New York Times: A War We Just Might Win

Here's a pretty complete rebuttal (long-winded, though):

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

 

Seriously? The things that have been said on this board about Republicans -- and his sig is "classless." Seriously?

 

Fixed.

 

Ah, yes. The every-few-months "We're winning in Iraq, and this time, we really, really, really mean it" thread.

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/39587/

That's what I wrote then. I stand by it now. And I will in a few more months, when nothing has changed in this war that is being run by proven failures.

And remember, "You Democrats want America to fail!" is conservative-speak for "We've got nothing."

Yes, if I wanted America to fail in Iraq, against Al Qaeda and . . . pretty much any endeavor, I'd have it follow the Bush/Republican playbook. Every damn page.

Forgive me if I don't take seriously the opinion of the Brookings guys, who -- like Kristol, Barnes, Krauthammer and the rest of the pet-war cheerleaders in the shit-for-brains Washington press corps -- have been wrong about everything concerning Iraq since . . . oh, forever.

And, as Greenwald pointed out, I am fucking sick and tired of these jokers being held up as "experts" when they should be laughed out of the TV studio.

 

(no it isn't. It's par for the course.)

 

Isn't the sig supposed to be beneath you?

 

Here's yet another perspective.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20470

Which makes this very telling observation.

The Iraq war is lost. Of course, neither the President nor the war's intellectual architects are prepared to admit this. Nonetheless, the specter of defeat shapes their thinking in telling ways.

The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning—a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes—but by the consequences of defeat. As President Bush put it, "The consequences of failure in Iraq would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America."

 

Brookings is "liberal" if you're looking for "liberals" who support the war. O'Hanlon and Pollack have records supporting the clusterfuck going back to 2002, including the surge, so it's no surprise that they're trying to defend the indefensible. Again. (Consult Glenn Greenwald in Salon for details.) Petraeus lost me when he went out of his way to appear with that wingnut Hugh Hewitt. I decline to believe these guys, thanks. Not because I don't want to, but because I have no reason to.
And old_tony, there really is a bottom to the barrel. Keep scraping.

 

More Greenwald:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/07/31/ohanlon/index.html

Greenwald nails it: What happened yesterday was the equivalent of Sean Hannity suddenly calling himself a long-time Bush critic -- then getting labeled as such by the media after he writes a New York Times column saying that Bush has really become a great president.

This is why the Republican presidential candidates, especially John McCain, can have no fear about tying themselves so closely to the war to pander to the base. When the general election rolls around, the eventual nominee knows -- right now -- that all he has to do is give one speech pretending to be outraged about the Bush junta's handling of Iraq.

The shit-for-brains Washington press corps, sticking ever so tightly to script, will hail said nominee as an authentic straight-shooter, flushing his pre-nomination rhetoric down the memory hole.

This will happen. Take it to the bank.

Meanwhile, wealthy John Edwards gives speeches about how we need to help the poor, so he's a phony.

 

Ragu --
The fact is that the elite political media in this country has been an embarrassment to our profession going back at least to the story within which the NYT invented the Whitewater scandal. There are any number of examples you can cite, and any number of volumes written as to why, many of them dating the whole business back to the pass the corps gave Reagan. Please just don't spew vitriol and make up "cahots" where nobody is alleging them. The system is broken, and it is broken largely in ways that have advantaged Republicans. We are at war right now at least in part because of that.