Dejavu

[temujin]

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy.

This Krauthammer is late.
Th financial and military cards have ben played already.

Trasformation of health care could only benefit the US (I can't think of a more inefficient system).
And yes, those energy patents will have to be brought out of the drawers, even if the oilmen don't like it.

With the current crisis, who is EXACTLY paying this guy to write these idiotic "articles"?

[temujin]

More readings from this imbecile.

He was calling for a full blast war of Israel in Gaza and rejection of any cease fire whatsoever.

"The disintegration of Hamas rule in Gaza would be a devastating blow to Palestinian rejectionists, who since the Hamas takeover of Gaza have been the ascendant "strong horse" in Palestinian politics. It would be a devastating blow to Iran as patron of radical Islamist movements throughout the region, particularly after the defeat and marginalization of Iran's Sadrist client in Iraq. It would encourage the moderate Arab states to continue their U.S.-allied confrontation of Iran and its proxies. And it would demonstrate Israel's irreplaceable strategic value to the U.S. in curbing and containing Iran's regional ambitions."


40 (Forty) days later.

No disintegration of Hamas.
More rockets being fired.
No devastating blow to Iran, which gets invited to talks about Afghanistan by the US.
"Sadrist" client to take chargo of Irak, as the US leave (Sooner than later).
No need of Israel for the US to talk to Iran.
Last, but not least, Olmert's party gets booted out of power.

This guy is GENIUS.

Can't he predict an easy win of the Lakers this year?

[DarrinS]

This guy is GENIOUS.

Or maybe even a genius.

[temujin]

Or maybe even a genius.

Yeap.

[temujin]

let's have more fun, this Kreuthammer chap is rapidly turning into a legend.

September 19th 2008.

"For the last 150 years, most American war presidents -- most notably Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt -- have entered (or re-entered) office knowing war was looming. Not so George Bush. Not so the war on terror. The 9/11 attacks literally came out of the blue.

Indeed, the three presidential campaigns between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11 were the most devoid of foreign policy debate of any in the 20th century. The commander-in-chief question that dominates our campaigns today was almost nowhere in evidence during our '90s holiday from history.

When I asked President Bush during an interview Monday to reflect on this oddity, he cast himself back to early 2001, recalling what he expected his presidency would be about: education reform, tax cuts and military transformation from a Cold War structure to a more mobile force adapted to smaller-scale 21st-century conflict.

But a wartime president he became. And that is how history will both remember and judge him.

Getting a jump on history, many books have already judged him. The latest by Bob Woodward describes the commander in chief as unusually aloof and detached. A more favorably inclined biographer might have called it equanimity.

In the hour I spent with the president (devoted mostly to foreign policy), that equanimity was everywhere in evidence -- not the resignation of a man in the twilight of his presidency but a sense of calm and confidence in eventual historical vindication.

It is precisely that quality that allowed him to order the surge in Iraq in the face of intense opposition from the political establishment (of both parties), the foreign policy establishment (led by the feckless Iraq Study Group), the military establishment (as chronicled by Woodward) and public opinion itself. The surge then effected the most dramatic change in the fortunes of an American war since the summer of 1864.

That kind of resolve requires internal for ude. Some have argued that too much reliance on this internal compass is what got us into Iraq in the first place. But Bush was hardly alone in that decision. He had a majority of public opinion, the commentariat and Congress with him. In addition, history has not yet rendered its verdict on the Iraq War. We can say that it turned out to be longer and more costly than expected, surely. But the question remains as to whether the now-likely outcome -- transforming a virulently aggressive enemy state in the heart of the Middle East into a strategic ally in the war on terror -- was worth it. I suspect the ultimate answer will be far more favorable than it is today.

When I asked the president about his one unambiguous achievement, keeping us safe for seven years -- about 6 1/2 years longer than anybody thought possible at the time of 9/11 -- he was quick to credit both the soldiers keeping the enemy at bay abroad and the posse of law enforcement and intelligence officials hardening our defenses at home.

But he alluded also to some of the measures he had undertaken, including "listening in on the enemy" and "asking hardened killers about their plans." The CIA has already told us that interrogation of high-value terrorists like Khalid Sheik Mohammed yielded more valuable intelligence than any other source. In talking about these measures, the president mentioned neither this testimony as to their efficacy nor the campaign of vilification against him that these measures occasioned. More equanimity still.

What the president did note with some pride, however, is that beyond preventing a second attack, he is bequeathing to his successor the kinds of powers and ins utions the next president will need to prevent further attack and successfully prosecute the long war. And indeed, he does leave behind a Department of Homeland Security, reorganized intelligence services with newly developed capacities to share information, and a revised FISA regime that grants broader and modernized wiretapping authority.

In this respect, Bush is much like Truman, who developed the sinews of war for a new era (the Department of Defense, the CIA, the NSA), expanded the powers of the presidency, established a new doctrine for active intervention abroad, and ultimately engaged in a war (Korea) -- also absent an attack on the U.S. -- that proved highly unpopular.

So unpopular that Truman left office disparaged and highly out of favor. History has revised that verdict. I have little doubt that Bush will be the subject of a similar reconsideration.

[Nbadan]

Actually, Kreuthammer has been an idiot for a lot of years, your just now discovering the level or his idiocy....

[temujin]

More on the visionary capacities of the "expert".

Russia reacts to Georgia's aggression.

1. Suspend the NATO-Russia Council established in 2002 to help bring Russia closer to the West. Make clear that dissolution will follow suspension. The council gives Russia a seat at the NATO table. Message: Invading neighboring democracies forfeits the seat.

2. Bar Russian entry to the World Trade Organization.

3. Dissolve the G-8. Putin's dictatorial presence long made it a farce but no one wanted to upset the bear by expelling it. No need to. The seven democracies simply withdraw. Then immediately announce the recons ution of the original G-7.

4. Announce a U.S.-European boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi. To do otherwise would be obscene. Sochi is 15 miles from Abkhazia, the other Georgian province just invaded by Russia. The Games will become a riveting contest between the Russian, Belarusian and Jamaican bobsled teams.

All of these steps (except dissolution of the G-8, which should be irreversible) would be subject to reconsideration depending upon Russian action -- most importantly and minimally, its withdrawal of troops from Georgia proper to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The most crucial and unconditional measure, however, is this: Reaffirm support for the Saakashvili government and declare that its removal by the Russians would lead to recognition of a government-in-exile. This would instantly be understood as providing us the legal basis for supplying and supporting a Georgian resistance to any Russian-installed regime.

1) Big blow to s and nightclubs in Brussels.
2) No.
3) G8 called in evey other week by US president, starting from late october.
Actually extended to G20.
4) Sure, boycott the Olimpics.

Saakashvili president still in place.
No need for yet another war a la UCK in Kosovo.
May I remind him that Russia is NOT Yugoslavia.

I seriously cant' think of someone systematically getting predictions more "wrong".

[temujin]

Actually, Kreuthammer has been an idiot for a lot of years, your just now discovering the level or his idiocy....

The more I read, the more I am stunned by the fact that he makes money out of his articles.

[temujin]

OK

Going to bed.

Relieved, actually, of the gllomy future this guy predicts in the original article that started this thread.

[Nbadan]

The more I read, the more I am stunned by the fact that he makes money out of his articles.

Pfff....he's part of the wing-nut media......your talking about a media conglomeration that can put books by Ann Coulter, of all people, on the N.Y.T. top 10 list...

[Nbadan]

....facts don't matter......just get the message out....over and over........

[Winehole23]

I seriously cant' think of someone systematically getting predictions more "wrong".

[Nbadan]

[balli]

[Nbadan]

[Nbadan]

?

[balli]

[temujin]

?