Those "Crazed" defectors

I just love how those who critique the Bush Administration are put in the "virtual" psychiatric hospital by Bush flacks. They'd make great Soviet Central Committee Members:

Richard Clarke:

Woolsey On Clarke [Jonah Goldberg]

Ex-CIA Dir. James Woolsey, on Clarke (Via Hotline):

Ex-CIA Dir. James Woolsey, on Clarke: "He's a man who, once he gets locked into a view, doesn't listen anymore. He is an able man, in some ways. But in this case, he got locked into the view early on that there was nothing ever, no contacts of any kind between al Qaeda and governments such as Iraq. And so I think he ignored some of the clear evidence that George Tenet spread out before the Senate in 2002 about Iraqi training of al Qaeda in poisons, gases and explosives" ("On the Record," FNC, 3/24).

Golly, who's turned out to be right on this one?

Paul O'Neill:

What Jonah Says Goes For Me [Peter Robinson]


As it happens, Jonah, I too had an off-the-record encounter with Paul O'Neill. My impression of the man is most succinctly conveyed by quoting yours: "a pompous, self-indulgent prima donna."

01/12 11:32 AM

As opposed to:



Gen. Eric Shinseki, March 28, 2003:

In a contentious exchange over the costs of war with Iraq, the Pentagon's second-ranking official today disparaged a top Army general's assessment of the number of troops needed to secure postwar Iraq. House Democrats then accused the Pentagon official, Paul D. Wolfowitz, of concealing internal administration estimates on the cost of fighting and rebuilding the country.

Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops. Mr. Wolfowitz then dismissed articles in several newspapers this week asserting that Pentagon budget specialists put the cost of war and reconstruction at $60 billion to $95 billion in this fiscal year. He said it was impossible to predict accurately a war's duration, its destruction and the extent of rebuilding afterward.

"We have no idea what we will need until we get there on the ground," Mr. Wolfowitz said at a hearing of the House Budget Committee. "Every time we get a briefing on the war plan, it immediately goes down six different branches to see what the scenarios look like. If we costed each and every one, the costs would range from $10 billion to $100 billion." Mr. Wolfowitz's refusal to be pinned down on the costs of war and peace in Iraq infuriated some committee Democrats, who noted that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the budget director, had briefed President Bush on just such estimates on Tuesday.

Matthew Dowd:

Dowd engages in one long, petulant rant, consumed by his disappointment at Bush's failure to change when Dowd changed. I'm sorry for Dowd's disappointment, but this says much more about Dowd's emotionalism than it does about the Bush administration.