Bill Kristol: Completely and Tragically Wrong

Bill Kristol or William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, is one of those Ivory Tower-never-served-in-the-military neo-cons that cheered and pushed for the US invasion of Iraq (see some other Chickenhawks here). Yet, Billy Kristol is fond of sending other people’s kids to war; so much so, in fact, that his Fox News co-commentator, Juan Williams, jokingly refers to Kristol as "The General" and questions his over reliance on military force.

With that in mind, why is Billy "The General" Kristol taken seriously anyway? Of course, the so-called liberal media must find hour-upon-endless-hour of jabbering heads to fill their precious airtime, so they gladly hand the mike over to "The General" — he’s always got a war to sell, which makes for neat content.

But, isn’t it about time that more people conclude as Alex Koppelman concludes here? Alex Koppelman writes:

Bill Kristol is rarely unsure about anything; Sunday was no exception. Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Kristol told host Chris Wallace that "the notion that a retreat in Iraq would not embolden terrorists elsewhere in the Middle East, and terror recruiters in the suburbs of London, is ludicrous… It’s just factually true that our pulling out of Iraq will be bad for us in the global war on terror."

Now, I can’t say for sure that Kristol is wrong. What I can say for sure is that we have absolutely no basis to believe Kristol was right. Kristol, after all, has a long track record of getting Iraq completely, and tragically, wrong. In April of 2003, he went on NPR’s "Fresh Air" to say:

On this issue of the Shia in Iraq, I think there’s been a certain amount of, frankly, Terry, a kind of pop sociology in America that, you know, somehow the Shia can’t get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There’s almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq’s always been very secular.

Good one, Bill.

In February of 2003, he and Lawrence Kaplan told the National Review‘s Kathryn Jean Lopez that "having defeated and then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world’s sole superpower."

That one’s turned out well.

Yet Fox still considers Kristol a legitimate pundit on the subject. Why, for God’s sake? He has absolutely no experience or knowledge relevant to the subject. And again and again he has proven that any opinion coming from his mouth on the subject will be proven wrong.

The right’s media critics have made it their mission to call for the regulation of the media by means of attacking the First Amendment, threatening those of us in the press who dare to do our jobs with the threat of violence. Maybe it’s time for the rest of us to call for a little media regulation of our own, to ask that our pundits have some sort of license to spew, or at the very least have the ability to prove they know what the hell they’re talking about. At the moment, the ability to produce a quick, uncomplicated talking point seems to be the only qualification.

Go read Alex Koppelman over at the HuffingtonPost.com, he’s got more to say.

Bush Admin Hurried Timing of London Arrests

Once again, sufficient reason to suspect that the Bush administration is at it again with their partisan exploitation of our nation’s war against terrorists. As we’ve learned, just a day after a strong critic of Bush’s Iraq war — and a distraction it represents from the actual war on terror — won the Democratic primary in Connecticut, we just knew that the public discourse just had to change… so, instead of the results of the Connecticut primary dominating the news headlines, the public heard of a foiled terrorists plot coming out of England. And now we have this:

Source: U.S., U.K. at odds over timing of arrests
British wanted to continue surveillance on terror suspects, official says

By Aram Roston, Lisa Myers, and the NBC News Investigative Unit
NBC News
Updated: 8:13 p.m. ET Aug 12, 2006

LONDON – NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.

A senior British official knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

In contrast to previous reports, the official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.

[...]

The British official said the Americans also argued over the timing of the arrest of suspected ringleader Rashid Rauf in Pakistan, warning that if he was not taken into custody immediately, the U.S. would "render" him or pressure the Pakistani government to arrest him.

Here’s How Lieberman Will Exit Indy Bid

Looks like Joe Lieberman’s exit from stage right has already been written, and it’s by a writer of compelling drama, no less — one of the creators of The West Wing:

Joe Lieberman will drop out. He probably knows right now that the day will come in late September when he will announce his withdrawal from the race. No one is going to have to talk him into it. By that time, the Democratic Party power structure will be doing its thing for Ned Lamont and Lieberman will be trailing by double digits.

It won’t be a hard decision for Lieberman. He will drop out to avoid career-ending humiliation.

Lieberman came within four points of Lamont by climbing up on the shoulders of the biggest names in the party including Clinton–Bill and Hillary. Lieberman’s TV commercial starring Bill Clinton was his best. Now, both Clintons and everyone else in the Party are carrying Lamont on their shoulders. By late September, Bill Clinton will be onstage hugging his new best friend and starring in Lamont commercials. Connecticut’s much better liked senator, Chris Dodd, will be campaigning for Lamont this time. The Clinton and Dodd defections will cost Lieberman ten points in Connecticut. If Dick Cheney continues to say nice things about Lieberman, it’ll cost him another ten points. And Lieberman campaigning alone, all alone, will look bitter, very bitter. His smile will look faker than ever. Voters aren’t drawn to bitter.

Lieberman is going to have one very big news day in late September and he’ll milk it for all its worth. That’s all his independent candidacy is going to be about–stage-managing his own exit. He didn’t want an eighteen year Senate career to disappear under ‘Lamont Wins’ headlines. He wanted his own news day, his own headline. He knows how and when to get it.

How Can We Trust Again?

Here’s what five and change years of a bitterly partisan, utterly opportunistic and completely self-serving Republican administration has wrought on our country, just when Americans should not be doubting our own government (AFP, 08.10.2006):

Bush Seeks Political Gains from Foiled Plot

CRAWFORD, United States (AFP) – US President George W. Bush seized on a foiled London airline bomb plot to hammer unnamed critics he accused of having all but forgotten the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Weighed down by the unpopular war in Iraq, Bush and his aides have tried to shift the national political debate from that conflict to the broader and more popular global war on terrorism ahead of November 7 congressional elections.

[...]

His remarks came a day after the White House orchestrated an exceptionally aggressive campaign to tar opposition Democrats as weak on terrorism, knowing what Democrats didn’t: News of the plot could soon break.

Vice President Dick Cheney and White House spokesman Tony Snow had argued that Democrats wanted to raise what Snow called "a white flag in the war on terror," citing as evidence the defeat of a three-term Democratic senator who backed the Iraq war in his effort to win renomination.

Man, where to begin!?

Sadly, all I can say is that this morning, when I first heard of the news coming out of Britain, I immediately thought, Wow, just on schedule for the mid-term elections.

This is where we, Americans, are. Some of us simply cannot believe anything that this administration and its allies, whether domesitic or from abroad, tell us. I honestly cannot trust anything that even carries a whiff of the now infamous Rovian taint, since the tactics that now associated with that name so permeate the actions of this administration and of the Republican party.

Chris Matthews: World’s Biggest A**

Once again, Chris Matthews, a man that swoons at the sound of his own voice, proves himself to be the biggest ass and peddler of disinformation on TV. Here’s Matthews asking Ned Lamont if he had anything to do with with Joe Lieberman’s web site being down:

Never mind, of course, that if Matthews and the other useful idiots in the main stream media had done any "investigative journalism" they would’ve found what this — and other — intrepid citizen found out, namely: Joe’s web site was hosted by a crappy company that could not hold up to high traffic demands on the web site.

UPDATE: Marty Kaplan weights in on Matthew’s oft-repeated attack on Liberal bloggers:

It’s funny: the entire District of Columbia is built on the exact same process that Chris Matthews describes, except that instead of people using keyboards, they use phones, and instead of blogging, they use their access to print and broadcast media, and to one another.

I lived and worked in politics and journalism in Washington for eight years, and every day, the inviolable morning ritual was that people read the papers, they watched television, and then all day long they called one another to ask, "What do you hear?" The biggest difference between the daily routine of the Beltway chattering class and the blogosphere is that the Gang of 500 (as The Note calls them) has been replaced by the dispersed and inherently more small-d democratic netroots.