Maybe I should join a campaign, because these days I seem to live on planes. This evening I am in Charleston SC. Tomorrow around noon heure locale Bob Owens (Confederate Yankee) and I will be interviewing Fred Thompson under the video cameras of Andrew Marcus. Thompson is in Charleston to give a speech at The Citadel, where we will be recording him immediately afterwards.
This will be the first of PJM’s War on Terror Conversations with the leading candidates – the ones we can get to do it with us anyway. The idea is to focus on the WoT, the subject of subjects, one on one for about a half an hour.
If any of you have any questions in the area for Thompson, please put it in the comments and I will see if I can fit them in.
At this moment I am feeling pretty woozy, however. Deranged foodie that I am, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to get some southern cooking at Magnolia – their signature ham chowder, fried chicken and pecan pie. Don’t even ask about the booze. I hope I’m up for the interview tomorrow.
How would the Thompson Administration improve the communications process and PR efforts on behalf of the WoT?
Dear Mr. Simon,
I am interested in Mr. Thompson’s position on Western economic assistance for Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. It seems to me that without helpful, noncoercive advice or development that newly formed democracies may become adrift in the modern world and be unable to take advantage of international trade. This may weaken democracy’s hold in the world.
N.B: Best wishes on the Writers’ Strike. I am hoping that the writers win on this one. It always saddens me to see that the people who actually make the engine turn lose out to the people at the top (studio chiefs) and the eye candy (solipsistic celebrities.) I have enough experience in business to know that it doesn’t have to be that way.
1) What is your assessment of how things are going in Afghanistan / Pakistan, and what if anything would you change about the current policy?
2) What is your attitude towards the conflict in Israel? What role do you believe America has in this process, and in particular do you intend to push for further agreements as Presidents Bush and Clinton have? Do you believe that this conflict can be resolved with further concessions on the part of one side or the other?
3) Regarding Iran, the cat’s pretty much out of the bag as far as nuclear technology and expertise is concerned (if not the physical infrastructure itself). What do you feel is the long-term solution for nuclear (and biological) weapons proliferation? Do you support the efforts by Sunni Arab states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia to develop nuclear power?
4) Which do you see as more dangerous, nuclear or biological weapons?
For Fred:
1) Ask him if he agrees with McCain that we had no choice about invading Iraq because the status quo was not an option, the “allies” and UN would do nothing, and we were shouldering the cost for the NO-FLY-ZONE for years and years.
2) Ask him if he doesn’t think “racial profiling” in places like airports is only common sense and should be legalized.
3) Ask him if he doesn’t think defeatism by members of Congress and the media have not prolonged the war and cost American lives.
4) Ask him if after paying bribes to Israel and Egypt for only a fitful peace, and with worse carnage than ever from child suicide bombers, it was not clear that the U.S. had to do SOMETHING different by the time George W. Bush came along.