Thompson's Tactics

This is such a wealth of info that it's worth a transcription ...

Diane, that's tactics. We don't know what the President knows in terms of intelligence as to uh, how they can pinpoint where Osama bin Laden is right now. I think the point is clearly he's there. Clearly he's somewhere along the Afghan/Pakistan uh, border. And clearly, he's still giving orders. Uh ... and the even broader concern that Americans should have is that Al Qaeda is still - uh - out there in the world there in Western Europe, they're in the United States, they're in Iraq. Uh ... Iraq is part of the global effort - the global war - that AQ and radical fundamental Muslim have been carrying on against us for some time. We didn't pay attention to it for a while. But we are now. And we're finding that there's a global war going on against us. And we'd better figure out a way to contain it because it's going to be with us for a long time ...

Three points to take from this:

- When the Clinton administration knew there was a war against America, what was it again that Fred and his fellow Republicans were focused on?

- Note how Fred starts off trying to pass the buck on the President's intel ... and then follows with not one, not two, but three "clearly"s that he seems to exclude.

- Lastly, recall Matt Bai's late interview with John Kerry in 2004. According to our Republican friends, the comment that we would never fully eliminate terrorism, but rather contain it as we do crime, struck them as insufficiently hawkish. Curious why Fred's "containment" approach isn't getting the same?