Coulter has always claimed that Democrats are traitorous because they don't support America in its wars. After all, she wrote a whole book on the topic. In this week's column she tries to make her point by quoting Democrats on … their support of a war?
After some of us began to ask which part of the war on terrorism Democrats support, Larry Kudlow put the question directly to Rep. Barney Frank on CNBC's "Kudlow & Company." Frank said: "What part of the war on terrorism do I support? I voted for war in Afghanistan."
Coulter neglects to mention that she was a guest on this show, so she was able to insult Frank to his face. His complete response actually went like this:
Well, first of all, a very big part, and I am appalled at the extent to which for partisan and ideological debate purposes, Ms. Coulter and others have ignored the war in Afghanistan… I think it was necessary for us to do it … and now I find for partisan purposes, they've made that war disappear.
What part of the war on terrorism do I support? I voted for war in Afghanistan. That was the war that we launched after September 11th. It was Osama bin Laden who engineered September 11th. He was in Afghanistan. The situation in Afghanistan, tragically, is eroding, and that's, I think, in part because of the war in Iraq. So I very much support that number one war in terrorism in Afghanistan.
Coulter continues:
The one part of the war on terror … Democrats even pretend to support is the war in Afghanistan.
Coulter just quoted Frank as supporting the war in Afghanistan. She also cited Nancy Pelosi’s support and pointed out that virtually every Democrat in Congress voted for the Afganistan war. So how can she justify claiming the Democratic support of the Afghanistan is "pretend?"
Coulter then veers off into territory usually reserved for Miss Cleo by predicting the future in an alternate universe:
If Bush had gone to war with Iraq immediately after 9/11 and waited to attack Afghanistan, Democrats would now be pretending to support the Iraq war while pointlessly carping about Afghanistan. Afghanistan didn't attack us on 9/11! The Taliban didn't attack us! What's our exit strategy? How do you define "victory" in Afghanistan, anyway? It's a quagmire — aahhhhh!
Obviously this is pure conjecture, conveniently drawn to support her own opinions about Democrats. Sorry Ann, you're a lawyer and should know that it’s unethical to manufacture your own evidence.
The beauty of Democrats' pretending to be hawks on Afghanistan is that most people can't remember what liberals said five minutes after they said it, much less five years later.
Now, to support her claims, she needs to pretend that the majority of Americans have inadequate memories. She then makes it sound like Democrats didn't support the war back when it was new:
In October 2001, Sen. Joe Biden gave a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations saying that America's air war in Afghanistan made the United States look like "this high-tech bully that thinks from the air we can do whatever we want to do."
First, that quote was not part of Biden's speech, but was an answer to a question asked at the event — a shameless mischaracterization of what Biden said. Courtesy of The Washington Post, here is the full quote: (emphasis added)
Asked about the risks of failing to defeat the Taliban in the next four weeks, before the onset of winter in Afghanistan, Biden replied that public opinion in the United States and the Muslim world will tolerate continued combat so long as "it is action that is mano a mano … going against other forces on the ground."
He continued, "The part that I think flies in the face of and plays into every stereotypical criticism of us is we're this high-tech bully that thinks from the air we can do whatever we want to do, and it builds the case for those who want to make the case against us that all we're doing is indiscriminately bombing innocents, which is not the truth."
Biden was concerned about the public perception of America by the civilian population at home and abroad, but Coulter distorts what he said to make it sound like he was being critical of the military's efforts.
Coulter continues by claiming Democrats are poor military analysts:
In an Oct. 27, 2001, column titled "How to Lose a War," New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote that the Taliban "are proving Viet Cong-like in their intractability." He stated categorically that "we're losing that battle for Afghan hearts and minds" — proving Rich to be as competent a military analyst as any longtime New York Times theater critic could reasonably be expected to be.
Say, when is the Times going to hire generals to review the latest Broadway offerings? I think more people would like to read Tommy Franks' review of "Rent" than Frank Rich's review of a war.
Never one to pass up an opportunity to slam the New York Times, Coulter seems of the opinion that people are only allowed opinions on a single topic, though apparently she is special and is allowed opinions on pretty much everything. Even though Coulter claims the Taliban were "sent scurrying" only five weeks after the U.S. invaded, it looks like they are back.
In the five years since we invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban are still very present in the area, and Pakistan tacitly allows them to operate across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The British were forced to pull out of one area in Afghanistan because they were taking too many losses from the Taliban.
The fighting in Afghanistan has largely been turned over to NATO, and is not going as well as it could. From Time:
Control of Panjwai, which lies so close to the political heart of the Afghan south, is vital, and it seems NATO's hold on the district is slipping. Lieutenant General David Richards called Operation Medusa, a "significant success," but weeks later the Taliban have come back with a vengeance, staging large-scale attacks on NATO bases in the area and scotching NATO claims that they had driven the Taliban out of Panjwai.
Worst of all, the Afghan people may be losing confidence in Western forces:
Akbar Khakrizwal, a tribal elder and former security official in Kandahar city said the Taliban are gaining strength in Panjwai on a daily basis. "For more than four months NATO has been fighting in Panjwai district, " he said, "and they cannot drive 500 Taliban away, or kill them or arrest them. They have the wrong strategy." He contended that NATO troops are playing into the hands of the Taliban. "NATO are very impatient when the Taliban attack them from a residential area and they reply by bombing, and that is what the Taliban want. They want to make NATO look bad."
Ironically, that's exactly what Biden said in 2001, and what Coulter criticizes him for saying in her column this week.
Sources:
October 27th, 2006
Posted by
Eric |
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It is odd to see a lawyer arguing against justice, but that's exactly what Coulter does in this week's column. She focuses on the conviction of Lynne Stewart, a defense attorney convicted of helping her client, Omar Abdel-Rahman, send messages to terrorists in Egypt. Stewart was recently sentenced to 28 months rather than the 30 years sought by the prosecution.
In Coulter's mind, this is due entirely to the fact that the presiding judge, John G. Koeltl, was appointed by Coulter’s life-long nemesis, Bill Clinton.
At Stewart's sentencing, the judge noted that the defendant's actions had not resulted in any deaths. I'll have to remember that in case I'm ever on trial for attempted murder…
In rejecting a 30-year sentence in favor of a 28-month sentence, the judge commended Stewart for her "public service, not only to her clients, but to the nation" for representing members of the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground. In a sane world, that would have justified a longer sentence, not a shorter one.
There, Coulter is deliberately misleading her readers. Judge Koeltl did not praise Stewart specifically for representing defendants like the Black Panthers, but rather for a lifetime of public service defending "the poor, the disadvantaged and the unpopular." As a government-appointed lawyer, she made little money (unlike lawyers that become millionaires writing newspaper columns, books, and appearing on FOX News) and, according to an October 17 New York Times article, Stewart "helped [Matias Reyes] confess that he was the true attacker in the infamous Central Park jogger case, after others had been wrongfully convicted."
Rather than give her a slap on the wrist, Judge Koeltl's decision strongly condemns her actions. That same Times article continues:
The judge acknowledged that Ms. Stewart’s crimes were "serious, involved dishonesty and breach of trust," and led to "potentially lethal consequences"
… The judge pointed out that Ms. Stewart would lose her license to practice law as a result of her conviction and sentence, which he said was a form of punishment, and that she is barred from having any contact with Mr. Abdel Rahman. He said the chance that her crimes would recur was "nil," and noted there had been no evidence that anyone was harmed as a result of her actions.
He also mentioned that there was a "statistically significant" chance that Ms. Stewart’s breast cancer would recur.
Coulter claims this ruling shows that Democrats as a whole are not willing or able to fight terrorists. Coulter is participating in what is simply rank partisanship; she seems unable to conceive that anyone other than a rank-and-file Republican can defend America against terrorism. She goes so far as to say:
But Democrats think military tribunals aren't good enough for the terrorists plotting to kill Americans today. Liberals are going to make the terrorists love us! What better way to start than with criminal trials in front of judges like John Koeltl?
Yet, one thing that Coulter conveniently does not mention is that one of Stewart's co-defendants, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, received a sentence of 24 years in prison for his action in this case. That is hardly a slap on the wrist.
Sources:
October 22nd, 2006
Posted by
Eric |
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This week's Coulter column concentrates on the recent nuclear test, and how the nuclear militarization of North Korea is all Bill Clinton's fault. She even implies that Jimmy Carter is gay, claiming he believes Kim Il Sung is a "total stud." The North Korea nuclear test can even be blamed on the Lewinsky scandal:
Clinton promptly signed the [1994 Agreed Framework deal], so he could forget about North Korea and get back to cheating on Hillary.
That would be scandalous, indeed, but the Agreed Framework was signed in 1994 and Lewinsky didn't start working in the White House until 1995.
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea agreed to shut down the nuclear power plants at Yongbyon and to stop building an additional plant at Taechon. The nuclear reactors at both these facilities use uranium as fuel and ultimately generate plutonium, which can be used to build nuclear weapons. The Framework also specified that two light-water reactors would be built to provide electricity. Light-water reactors can not be used as effectively to create weapons-grade plutonium.
In 1994, the Republicans took over Congress and funding and construction of the light-water reactors stalled. Significant construction did not start until 2002.
Although she habitually denigrates the New York Times, she quotes it in this column to report North Korea's reactivation of their nuclear weapons program:
And then on Oct. 17, 2002 — under a new administration, you'll note — The New York Times reported on the front page, so you couldn't have missed it: "Confronted by new American intelligence, North Korea has admitted that it has been conducting a major clandestine nuclear weapons development program for the past several years."
It’s not clear what the Times means by "the past several years." Coulter claims that the North Koreans began their other weapons development program "before the ink was dry," presumably meaning in 1994. But the same Times article that Coulter quotes also says this:
…the government of Kim Jong Il began in the mid- or late-1990's a secret, parallel program to produce weapons-grade material from highly enriched uranium.
Presumably, this refers to a non-nuclear program to increase the uranium-235 content. Essentially, Coulter is blaming the Clinton administration for failing to stop a weapons program it didn't know about, one that may not even have existed at the time.
Coulter’s column is nothing more than an exercise in buck-passing. Even assuming the worst-case scenario, that the North Korean enrichment program began immediately after the Agreed Framework in early 1995, that means the program was in existence for six years under the Clinton administration. However, it also means that the program has been in existence for six years under the Bush administration, the last four years of which were not even in secret.
It is also not clear what Coulter is suggesting the Clinton administration should have done. Although she mocks and insults Clinton's administration for addressing this problem through diplomacy and negotiation, the approach of the Bush administration toward North Koreas weapons program — which it began in the mid-1980s — has not been significantly different.
Under the Bush administration, North Korea has:
- expelled weapons inspectors and shut down nuclear monitoring programs
- restarted the plutonium-producing nuclear reactors at Yongbyon
- processed enough spent uranium rods into plutonium for as many as seven devices
- actually tested (probably unsuccessfully) a nuclear weapon
So the evidence once again contradicts another of Coulter’s attempts to use Bill Clinton as a scapegoat for the current administration’s oversights.
Update: In the time since this was initially written, American intelligence sources have determined that the nuclear material used in the October 9 test was plutonium, not uranium. This means that its origin was not the uranium-enrichment program, but probably the Yongbyon reactor. This also means it was probably generated during the first Bush's administration or since North Korea pulled out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, during the current Bush administration.
Sources:
October 17th, 2006
Posted by
Eric |
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New York Magazine has a story this week on Steven Colbert of The Colbert Report
…with Coulter, there's always been a sturdy suspicion that she is playing a character (like Colbert) and amping up the obnoxious rhetoric for maximum effect (like Colbert). When I mention the comparison to Colbert, though, he seems surprised, even unnerved. "I don't really think about her much," he says. "She's a self-generating bogeyman. She's like someone who wants attention for having been bad." Given that he's hosted right-wing true believers like Joe Scarborough before, and has often said he'd love to have Bill O'Reilly on the show, would he ever invite Coulter as a guest? "My sense is that she's playing a character," he says. "I don't need another character. There's one character on my show, and that's me."
That raises the question : Does Coulter truly believe the outrageous things she says?
It's clear that she is respected by, and valuable to, the conservative media. She is regularly invited on shows like The O'Reilly Factor to give her opinion on everything from national security to evolutionary science despite having no training or expertise in these areas. Yet, sometimes the things she says are so inappropriate, so ridiculous, that one can't help but wonder if she is only pulling a Howard Stern and saying them for shock value. Is it all just a put-on to draw attention to her latest book and lure readers to her weekly column.?
Is it sincere, or is it shtick? Feel free to discuss in the comments.
October 15th, 2006
Posted by
Eric |
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Coulter's column this week (September 4, 2006) concerns the Mark Foley sex scandal, and how the Republican Representative’s behavior, the neglect of the Republican leadership, and their subsequent attempts to cover it up reflect badly on … Democrats. Seriously.
The object lesson of Foley's inappropriate e-mails to male pages is that when a Republican congressman is caught in a sex scandal, he immediately resigns and crawls off into a hole in abject embarrassment. Democrats get snippy.
Republican congressmen embroiled in sex scandals immediately resign? In the late 1990s, it was revealed that Henry Hyde had carried on a four-year adulterous affair with a woman while they were both married. Not only is he still a Representative, he's chairman of the House International Relations Committee. Newt Gingrich had a three-to-five-year adulterous affair (cheating on his second wife) with a House aide twenty-three years younger than himself. The affair was ongoing while he was not only a Representative, but the Speaker of the House. Don Sherwood was accused by his mistress of five years of trying to strangle her, yet he has not resigned.
Foley didn't claim he was the victim of a "witch-hunt." He didn't whine that he was a put-upon "gay American." He didn't stay in Congress and haughtily rebuke his critics.
No, Foley didn't claim he was the victim of a witch hunt. Dennis Hastert, however, has claimed that the Foley scandal is a great Democratic conspiracy to make the Republicans look bad. Apparently it wasn't ignoring inappropriate behavior, or attempting to cover up the scandal that makes them look bad.
Coulter then continues by remembering another sex scandal, this time from twenty-three years ago:
In 1983, Democratic congressman Gerry Studds was found to have sexually propositioned House pages and actually buggered a 17-year-old male page whom he took on a trip to Portugal. The 46-year-old Studds indignantly attacked those who criticized him for what he called a "mutually voluntary, private relationship between adults."
This is interesting, not for the facts that Coulter brings up, but for those she leaves out. In 1983 another Republican Representative, Dan Crane, was censured on the very same day as Gerry Studds. Crane’s fornication, however, was with a 17-year old girl.
This leads to the possibility that Coulter didn’t mention Crane’s or any other scandals not just because they involved Republicans, but because they were heterosexual. She makes a specific effort to mention that Studds "buggered" this page. I was not able to find online references that detailed any sex acts which took place, so unless Coulter has inside sources or was present during the "buggering," she is likely making assumptions. It's also not clear if she considers this more scandalous, with penile-vaginal sex less so.
The most disturbing possibility is that Coulter is attempting to imply that Foley's behavior with these young men is actually because of his homosexuality. She attempts to degrade Studds by saying he was "not shy about presenting his backside to a large group of men," referring to when Studds turned his back on the House when it censured him. She also falsely implies that the Studds affair was ongoing, involving more than one page (which it didn't, unlike in the Foley scandal).
An attempt by a conservative to falsely link homosexuality with pedophilia isn't far-fetched. In fact, prominant Republicans and "family"-oriented intitutions are now saying that very thing.
Several times, Coulter draws attention to Foley's newly-revealed homosexuality, and accuses Democrats of wanting to wiretap his phones "soley because Foley was rumored to be gay." This is, of course, untrue. No Democrats have suggested that Foley's phones should have been wiretapped at all, let alone because he was gay. What Democrats are saying, and some Republicans as well, is that the Republican leadership should not have ignored Foley’s behavior when it was brought to their attention some years ago, nor should they have tried to cover it up.
Sources:
October 8th, 2006
Posted by
Eric |
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