Responses to Newt Gingrich

In a continuation of the article published last night, here are some other responses for your perusal.

Well, the President viewed the diplomatic process as a very important process that allowed for the military success to take place. And the process that the State Department followed and Secretary Powell led was the President's process. This is a process that the President decided on in his speech to the United Nations in September. And the fact of the matter is the State Department and Secretary Powell did an excellent job at ushering through that process. There were others who complicated the process in the Security Council. That in no way is reflective of the State Department or what the President thinks about the State Department or Secretary Powell's superb efforts.
Ari Fleischer, Press Briefing, April 22, 2003

Gingrich, like Richard Perle a member of the Defense Policy Board, is taking the occasion of a speech today at the American Enterprise Institute to launch the latest attack on Powell. The former speaker is a longtime advisor to Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense whose obvious desire is to seize complete control of the administration's foreign policy. Who needs a State Department or a Secretary of State if all diplomacy is to be conducted by gunboat?

It says something rather unflattering about the neocons that they have dispatched the unsavory Gingrich to carry their public agenda. After all, he is among the most renowned chicken hawks, and an Army brat to boot, who managed to avoid Vietnam while Powell served. His remarks today eerily echo Joe McCarthy's jihad against the State Department -- just substitute "commies" for "appeasers" -- and he even bears a disturbing physical resemblance to the Wisconsin demagogue. But then he always resembled McCarthy, going back to the "lexicon" he used to hand out to GOP congressional candidates, which urged them to accuse Democrats of "treason."
Joe Conason

Newt said that America "cannot lead the world with a broken instrument of diplomacy." One infobabe from USA Today sniveled that Gingrich should be honest that he was really attacking Secretary of State Powell and calling for President Bush to fire him. Newt laughed off this absurdity. He targeted the career, State Department culture that existed long before Secretary Powell took the job.
Rush Limbaugh

Even Mr. Santorum's old mentor, Newt Gingrich, felt emboldened to slither back on stage with a proposal to eviscerate the State Department.

After vowing to reshape the American character when he became speaker in '94, Mr. Gingrich ultimately faced ethics questions and criticism for having an extramarital affair with a young Congressional aide after pushing for Bill Clinton's impeachment over his extramarital affair with a young White House aide. He stepped down in '98.

The man who once depicted himself as an "Arouser of Those who Form Civilization" stepped back yesterday into a clash of civilizations between the Pentagon and the State Department. In remarks at the Temple of Triumphalism here (the American Enterprise Institute), Mr. Gingrich denounced Colin Powell's domain as a "broken bureaucracy of red tape and excuses" and demanded it be "transformed," like Rummy's.

He attacked Mr. Powell for announcing that he would visit (rather than bomb) Damascus and for the prewar failure of diplomacy with Turkey — conveniently ignoring the fact that it was the Pentagon hawk Paul Wolfowitz who had tried and failed to talk turkey with Turkey.
Maureen Dowd

I guess we'll see what happens next.