Tag Archive for 'iraqwar'
And people wonder why Katie Courac has bombed as a serious news person.
In the final accounting, literally every premise was a lie. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The war cost trillions, is ongoing after five years, and has not endeared us to the Iraqi people. There has been no wave of democratization. And our “humanitarian mission” took a relatively stable, though unquestionably repressive, society and killed between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands. No one would have taken this deal. But it was never offered. Rather, the Bush administration, with the enthusiastic aid of the media, did a remarkable job hiding the costs and making this an issue of moral blackmail, rather than cost-benefit calculations. They never had to answer the question of how much they were willing to spend on this war, and how many lives they were willing to lose over it. And without answering those questions, there were never really benchmarks for success or for failure, and the American people never had anything realistic to use in their estimates.
In the comments David writes that yesterday’s McCain comment regarding Iran and Al-Qaeda might have been more of a slip of the tongue then anything else. David’s giving McCain a little bit more benefit of the doubt then I’m inclined to, especially in light of the fact that McCain made the same mistake three times in two days. And further, right-wing blogs are up in arms defending McCain, saying what the Senator said was correct. Powerline, RedState, The Weekly Standard, etc.. Matthew Duss has more on that front, but the point is that it might not have been a mistake. In right wing circles at least what McCain said is correct.
Ezra Klein notes this comment by Max Bergmann:
That is not a gaffe. That is called believing something that isn’t true. It is called being confused. And being confused about the differences between Shia and Sunni when claiming that you should be elected president of the United States on your foreign policy knowledge and experience, is simply not okay. This is a big deal.
Exactly. I’ll also recommend reading this from Josh Marshall.
I’d like to note a point made my NBC’s Chuck Todd (via Atrios):
…this was not a one-time slip and so, you know, this just shows you how much bank — how much of the foreign policy experience stuff he’s got in the bank, because had Clinton or Obama done something like this, this would have been played on a loop, over and over, and would have absolutely hurt them politically.
As Blue Texan notes:
It’s almost impossible to imagine the wingnut/media outrage circus if Obama or Clinton had claimed Iran was training al Qaeda. I see Sludge Report headlines like, HOW CAN WE TRUST OBAMA TO FIGHT THE WAR IF HE DOESN’T UNDERSTAND THE ENEMY?, a series of passive-aggressive NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME posts from Glenn Reynolds, declarations by Tweety that the race is already over, grim-faced former generals expressing their disapproval on MSNBC, Fixed News playing the clip over and over and over…
Whats frustrating about Chuck Todd’s comments is that he’s actually IN THE MEDIA. I admire his ability to be self-aware but he is in position to change things and yet most likely will chose not to.
When I first heard this I remembered that a reporter had gone around a while ago asking members of Congress about the differences between Sunnis and Shiites but I couldn’t recall the specifics. Brendon Nyhan helpful remembers that it was CQ’s Jeff Stein.
Via Firedoglake, here’s video of the most recent incident:
And finally, to bring the Democratic nomination into the picture, I would certainly gain new respect for Senator Clinton if she followed Mark Kleinman’s advice (via Drum):
Given McCain’s buffoonish performance in Jordan, wouldn’t this be a good time for Hillary Clinton to say, “Gee, I thought he was ready to be Commander-in-Chief, but it sure doesn’t sound like it. The least we should expect from the President is some basic knowledge about who our enemies are.”
McCain’s supposed “strength” is foreign policy. The fact that he appears to be clueless about it (along with domestic policy, which leaves him with what exactly?) should be mentioned by Democrats more then once.
Interesting. Add “Iraq” to the list of things Sen. McCain is clueless about:
Sen. John McCain, traveling in the Middle East to promote his foreign policy expertise, misidentified in remarks Tuesday which broad category of Iraqi extremists are allegedly receiving support from Iran.
He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.
Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”
Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.” A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then said: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”
The mistake threatened to undermine McCain’s argument that his decades of foreign policy experience make him the natural choice to lead a country at war with terrorists. In recent days, McCain has repeatedly said his intimate knowledge of foreign policy make him the best equipped to answer a phone ringing in the White House late at night.
Of course this isn’t just an issue of McCain blowing some trivia answer, it seems to call into question whether he’s really been paying attention to the Iraq issue over the past couple of years. He’s very sure that the surge is working, but doesn’t understand the basic contours of the ongoing conflicts in Iraq? Seems strange.
In a fair and just world this “gaffe” would get as much and more media attention as the comments made my Sen. Obama’s pastor. Rest assured that they won’t though. Also, I love that good ole’ Joe Lieberman was there to help his buddy out. Those two deserve each other.
Greg Mitchell gives us “Eighteen things you’ve already forgotten about the media’s flawed coverage of Iraq.” His upcoming book So Wrong For So Long should be a good one.
Andrew Olmsted, blogger and active duty solider, has been killed in Iraq. He wrote a post to put up if he passed on that can be read here.
(via Unfogged)
This is pretty breathtaking:
McCain would have no problem being in Iraq for another 100 years? Really? That is, in a word, insane. He does say thats only if American troops are not being injured, harmed or killed but still, the Arab world isn’t going to like even the hint of that idea one bit, not to mention Americans.
Yglesias has this right:
Nevertheless, not even George W. Bush is nearly so cavalier and irresponsible as to make the kind of remarks McCain is saying here. Bush, it seems, has advisors who know something about the diplomatic situation. Bush has even spoken personally with heads of state and other officials throughout the Arab world. Bush, in short, recklessless and immature though he may be still knows that it plays very very very poorly in the Arab world for American leaders to run around talking about 100 year occupations of Iraq.
I was actually in the audience. I heard the guy challenge McCain on the war. I knew McCain was going to push back. But his style of reply was astonishing. When the questioner asked about Bush’s plans to keep us in Iraq 50 years, McCain literally interrupted him with a Monty Python-esque “What about 100?…That would be fine with me.” He may as well have adopted a British accent and said, “50 years? 50 years!? That’s for cowards and fools. I’llt take your 50 years and double it — nay! Triple it! — good sir.” And if the questioner had been able to keep going, it wouldn’t have been long before McCain hit infinity plus 100, which I think might be the right formulation in the Republican race.
And finally Matthew Duss:
America simply cannot afford to have as president a man so utterly clueless about the nature of Islamism, and how so much of its appeal lies in its ethic of resistance to Western encroachment, as to blithely suggest that the U.S. stay in Iraq for “a hundred years.” The last seven have shown how much damage to America’s interests can be wrought by a president who wandered aimlessly into imperialism. I think we really don’t want to find out how much can be wrought by a president who embraces it wholeheartedly.
Duss calls this McCain’s “Macaca moment”, in reference to former Senator George Allen’s racist comment during his Virginia senate race but sadly I think Duss is wrong. It is much more acceptable in Washington to have a war, more war, most war foreign policy then it is to be racist. Not to mention the Washington media has a gigantic crush on McCain, as anyone who watched MSNBC last night surely saw.