A Medal of Freedom For Stephen Hadley?

William McGurn, former speechwriter for George Bush, offers an interesting idea that won't happen:

I suppose it's possible that George W. Bush would award Stephen J. Hadley the Medal of Freedom. Certainly the president's national security adviser has earned it, for work that made possible the success we are now seeing in Iraq. And it would be within the president's prerogative to see that work acknowledged with this honor before they both leave the White House come Jan. 20.

But how much better it would be all around -- for the country, for the recipient, and even for Barack Obama -- if Mr. Hadley were to receive this honor from the hands of the 44th president of the United States.

Now, Mr. Hadley is a former colleague of mine from the White House. We did not always see eye to eye, and I know this self-effacing man well enough to know he would be appalled to find anyone putting his name forward for a medal. Yet one fact trumps everything else: Without this good man's courage and persistence, there would have been no surge.

After explaining Hadley's role in developing the surge option, McGurn continues:

...At bottom, Mr. Obama's war stance boils down to reducing our presence in Iraq and increasing our presence in Afghanistan. The success of the surge permits him to carry out this strategy from a position of strength. In fact, the security pact just approved by Iraq's cabinet suggests that Mr. Obama is now in a position to achieve most of his Iraq aims without jeopardizing the hard-won gains our troops have made -- provided he keeps his word to listen to our commanders on the ground.

Awarding Steve Hadley the Medal of Freedom would cost Mr. Obama nothing, save possibly a few howls from the Daily Kos. Surely it is not beyond a candidate who has already conceded that the surge has "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams" to bestow the Medal of Freedom on the public servant who made that success possible.

Hmm.  I suspect the howls would come from more than the Daily Kos and would run at least 16 Words.  Just as a warm-up.  And don't get bogged down in logic, facts, or alternative explanations - Bush lied people died, vote Obama.

I don't see Obama engaging in that kind of leadership or statesmanship.  If Bush wants this he will have to do it himself.  And he probably ought to.

Comments

[Bill in AZ]

How about a pardon for Libby while he's at it...

[Greg Ransom]

Bush still has some left wing Democrats at the top of his "Medal of Freedom" list that he needs to take care of before he's going to waste any time with someone like Stephen Hadley.

[Greg Ransom]

I heard that Bush is going to give a "Medal of Freedom" award posthumously to Herbert Hoover.

[Appalled]

I don't think Obama is going to acknowledge the Surge worked in a public fashion. It goes against the mystique.

[Frau Jedöns]

Obama had a NLP implant that prevents him from even saying the word "surge."

[Mustang0302]

TM -

Have you seen Zombie's idea to declare 22Nov08: Victory in Iraq Day?

[sbw]

Ooh! I can't wait to raise my "Mission Accomplished" banner!

[Extraneus]

Hah. Do you think anyone saved the one from the carrier?

[Jane]

Oh gawd, my co-host brought up that "mission accomplished" banner on the radio today. That after he yelled that "no one" NO ONE ever wanted to lost the Iraq war.

People just need to get over themselves.

[Jane]

lost = lose

[JM Hanes]

Of course not, Jane. They just wanted to pretend we were losing every step of the way for political advantage.

[Jane]

If I live to be 100 I don't think I will ever get over the left's willingness to lose a war to make the President look bad. Never, ever, ever.

[matt]

it was their intentional refusal to recognize the facts that bothered me the most. And those who remained silent when they knew better. Liars, crooks and unpatriotic, the bunch of them.

[sbw]

Jane, at the time the banner was flown, the military mission had been accomplished. Saddam's regime had been routed. Besides, the banner was not Bush's banner and should not have been attributed to him.

The press and the pundits ran with what they wanted, no matter the lack of reality. Fakchekkers? We don't need no steenkin fakchekkers!

[clarice]

Me, neither, Jane. Never.

[bad]

...the left's willingness to lose a war to make the President look bad.

As my grandmother said, "Breeding tells."

[Thomas Collins]

See LUN for my nomination for Idiotic Indictments of the Year (I am hoping this is a hoax, but I doubt it).

Looks as if there is at least one South Texas prosecutor getting a head start on "Trurh Commission proceedings.

[Thomas Collins]

Whoops! That's "Truth." And I don't even have wild bacchanalian cruise carousing as an excuse!

[bad]

Thanks for that link Thomas. I wonder if Bush and Cheney will be fighting stupid charges like these for the rest of their lives.

[TCO]

Iraq is a clusterfuck. You kneejerk follow Bush anywhere need to stop with the crap. He's a liberal on economics. and he didn't know what the fuck he was doing with Iraq. Look at reality and make inferences from that. Rathewr than putting your worldview on top of the facts. I was for Iraq, but have the balls to admit it was a bad move.

[Pagar]

Bad, Based on the post after yours, I would say you can count on the stupid things continuing. The real sad thing is that probably 95 % of what Americans mean when they say things went wrong in Iraq is because the American leftists insisted on telling the world from day 1 that they would never support America and that anyone fighting America could count on their non support for this nation.

[trax]

Stephen J. Hadley doesn't remember getting the Able Danger chart.

Need I say more?

Keep up the phat work Hadley!

[trax]

Hmmm.. Medal of Freedom.. ?

For holding the line on Able Danger?

Hadley disappeared the Able Danger link chart. He's under the thumb. ; )

Keep up the phat work Hadley.

[Boatbuilder]

He cut taxes as the centerpiece of his economic program. If there was someone to the right of him on that issue running for president in the most recent two elections (including the primaries)I missed it.
If you were for Iraq, and you're such a goddam genius, why did you decide it was a bad move--or did you, like all the other sunshine patriots, just decide you couldn't stand the heat from the smart people who had a better idea that they forgot to mention at decision time?
Your own worldview seems to be based primarily on hindsight--and myopic hindsight at that.
And nobody really wants to know anything about your balls.

[PD]

admit it was a bad move

Why? It wasn't.

[JM Hanes]

TCO, just blowin' in the wind.

[Soylent Red]

Bad move? All my sources say we've won.

BTW, 22NOV08 is Victory in Iraq Day (VI Day). Righty blogosphere is declaring it, since MSM and TCO never will.

Also, which TCO is present tonight and can someone get me a program so I can follow along?

[Jane]

Jane, at the time the banner was flown, the military mission had been accomplished. Saddam's regime had been routed. Besides, the banner was not Bush's banner and should not have been attributed to him.

SBW,

I know that, but my co-host would not hear of it. Funny how a theme emerged tho. He was complaining about how Sean Hannity was saying Obama voters were stupid because of that Zogby poll. (Luckily I brought the poll results with me). I told him he was missing the point. The issue was that the media didn't report what Obama supporters needed to know. Exactly like the whole banner thing.

BTW, your advice to "smile" was the very best advice I was given. What a difference it makes.

[kim]

Above and beyond all this, that ship with the banner was returning from its tour off Iraq. It's mission was accomplished and it was the ship's crews banner. It was the journalists and pundits who have perverted the story. Just one more little detail historians will have to correct for the record.

Historians for a century are going to have fun with the record. Trivial knowledge games will be rife with the correct answers to Bush canards. Don't guess, look it up.
======================

[clarice]

Jane. I figure it's only a matter of hours before unnamed listeners start proposing to you--people who've been fed up with the one sided carp they've heard for years and don't use the IT so they've not heard the refreshingly truthful other side of the story.

[Bill in AZ]

And those who remained silent when they knew better. Liars, crooks and unpatriotic, the bunch of them.

...and speaking of Powell and Armitage, the surge might not have even been required had these two characters not undermined the Administrations and the National Security Councils direction to get the leadership of Iraq back into the hands of Iraqi's as soon as possible. See Doug Feiths book on how these guys undermined the war effort.

[Jane]

Clarice,

I suspect there are only 12 listeners. I don't care tho, cause it is really fun.

[sbw]

Jane: smile

Thanks. Too often people need to remind me as well.

--

Tuck away a few clauses that your host can't avoid but that don't call him an ass.

Suggestion:

"I know it may be outside your comfort zone, but consider..."

[Jane]

Oooooooooooh I like it.

He's a pretty moderate lib - and he loves to go on about what great pals he is with Dukakis, Kennedy, Kerry etc.

Yesterday I asked him if he thought Dukakis would have been elected if the media never reported on the tank, the rape question and Willy Horton to make my point. There was a look of "what could have been' in his eye.

[clarice]

Gosh sbw , what good advice. And Jane what a great example you gave.

[RichatUF]

kim-

It was the journalists and pundits who have perverted the story. Just one more little detail historians will have to correct for the record.

It is a pretty clear example of Alinsky's Rule 13: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." It wasn't so much journalists and pundits, they were just script readers, it was the "anti-war" movement which came up with the talking points and got them on the air. IIRC the story started with feigned outrage from lefty bloggers.

[not_bubarooni]

...as i recall, it was the aircraft carrier USN Abraham Lincoln, CVN 72.

they have a website.

they have a public affairs officer.

they have a link on the website where you can actually ask the public affairs officer a question.

they are really quite nice. as i recall, though it's been many moons ago, i sent an email to said official and they promptly replied back.

said they fly the banner everytime they put back into home port after a deployment or something to that effect.

took just an email to get the story straight. amazingly simple. i shoulda gone to j-school. easy work if you can get it.

[JM Hanes]

Amazing what you can accomplish by actually lifting a finger, isn't it, not_b?

[Nick]

Stephen Hadley, who had 'simply forgotten' to remind the White House not to include language about African uranium which Tenet had warned him about 3 months earlier:

National Security Adviser Steven Hadley is another individual associated with the 16-word controversy. He admitted he failed in his responsibilities to remove the untrue statement—a job that Tenet told him to do three months earlier for the Cincinnati speech—but had simply forgotten to do so later for the State of the Union address.

http://www.pubrecord.org/nationworld/259-former-cia-officials-speaks-out-about-q16-wordsq-that-led-to-iraq-invasion.html

Even though nothing had changed about the quality of the bogus uranium intelligence:

Tenet wrote that the White House officials had told the media that the language pertaining to Niger omitted from the Cincinnati speech was dramatically different from the Niger claims that ended up in the State of the Union address.

"That simply wasn't so," Tenet wrote. "It was clear that the entire briefing was intended to convince the press corps that the White House staff was an innocent victim of bad work by the intelligence community."

http://www.truthout.org/article/jason-leopold-and-matt-renner-tenet-book-blames-white-house-16-words

But but, Michael Ledeen and the National Review.

Yeah, like we should give they've shown themselves to be reliable sources of information and analysis in this whole debacle.

[kim]

Remember, Saddam was declawed and trying to keep the Persians at bay with his teeth. Remember too, Joe Wilson argued, in a 2/6/03 op-ed in the LATimes that we should not invade Iraq for fear that Saddam would use his biological and chemical WMD on our troops. And what about the two billion dollars Saddam sent to Libya, and what about Libya's long and desolate border with Niger?
=========================================

[kim]

OK, I'll be the first to say the damnable words. Waddya bet Joe Wilson and Val Plame will find a role in this administration? Larry, maybe not so much, but it certainly seems like a lot of Clintonites have triangulated somehow with Obama's posse.
=================================

[Angie Smith]

Stephen Hadley should certainly have the Medal of Freedom bestowed on him. The success we have in Iraq was in large part due to him. He had to fight those liberal, left-wing loons every step of the way because they were against the surge. They wanted to lose the war just to get even with President Bush. How sickening they are.

[sophy]

I do not know how to use the Cheap metin2 yang ; my friend tells me how to use.