United States, then Vietnamese or Guatemalan suicide bombers might have materialized.)...

Many of these liberals were sufficiently ambivalent about war and American power that they were reluctant to feel patriotic after Sept. 11. But they do. The nation that was grievously wounded is theirs....

Thus, many on the left -- myself included -- feel varying degrees of queasiness with this war, but still forswear anti-war rallies. When our friends argue that war is unnecessary, and that, instead, Osama bin Laden should be tried by a world court, we have trouble seeing this as a practical alternative. The principle of legal recourse in justice's name is attractive, but we can't imagine who is going to find, serve legal papers on, capture, bring to trial, and punish well-armed criminal conspirators who dwell in caves.
Yes, that's what was going on after 9/11. Rove is pretty sneaky, but he can't travel time. The City of Berkeley even passed a resolution against the war. (So did the American Library Association's "Social Responsibility Round Table", for that matter.) We have plenty of liberals who even now only grudgingly approve of that war because it "was pretty justified, I guess", not to mention Democrats like Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who claimed that Osama bin Laden is the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers. I'm seriously asking here: How can the notion that Democrats wanted to draw up indictments be an improper statement, when they just made Howard Dean their leader, despite his infamous "let's wait for a jury to decide if Osama really did it" comment?

I don't think there was any major college campus in America that didn't play host to various leftist celebratory flag burnings and peace rallies in the few short days after 9/11, at the time when it was perhaps most tasteless and uncalled for. I myself spent a significant amount of time on the Indiana University campus being accosted by people from a giant tent city of liberals set up in the courtyard of the student union who were passing out xeroxed brochures on how Bush and bin Laden were secretly working together to manipulate the oil market. (The leader of the students was an old bum named, I believe, "Steps to Freedom", and they kept their tent city in place until March, when the University told them to get off the lawn.)

The coming war was obviously "state terror" that made us as bad as they were, and there was no reason to believe Osama hadn't been framed. It was what you heard in the coffee shops, it was what the art was about, it was what was graffitied on the sidewalks ("STOP AmeriKKKa"), it was what was being shouted in the halls of the Collins Living-Learning Center (while they vandalized the soda machines, of course, for those were tools of globalization) alongside debate about whether conservative students should be banned from the dorm. Vacuous though it was, that was the state of "progressive thought" at the time, freshly forged in the fires of the "Bush stole the election!" lunacy.

The point is that all this outrage has absolutely zero merit. What are Democrats trying to argue here? That the liberal movement was somehow secretly spearheading and leading the movement for war in Afghanistan? No rational person can make such an argument, nor can they pretend that there was not a major segment of liberal thought insisting that the terrorists had merely been emotionally traumatized by American prosperity. Yet these folks are taking offense and demanding apologies and resignations from people who refer to the documented, provable facts? Maybe Rove would've been more correct to say "some liberals", because there were undeniably plenty of liberals on the moderate end of the spectrum who had their heads on straight, at least to some degree. However, in this context, "some liberals" is enough that those liberals successfully crafted the public face that has run the Democratic Party straight into the ground. There's no value judgement in there for Democrats to be offended by: Rove isn't questioning their patriotism, their sanity, or their wisdom. Yet simply hearing the facts of the liberal case raises questions about all three points for most Americans. That's what Democrats are upset about. Just look at this tantrum from John Kerry:
''That spirit of our country should never be reduced to a cheap, divisive, political applause line from anyone who speaks for the president of the United States," said Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, in a speech on the Senate floor. ''It is really hard to believe that last night in New York, a senior adviser -- the most senior adviser to the president of the United States -- is twisting, purposely twisting those days of unity in order to divide us for political gain."
Kerry can't directly address the substance of the issue itself because it's totally true. He just doesn't appreciate being called out on it. (On the other hand, Kerry's never directly addressed an issue in his life. The guy's amazing.) Unfortunately they aren't going to make that facet of their legacy go away simply by pretending it never happened. We were all there, and we all remember. Perhaps Rove should consider issuing an apology, using the Durbin format: "I'm sorry if a few particularly snivelly Democrats were offended by my statements of plain fact."

 

[kosar]

Wow, I must have missed all those anti-war rallies on campuses 'a few days sfter 9/11.' I don't believe even one was shown on any news network. Were there any, or is this author full of it? And he says they were happening on 'nearly every major campus.'

This guy jumps in and out between asscociating 9/11 with the war in Iraq and 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, as if the two are correlated. Thats intellectually dishonest, but a clever trick that was used by Rove with his comments.

He also makes it sounds like the dems resisited going into Afghanistan. We all know that isn't true. And *of course* it was the Republicans who led us into Afghanistan. They had the White House. Duh!

His article may apply to a few hippies in San Francisco, but to broadly apply it to democrats is idiotic.

 

[dr. freeze]

why is Hillary taking offense to something that Rove says liberals do? didnt think she was a liberal

Or did Rove play a little game of "Caught ya!"

:mj07: :mj07: :mj07:

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

MC and BBC
"Three years after the fact and the insinuation that Iraq has something to do with 9/11 is still right there."

"Rove and Cheney are still trying to sell the American people that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 when the concrete evidence shows that is a lie!"

Could either of you show any factual statements that anyone in this administration even hinted that Iraq was responsible for 911?

If not we have to assume you are part of the moveon.org/Micheal Moore--- Kool Aid Kids

As you both have referred to it numerous times--enlighten us!!!

 

[StevieD]

Rove is a lying sack of crap. If I remember, the vote after 911 to go after the Taliban and get bin Laden was 98 to 0 in the senate. Thats ZERO and in the House there was only one dissenting vote. That is ONE. ONE plus ZERO equal ONE. Was there any Taliban in Iraq? bin Laden is still free. Great job!
Freeze, maybe Hillary is upset with what he said because it is a blatant lie. Something that obviously doesn't upset you and the other Kool Aid drinkers, as long as there is a buck to be made.

 

[BobbyBlueChip]

Dogs,

I'd be happy to, but am a bit busy today. It won't take much searching if you have the time.

Can you show me where Germany and France used their UN veto power because a few of their citizens and Companies were profiting from the oil-for-food program? Can you also let me know why you think their profiteering is any different than the profiteering going on now by American Companies?

 

[kosar]

MC and BBC
"Three years after the fact and the insinuation that Iraq has something to do with 9/11 is still right there."

"Rove and Cheney are still trying to sell the American people that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 when the concrete evidence shows that is a lie!"

Could either of you show any factual statements that anyone in this administration even hinted that Iraq was responsible for 911?

For a newshound like yourself, I find it hard to believe that you never saw Cheneys comments trying to tie Iraq to 9/11. Or Rice for that matter. But jeez, you don't have to go any further than your own post in this thread to see Rove doing it:


-"liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Conservatives, he told the New York state Conservative Party just a few miles north of Ground Zero, "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."-

Now, he's either talking about the Afghan war or the Iraqi war. We can eliminate the Afghan war, because it doesn't apply as i'm sure we can agree. The democrats were not against that and still aren't. However, a good amount of dems(and growing list of repubs) are grumbling about the Iraq debacle. He's obviously referring to the Iraqi war and ONCE AGAIN tying it in with 9/11.

He can use semantics like 'liberal' instead of 'democrats' all he wants, but you would have to be an idiot to not glean his meaning.

Granted, Cheneys previous comments were more direct and less oblique, but that's why Rove is Rove.

 

[StevieD]

I have to laugh at the whining of Fox news. Karl Rove, and all their loyal followers oin here. Here is the point boys, if your party controls both houses of congress and the White House and you can't get anything done to help America stop your crying and lying and look in the mirror. You have no one to blame but yourself.

 

[gardenweasel]

bobby...drawing a correlation between european countries vetoing any real action vs iraq and the oil for food scandal and profiteering isn`t exactly a stretch....maybe you won`t find a document with an official`s name on it saying that they were subverting the u.s.`s action "specifically" because they were making dough from oil for food....but,as i said,i don`t think that
it`s an objective statement to say that financial gain may not have been an issue...

although not the only reason for opposing the u.s,it`s not a stretch to say that it was a part of the equation...

the same thing is happening in iran...the russians being the main culprit.....and again,the inspectors are only allowed to inspect sites that the iranians agree to...

it`s a sham...as were the iraqi inspections...

european views on non-proliferation of wmd`s is baffling,to say the least...

the long term well being of the middle east and the world seem to not be a concern to most of europe....

like france busting their chops(chirac in particular)helping saddam build his nuclear reactor in the late 80`s....to putin and russia helping iran with their nuclear ambitions now...

obviously,financial gain is an issue....but,i also believe that it`s also plain old resentment of america....resentment of our world stature....our military...our economy....our success...

and some anti-israel sentiment thrown in for good measure...

from reading some articles on the net,anti-semitism is alive and well in europe....

all this has some resemblance to what happened in europe in the lead up to ww 2...

i really think we have to wake up to the fact that some of europe aren`t our allies....they just aren`t...and i think we have to approach them in a more realistic manner...

as for rove`s comments...i don`t think he specifically cited democrats...he used the term liberals...and mentioned "move-on.org." specifically...and in move=on.org`s case,i don`t think he was farr off point...

as far as the "prepaqring for war" comment,he may well have been referring to afghanistan....

football`s not very far off....let`s all try and stay on the green side of the grass for another few months....

 

[StevieD]

GW, you said you do not think Rove was far off the point. Please name me 5 prominent liberals who were against wiping out the Taliban and capturing or killing bin Laden.

 

[gardenweasel]

i said he specifically mentioned "move-on.org"....and that he was correct in mentioning them and associating THEM with his quote....

and that was on point...

 

[gardenweasel]

now they(m.o.org.)are trolling the waters for support for a troop withdrawal date from iraq...

the terrorists never had it so good...


Survey Question

"We're looking for feedback from MoveOn members about Iraq. Please help us by completing this survey.

Should we work together to begin bringing the troops home, by supporting the Jones-Abercrombie resolution? (The resolution would require the president to put together a plan by the end of the year for bringing home all U.S. forces from Iraq with troop withdrawal beginning no later than October 1, 2006.)

I would support a campaign like that.
MoveOn should work on other priorities, or another approach to what's going on in Iraq"...

let`s tell the monsters when we`re leaving....so they can plan accordinly....

lol...

like i said...rove was right on point when mentioning this bunch....

 

[Master Capper]

Well they don't usually tell all the news on Fox News or when you listen to the felon dope man Rush, so I can see where you would not get the news. First of all, Cheney and Rove need to stick what they do best and thats stealing money for Cheney and dividing the country for Rove, and neither of these two should ever open their holes about the military. If a young man today had the same lame excuse as Cheney on why he did not serve the country then you know damn well Cheney would consider that person unpatriotic, but it's okay for him to have better things to do then to serve his country. To even have Cheney and Rove making any comments about the military is a slap in the face to the patriotic young men whom have been sent to a war under false pretenses and with no clear exit strategy in place, as I would consider Cheney to be a very unpatriotic American. I can respect Bush for speaking on war as he actually served the country even if some of the stories are true about favoritisms, but he at least served.

 

[BobbyBlueChip]

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/rele...6/20050618.html

Two days ago, W says that "As we work to deliver opportunity at home, we're also keeping you safe from threats from abroad. We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens. Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world's terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror. These foreign terrorists violently oppose the rise of a free and democratic Iraq, because they know that when we replace despair and hatred with liberty and hope, they lose their recruiting grounds for terror.

. . . Two days ago

 

[BobbyBlueChip]

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/IraqCover...d=144396&page=1

NEW YORK, Oct. 5, 2004 ? A new CIA report delivered to Vice President Dick Cheney last week calls into question White House assertions of a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, officials told ABC News.

On Feb. 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell presented a case for war against Iraq to the U.N. Security Council, in part by stating, "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants."

Earlier this year, in a joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in the Rose Garden on June 15, President Bush said, "Zarqawi's the best evidence of a connection to al Qaeda affiliates and al Qaeda."

And Cheney, while speaking at the D-Day Museum on July 1, said, "Later, senior al Qaeda associate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi took sanctuary in Baghdad after coalition forces drove him out of Afghanistan."

But a senior U.S. official told ABC News that the CIA report, based on captured documents and interviews with former Iraqi officials, raises serious questions about such statements.

The official said there was, in fact, no clear-cut evidence that Saddam even knew Zarqawi was in Baghdad, contrary to what Bush has claimed.

"He let Zarqawi run free in Baghdad, and his crowd," Bush said in a rally in Kirtland, Ohio, on Sept. 4.

The CIA report concludes that Zarqawi spent time in Baghdad, but casts doubt on reports that the 37-year-old had been given official approval for medical treatment there, as Bush said this summer.

"This guy Zarqawi got hospital aid there in Baghdad when Saddam Hussein was in power," Bush told the crowd at a Lancaster, Pa., event on July 9.

The CIA presented its findings to the White House one week ago today, in what is known as a red-striped document, one available to only five or six top officials.

Now it seems the ties between Zarqawi and Saddam are not quite as simple as the Bush administration has previously made out.

This is a murky story," said Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser. "I'm sure we'll find out more but what we do know about Zarqawi is that he knew Iraq well."

Since then, the president has subtly altered his language when discussing Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad before the war. Bush no longer maintains Zarqawi was harbored by Saddam, just that he was there.

In campaign stops on Oct. 1 and 2, Bush said, "Zarqawi was in and out of Baghdad."

Now Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says he knows of no intelligence linking Saddam and al Qaeda.

In prepared remarks given at the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Rumsfeld said, "I have not seen any strong hard evidence that links the two."

 

[StevieD]

Why don't the insurgents just stop fighting. Pretend everything is hunky dory and wait for us to leave and then attack? Ask Rove or Cheney or the head crook Bush that one?