August 21, 2007

IRAQ: Whose Publicity Stunt Is It?

Neither conservatives nor progressives were pleased with news that Gen. David Petraeus will testify before Congress on 9/11. NRO's Jim Geraghty blogs: "In fact, if indeed the Democratic leadership of Congress scheduled Petraeus to testify that day, I cannot help but suspect that they indeed are trying to politicize the anniversary. The all-too-easy soundbites write themselves - "Today, six years after 9/11, we learn that we're failing in Iraq and the Bush administration has made us no safer and blah blah blah." ... I hope they move the testimony up or back a day. It just seems like forcing an unnecessary controversy into a day that's full enough as is."

AMERICAblog's John Aravosis claimed the WH picked the date: "Petraeus, who is as big a liar as he is a PR-yes-man, claims that he just chose September 11 by chance. Yeah, right. Be a man, general. You chose September 11 as a publicity stunt. Have the balls to at least admit it. ... You're a yes-man. All you do is sugar coat the bad news and make it good, regardless of the truth, regardless of the cost in American lives. And now you're going to use the 3,000 American dead from September 11 as more of your public relations cannon fodder."

Also in Iraq news, Andrew Sullivan flags a Henry Farrell post promoting a study by two Vanderbilt professors showing: "[T]hat, among Republicans, for about every two Iraq war casualties among soldiers with hometowns in the congressional district, the Democratic swing increased by about one percentage point. Democrats, in contrast, faced no electoral reward or punishment contingent upon their votes on the Iraq war or based on the number of Iraq war casualties in their districts."

Posted by Conn Carroll at August 21, 2007 12:48 PM