Fred Hiatt should be chained to a pole in Lafayette Park and a dunce cap should be placed on his head. Hiatt thinks that there is a consensus in Congress about what to do in Iraq, and that they Bush administration agrees with that consensus.
A large majority of senators from both parties favor a shift in the U.S. mission that would involve substantially reducing the number of American forces over the next year or so and rededicating those remaining to training the Iraqi army, protecting Iraq’s borders and fighting al-Qaeda. President Bush and his senior aides and generals also support this broad strategy, which was formulated by the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton commission.
Hiatt is smoking crack. But it’s worse than just being wrong. Hiatt has someone who he blames for the failure to shift the mission.
The decision of Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) to deny rather than nourish a bipartisan agreement is, of course, irresponsible…
….For now Mr. Reid’s cynical politicking and willful blindness to the stakes in Iraq don’t matter so much. The result of his maneuvering was to postpone congressional debate until September, when Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report on results of the surge — in other words, just the outcome the White House was hoping for…
…a Democratic strategy of trying to use Iraq as a polarizing campaign issue and as a club against moderate Republicans who are up for reelection will certainly have the effect of making consensus impossible — and deepening the trouble for Iraq and for American security.
So, for the Washington Post editorial board the only reason Congress hasn’t come to some kind of consensus and melded a forward looking strategy with the White House is that Harry Reid is being political.
This doesn’t require any exquisite rebuttal. It just requires derision and mockery. Hiatt has turned the Washington Post editorial page into the intellectual equivalent of The Dartmouth Review. Once again…dunce cap.
you know what the Post needs?
A clown car. You could fill it with Richard Cohen, David Broder, David Ignatius, Anne Applebaum, George Will, Bob Novak, Len Downie, William Kristol, the Kagans, and Fred Hiatt, with the King Klown himself Donald Graham at the wheel.
Think about it: it’s a photoshop waiting to happen. Except instead of circus music on the calliope, it’s a “Ride of the Valkyries”.
Look at the Kane/Murray hit piece in the main pages.
.
But Reid’s leadership team has placed a bet that — after a month-long recess at home with voters in August, followed by a Sept. 15 assessment of the war’s progress from Army Gen. David H. C …
White House Invites Lawmakers to Pentagon As Part of Push to Win More Time on War
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."But he has authoritatively let us know (because he would know) that the U.S. will be in Iraq into next year and beyond, into the next presidency, though he didn’t say that in so many words. The man is a master of deceit, often by calculated omission.
The discussion about the war on and occupation of Iraq becomes more perverse and perverted by the day. Up to now, the administration has largely got off scot-free. Where is the issue of the Congressional subpoenas going?
…and his view that the Democrats are at fault is pathetic.
However, I think there is about a 3-to-1 likelihood that what we’ll see in September or shortly thereafter is something quite a bit along the lines that WaPo’s Hiatt writes about in his horrible editorial: essentially a modified version of the Iraq Study Group’s plan.
That means setting a date to begin a major pull-out of U.S. troops, perhaps 120,000 of them out by September 2008, with a residual force of 30-40,000 left in the country indefinitely.
The debate on this will no doubt be sharp. But moderate-conservative Democrats in the Senate and half to three-fourths of the Blue Dog Democrats (and possibly a handful of others who don’t call themselves Blue Dogs) will see this halfway, half-assed kind of withdrawal as the proper approach. This may play well in the heartland, too.
This new direction will be given a great big kiss of bipartisan approval and the more “radical” position of a rapid and complete withdrawal (or complete except for a force left in Iraqi Kurdistan as a temporary bulwark against Turkish or Iranian adventurism there) will be lost in all the congratulations that will be passed around.
This could actually get a veto-proof majority.
and i suppose bush’s “support” for a “bipartisan” agreement is fully evidenced by this scene which played out only this past monday…
oh, fred… when are you going to finally come out of the darkness and into the light…? probably at about the same time karl rove does, i would guess…
sorry booman but a dunce cap in lafayette park just isn’t good enough for these sycophantic pranksters like hiatt who have aided and abetted the unitary executive sitting in the VP office and his incoherent rambling sockpuppet in the wilful destruction of our beautiful Republic. i say waterboard them all, every single member of the DC press corps (well ok, with a few exceptions – they can wear the dunce caps in their cages in lafayette park for a few weeks at a time before being sent off to help reforest america along with all the elite members of the fortune 10,000 who have pillaged the countryside and national parks and forests)
I am against waterboarding for everyone.