April 09, 2008

4/9: War Talk

As the political world focuses on the congressional hearings with Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, political bloggers are also turning their attention to Iraq. Liberal bloggers are slamming John McCain for confusing Shiites and Sunnis (again) while questioning Gen. Petraeus about Al Qaeda in Iraq. As the netroots have been quick to note, this is not the first time that McCain has confused Shiites and Sunnis. Liberal bloggers view these misstatements as evidence that McCain is ignorant about the players involved in the Iraq conflict and that he shouldn't be considered credible on national security.

Meanwhile, conservative bloggers are forcefully pushing back against claims that McCain wants to continue the Iraq War for another 100 years. In their view, the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton camps have been deliberately distorting McCain's words (and several non-partisan organizations agree with them). Liberal bloggers, however, are pushing back against the push-back by denying that they're taking McCain's words out of context. As Atrios writes, "[McCain's] point was perfectly clear, that he's happy to stay in Iraq as long as it takes to 'win' and then he's happy to stay there even longer."

MCCAIN: Oops!...I Did It Again

Liberal bloggers are piling on McCain for confusing Shiites and Sunnis while discussing Al Qaeda in Iraq (a Sunni group) at yesterday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing:

McCain: "Do you still view Al Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat?"
Petraeus: "It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was say 15 months ago."
McCain: "Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shiites overall?"
Petraeus: "No, no sir."
McCain: "Or Sunnis or anybody else then?"

• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "I suppose that eventually the press is bound to notice that McCain is seriously confused about the religious and political dynamics of Iraq and the greater Middle East, right? Maybe around December or so."


• Crooks and Liars' Nicole Belle: "It's really embarrassing that the guy who has built his whole campaign over staying in Iraq doesn't understand the players at all. Of course the media will never point this out, but it's ridiculous that he has made the same gaffe over and over again and can still be considered credible on National Security."


• Democracy Arsenal's Ilan Goldenberg: "Now, I know that there is a bit of gotcha going on here. But this man claims that his greatest qualification for the Presidency is that he understands foreign policy. But the differences between Sunni and Shi'a matter. They matter a lot! And this nasty habit of mixing it up just seriously needs to stop."


• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "If John McCain still doesn't understand that Al Qaeda is a Sunni group largely opposed to Shiites (as well as Americans and others) -- not a Shiite group aligned with Iran -- does he really have the national security acumen and understanding to be commander-in-chief?"


• Daily Kos' Devilstower: "McCain still seems fixated on the idea of just tagging them all al-Qaeda so we can let bombs sort it out."

MCCAIN II: 100 Years Of Solitude

As we've noted before, conservative bloggers are fiercely defending McCain against accusations that the GOP candidate wants to continue the Iraq War for another 100 years -- a charge that the Columbia Journalism Review calls "seriously misleading":

• RedState's Erick Erickson: "The Obama campaign and lefties everywhere are still pushing the story that John McCain said he wanted to keep fighting in Iraq for 100 years or 1000 years or 10,000 years. Despite the fact that major nonpartisan organizations are saying that is a total distortion of the record, the lefties and a bunch of journalists are keeping on. [...] It shows an utter lack of military knowledge on the part of the Democrats that they would equate a standing military presence in a country with war. If we follow their logic, we must still be at war in Japan and Germany and Korea."
• RedState's Soren Dayton: "The Democrats are just operating under [Vladimir] Lenin's maxim that 'a lie told often enough becomes truth'. They are just trying to spread lies to hope that it sinks in to a couple of voters."

Liberal bloggers, however, are pushing back against the push-back:

• TPM's Josh Marshall: "Republicans can see how John McCain's 100 years comments (remember, he said it repeatedly) can be made into an albatross around his neck. So they're going for the full court press. [...] Here's why Republicans are scared to death of this. No one wants to be in Iraq 100 years from now, even if McCain stipulates to the fantasy that Iraqis will be happy having us occupy their country forever and that the place will become like Finland. And none of our soldiers will ever get killed there and it won't cost any money. If that's the explanation for why we shouldn't be concerned that he's happy to stay in Iraq for a century, that just tells people that McCain is living in a fantasy world. They need to stop people from talking about it at all because their explanation for what he meant is at least as bad as what he really said."
• Atrios: "I've read the numerous attempts by conservatives and mainstream journalists to complain that somehow people are being mean and unfair to [McCain] by taking his '100 years' comment 'out of context' or 'distorting it' or whatever. For the life of me I don't understand what their complaint is. His point was perfectly clear, that he's happy to stay in Iraq as long as it takes to 'win' and then he's happy to stay there even longer. They could perform some actual journalism by asking him just how long Americans should keep getting killed in Iraq, just how much taxpayers' money he's willing to spend or how many American lives should be lost in Iraq just so we can get to the point when no more American lives are being lost in Iraq."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "What we're seeing unfold is a coordinated, carefully-orchestrated campaign to get people -- everyone, really -- to stop using the words 'McCain,' 'Iraq,' and '100 years' in the same sentence. No one can do push-back as well as the Republican Machine, and these guys are intent on making it impossible to hit McCain where it hurts. [...] Republicans insist that McCain's words have been 'distorted.' In some instances, that may be true. But what they probably fear the most is taking McCain's comments on Iraq at face value. They don't need embellishment -- they're devastating all on their own."

MCCAIN III: Hatin' On Roc-A-Fella

Conservative bloggers are defending McCain against the following critique made by Obama supporter/WV Sen. Jay Rockefeller:

"McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."

• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "If this sounds familiar to you, it should; it's basically what the North Vietnamese said about McCain while they tortured him in the POW camps. It indicts everyone in the Air Force and the Navy whose job it is to fire laser-guided missiles now in places like Afghanistan and Iraq."


• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "Is there an effort to portray fighter pilots as somehow dishonorable? This would not be the first time Vietnam Veterans have been criticized and attacked for their service. These attacks are disgusting and should be considered out-of-bounds in terms of appropriate political rhetoric. [...] If Barack Obama truly wants to be a new 'brand' of politician, he should immediately condemn these remarks."


• RedState's Moe Lane: "It is the action of a partisan buffoon to call someone who has been tortured for half a decade for putting on America's uniform ignorant of the consequences of his actions."


• The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb: "McCain was engaged in low-level attack on a heavily defended power plant in Hanoi when he was shot down. Rather than dropping bombs from the relative safety of 35,000 feet, McCain and his comrades were willing to put their lives at great risk in order to hit specific, high-value targets without the assistance of guided munitions. Though I'm sure Rockefeller, with his billion dollar trust fund, is infinitely more sensitive to the 'human issues' of the average American than John McCain."


• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Where to begin?...That McCain certainly got to see 'what happened on the ground' as a POW? That Senator McCain gets impression of how things are on the ground in Iraq from his son? That a guy in a party who spent the past five years beating the drum on 'chickenhawks' ought not send a guy who spent Vietnam in the Peace Corps to contend that fighter pilots don't 'care about the lives of people'?"


• Townhall's Amanda Carpenter: "I suspect these surrogates may be testing McCain's well-known temper in hopes of a press-worthy blow-up."

On the left side of the blogosphere, Steve Benen thinks McCain supporters should calm down: "Realistically, if the Obama campaign really wanted to go after McCain like this, aides probably wouldn't have called on Jay Rockefeller. The guy isn't exactly a polished attack machine. [...] I'll gladly concede that Rockefeller's comments were cheap and definitely warranted an apology, which he promptly offered. And I suppose I don't blame the McCain campaign for trying to capitalize on every available opportunity. But in general, folks really can't work themselves into too big a dither every time a pol makes a foolish attack. By the fall, no one in the political world will have any energy left at all."

OBAMA: They Like Me, They Really Like Me!

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about an article by ABC's Martha Raddatz, in which Raddatz finds anecdotal evidence that some U.S. troops support Obama:

• TPM's Greg Sargent: "This is hardly a scientific survey, obviously, but more of the troops who spoke to ABC had nice things to say about Obama than about either Hillary or McCain. For some reason they seem to like the fact that Obama is promising to bring them home."
• Benen: "The troops, like the rest of the country, are ready to consider a candidate offering a change. [...] So much for the conservative assumptions about the worldview of the men and women in uniform."
• Firedoglake's Blue Texan: "One thing wingnuts really hate is objective evidence that actual, real-life soldiers support Democrats. So they're running around accusing ABC of cherry-picking. They must not have heard that unserious defeatists Barack Hussein Obama and Ron Paulwere leading in military fundraising . They must not know that 6 out of 10 military families hate [George W.] Bush or that a Military Times poll showed that the troops hate him too. Look at the trend. [Al] Gore got less that 20% of the military vote in 2000, but thanks to Bush's excellent war, [John] Kerry more than doubled that in 2004. So don't be a bit surprised if the Democratic candidate breaks 50% this year."
• Atrios: "I've done my best to never try to make assumptions about the political views of 'the troops.' They aren't a monolithic group, they all signed up for a variety of reasons, and they have differing personal circumstances. Still to anyone with a moderate bit of intelligence it shouldn't be all that surprising that some of them might not be thrilled about their extended trip to the desert and might not be thrilled to support candidates who want to make it an even more extended trip."

Balloon Juice's John Cole isn't a fan of Raddatz's article: "While I am glad many [troops] choose Obama, I generally think this sort of journalism is stupid and pointless, and watching liberals rush to promote it will be just as irritating as it is when right-wing blogs try to claim that the troops are overwhelmingly Republican. I understand the desire to pushback against the popular meme that the troops are all right-wing, but it is just that -- a meme. As such, pushback against stupidity generally leads to more stupidity. [...] We will no doubt be treated to weeks of 'HERE ARE SOLDIERS WHO WANT MCCAIN' pieces by the various idiots in the right-wing blogosphere, much like in the wake of Cindy Sheehan's rise to notoriety we were treated to the grotesque spectacle of grieving parents who still supported the war being foisted into the media spotlight to share their grief and enthusiasm for our excellent adventure in Iraq."

OBAMA II: You Call This Journalism?!?

Conservative bloggers are sharply criticizing Raddatz's article:

• The Weekly Standard's Jaime Sneider: "Are our troops now voting exclusively Democrat? Has the Iraq war ushered in a complete transformation of the military's voting habits? While this may be a liberal journalist's wet dream, this does not make it what the rest of us refer to as reality."
• RedState's Mark Kilmer: "Remember, folks, a small collection of anecdotes chosen to tell the story a reporter wants to be told is not scientific, is not journalism, and is indicative only of the reporter's dishonesty. It is not news that some of our soldiers are registered or even partisan Democrats who support their party's potential candidates; after all, they come from amongst Americans. It is disingenuous to misrepresent the words a few of them to attempt to indicate that the entire military supports Obama because they believe Iraq is an unjust war which we should surrender immediately."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "How representative is the sample? [...] Doubtless there's been some erosion of Republican support as the war's dragged on, even within a profession that's always skewed a bit right, but to the extent suggested here? With Republicans generally overwhelmingly predisposed to staying in Iraq? Even the left acknowledges that most troops are gung ho to win the war, and that was before 10 months of security gains. Maverick's surely doing better than this."
• NRO's James S. Robbins: "ABC's Martha Raddatz scoured Iraq to discover that American soliders' presidential preferences fall into two categories: Obama and undecided. At least that was true of the few she could get to talk to her. Apparently they want to be pulled out of Iraq as much as Obama wants to pull them out. The fact that re-enlistments are highest among troops actually serving abroad (unnoted in this report) is just some pesky statistic."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Unilateral Disarmament?

AmSpec Blog's James Antle:

"Will Barack Obama abide by his pledge to take public financing as long as his Republican opponent did the same? Certainly, Obama and the Democrats will look hypocritical for reneging on this deal and will emerge as a McCain talking point. But would any sane candidate give up so huge an advantage in order to avoid a controversy that may well make voters' eyes glaze?

As [Reihan] Salam points out, McCain raised $15 million in March. Not bad, and only $5 million behind Hillary Clinton. Obama raised $40 million last month. He has 1.3 million donors. Many of them are small donors hard to portray as special interests. Obama doesn't take money from lobbyists. If George W. Bush had taken public financing in 2000 or 2004, it would have been unilateral disarmament. That will be equally true for Obama. And while a lot of my friends find his approach to foreign policy too peacenik for their liking, I don't think this is an area where Obama favors disarming unilaterally."

LEST WE FORGET: Businessman Takes Power Bath

From The Onion:

"ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NJ -- Citing a need to compete in today's 'cutthroat' business environment, PricewaterhouseCoopers CEO Samuel DiPiazza has made it a habit to drive home from his Manhattan office once a day to rapidly indulge in a 15-minute power bath. 'During today's session I got on three conference calls and appointed a new global board member, all while grabbing a few quick suds,' a robed DiPiazza told reporters Monday. 'No time to waste. I come home, draw up a quick bubble B, do a little videocon with the Japan people, slap on some brown-sugar-and-fig body butter, whip out the BlackBerry, and exfoliate the shit out of myself, and bam: totally refreshed and rejuved.' An utterly relaxed DiPiazza swerved into oncoming traffic and died in a head-on collision while driving back to work later that day."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at April 9, 2008 12:45 PM