Evasive Maneuvers

OK, my good friends, I hope that you are all having a happy weekend.

But watching a "fair and balanced" Meet the Press today, with three Republicans and exactly zero Democrats, probably didn't put you in a happy frame of mind. Not, that is, if you watched it. I actually skipped the Ahnold portion of the program, so it's possible the Gropenator may have said something really egregious, and I missed it. Oh, well. Just wanted to comment a bit on this exchange between Russert and Rep. King of New York, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee. The commentary will begin after the first excerpt:

MR. RUSSERT: Congressman King, you supported the war. We are now three years into it. And there were four fundamental judgments made by the administration. One: There would be weapons of mass destruction found. That is not the case. Two: We would not need large numbers of troops to occupy Iraq for years on end. Three years in, we still have 130-some thousand troops. Three: We’d be greeted as liberators. And four: That the Shiites, the Sunnis and Kurds would all come together...

REP. KING: Uh-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: ... and unite as Iraqis and not break down into tribal or sectarian warfare.

REP. KING: Uh-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: Was the administration wrong on all four counts? Were there four fundamental misjudgments?

REP. KING: No, I think—and I still think it was the right thing to go in. You cannot allow a dictator to continue to defy U.N. resolutions, with people believing you had WMD and having the capacity to have WMD. And I believe the situation—we are at a very defining moment right now in Iraq.

This is the evasion. The question was not whether it was "the right thing to do." It's entirely possible to think that the administration (1) misjudged the threat posed by Iraq (see, instead of a "grave and gathering danger," it was, well, not a danger at all, not "grave," and not really "gathering" anything, either); (2) the number of troops needed to occupy the country, after the invasion (Bill Kristol and I agree that the folks at the Pentagon and White House got this one terribly wrong); (3)whether the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators; and (4) that Iraq would not not be torn apart by sectarian animosities after the overthrow of Hussein . . . AND still believe that the war was the right thing to do. Bill Kristol, Chuck Krauthammer, and many, many members of the ever-more-and-even-more-hawkish wing of the War Hawks are in this camp. (BTW: Did anyone see Bill Kristol minimize the sectarian violence in Iraq in the last week by saying, "It's not a full-scale ethnic cleansing," on Fox News Sunday? Well, if it's not a full-scale ethnic cleansing, no big whoop, as they say. Freedom is messy. Death squads, assassination, mosque bombings, all part of the normal democratic process.)

But King actually says, NO, the administration was not wrong about these four things. Although he doesn't say which one of the four they were right about. I wish Timmeh had asked a follow-up.

Instead, we got this "definitive moment" business. To which we return:

[REP. KING]: What Senator Warner said, I think, is very significant, that you have had the parties come back together for the purpose of talks. And the Sunnis realize that if this does turn into a civil war, they will be slaughtered. So they need an American presence there, and they have to end any possibility of going toward a civil war. I think Ayatollah Sistani is still doing a very good job of trying to keep the Shiites from retaliating completely against the Sunnis. So I’m still—listen, this is a defining moment, and Senator Warner said, you know, it’s up to them, ultimately. But I do think the Iraqi Army is much better trained. Seventy percent of the operations in Baghdad are carried out by Iraqis, the Iraqis being in the lead. So no, I think that this is a tough time, it’s a very difficult time. My heart goes out to anyone who’s lost anybody in Iraq. But having been there several times, I think we’ve made enormous progress. And if they can hold it together now, this can—having looked into the abyss, the Iraqi people may realize it’s time now to not go to a civil war but instead form a government.

The first bolded section there is clearly a new GOP talking point. I heard Chuckles (Krauthammer) say the same exact thing on the Fox roundtable. My question: Is this a good argument? Is there any evidence that actual Sunnis on the ground think like this, as opposed to how the-Sunnis-imagined-by-those-who-generate-GOP-talking-points think? It seems to me that the Sunnis may believe that they are merely engaged in self-defense; that the Shiites (with their death squads and all) are out for revenge, and that if they (the Sunnis) don't fight back, they will be slaughtered. So I'm not sure about this talking point, either in terms of logic or whether it reflects actual Sunni thought, on the ground.

The second bolded section boggles the mind. If I could go back to 2000 and tell the American people that, if you elect Bush, in a little over five years a GOP House committee chairman will appear on Meet the Press and praise a Shiite ayatollah's efforts for peace, well, I think that I would have been branded a loon. I think that Sisani was one of the ayatollahs Bush called in the last week. But the point is, even if it wasn't Sistani himself, the U.S. president is making calls to ayatollahs, people. We have crossed over into some alternate universe.

The third bolded section speaks for itself. If the Iraqi army is taking the lead in operations against . . . other Iraqis, isn't that, by definition, a civil war?

But it gets worse:

MR. RUSSERT: And the people on Long Island, in your district, aren’t concerned about this war and they’re patient and supportive the way you are?

REP. KING: No, they are very concerned and every, every death is tragic. But my district also lost well over 100 people on September 11. And realizing you cannot defeat radical Islamic terrorism unless the Middle East is stabilized, and you cannot stabilize it so long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

MR. RUSSERT: But you’re not connecting Iraq to September 11?

REP. KING: I’m saying that in war against terrorism it’s essential to have a stable Middle East, and you cannot have done that so long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

Lookie there, King clearly connected the Iraq war to 9/11, and then, when challenged, didn't say NO, it's not connected. The same old tactic. Draw the connection, imply a connection, but don't defend the connection if pushed. Classic. Evasion. But note the rest of the sentence. If Representative King thinks that the Bush administration's policy in Iraq has made for "a stable Middle East," or even a more stable Middle East, I have just one follow-up: Is he frickin' mental?

Link to the transcript.