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Hey Ray , Yoni, please explain this away.. I have a feeling that our apologist's will run from this thread like illegal immigrants from La Migra!!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/wa...nt&oref=slogin
April 1, 2007
Ex-Aide Details a Loss of Faith in the President
By JIM RUTENBERG
AUSTIN, Tex., March 29 — In 1999, Matthew Dowd became a symbol of George W. Bush’s early success at positioning himself as a Republican with Democratic appeal.
A top strategist for the Texas Democrats who was disappointed by the Bill Clinton years, Mr. Dowd was impressed by the pledge of Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, to bring a spirit of cooperation to Washington. He switched parties, joined Mr. Bush’s political brain trust and dedicated the next six years to getting him to the Oval Office and keeping him there. In 2004, he was appointed the president’s chief campaign strategist.
Looking back, Mr. Dowd now says his faith in Mr. Bush was misplaced.
In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s leadership.
He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.
“I really like him, which is probably why I’m so disappointed in things,” he said. He added, “I think he’s become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in.”
In speaking out, Mr. Dowd became the first member of Mr. Bush’s inner circle to break so publicly with him.
He said his decision to step forward had not come easily. But, he said, his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s presidency is so great that he feels a sense of duty to go public given his role in helping Mr. Bush gain and keep power.
Mr. Dowd, a crucial part of a team that cast Senator John Kerry as a flip-flopper who could not be trusted with national security during wartime, said he had even written but never submitted an op-ed article led “Kerry Was Right,” arguing that Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat and 2004 presidential candidate, was correct in calling last year for a withdrawal from Iraq.
“I’m a big believer that in part what we’re called to do — to me, by God; other people call it karma — is to restore balance when things didn’t turn out the way they should have,” Mr. Dowd said. “Just being quiet is not an option when I was so publicly advocating an election.”
Mr. Dowd’s journey from true believer to critic in some ways tracks the public arc of Mr. Bush’s political fortunes. But it is also an intensely personal story of a political operative who at times, by his account, suppressed his doubts about his professional role but then confronted them as he dealt with loss and sorrow in his own life.
In the last several years, as he has gradually broken his ties with the Bush camp, one of Mr. Dowd’s premature twin daughters died, he was divorced, and he watched his oldest son prepare for deployment to Iraq as an Army intelligence specialist fluent in Arabic. Mr. Dowd said he had become so disillusioned with the war that he had considered joining street demonstrations against it, but that his continued personal affection for the president had kept him from joining protests whose anti-Bush fervor is so central.
Mr. Dowd, 45, said he hoped in part that by coming forward he would be able to get a message through to a presidential inner sanctum that he views as increasingly isolated. But, he said, he holds out no great hope. He acknowledges that he has not had a conversation with the president.
Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor, said Mr. Dowd’s criticism is reflective of the national debate over the war.
“It’s an issue that divides people,” Mr. Bartlett said. “Even people that supported the president aren’t immune from having their own feelings and emotions.”
He said he disagreed with Mr. Dowd’s description of the president as isolated and with his position on withdrawal. But he said he was not surprised. Mr. Dowd has relayed the same sentiments to Mr. Bartlett in private conversations; they are friends.
During the interview with Mr. Dowd on a slightly overcast afternoon in downtown Austin, he was a far quieter man than the cigar chomping general that he was during Mr. Bush’s 2004 campaign.
Soft spoken and somewhat melancholy, he wore jeans, a T-shirt and sandals in an office devoid of Bush memorabilia save for a campaign coffee mug and a photograph of the first couple with his oldest son, Daniel. The photograph was taken one week before the 2004 election, and one day before Daniel was to go to boot camp.
Over Mexican food at a restaurant that was only feet from the 2000 campaign headquarters, and later at his office just up the street, Mr. Dowd recounted his political and personal journey. “It’s amazing,” he said. “In five years, I’ve only traveled 300 feet, but it feels like I’ve gone around the world, where my head is.”
Mr. Dowd said he decided to become a Republican in 1999 and joined Mr. Bush after watching him work closely with Bob Bullock, the Democratic lieutenant governor of Texas, who was a political client of Mr. Dowd and a mentor to Mr. Bush.
“It’s almost like you fall in love,” he said. “I was frustrated about Washington, the inability for people to get stuff done and bridge divides. And this guy’s personality — he cared about education and taking a different stand on immigration.”
Mr. Dowd established himself as an expert at interpreting polls, giving Karl Rove, the president’s closest political adviser, and the rest of the Bush team guidance as they set out to woo voters, slash opponents and exploit divisions between Democratic-leaning states and Republican-leaning ones.
In television interviews in 2004, Mr. Dowd said that Mr. Kerry’s campaign was proposing “a weak defense,” and that the voters “trust this president more than they trust Senator Kerry on Iraq.”But he was starting to have his own doubts by then, he said.
He said he thought Mr. Bush handled the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks well but “missed a real opportunity to call the country to a shared sense of sacrifice.”
He was dumbfounded when Mr. Bush did not fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld after revelations that American soldiers had tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Several associates said Mr. Dowd chafed under Mr. Rove’s leadership. Mr. Dowd said he had not spoken to Mr. Rove in months but would not discuss their relationship in detail.
Mr. Dowd said, in retrospect, he was in denial.
“When you fall in love like that,” he said, “and then you notice some things that don’t exactly go the way you thought, what do you do? Like in a relationship, you say ‘No no, no, it’ll be different.’ ”
He said he clung to the hope that Mr. Bush would get back to his Texas style of governing if he won. But he saw no change after the 2004 victory.
He describes the administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina, and the president’s refusal in the summer of 2005 to meet with the war protester Cindy Sheehan, whose son died fighting in Iraq, around the same time that Mr. Bush entertained the bicyclist Lance Armstrong at his Crawford ranch as further cause for doubt.
“I had finally come to the conclusion that maybe all these things along do add up,” he said. “That it’s not the same, it’s not the person I thought.”
He said that during his work on the 2006 re-election campaign of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, which had a bipartisan appeal, he began to rethink his approach to elections.
“I think we should design campaigns that appeal not to 51 percent of the people,” he said, “but bring the country together as a whole.”
He said that he still believed campaigns must do what it takes to win, but that he was never comfortable with the most hard-charging tactics. He is now calling for “gentleness” in politics. He said that while he tried to keep his own conduct respectful during political combat, he wanted to “do my part in fixing fissures that I may have been part of.”
His views against the war began to harden last spring when, in a personal exercise, he wrote a draft opinion article and found himself agreeing with Mr. Kerry’s call for withdrawal from Iraq. He acknowledged that the expected deployment of his son Daniel was an important factor.
He said the president’s announcement last fall that he was re-nominating the former United Nations ambassador John R. Bolton, whose confirmation Democrats had already refused, was further proof to him that Mr. Bush was not seeking consensus with Democrats.
He said he came to believe Mr. Bush’s views were hardening, with the reinforcement of his inner circle. But, he said, the person “who is ultimately responsible is the president.” And he gradually ventured out with criticism, going so far as declaring last month in a short essay in Texas Monthly magazine that Mr. Bush was losing “his gut-level bond with the American people,” and breaking more fully in this week’s interview.
“If the American public says they’re done with something, our leaders have to understand what they want,” Mr. Dowd said. “They’re saying ‘Get out of Iraq.’ ”
Mr. Dowd’s friends from Mr. Bush’s orbit said they understood his need to speak out. “Everyone is going to reflect on the good and the bad, and everything in between, in their own way,” said Nicolle Wallace, communications director of Mr. Bush’s 2004 campaign, a post she also held at the White House until last summer. “And I certainly respect the way he’s doing it — these are his true thoughts from a deeply personal place.” Ms. Wallace said she continued to have “enormous gra ude” for her years with Mr. Bush.
Mr. Bartlett, the White House counselor, said he understood, too, though he said he strongly disagreed with Mr. Dowd’s assessment. “Do we know our critics will try to use this to their advantage? Yes,” he said. “Is that perfect? No. But you can respectfully disagree with someone who has been supportive of you.”
Mr. Dowd does not seem prepared to put his views to work in 2008. The only candidate who appeals to him, he said, is Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, because of what Mr. Dowd called his message of unity. But, he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t walking around in Africa or South America doing something that was like mission work.”
He added, “I do feel a calling of trying to re-establish a level of gentleness in the world.”
Is there any reason to continue to showing this administration is danger to our well being? The same people who are claiming others want to surrender in Iraq are the same folks who got us into this mess. The same people that have been wrong since day one are telling us how things will turn out if and when we get out...
To the Apologists no one is calling for them to leave tomorrow but we need to start devising an exit strategy..with some teeth
Last edited by George Gervin's Afro; 03-31-2007 at 04:57 PM.
Hey Ray , Yoni, please explain this away.. I have a feeling that our apologist's will run from this thread like illegal immigrants from La Migra!!!
I guess you wold put me in the "apologist" role; but I don't feel that is what I am.
I am not happy with how Bush has handled Iraq; and I believe, now, that we shouldn't have gone in.
Now, however, I feel that, as a country, we cannot quit. We started it, we HAVE to finish it, otherwise we are compounding a mistake. Will it cost American's lives? Yes. Is it an unwinnable situation? It might be; but that doesn't change the fact the we, as a country, got Iraq into this mess, and leaving them like that would be morally wrong. We must stay until the bitter end.
I know there are posters (Boutons) who are going to come in here saying, lying this, deceiving that, I NEVER wanted to go in, etc... But the fact remains the political and military structure of this country took us in, took out the power structure, and screwed things up; that is the net result.
, it's not like I can simply NOT participate in Social Security, even though I don't support it, and was lied to about what it would do for me! I am a citizen of this country and am responsible for what this country, and its leaders, do.
I don't believe a published or firm exit strategy is anything more than a date certain that the insurgents can go underground until.
Apparently some Democratic Congressmen agree with me. There have been several proposals for a "secret" pull out date; known ONLY to Congress, the White House, and the Iraqis. I'm sure that date wouldn't get leaked.
The guy continued to push, even with doubt. Karma is a . I have no sympathy for someone that pressed an issue they don't agree with. He was a vital player that could have stepped down and go public with his concerns. him.
I guess this is what surprised me the most about this article. The guy admits he was destroying kerry but actually agreed with him.
I agree with you. We cannot simply just walk away from the mess we created however an open ended endeavor is not the most appealing option either. My point in posting this is to show all of the Bush supporters that the guy purposely divided this country and took the partisan political bitterness to a whole new level. Bush used this war as a political hammer and then blames the dems for politicizing the very same war.
Therin lies the rub. I understand your logic, if you make a mess, you fix it. Colin Powell famously was quotes saying the Potter Barn saying "You break it, you own it."
I would fall into that camp as well but there is not a military solution to this problem. These guys (the Iraqis) live there, they ain't going anywhere. They will wait us out no matter how long we stay. They fight for centuries, not years. Right now there will be a power vacuum if we leave. Shia and Sunni will fight to fill that void when we leave. It can happen now. Or it can happen in 2009 when a new president pulls out. Or it can wait 20 years until we leave, etc.... Americans don't want to be permanently in Iraq.
Why spend money on this bottomless pit? Why lose American lives and limbs to simply "hold on" waiting for the Iraqis to be able to stand up so we can stand down. It's a word game. Short of a despotic regime with absolute power like Saddam, no government is going to stand in baghdad. Saddam could not rule Iraq today if he were still alive and put back in power. There is too much disarray.
The only solution is not a good one. Much blood will need to be spilled while one group prevails. It may spread to other coutries within the region and that only demonstrates how grave of an error this was in the first place. Bush I knew better than to push to Baghdad in Gulf War I. Clearly, Schwartzkopf easily could have prevailed but then what?
We need to get out and we will pay the price for this error for many years, probably more years than most of us will be on this earth. We are still the only superpower on earth but this blunder is sapping our strength and influence. It is time to withdraw and regroup and focus other issues that increase our national security.
Very well said. I believe I agree with your assessment 100%.
"No! You can't pull the knife out of that guys neck you just stabbed previously...it'll result in a disaster! Just leave it in long enough for it to heal."
"Bush aide has second thoughts after his child is deployed to Iraq"
Big surprise.
But also, tough . Just another Bush supporter that didn't consider the consequenses of an invasion. I will never understand why the Bush administration didn't take the war as seriously as they said we should. If it's the most important thing this country could ever do, why roll the dice and only send in half the troops any competent military planner recommended to secure and hold the country?
It's awful that are only option left in Iraq is finding a way out that makes us look like pussies the least, but Bush condemned us to that in November 2001.
What is the surprise. He went to Bush wanting somethings and
didn't get them. You know, his way or the highway. So now
he trashes Bush.....
What's new pussy cat.....yeoooo......yeooooo......yeooooo.
Yeah, competent bipartisan leadership.What is the surprise. He went to Bush wanting somethings and
didn't get them.
screw bipartiship. Just expressing the dimm-o-crap point of
view. Wont to tell me where they have attempted to cooperate
with Bush......hmmmmmm
The invasion of Iraq.Wont to tell me where they have attempted to cooperate
with Bush......hmmmmmm
Democrats were just as stupid for different reasons.
You're welcome.
And now.................I didn't do it, he deceived me.
Not all of them, but the ultimate responsibility lies with Bush. He ed up on a monumental scale.
Of course he did, because you said so and we know you cant
be wrong, cause you listen to ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN. And
read the E-N on a regular basis and they only quote the
most trusted sources.......dimm-o-craps.
Do you mind if I disagree with you. Thought you would, but
so what, I still disagree with you. So there
x, do you think everything involved with the planning and execution of the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been perfect? Do you think any part of it could have been done better?
your problem is that if someone was pissing on your face, and you wanted to believe it was raining, no one could convince you otherwise.
Pot, meet kettle.
Why is your name Grey Goose?
im not unpersuadeable or unreasonable.
its not. its ggoose25. one of the admins put that under my name.
its not. its ggoose25. one of the admins put that under my name.
, ruins my point then.
To with it then.
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