Think Progress has the video, here is the transcript from tonight’s NBC News. Tim Russert reports on a bit of a palace revolt.
WILLIAMS: Tonight we’re also able to report new and exclusive details on the politics of the war in Iraq, specifically involving President Bush and members of his own party. For that we are joined by our Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert. What do we know?
RUSSERT: Brian, all eyes on the Republican Party. How long will they support the president’s position on the Iraq war? Yesterday may have been a defining pivotal moment. At 2:30 in the afternoon in the private quarters of the White House, the Solarium room, 11 Republican congressmen had a private meeting with the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the chief political adviser Karl Rove and the White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and others. It was headed by Mark Kirk of Illinois and Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania. It was, in the words of one of the parties, the “most unvarnished conversation they’ve ever had with the president.” Another member said he has met with three presidents and never have been so candid. They told the president, and one said, “My district is prepared for defeat. We need candor, we need honesty, Mr. President.” The president responded, “I don’t want to pass this off to another president. I don’t want to pass this off, particularly, to a Democratic president,” underscoring he understood how serious the situation was. Brian, the Republican congressman then went on to say, “The word about the war and its progress cannot come from the White House or even you, Mr. President. There is no longer any credibility. It has to come from Gen. Petraeus.” The meeting lasted an hour and 15 minutes and was, in the words of one, “remarkable for the bluntness and no-holds-barred honesty in the message delivered by all these Republican congressmen.”
WILLIAMS: And Tim, in the seconds remaining, how did the president react, and how then did this affect the instructions for Vice President Cheney heading off to Iraq.
RUSSERT: One congressman said, “How can our sons and daughters spill their blood while the Iraqi government goes on vacation?” The president responded, “The vice president is over there to tell them, do not go on vacation.”
Tim, as always, thanks.
I find it interesting that this delegation was led by Charlie Dent and Mark Kirk. Dent is a second-term congressman from Allentown, Pennsylvania. He sits on the Homeland Security and Transportation committees, but he has no seniority. Mark Kirk is a fourth-term congressman from Northbrook, Illinois. He sits on Appropriations, but he also has no seniority. Kirk is the U.S. Naval Reserves, and has been since 1989. Russert doesn’t say who the other nine congresspeople were, but it doesn’t sound like they were particularly high ranking either.
Update [2007-5-10 1:10:46 by BooMan]: Via the NYT’s the “delegation included Representatives Mark Kirk of Illinois, another leader of the moderate coalition; Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania; James T. Walsh of New York; and Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri.” Plus, Minority Leader Boehner (who let others speak), Ray LaHood of Illinois, and Tom Davis of Virginia.
In what was in Washingtonspeak ‘a frank exchange of views’, they told the President that he has no more credibility and that any news about Iraq must not come from the White House, but directly from General Petraeus. One of these Congressmen told the President that his district is ‘ready for defeat’. (Aside: I don’t know why Republicans insist on defining things as victory vs. defeat).
This seems like somewhat of a watershed moment. It’s significant that these are rank and file Republicans. They went around the leadership to talk to the President and his team directly. And it sounds pretty clear that they communicated their refusal to mouth Rove’s talking points and remain resolved. The moment we’ve been waiting for seems to have arrived. The Republicans are cracking. We just need to keep the pressure on.
Aravosis is reporting that the Blue Dogs are gonna cave tomorrow.
I think maybe we’ve been punked.
Our National Media. Timmeh, the “Most Respected Journalist in America”, and this is what we get. It sounds like a report on Paris Hilton’s in camera arguments. Or maybe what took place in the Ladies Room in London when Lindsay Lohan was snorting up.
Is ther any meat left in this stale-ass faux hamburger?
Yeah, but…
What if Bush and his handlers are not Republicans?
Not really.
What if they do not give a shit about “Republicans”?
OR Democrats?
What if their entire game is being played on another level?
What if they WANT a constitutional crisis?
Or…what if their real game is to collapse the government and society of the U.S. completely? Paving the way for true government by corporation.
Government of, by and for the dollar.
The only power left standing.
What then?
These lower level congressmen leave the Oval Office, and there sit Rove, Cheney and the rest, laughing their asses off at the ongoing success of their plans.
From Ron Suskind’s 2004 NY Times article Without a Doubt
The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
What if their current “new reality” is almost totally unthinkable to those who still live within the box of American history. Of Civics 101 as it is taught to us all in school.
What then, bubbas?
What then?
If you look at the actions that they have taken…from the Clinton honeytrap and the audacious theft of the 2000 election right on through to today…with the idea in mind that they have been engaged in trying to END the government and society of the United States as it has stood for a couple of centuries, then and ONLY then do their actions make sense. The only other possible explanation is total incompetence, and if that is the case then they are strangely selective in their incompetencies, because when it has suited their purposes…especially politically…they have suddenly turned exceptionally competent.
Reptoids out to destroy our society and enslave us?
Republitoids.
Satan’s slaves, out fishing for souls?
Representatives of hostile foreign governments?
Worse…representatives of a NEW form of “government”, multi-national corporations.
Corprocracy.
These makes more sense than any OTHER set of explanations, once you look clearly at their actions.
Ye shall know them by their fruits.
Hmmmmmm….
Later…
AG
Arthur, you’ve been reading way to much William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. I ain’t saying you’re wrong, because our current situation resembles nothing so much as a cheesy 1970s SF TV miniseries. Hell, we’ve even got the cyborg in the person of our VP.
No “Leadership” involved?
“It’s significant that these are rank and file Republicans. They went around the leadership to talk to the President “
So what is John “Suntan Johnny” Boehner?
that was in the update.
If there is anyone out there that believes for one single second that that liar in the wh is telling anything but another lie, they are either pulling a rip van winkle or is one of the miniscule coolade drinkers that follow the Liar.
And, to believe that porker biased slob on nbc makes it another joke. “he doesn’t want to leave this horror to the next pres”- my ass! That is exactly what his plan is. Every single action coming from the wh is backed by an overall plan to enhance the historic place of the piece of garbage and is also based on the overall plan of the neos that direct the stooge.
WOW! I do sound angry! AND GUESS WHAT-I AM!
Not buying it, especially from NBC.
You know what I’m waiting for. Reality
M. Defarge
The only anti-Illuminati candidate!
They own all the other Manchurians!
Do you think the congressman who said his district is ready for defeat was referring to his own election rather than the occupation of Iraq?
Mark Kirk a moderate? Oh, yeah. That’s his line for the two months before each election. His district is largely white and largely rich and very rich. Still, there is a strong liberal contingent there. He has been master tightrope walker. Poor baby, must really be feeling the heat.
they told the President that he has no more credibility and that any news about Iraq must not come from the White House, but directly from General Petraeus
This is unadulterated BS. No active military person can go before the public and go against orders (likely hidden)from the White house. To do so would be against the code. This is also true for anyone in the executive branch, but the penalties for violation are not as potentially draconian.
Actually many have been looking to the media for blaming-allowing the current propaganda blitz under this administration, but I believe a good whistle-blower law which included the military and all branches of civilian government would work better!
So they’re figuring out that people don’t buy it when McCaine and others go on their little photo-ops (accompanied by enough troops and attack ‘copters) to prove the surge is working…. so they think that if Patraeus instead of Tony Snow or the Shrub recites the current talking points, it will be enough? Though I think it was significant that they went and also that someone on the Republican side obviously “leaked” this to the media.
My biggest qualm is that the reason Cheney is there to tell them “don’t go on vacation” has more to do with the fact that it appears that the nationalist factions of the Iraqi parliment are putting their collective feet down and refusing to ratify the much-desired hydrocarbon law. On Tuesday, they sent a collective petition, signed by 144 out of 275 MPs, calling for the US to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. This didn’t even make a peep in the MSM here, but could have triggered Cheney’s surprise visit.
At stake — the hydrocarbon law, the one “benchmark” it appears both Republicans and Democrats seem to agree is of paramount importance for the Iraqi government to meet… and the one that will screw them over the most for the next three decades, at least. And there are a lot of Iraqis who are very aware of that, and are willing to resist it, despite all the persuasions the Bush admin. (or its local hit squads) can present.
When Bush said “as they stand up, we’ll stand down…” I’m sure this is not the kind of standing up he had in mind — a weak, divided Iraq, unable to resist the plundering of its gas and oil resources is what they have wanted all along.
So this will be interesting to watch for the next few weeks…. The civil war in Iraq has never really been about religious sects, it’s been about the balance of political power and control of those oil and gas resources. So if the Iraqi parliment stands up, and votes to ask the US forces to set a timetable and LEAVE…. will we stand down?