Mistakenly stumbled upon Hardball and Chris Matthews

[burythehatchet]

so the talking head guest is James Woolsey. In a nutshell, the learned Mr. Woolsey opined that the problems in Iraq have two causes: 1. The ineffectiveness of Colin Powell to build a broader coalition, and 2. the State Dept in general for not wanting to follow Rumsfield's "original" plan, which they are convinced was perfect. So essentially, According to Jim, Colin Powell basically got his way. Powell nixed Rumsfeld's battle plan by making sure Turkey didn't let our troops base there.

At what point in time will these guys not have any more credibility? How can a group of people be so completely befuddled? Up is frickin down!

[Patsy Stone]

1. Just wait

In like 20 minutes it will all be Bill's fault!

[Pirate Smile]

11. YOU ARE CORRECT! I guess Hannity interviewed Rumsfeld on

his disgusting radio show and it is all because the defense dept. was gutted in the 90's, blah, blah, blah.

[Patsy Stone]

14. Oh Boy! Right Again! :) n/t

[Pirate Smile]

15. I flipped by Faux (arrggg - my eyes, my ears, arrgghh) and they were

replaying the radio show on the TV show tonight.
:eyes:

[Patsy Stone]

16. Between you with Faux

and the Harball collision, it's been a whole night of TV accidents. Stop the madness... :)

[Pirate Smile]

18. Hardball (I am putting on my Kevlar vest and helmet) has been OK

a few times lately (ducking behind furniture).

Jimmy Carter was great.

Tweety is pissy about the Iraq War and he loves to say he was against it (which he kind of was, but he was too wishy washy about it and he kept his opinion out of this topic too much).

Tweety has been slamming Rummy and mocking the Medals of Freedom for the people who screwed up - the standard rewarding of incompetence with this Administration.

Tweety did say that Rummy should quit and then Bush will award him the Medal of Freedom because that is how they deal with people that screw up in this Administration. He is calling the medals "Hush Medals".

Sen. Bill Nelson was also on tonight and said that Garner (who got fired) wanted to keep the Iraqi Military together which would of been the correct thing to do. Instead they brought in Breamer to screw things up "big time".

[Patsy Stone]

21. Once upon a time I could watch...

He asks inane questions, never lets his guests answer, and that breathless delivery just puts me off. More power to you. Whenever he has Andrea Mitchell on, I can't turn it off fast enough. :) Bill Nelson, my Senator, is great. I'll miss Bob G. terribly and I can't imagine life with Mel. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

[Pirate Smile]

22. I will watch it now depending on the topic and guests. I have watched

much less lately because I just won't put myself through it if it just attacks on Dems or singing the praises of BushCo.

However, Rummy has stepped in some deep sh#$ and the piling on has started. I don't mind watching that. I also keep hearing the Truman quote about who the buck really stops with and I sure as hell don't mind hearing that either.

The Faux thing though - that really is a chance thing. I don't have enough self loathing to watch that station. If someone posts that a good Dem spokesman is going to be on, I might flip over but that is rare.

[Bush was AWOL]

17. Hannity and Rumsfeld should both read this:

Post-Cold War Defense Spending Cuts: A Bipartisan Decision

The question of who is responsible for the substantial reductions in defense spending that occurred in the 1990s has arisen as an issue in the 2000 presidential campaign. A strong case can be made that these cuts were an appropriate response to the end of the Cold War and efforts to bring the federal deficit under control. But, more importantly, whatever the merits of the defense drawdown of the 1990s, one thing is clear: the decision to cut the defense budget, and to do so relatively deeply, was very much a bipartisan decision. Among other things, CSBA finds that:

The post-Cold War decline in defense spending began during the Bush Administration.

There is almost no difference between the level of funding proposed for defense by President Bush in his last fiscal year (FY) 1994-99 budget plan and the level of funding actually provided for defense over this six-year period under the Clinton Administration. Both Bush planned funding and actual funding amounted to $1.72 trillion (in FY 2001 dollars).

Congressional add-ons since 1995, when the Republican Party gained control of both houses, account for only about 3 percent of the defense topline of the past six years.

Not only was the drawdown of the 1990s clearly a bipartisan affair, the best available evidence suggests that Democrats and Republicans are still remarkably close in terms of their support for defense spending. Under the latest Clinton Administration plan, funding for defense is projected to remain essentially flat in real (inflation-adjusted) terms through fiscal year (FY) 2005. The latest Congressional Budget Resolution (CBR) would provide only about one-third of 1 percent more over this period. In reality, the effectiveness with which the Department of Defense (DoD) is able to address US security challenges in the future is likely to depend much more on how wisely DoD spends than how much it spends.

Cuts Began During Bush Administration
Funding for national defense declined by about 16.9 percent between the last Reagan Administration defense budget (FY 1989) and the last Bush Administration budget (FY 1993). These were the deepest cuts of the post-Cold War period. To be sure, the depth of these reductions owed much to the actions of the then Democratic-controlled Congress. However, the Democratic Congress was hardly acting alone: all but the very first of the Bush budget submissions called for cutting defense spending.

By comparison, under the Clinton Administration, funding for defense declined by about 13.1 percent between FY 1993 and FY 1998, when funding for defense bottomed out, and has risen 6-7 percent since then. The actions of the now Republican-controlled Congress have been partly responsible for the recent upswing in funding for defense. Like the cuts begun under the Bush Administration, the increases of the past several years owe something to the actions of both Congress and the Clinton Administration.

More in link:

http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/Archive/H.20000831.Post-Cold_War_Defe/H.20000831.Post-Cold_War_Defe.htm

[slor]

2. Let me guess...

Colin Powell told rummy, via wireless receiver, how to answer that soldier's question last week regarding the lack of armour also?
Damn You Colin!

[Pirate Smile]

3. This is the new RW mantra - It is all the State Department's fault.

[Doc_Technical]

5. Nuke Foggy Bottom!

At least, that's what Pat Robertson said.

[Generator]

4. Well if this mistakenly happens to me

my eyes start bleeding, I go into convulsions and my four year old changes the channel.

Don't do it man! I had to see Matthews smug mug next to Conyers tonight in a promo. It's just not right.

Pats herself on back-only mainstream thing I've watched since 11/2 is Countdown. It's such a relief.

[pretzel4gore]

6. that woolsey is the epitome

of everything awful about police bureaucrats....the guy seems to say 'buchenwald was just good bizness' ie well run death camp, or something.... looking at woolsey (he wears richard armitage's underwear, and armitage wears woolsey's) the mystery is how geebush wasn't annointed US presidente long ago!
what a fukked up country the US is; there are tens of thousands of creeps like woolsey running free, prospering and getting fat
btw NOTHING woolsey say, NOTHING, has any credence....don't let a syllable of his shit enter your awareness

[tsuki]

7. Gee, that's novel. I would have thought it was all Clinton's fault.

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. Powell should have remembered the golden rule.

The first one to go spend time with the family gets all the blame.

[goforit]

9. And Woolsey appeared to stutter through every sentence...(fibbing?)

Wasn't convincing to me.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!

[LittleClarkie]

10. And, the fact that we had no reason to be there had nothing to do with it?

Riiiight.

It ain't easy building the "coalition of the willing."

[Stinky The Clown]

12. The subtle message he had for us was not about the war, per se ....

It was that **France** was telling Turkey not to cooperate with us.

He looks too fuggin skinny to be carrying so much of the BFEE's water.

What a reptilian little shit he is. Smug Mufukker.

[eleny]

13. Who was the other guest?

A congressman, right? He did very well as the counterpoint. Or so I thought that he made Woolsey look like an ass,

[Pirate Smile]

20. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida. He did do a pretty good job tonight.

[mitchtv]

19. HA hahahaha

can't say he doesn't deserve it. After all you should dance with the one that brought you. He lied for them, and now it's his fault, Oh this made my evening.

[Strelnikov_]

23. Talk About A Stretch. The 4th ID Was In Iraq Well Before The

insurgency got rolling. How would ending 'major combat' a week earlier have changed anything?