That links to a Daily Mail story — "Obama rules OUT sending troops back into combat in Iraq but promises to review military options – including air strikes" — that includes an effort to extract a comment from George W. Bush:
Former President George W. Bush has been reluctant to weigh in on the latest developments in the region where he spent years deploying military assets that Obama would later pull back.Everyone already knew that, but the Mail made it into something that could be reported, and Drudge is featuring what is, essentially, the news of nothing.
A request for comment from the former president was met with a non-response from his communications director Freddy Ford, who told MailOnline: 'I don’t have a comment for you. When he left office President Bush decided not to criticize his successor.'
With so many newsworthy things happening right now — the VA scandal eclipsed, the Bratquake reduced to a 1-day story, the Lois Lerner spoliation, Bergdahl (Bergdahl? Who's Bergdahl?), Hillary snapped — the news of nothing rises to the top and just sits there.
What is the ever-enigmatic Drudge trying to say?
Nothing?
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৪৮টি মন্তব্য:
The Hound of the Baskervilles as Rehnquist once alluded...
spoliation
is perhaps the greatest word in the dictionary.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=spoliation&btnG=Submit&oq=&gs_l=&pbx=1
Once more, thanks.
In this case, "No comment" is a very large comment indeed, and especially from W. He would normally be at least nominally supportive.
Bush ain't Jimmy Carter. In fact neither of the Bushs are Jimmy Carters.
Past presidents, by tradition, keep their mouths shut. Jimmy was just a 'bitter clinger', as Obama would say.
Good chance Obama will be one to. He has no character and will be a lonely man when he leaves office (or is kicked out.)
I saw Mr. Bush on the Tonight Show just before Jay Leno just before Leno retired. Leno asked him why he doesn't comment on Obama's policies and he said that he didn't think it was useful for former presidents to comment on the current president. When asked to comment about the flak President Obama was getting, much like he had gotten, he just grinned a little ruefully.
Hagar said...
In this case, "No comment" is a very large comment indeed, and especially from W. He would normally be at least nominally supportive.
Actually, he has refrained from comment positive or negative. But when your spokesperson says Bush has a policy of not "criticizing" his successor (rather than not commenting) the message isn't really that sly.
'I don’t have a comment for you. When he left office President Bush decided not to criticize his successor.'
So, if he did have a comment, it would be criticism. I like that nuance, in a "when did you stop beating your wife" way.
There is no question about it. W is a class act. The libruls always tried to portray him as a rube and a cowboy fixated by My Pet Goat.
He's a class act, and I miss him.
- Krumhorn
Juxtaposition.
"At day’s end: darkness comes?
The hell it does. Light goes.
What comes is verbal symbol for the negative.
We sense little but in relation to its opposite. It takes hard stone to make us tingle to soft flesh, a desert to delineate the water, and hatred to make clear how rich is love."
- William Christopher Stevens
"Drudge has looked like this for quite a while"
I confused it with American Idol,...
When did Hillary snap?
Then there is the IRS-not-having-the-emails story. Another story about "nothing".
I can remember when the WaPo had headlines saying, essentially: No new news in Watergate today. It's a way to keep a subject alive or imply the existance of nefarious secrets unrevealed. "Stay tuned ...." So to speak.
Criticizing Obama would be the worst thing Bush could do, in terms of shifting the spotlight off America's Last Black President. They're already trying to blame Bush for not psychically foreseeing that Obama would be too stupid and incompetent to extend the SOFA during his administration.
"Nothing" defines the NY Times coverage of the missing e-mails and the ridiculous story the administration put out about "losing them."
What Drudge is saying is we conservatives have had it with George W. Bush's phony Christian routine. Christians are supposed to call out liars like Obama.
"When he left office President Bush decided not to criticize his successor."
That certainly leaves open the possibility of praising his successor, should an occasion ever arise.
It's time for Bush to talk, IMHO. Obama is pissing on the graves of all those who gave their lives to bring Iraq out of Saddam Hussein's torment.
Or, the Iraqi military should be given Skil chainsaws so they can start beheading ISIS shits more efficiently than ISIS can behead everyone with knives.
When the extraordinary becomes the status quo there is nothing to report.
I wonder whether George W. Bush ever reflects on the enormity of the chaos and human misery he unleashed when he decided to topple Saddam. I suspect he thinks that, all things considered, he did good. Otherwise, how could he live with himself?
Bush will compliment if appropriate. His silence communicates the obvious.
Or maybe GWB was told by some of his advisers that he would be stepping in it by forcing a democracy on Iraq, or anywhere else, for that matter, but he chose to agree with the wrong advisers.
We'll never know, for sure.
jd
What's with the blue ties?
You want news of something?
OK how about this:
"The Turkish government recently cut off the flow of the Euphrates River, threatening primarily Syria but also Iraq with a major water crisis."
http://stratrisks.com/geostrat/19676
I think the no comment policy is smart and classy
Meanwhile, President Alfred E. Newman goes to another fundraising and golfing weekend!
Don't Worry, Be Happy!
For a foreign policy matter it is common to give a non-answer about the necessity for standing together, etc. blah, blah, without getting into any specific praise or criticism.
A flat "no comment" and "no comment to the no comment" is unusual.
W shouldn't say anything, that's what past presidents used to do until Carter was trounced. Then he went around the world and whined. Clinton did the same.
Eisenhower did take Kennedy to task after the Bay of Pigs, I think, but it was privately.
Drudge is subtly saying that, events in the ME would normally call for comment about obama's weak foreign policy & the disaster that has been allowed to happen, depicting W. who invested so much into Iraq's stability.
Implication & visual metaphor.
Show me one instance where this phenomenally igorant, ncarcisstic poseur has take good advice or made one informed decision in the White House. Never happened and it never will. Why should Bush waste his breath?
Did we get our guys out of Balad/Baghdad? If not, his ass shouldn't be seen anywhere near a golf course.
Paul Kircher wrote:
I wonder whether George W. Bush ever reflects on the enormity of the chaos and human misery he unleashed when he decided to topple Saddam. I suspect he thinks that, all things considered, he did good. Otherwise, how could he live with himself?
Do you ever think about the chaos and human misery if he didn't? Do you ever think about the human misery of oBama not leaving a residual force to secure the stablity we had achieved?
Prior to us going into Iraq it wasn't exactly a kite flying utiopia.
W won the war. After mistakes (and in any war there are mistakes) understood what the surge could do. Left O a big task but could have been done better if he had not screwed it up royally. This started as W's war but ends in O's defeat instead of victory.
Althouse and Drudge chronicle the unraveling of the rule of law and American principles. We watch and read numbly with our mouths open. The constant babble of analysis, commentary, congressional hearings, speeches results in "nothing." We are waiting for someone to tell us what to do, but we are unfortunately still too divided against each other to take any effective action. Voting out Eric Cantor is not going to do it. Voting in Hillary is not going to do it. A comment from Bush is not going to do it. "Nothing" to do.
Back in 2010 ol' Lonesome Joe Biden predicted that Iraq would be one of the greatest achievements of the Obama administration.
Scary thought: what if he's right?
If W were to comment, he knows the Leftards would make him the center of the story. By not saying anything, the spotlight remains on Obama. He avoids being made a distraction and history gets to take the full measure of Obama. We watch as Obama's actions, and his actions alone, define his presidential legacy
GWB acts as an ex-president ought to. Not like Jimmy Carter (going around badmouthing the country).
There's an old proverb: If you can't say something good, don't say anything.
#emptychair
"We are waiting for someone to tell us what to do, but we are unfortunately still too divided against each other to take any effective action."
It's the other way around. We are still too physically intermingled and economically intertwined to express our mutual hatred and contempt with organized violence.
He's trying to remind us of all the effort that the country put into Iraq... which is symbolized by W... Drudge isn't commenting about Bush. He's commenting about us, and the blood and sweat and tears and energy that we all put into the country during the W years. Remember all that??!!! What was it all for?
you missed the significance of the PR spokesmans comment. "the President decided NOT TO CRITICIZE" that is he is following the edict of, if you cant say something nice, don't say anything. Speaks VOLUMES.
"the blood and sweat and tears and energy that we all put into the country during the W years. Remember all that??!!! What was it all for?"
Apparently, it was for Obama to piss away.
jdallen wrote:
Or maybe GWB was told by some of his advisers that he would be stepping in it by forcing a democracy on Iraq, or anywhere else, for that matter, but he chose to agree with the wrong advisers.
And he'd also be stepping in it if he let containment continue in free fall while Sadaam continued to be a threat for WMD's and there was the potential of WMD making their way to Al Qaeda who had sought out nukes.
It was US policy since 1998 to call for regime change AND a transition to democracy. The only issue was how to achieve it.
Having achieved regime change and then fighting insurgents we had finally achieved stability. As bad as Maliki is he is no Sadaam Hussein. And if we had set up a moderately democratic govt, he could be voted out. Us remaining there could have maintained the integrity of that govt and strenghtened it as time went on.
ISIS would not have dared to attack if we had 10,000 troops there unless they wanted to lose ISIS capability to fight wars.
Because ISIS is well trained, but no match for 10,000 US soldiers and Air power and drone strikes all waged against it. It wouldn't dare in the first place, but if it tried it would be decimated the same way Sadaaam' army was decimated during the invasion.
And here it is Sunday, and Drudge's main page has hardly changed at all. Is Matt ill, perhaps?
"ISIS would not have dared to attack if we had 10,000 troops there unless they wanted to lose ISIS capability to fight wars."
Obama fucked up. Big time.
"Apparently, it was for Obama to piss away."
When you treat the entire task of governing as just an exercise in spin, there are no bad moves, only moves that require more spin than others. These clowns never got out of campaign mode because the concept of governing was beyond their collective core competency. Welcome to the new normal brother.
"Promises to review options"
Let's hope this commitment doesn't force the delay of a Tee Time, or -gasp- the complete cancellation of a golf outing.
Why should W say anything? Res ipsa loquitur.
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