Marvin The Paranoid

What I still find disturbing are the poll >results. Kerry is just barely

Bush's proclaimation 'America is safer' is >a lie. Bin Laden is threatening
the U.S. again, three years later.

And the polls still indicate a level of >support for him that's mind-boggling.

On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 13:03:34 GMT, R. Foreman overjoyed me with this news:

Mon Jul 12, 1:13 AM ET

By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - When an influential group of conservatives gathers
in downtown Washington each week, they often get a political pep
talk from a senior Bush administration official or campaign aide.
They don't expect a fellow Republican to deliver a blistering
critique of President Bush (news - web sites)'s handling of
the Iraq (news - web sites) war

But nearly 150 conservatives listened in silence recently as
a veteran of the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations ticked
off a litany of missteps in Iraq by the Bush White House.

"This war is not going well," said Stefan Halper, a deputy
assistant secretary of state under President Reagan.

"It's costing us a lot of money, isolating us from our allies
and friends," said Halper, who gave $1,000 to George W. Bush's
campaign and more than $83,000 to other GOP causes in 2000.
"This is not the cakewalk the neoconservatives predicted. We
were not greeted with flowers in the streets."

Conservatives, the backbone of Bush's political base, are
increasingly uneasy about the Iraq conflict and the steady
drumbeat of violence in postwar Iraq, Halper and some of his
fellow Republicans say. The conservatives' anxiety was fueled
by the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal and has not abated
with the transfer of political power to the interim Iraqi
government.

Some Republicans fear angry conservatives will stay home in
November, undercutting Bush's re-election bid.

"I don't think there's any question that there is growing
restiveness in the Republican base about this war," said
Halper, the co-author of a new book, "America Alone: The
Neoconservatives and the Global Order."

Some Republicans dismiss the rift as little more than an
inside-the-Beltway spat among rival factions of the GOP
intelligentsia. Indeed, conservatives nationwide are still
firmly behind Bush. A Pew Research Center poll last month
found that 97 percent of conservative Republicans favored
Bush over Kerry.

But anger is simmering among some conservatives.

"I am bitterly disappointed in his actions with this war.
It is a total travesty," said Tom Hutchinson, 69, a
self-described conservative from Sturgeon, Mo., who posted
yard signs and staffed campaign phone banks for the
Republican in 2000. Hutchinson said he did not believe
the administration's stated rationales for the war, in
particular the argument that Saddam Hussein (news - web
sites) had weapons of mass destruction.

Hutchinson, a retired businessman and former college
professor, said his unease with Iraq may lead him to do
something he has not done since 1956: avoid the voting
booth in a presidential election.

Jack Walters, 59, a self-described "classical conservative"
from Columbia, Mo., said he hadn't decided which candidate
to vote for.

"Having been through Vietnam, I thought no, never again,"
Walters said. "But here comes the same thing again, and I'm
old enough to recognize the lame reasons given for going into
Iraq, and they made me ill."

The tension has been building in official Washington, where
conservative members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign
Relations committees have pressed the administration for
answers on combat operations; disagreed with the Pentagon
(news - web sites) on troop levels; and expressed frustration
with an administration they feel has shown them disdain by
withholding information.

Chief political adviser Karl Rove's formula for re-election is
primarily to push Bush's conservative base to the polls.

Another administration official involved in Bush's re-election
effort has voiced concern that angry conservatives will sit
out the election.

But Matthew Dowd, the Bush-Cheney campaign's chief strategist,
described the fear of losing conservative support as "just
ludicrous."

Bush is "as strong among conservative Republicans as any
Republican president has been" — higher than President
Reagan's approval among conservatives during his re-election
campaign of 1984, Dowd said.

Yet, Halper said his critical review on the administration's
performance on Iraq last week was met with expressions of
support in the conservatives' weekly meeting, which is
closed to journalists.

The marquee speaker sent by the administration was Eric
Ciliberti, who spent several weeks in Iraq this year and
told the audience of broad progress being made there.

Ciliberti complained to the group that those in the news
media were not reporting the positive developments out of
Iraq. Ciliberti did not return several calls late in the
past week from a reporter seeking his account.

That was an interesting read.

What I still find disturbing are the poll results. Kerry is just barely
beating Bush.

To most outside observers, it's disturbing to see Bush getting this kind of
support even after a year of nothing but bad news. From Richard Clarke's
and Paul O'Neill's books, the prison scandal, Dr. Kay's search for weapons,
the faulty intelligence and on and on.

Just yesterday Bush stood by his decision to invade Iraq regardless that it
didn't have WMD's or posed a threat to the U.S. Kind of like executing a
prisoner only to later find out he/she was innocent ... then saying 'They
deserved to die anyways'.

And he stood by his policy of preemptive war. This translates into 'I can
attack any nation of my choosing as long as the intelligence at the time
justifys it'. America has no allies because of Bush. Traditional allies
have abandoned the U.S. and most of the rest of the world sees it as a
threat.

Bush's proclaimation 'America is safer' is a lie. Bin Laden is threatening
the U.S. again, three years later.

And the polls still indicate a level of support for him that's
mind-boggling. There is a general fear throughout the world that he'll
either be reelected or find some other way to stay in power.

Hopefully the article posted bears some truth that traditional Republican
supporters will avoid the election polls this year.