Because Bush chose to do multilateral strategy, which takes time and political effort, Bush cannot really afford to let people like Plame or her husband loose doing sabotage operations that he can stop with his power.

Multilateral strategies require support, specifically public support and international support. It is hard to get that when you allow the enemy or domestic opponents to win propaganda victory after propaganda victory.

If Bush was doing unilateral policies like air strikes and unilateral blockades and sanctions, then Bush would be correct to concentrate his efforts on future operations rather than his logistics lines. If Bush is on the attack, then his offense pushes the enemy so far back that they can’t reach his logistics. Because Bush has chosen a defensive strategy, Bush needs to fortify and dig in. He cannot Not dig in, and Not attack. He has to do one or the other. Fortify up, or attack. He does neither.

Bush has 2 years to attack Iran unilaterally. If he continues with multilateral strategies, they will be as successful as his multilateral strategies in NK were. Meaning, a failure.

In certain affairs your energies should be devoted in such a way that they produce synergy. THey have to offset each other’s weaknesses and promote the strengths in unified fashion.

You can’t decide you’re on the “attack” and deplete your forces by spreading them around your back lines. If you want to attack, you must devote your energies to the attack force, not the defense force.

On the other hand, if you want to defend, you should fortify up and concentrate your force into the Defense, and not spread them out where they may be defeated in detail by the enemy’s attacking force.

Bush has decided on the defense strategy politicaly and militaristically, both in Iraq and in Iran. Tactically the military is on the offensive in Iraq, but strategically Bush pulls the strings.

Because Bush has decided on a defense strategy, Bush has to concentrate his force or at least have them close enough for mutual support. Because Bush sends a lot of his energy on stuff that doesn’t matter in the defense, like Social Security and not Border security; as well as talking to Old Europe and giving them legitimacy to negotiate with Iran, it tends to spread his forces and thus his energy thin.

A lot of this wouldn’t matter if this was peace time, but you really can’t afford to scramble your assets in orientation in war.

Iraq is an offensive asset and strategic location. Brought about by an offensive strategy. Using Iraq as a defensive point of interest, is not a good idea. Because it inadequately makes use of territory won. Either we are on the offensive or we are not, and Bush’s confusion over this matter wastes more of his energy than any concentrated attack or defense ever would.

However, those who oppose Bush, such as yourself, are pretty incautious when it comes to their claims. The evidence for the Niger uranium and the biological weapons trailers is strong. The claim you repeat that Bush knew they had been discredited when he said them has been refuted again and again, not that it matters to Bush’s detractors, hence the frustration in this topic.

See two recent links here and here

Maybe Bush has called this one wrong, but I see no reason to suppose that an all-out assault would succeed either. It might well backfire horribly too. I do know that it would soak up much energy in his administration, and that energy might be better used as it is.

We forget perhaps, that the American people elected Bush, not Tenet and the CIA, the NSA, or anyone else in the bureacracy. We forget, that whatever repercussions Bush will take in firing bureacrats, he will take more damage being on the defensive (Think 9/11) than in taking the offensive and assaulting a strong point, regardless of the casualties.

Classical assault theory states that if you go through with an assault and move through the defensive fire, you will take casualties but you will for the most part, avoid most of the casualties once you have taken the beachhead. The more you try to dig in under massive fire, the more you are surrounded and beaten into a pulp. Launching himself against the CIA and the State and the bureacrats is dangerous, but far less dangerous than doing nothing and having your approval polls say “33 %”.

Most Americans would love to see people in government get fired. Bush’ll probably get 5% pts for every person he fires. Blood and treasure has never been an obstacle America could not overcome. It is the psychological depression and attacks that are the problem, the feeling of helplessness. That destroys more people than any bomb.

As Unknown Blogger knows, most people couldn’t care less about Bush trumpeting “facts”. The internet is for facts, Bush was elected so he could viciously savage the incompetent Democrats and raise support for American foreign policy abroad. The American public has plenty of facts, what they need is morale boosting uber-patriotism, ala Roosevelt. The State of the Union is for facts, the Presidency is for leadership. It ain’t no John Kerry-Yale Debate Team Competition that is for sure.

When there is a will there is a way. When there is a fact, there is a lawyer, which is not the way.

“According to this source, the documents had been examined by the U.S. intelligence community and judged “consistent with authentic documents”–the professionals’ way of saying that these items cannot definitively be certified but seem to be the real thing.”

But then again, Bush was talking about the “WMD trailers” and uranium shopping sprees in Nigeria after he knew those had been discredited, so who really knows.

Also, I can think of a few other rhetorical questions for you:

I can’t help but note that these papers came to the Weekly Standard from an unnamed “senior U.S. government official.” Aren’t we supposed to be mistrustful of unnamed sources?

The original documents have been posted by the government on the web. Why won’t this official stand behind those translations? And I wonder why he handed them over to Hayes at the Weekly Standard and not, say, the editors of The Wall Street Journal?

Bush could take any number of drastic measures if he wished, but even the President faces repercussions for his actions and even the President must build support for policies in the country and within the government

The Iraq War, once past the invasion, has not been a popular war. It’s cost much blood and treasure. There has been good progess but it’s been three years and that’s a long time for the American public.

I think Bush knows his limits and picks his battles carefully.

In a weird sort of dichotomy Trump is ruthless enough to fire people at a moment’s notice if he doesn’t like their performance, but Trump isn’t even ruthless enough to support OIF or the Iraq Guerrila War, while Bush is. So there’s an interesting dichotomy going on between political infighters like Trump and war leaders like Bush, in their policies.

This is of course, separate from non-important figures like Katie Couric.

She is vilified on News Busters as being a friend to the left and she is critiized on Media Matter as a news analyst who misses opportunities – blah, blah, blah.

There’s no conspiracy here. The press is always slow to pick up on these stories, especially since there is such a corporate influence in the MSM nowadays.
Historically stories like this usually have to gain a lot of traction before the MSM will even consider reporting them, now it’s even worse with profits being so important.
How long did the MSM press ignore the Watergate Scandal?

I find the mainstream media complicit to the needs of their share holders, not so much the right or left.

Be patient.
As a liberal, I want to know the truth about these documents too. I’m sure that there will be more revelations to come, but bashing the media over this is about as useful as screaming at a wall.

Anyway, thanks for this post, I’ll be looking for some clarity on this issue now.

If Bush had taken on the full-time job of rebutting the MSM and Democrats while the State Dept and CIA worked behind his back, it could have escalated into something much worse than we see today.

Bush is focused on producing results in Iraq and letting those results speak for themselves. Maybe it is the wrong call. Maybe it is just Bush’s nature to avoid public squabbling and the risk of appearing weak and self-serving. Maybe what’s going on with Iran in the near future will make all this seem trivial.

I don’t know, but although I find it frustrating, I do see some wisdom in Bush’s letting the MSM battles slide while he fights a larger war.

With “Bush lied” we heard that he lied forever and ever and ever. Bush refuted this. The moderate opposition dropped the topic.

Instead, Bush should have launched a counter-offensive, calling out the liars on their lies, changing the topic from “Bush lied” to “the Democrats and press lied” for a week or two.

When he doesn’t do that and the subject is simply dropped, then the last thing most people have heard is only that Bush lied. Joe Wilson should not only have been refuted, but attacked until his duplicity became the entirety of the story.

This indeed smacks of Clintonism; Clinton did that stuff to save his own behind. Isn’t the War on Terror just as important?