By popular demand

Someone wanted me to post about Woodward's book and the Foley mess.

Ok, here goes.

First Foley. He is a pervert who doesn't belong in congress. He resigned from congress just barely in front of being expelled and this is a good thing. Right now it doesn't look like he had physical sexual contact with any underage boys, but the investigation is still ongoing. If it turns out that he laid a hand on anyone below the age of consent then he should be jailed for as long as the law allows.

I have heard the term "pedophilia" used to describe Foley. He is not. A pedophile is someone who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children. Foley is called an Ephebophile. Ephebophilia is the sexual attraction to postpubescent adolescents. Sexual attraction to teenagers in the 16 – 18 year old range is not uncommon in either heterosexual or homosexual adults. Just think of the Catholic school girl fantasy that is exploited so frequently in erotic film or photography.

What set Foley apart was not that he found a 16 year old attractive what set him apart was a profound lack of self control. EVERYONE has desires which their culture considers inappropriate. For example if I actually acted on my impulses when some idiot cuts me off in traffic I would be sitting on death row for “murder with special circumstances”.

Foley acted in a way which his society considers absolutely inappropriate and he is paying the consequences. His behavior was selfish and immoral, and if it went beyond dirty IMs, criminal.

If you want to look at the political angle consider this. Back when the Democrats controlled the house a Democrat congressman was found to be actually having sex with an underage female page. He was censured, but not asked to resign. When other pages came forward and made accusations of inappropriate conduct from House members the Democrat leadership summarily ruled them “unreliable” and dismissed their testimony.

Contrast that with the way Republicans are dealing with Foley and ask yourself who you want running the institution.

As for Woodward’s book, I haven’t read it so I can’t comment in detail. However I will say this. Woodward’s first two books about the Bush Administration at war presented a very complementary view of the Bush White House. In fact the second book about the run up to the Iraq war was listed on the RNC website as recommended reading.

The question I have is this. Is it plausible to think that the entire Administration, its character and competence, has done a complete 180 degree change in just a couple of years?

Either Woodward was utterly wrong in his first two books and is only now waking up or he was right in the first two books and is wrong now. Why would he change his tone now? Perhaps the fact that he caught a great deal of heat from his fellow left-liberals for telling the truth in the first two books prompted him to engage in some “damage control”?

There are only two ways to look at this. Either Woodward is a terrible judge of character and an incompetent commentator on military and political affairs or he is dishonest. Whichever way you look at it Woodward’s book doesn’t appear to be a particularly good source of information.

Oh, I think the NIE was also mentioned.

The National Intelligence Estimate is a compilation of analysis from across the intelligence community. As such it is a collection of bureaucratic ass covering. These analysts are the same people who were absolutely convinced that Saddam had massive stockpiles of chemical weapons and a vigorous nuclear weapons research program.

When President Bush took the data that these people gave him about Iraq’s WMD and used it as one of about 20 other reasons why we needed to invade and depose Saddam the left shrieked “Bush lied, people died”. Now they are ready to cherry pick some statements from this same group of people and treat it as gospel.

It would seem that the left, like Woodward, is either a poor judge of character and an incompetent commentator on military and political affairs, or is simply dishonest.

I vote for both.