Obscure Rats Desert Ship
Aside from William Kristol, who runs the country’s most prominent right-wing opinion mag and is therefore a big deal, the “Bush Supporters Question[ing] War Tactics” surveyed by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos are either Republicans who have always had their doubts about the war on people you’ve never heard of. As if to underscore the point, Vlahos quotes John McCain, who is both prominent and, if you will, an anti-doubter. As usual, McCain can be relied on to draw precisely the wrong conclusion from any fact set:
“I’ve got an idea for our Pentagon planners,” he said. “The day I can land at the airport in Baghdad and ride in an unarmored car down the highway to the Green Zone is the day I’ll start considering withdrawal from Iraq.”
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
September 12, 2005 @ 7:22 am
It’s really a thumbsucker of an article. First you quote 6 or so different people, all of whom have conflicting or vague prescriptions (one wants more troops, as if we had any, one wants 100,000 less troops, as if the special forces that would be left would survive, most of the rest want goals and milestones, as if this war were some corporate reorg). Then, at the end, there are multiple people asssuring us of multiple leaks that we’re going to have less troops in Iraq by 2006. Gee, you think so? Even if it wasn’t very likely to be true because we’re going to run out of troops, you don’t think that the Bush administration has a motive for multiple leaks assuring everyone of this, right about now?
Comment by micah holmquist —
September 12, 2005 @ 10:12 am
The story did get it right about American Prospect being conservative, however. So long as you use a definition I doubt was intended, it did.
Comment by Diana —
September 12, 2005 @ 11:09 am
And then there’s a third type: people who supported the war, sometimes publicly, and who will deny ever having done such a thing. It happened with Vietnam. I was going to post something about this in March 2003 but lazily never did.
Comment by Leonard —
September 12, 2005 @ 4:28 pm
“the war on people you’ve never heard of”. I like it.
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Diana, wrt the deniers, the internet keeps an increasingly good historical record. Of course it will probably also serve to harden opinions when people realize they can’t escape their written past.
Comment by Iron Lungfish —
September 12, 2005 @ 8:24 pm
“The day I can land at the airport in Baghdad and ride in an unarmored car down the highway to the Green Zone is the day I’ll start considering withdrawal from Iraq.â€
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A what now? That doesn’t even make nonsense.
Comment by Iron Lungfish —
September 12, 2005 @ 8:42 pm
And how did Harold Meyerson end up getting quoted there? He’s neither a war supporter nor a Bush supporter by any remotely plausible defnition of the term. Was the writer just extremely confused or did they have a word count to meet that they padded out with a random quote from an unrelated source?