Clarification/Follow-up by SanchoPanza on 09/26/04 10:28 am:
Do you play cards?
It is rare to play your trump cards before you have to.
I think that meticulous atention to detail may prevent Kerry from launching an attack on his opponents and then coming unstuck through "faulty" intelligence. I'm sure Kerry didn't need to fill his hand with all the details he gathered, in order to make his move but at least he checked up on the validity of his argument and had the back up to call his oppenents bluff if they tried to spin their way out of it.
If Kerry is known to make that kind of effort then people are unlikely to try to bafle him with bullsh*t. If an opponent tries to stonewall a question with "I don't have the details right here, the best counter is "Well actually I do"

Clarification/Follow-up by voiceguy2000 on 09/26/04 10:48 am:
I am not sure I follow the card-playing analogy. Failure to play a particular card at a particular time is ambiguous. It may mean that the player does not have the card. It may mean that the player is not skilled enough to recognize when to play it. And much depends on all of the other strategic factors and circumstances, as perceived by that player. In many cases a trump card is perfectly useless, or becomes useless.

I do agree that "meticulous at[t]ention to detail may prevent Kerry from launching an attack on his opponents." I think this was true of Carter as well. When I was working in Washington, D.C. during the Carter administration, people I knew at the White House were absolutely furious with Carter's insistence on fact-gathering and micro-management, which tended to paralyze everything. The fact is that events move too quickly for academic scrutiny, and decisions must be made on the basis of incomplete information all the time. Carter gathered around him a coterie of comparative strangers who had widely differing agendas and no particular inclination to work together or to present anything resembling a common front. Again, I see these signs in Kerry.

Suppose, however, that launching an attack is the needed course of action? What if we could have prevented the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington by launching a preemptive attack somewhere? Would that not have been the right thing to do? From all indications, Kerry would have gathered information until it was too late to act.

The issue of the so-called faulty intelligence has been hashed out to death. The fact is that the statement made by Bush in January, 2003 -- that British Intelligence had reported that Iraq had "sought" yellowcake uranium in Niger -- is true. British Intelligence said that then, and stands by that report today. It is undisputed that representatives from Iraq went to Niger as reported, and Niger's main export is uranium (from French-run mines). The only other export is livestock-related products, hardly something that Iraq would be interested in.

Moreover, just this weekend there are numerous reports of Syria seeking to unload onto Iran a bunch of Iraqi nuclear scientists that Syria took in and concealed during the last hours before the U.S. invasion. How much of Saddam Hussein's WMD assets ended up in Syria and Iran? How much remains in the trackless desert areas of Iraq?

Throughout the Clinton administration and around the world, there was widespread agreement that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He had used them, and bragged about them. I don't doubt that U.S. intelligence had its shortcomings -- particularly after the gelding it received under previous administrations, going back to the Church hearings -- but the U.S. was hardly alone in its opinions.

Meanwhile, the whole point of the New York Times article is how easy, in fact, it is to "baf[f]le him [Kerry] with bullsh*t." His own staff people recognize that Kerry tends to go with the last point of view presented to him. This is disturbing.

If skill in running the U.S. government was about having the greatest quantity of facts and details in mind, the top posts would be held by college professors. And international problems would be handled in accordance with the slow train wreck that is Darfur. I, for one, am not interested in installing that model in the White House.

Clarification/Follow-up by SanchoPanza on 09/26/04 11:53 am:
Not at all the skill is in using your knowledge to best effect, rather than pushing ahead with your agenda in ignorence. The Yellowcake argument is purely circumstantial and in no way substantiates that Iraq had any weapons. The American administration had better realise that smug self satisfaction doesn't cut it with the rest of the world. At least Kerry is doing his homework and I guess that as he approached the issue at the right time and place it looks like he gets his staff to file their asignments on time.
There is an indian saying which goes: You can never fire the last bullet. In that once you have you hhave nothing left. The same goes for trump cards, if you win the hand without playing your trump card in life, you get to keep it until next time.

Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 09/27/04 6:53 am:
a better one would be the chess player who is not constrained by the clock but cannot decide to either push his pawn or to' en passant'.this leads to the type of decision making that is evident in the U.N.'s weak response to the attrocities at Darfur.

Clarification/Follow-up by Yiddishkeit on 09/27/04 8:40 am:
Elliot-

[concerning your comments]

**indecisiveness is very comparable to flip-flops**

Ok, so we disagree...fair enough. I just don't see it. Not being able to make a decision (indecisiveness) is not at all comparable to angling both sides or changing in mid-course (flip-flops). I do agree thought that some of the slow to react and some of the foreign policies of the Carter administration were definite failures.

Lieberman has more savvy, demeanor, probably better advisors, and is more likable once people get to know him....than Kerry. Lieberman is in the older-style Democrat mold. In my book that's why I find him comparable to Pres. Carter and why I would vote for Joe in a heartbeat.



Bobby

Clarification/Follow-up by Saladin on 09/29/04 1:50 pm:

So, there isn't going to be a big Medicare hike? That's funny, I have just been notified by the SS folks that my premium is rising by 11%. I will now ignore it.