I was watching a little of the cold cable news and saw Bill Kristol try to claim Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon as “war skeptics” whose surge enthusiasm should lend credibility to his own. Fortunately, the host of the show pushed back against Kristol’s claims.
The host, of course, was John Stewart. You don’t get that sort of rigor on a news program.
Whoever David Gardner is, I don’t think I’ve ever read him before. Judging by this Financial Times column, I probably should start:
It turns out those Kalashnikovs went missing on his previous watch, as trainer-in-chief of the still barely existent Iraqi army. Gen Petraeus, a student of counterinsurgency with a PhD from Princeton and a gift for PR, had been lionised for his command of the 101st Airborne division in 2003-04, and especially his “hearts and minds” campaign in the north. After his withdrawal, however, two-thirds of Mosul’s security forces defected to the insurgency and the rest went down like fairground ducks. His forces appear not to have noticed, moreover, that Saudi-inspired jihadis had established a bridgehead in Mosul before the war had even started.
But US commanders seem to have no trouble detecting the hand of Tehran everywhere. This largely evidence-free blaming of serial setbacks on Iranian forces is a bad case of denial. First, the insurgency is overwhelmingly Iraqi and Sunni, built around a new generation of jihadis created by the US invasion. Second, to the extent foreign fighters are involved these have come mostly from US-allied and Sunni Saudi Arabia, not Shia Iran. Third, the lethal roadside bombs with shaped charges that US officials have coated with a spurious veneer of sophistication to prove Iranian provenance are mostly made by Iraqi army-trained engineers – from high explosive looted from those unsecured arms dumps.
Shia Iran has backed a lot of horses in Iraq. If it wished to bring what remains of the country down around US ears it could. It has not done so. The plain fact is that Tehran’s main clients in Iraq are the same as Washington’s: Mr Maliki’s Da’wa and the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq led by Abdelaziz al-Hakim. Iran has bet less on the unpredictable Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army, which has, in any case, largely stood aside during the present troop surge.
Well-said. One worries, however, that the relentless blaming of things on Iran is more than a bad case of denial. Justin Logan, for example, notes Max Boot saying of Syria and Iran “Why we’re not at war with them is a little bit of a mystery.” Boot, obtained a position as a Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations on the strength of his work for the legendarily rigorous Wall Street Journal editorial page, so he must be a person we should take very seriously.
DoD photo by Master Sgt. Robert W. Valenca, U.S. Air Force.
In an interview today, Karl Rove said, “I’m realistic enough to understand that the subpoenas are going to keep flying my way. I’m Moby Dick and we’ve got three or four members of Congress who are trying to cast themselves in the part of Captain Ahab — so they’re going to keep coming.”
Mary Ann Akers reports on a random Donald Rumsfeld sighting in Washington D.C. today. “What was remarkable was how, according to our (Republican) source, Rumsfeld’s handlers had to help him onto the escalator and ‘held his elbow’ and opened doors for him. ‘He looked old,’ our tipster said.” Akers notes that’s a stark contrast from the Rumsfeld who used to stand for 8-10 hours a day and used a stand-up desk in his Pentagon office.
The AP reports that “rich federal tax breaks designed to spur rebuilding are flowing hundreds of miles inland to investors who are buying up luxury condos.” The Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005 granted “generous tax benefits available to investors. Now, investors are renting out luxury condos in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which “got only heavy rain and scattered wind damage from Katrina.” “It was supposed to be about getting people..to put housing in New Orleans, Louisiana, or Biloxi, Mississippi. It was not about condos in Tuscaloosa,” said a developer.
On Fox News today, host John Gibson asked White House spokesperson Dana Perino what the White House will be like “sans Rove.” Perino responded: “You know, there is no doubt that it’s going to be different around the White House. Some things that people don’t know about Karl is that like on Fridays, he started ‘Ice Cream Fridays,’ and he would bring around ice cream to all of the staff.” Watch it:
Perino added: “And when you’re doing your West Wing tours, he will point to you and say, ‘Dana, you are needed in the West Wing immediately. The President needs your advice on something.’ And it just thrills the tourists. He’s such a fun-loving guy.”
On Your World with Neil Cavuto, Fox displayed a chyron asking: “Karl Rove Leaving: A Loss for Wall Street?” Note to Fox: The financial markets are already in bad shape, due to volatility over sub-prime mortgage loans and other factors. And the departure of a man who helped drive the nation into long-term deficits is the least of the market’s current concerns.
UPDATE: Media Matters reports that “Cavuto frequently purports to identify possible effects on the stock market or the economy of ‘news’ stories, or allows his guests to do so, often in order to attack Democrats and progressives.”
As soon as Karl Rove’s departure from the White House was announced this morning, there was no shortage of talking heads to appear on TV to lavish praise on him. On Fox News, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card called Rove “a superstar,” CBS White House Correspondent Bill Plante described him as “the mastermind behind everything,” and on MSNBC, Chris Matthews declared “generally, where there’s brains, there’s Rove.”
While Rove is undoubtedly a skilled campaign tactician, the hyperbolic image of him as a political genius overlooks his record of bungled political predictions, a series of policy failures and the damage he has wrought on America’s political system.
ThinkProgress has put together a highlights reel of the breathless adoration for Rove. Watch it:
Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan argues, “Rove is one of the worst political strategists in recent times. He took a chance to realign the country and to unite it in a war – and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency.”
Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin adds, “After years of being lauded as a political genius, Rove nevertheless leaves his party in worse shape than he found it, with his boss profoundly discredited in the eyes of the American people.”
UPDATE: Huffington Post has video of the Boy Genius’s tearful goodbye from this morning.
In a letter released today by VoteVets, twenty veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan write to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, asking him to call on Bush to release documents related to the death of Pat Tillman. “We know that the National Football League is not in the business of partisan politics, nor should it be,” the letter states. “However, in this case…the House committee requests were signed by both the Democratic Chairman and Republican Ranking Member, so this is not a partisan witch-hunt, but merely a quest to get to the truth about the death of Pat Tillman.”
UPDATE: In its press release, VoteVets cites arguments made by ThinkProgress commenters. Check it out here.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) released a statement, saying that Rove’s departure does not put an end to the investigation into the attorney firings scandal:
The need for Karl Rove to explain his role in the firing of the U.S. Attorneys does not diminish when he leaves the White House. Our investigation to date has revealed the White House’s contempt for the rule of law and its interest in the politicization of the Department of Justice.
While resignations at DoJ and the White House continue to mount, questions raised by this investigation remain. We will continue to seek answers to these questions and expect full cooperation from Mr. Rove and other officials regardless of whether they are employed by the White House.
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