The Opinionated Bastard

1. Winning The Info War: Email transcripts of the White House Press Briefings the Same Day.

One of the reasons I started blogging was that way back when, before the Iraq War, I subscribed to the mailing list the State Department sends out of the previous days press briefing. From that I learned:

• Reporters are Idiots. They have no knowledge of history, even of say, last week’s history. My picture of a typical press room reporter is of some hung-over fat guy, trying to come up with a “gotcha” question to meet his deadline.

• The Nightly News Lies. I don’t expect them to take what the Administration says at face value. However, I expect them to at least be decent stenographers; they should at least be able to repeat what the Administration said correctly. It wasn’t Bush who hyped up the danger of Iraq, it was the media. For instance, on 8 separate occasions, when Bush was asked the question about Al Queda-Saddam links, he said No. Strange but true.

But that’s the State Department which releases transcripts a day late. The White House doesn’t release transcripts (idiots). If you want to counter the misinformation that’s out there, you have to provide the correct information.

Whatever reason the White House has for not emailng anyone who wants one a transcript is just stupid. Get over it.

2. Winning the Info War: Ask America coming soon to you on Arab TV

One of the ways General Petraeus won hearts and minds in Fallujah was that he hosted a weekly radio call-in show where he answered questions. We need to do the same thing on Arab satellite TV. I realize Bush comes from this “actions speak louder then words” mentality, but that’s just crap.

Perception is Reality

We need to start working hard to change the world perception of what we’re doing. That will mean eating a little crow, and saying “yeah, Iraq could be going better” but I’ve learned throughout my life that denying responsibility doesn’t get you anywhere, but accepting responsibility gets you laurels.

3. Winning the Info War: Publish the President’s Briefing Books

The White House should publish the documents from the briefings that led to the decision to go to war. Yeah, we might have to black portions of them out, and they might embarrass some other countries, but at this point we need to be more open, not less.

4. Winning in Iraq: A Thousand Points of Light

The US Government just loves fat cats. They want to hand off reconstruction to a couple of guys and go home.

That’s pretty much why we’re not doing so well. What we really needed to do was instead of handing off reconstruction to KBR/Halliburton or a couple of big firms, we had to hand it off to a bunch of little guys. No paperwork, just say “If such and such street is clean by such and such date, we’ll pay you $X.”

One of the great stupidities of the way this war was conducted is that we ran it like it was a United States public works project. Lots of paperwork, lots of politicing. Far better for Iraq if we fund 100 tiny building companies doing 1000 then funding 10 companies. We need to build small businessmen in Iraq.

I blame the rich kids in the State Department for this, because rich kids never quite get how America works.

5. Push forward local elections

The wrong guys got elected in Iraq, we took a census instead of an election. We need to push forward across the country and start electing local leaders who are more interested in getting shit done then in promoting their particular political party.

That in turn, will put more local pressure on the legislature to move their asses, because we’ll have created a crop of local politicians who will be more then ready to step into the legislators shoes if they don’t get their act together.