{"id":4777,"date":"2005-07-22T11:31:44","date_gmt":"2005-07-22T15:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4777.html"},"modified":"2005-07-22T11:31:44","modified_gmt":"2005-07-22T15:31:44","slug":"maybe-its-the-envoys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/maybe-its-the-envoys\/","title":{"rendered":"Maybe it’s the envoys"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Bush delivered his June 28 speech<\/a> on Iraq and the war on terrorism, one interested observer watched in disgust, knowing full well that the president wasn’t telling the nation the truth.<\/p>\n

The problem, at least from the White House’s perspective, is that observer was Bush’s hand-picked envoy to Afghanistan<\/a> after we invaded the country in 2001.<\/p>\n

“I was horrified by the president’s last speech on the war on terror [on June 28] — so much unsaid, so much disingenuous, so many half-truths,” James Dobbins told me. Dobbins was Bush’s first envoy to Afghanistan and is now director of international programs at the Rand Corp., a defense think tank.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dobbins has been what conservatives might call a “disgruntled former employee” for quite a while. He’s noted, for example, the president’s failure to follow through on his commitments to Afghanistan, arguing<\/a>, “Afghanistan remains the least-resourced nation-building exercise in the last 60 years.”<\/p>\n

But Dobbins’ response to his former boss’ recent claims is fairly devastating. Here we have the man Bush asked to oversee development in Afghanistan coming back and telling the nation that the White House is being “disingenuous” and intentionally trying deceive. When a Dem partisan says that, it’s immediately dismissed. When Bush’s former envoy to Afghanistan says it, the charges deserve more attention.<\/p>\n

It reminds me a bit of Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, who served as Bush’s hand-picked special envoy to the Middle East up until 2003. Describing his impression of the president’s policies in Iraq, Zinni said<\/a> he saw “at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption.”<\/p>\n

What does this tell us? If you’re a Republican, you see the need for the White House to choose better special envoys who will ignore reality and toe the party line. If you’re with the reality-based community, you see a White House with a misguided approach to foreign policy. Take your pick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Bush delivered his June 28 speech on Iraq and the war on terrorism, one interested observer watched in disgust, knowing full well that the president wasn’t telling the nation the truth. The problem, at least from the White House’s perspective, is that observer was Bush’s hand-picked envoy to Afghanistan after we invaded the country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}