The Iraq cheerleaders continue to make space between themselves and the White House.
o Today George Will, ever so delicately, asks Donald Rumsfeld to resign.
o Today Tom Friedman charges that "There is something even more important to the Bush crowd than getting Iraq right, and that's getting re-elected and staying loyal to the conservative base to do so. It has always been more important for the Bush folks to defeat liberals at home than Baathists abroad."
Friedman continues: "And, of course, why did the president praise Mr. Rumsfeld rather than fire him? Because Karl Rove says to hold the conservative base, you must always appear to be strong, decisive and loyal. It is more important that the president appear to be true to his team than that America appear to be true to its principles."
o In this week’s issue, Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria writes angrily that a handful of officials in the US Defense Department and Vice-President’s office have "commandeered" American foreign and defense policy. And?
"On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq – troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani - Washington’s assumptions and policies have been wrong."
Zakaria concludes: "Whether he wins or loses in November George W. Bush’s legacy is now clear: the creation of a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe."
That's progress, I suppose, but please note that they are critiquing the execution of the policy, not the policy itself. As if it was valuable.
It was not. Maureen Dowd put it this way today:
"The problem, of course, is that the war in Iraq started with lies — that Saddam's W.M.D. were endangering our security and that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda and 9/11."
"In a public relations move that cheapens the heroism of soldiers, the Pentagon merged the medals for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, giving the G.W.O.T. medal, for Global War on Terrorism, in both wars to reinforce the idea that we had to invade Iraq to quell terrorism. The truth is that our invasion of Iraq spurred terrorism there and around the world."
Or, as Howard Dean stated so simply, we are not safer with Saddam Hussein gone.
Think Sen. Kerry will ever get around to saying that?