Today in Iraq–Uh Oh

Ah Joe Klein, you are destroying the best part of being a conservative ass clown; never having to admit you were wrong.

Joe Klein:
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But there were substantive questions about its applicability in 2007–was the Iraqi government a reliable partner, were there enough troops, enough time?
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Actually, there were more substantive questions than these, namely “Will the US funding and arming of Sunni militia groups be a costly, temporary remedy that proves to be disastrous down the road, as the former insurgents turn their weapons in other directions?”
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Obviously Ricks’ answer to that substantive question is “Most likely, yes.”
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Happily, the “surge” operation succeeded beyond our wildest dreams….but, as today’s events make clear, it isn’t over yet. And it is entirely possible that Iraq may be in for a bad patch, perhaps even fall apart.
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Well then, perhaps the “surge” operation that is responsible for the “wildly creative” funding and arming of former insurgents hasn’t succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of anybody, except perhaps the Sunni militias in Iraq, don’t you think, Joe Klein?
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It seems that you folks in the Beltway love to play these semantic gotcha games with each other to no benefit of serious discussion. “Civil war vs no civil war”, “surge succeeded vs not-sure-yet” –we out here are truly exhausted with this nonsense, Joe Klein.
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How about you just say that the situation looks different, now that the forces that Petraeus sought initially to coopt with money, guns and a ceasefire are now recognized to be actively contributing to instability in Iraq? Isn’t that obvious?
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Why must it be a game of “my support for the surge was reasoned, while yours was reflexive“? Why can’t you just say that everybody –including the General– understood that the operation was a huge gamble, with a huge potential downside for our fixed-schedule departure?
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To those of us out here not deigned to be included in the fo-po discussion, it looks like Serious people are counting the amount of Petraeuses that can stand on the head of a pin.
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Isn’t just time to say that the “brilliant gamble” might not be so brilliant after all? Or is there just too much political cowardice on the part of the Serious community to face reality –again?
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Thank you for reading and considering this, Joe Klein.

I guess it’s easier to feel proud and happy about “the surge” than having facilitated death squads, beheadings and ethnic cleansing. Now there literally millions of “reasons” the country can explode at any time. But it does suggest a possible way forward for our Wall Street problem, since at least the neocons are all on board with it.

Does Commentary have a significant following in Washington? I am interested in why Joe is taking a series of swipes at the rag and Wehner’s responses. I am not sure that the people at Commentary have any significant impact on our foreign/war policy, except for their strident defense of Israel. Does Jennifer Rubin hold sway in the Village’s salons? Does she socialise with Sally Quinn and the lady who sits to the left of GS on This Weak.

bitter
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Believe it or not Commentary does have a big following on the right, and Joe Klein is helping to provide the kind of cover from people like them for people like Tom Ricks who actually know what the hell they are talking about that was missing during the Bush years and the run up to the Iraq war. It may seem needless for him to take these swipes but it truly isn’t. The more he helps to discredit these fools and remind everyone how wrong they have always been, the better the chances that they never again have the kind of sway that they once held. We always have to remember something, just because things are different today doesn’t mean they will be 4 or 8 years from now. And just like a bunch of people who got everything wrong in the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations made it into Bush 43′s administration there is a chance if left unchecked that in another few years the NeoCons will once again be seen as some kind of legitimate foreign policy minds. Sticking our head in the sand and acting like they don’t exist won’t change this, confronting them like Joe Klein is doing will, or at least has a hell uva lot better chance.

remind everyone how wrong they have always been [...] doesn’t mean they will be 4 or 8 years from now
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The one thing that Joe knows as well as anyone.
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The Internet never forgets.
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While efforts to rewite History are an inescapable part of History itself, Joe has learned as well as anyone that anything you say today will go on your “permanent record” GG is of course very skilled at linking to people’s mutually exclusive statements.
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It’s an approach Joe would do well to emulate.

SGW: Thanks for the warning. You are right. It is dangerous to ignore this gang. I never got past the first few lines when I tried to read it; and I had a nasty exchange with JPod a year ago. But at a recent dinner with some Washingtonians I came away with the impression that Commentary was a Likudnik wasteland. Now that Likudniks are the main part of the new Israeli Govt I guess your admonishment is spot on. Thanks for reminding me to be alert.

SG:
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An argument can be made that, by focusing the entirety of his arguments against the discredited right, Joe Klein is depriving the people who were right about everything their due forum, and limiting the debate one between centrists and neo-conservatives.
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My point to him in my comment above (#2) is that not everyone who is paying serious attention to the ongoing conflict was required to prove their Seriousness by lauding Petraeus’ huge gambles before November 2008. It’s counter-productive for Joe not include people who were questioning the wisdom of creating another mujahedeen in Western Iraq, because it suggests that these questions simply weren’t asked. They were, of course, by the same people who said that Thomas Friedman was playing the fool.
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Joe’s playing a political game he knows he can win –since the Bush doctrine was such a colossal failure– but we don’t need games, we need real, undistorted discourse about this sort of policy.
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The “surge” was not a “success”, other than politically here in the states. Joe should be taking the Times’ reporting, and honestly examining the meaning of “success” in terms of US interests in Iraqi stability, instead of clinging to recent political orthodoxies. It’s counter-productive, IMO, SG.
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Why doesn’t Joe “discredit these fools” the way that he did the people who were right about everything from before the war started to all the way up until the execution of the “surge”: by ignoring them?

My point is: why Joe’s single-minded obsession with neo-conservatives?
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Why isn’t at least one out of three of these sorts of posts having to do with the thoughts of somebody like Juan Cole
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Why is it always this tedious back-and-forth between him and the perpetually wrong about everything?

SZ
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That’s your view point and you are more than entitled to it but i would make these statements.
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1. Look around the net and find me another MSM outlet that is calling Newt Gingrich boorish and denouncing his right wing “bull pucky” or that are calling out the NeoCons on a regular basis as Joe Klein does.
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2. At this point in time there are a lot more media attention paid to and administration positions filled with the people who were right about Iraq. We just elected a President who said the Iraq War was wrong before we invaded for Jeebus sake. Its kinda hard to say that their point of view isn’t getting its fair shake at this point.
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3. When Joe Klein seems to be taking the easy way out in his posts I call him out as much as the next person. I just happen to believe that when he actually gets it right he should be saluted in just the same fashion. That doesn’t mean he has to agree to do everything my way, or say everything my way, or even like the things I like, and hate the things I hate. It means that he gives my side a fair shake and calls a spade a spade through his own lens.
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4. Many times we can argue so much that its hard to recognize when we have won the argument. But these last few posts at least from Joe Klein have been, in reality, to the left of KT. I am not saying his is a DFH because he is not and likely never will be, but he is at least coming from more of a reality based perspective and I welcome that. My thing is if we jump him when he writes bullsh*t, but then we also jump him when he writes a reasonable post, where will the motivation come from for him to keep writing better stuff? Call me crazy but I kinda like the Joe Klein I have seen on Swampland this week, whether its because he was being an opportunist or not.

SG:
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Points all well taken, but I’d think Joe Klein was truly improving our understanding of the situation if he could find a second or two in order to post about people who are making sense.
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…I would like to pose the question which rarely gets seriously addressed in this debate: what if there had been no surge?
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None of the current crop of Surge Literature really grapples with this counter-factual, though Ricks comes the closest (see his chapter seven). Most simply assume the worst-case counter-factual, that without the surge Iraqi civil war would have escalated to genocide and the United States would have fled with tail between legs. But this is simply not a sure thing. By the time the surge brigades arrived in Iraq, the Sunni Awakening’s turn against al-Qaeda had long since taken place (in the fall of 2006). The sectarian cleansing of Baghdad was far advanced (and continued through the surge). Moqtada al-Sadr’s calculations vis a vis Iran, competing Shia groups, and the United States were already changing. Strategic exhaustion may already have been setting in. Had the Iraq Study Group been heeded, would Iraq today look much as it does now — only with half the U.S. military presence and a much faster track towards political reconciliation?

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bitterpill8: I am interested in why Joe is taking a series of swipes at the rag and Wehner’s responses.
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There’s a bit of a personal issue there; no Jew likes to be called anti-Semitic…and Joe Klein has mentioned in a past posting that the public conversation regarding US foreign policy in the Middle East needs more and better-reasoned participation than what is provided by the gaggle of neoconservatives over at Commentary.
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Joe Klein: Wehner['s]…essential argument was that he was “right” about the surge and Ricks and I weren’t.
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Has Pete Wehner, the “idea and argument generator” in the Bush ’43 White House, ever been right – the first time – about anything? I’m finding it difficult to come up with examples. He has maintained that the decrease in violence in Iraq was due primarily – almost solely – to an increase in troops…All the while ignoring bigger factors and identifying a correct statement (that an improving situation in Iraq was the result of “political factors inside Iraq that came right at the same time”) by a future President as ‘counterfactual’.
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Reading through a few of Wehner’s ‘arguments’, I’m seeing the same thing over and over again…Broad, ambiguous statements (‘win the war in Iraq’ and Bush’s Iraq policy as “working in terms of security, in terms of politics, and in terms of economics.”), mischaracterization of critics’ arguments, a shallow grasp of the details, and – of course – attack, attack, attack. Just the man for the job in Karl Rove’s White House; ready to fight, far too right, and intellectually light.

SG:
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Just to underscore what I mean, I should probably “let Ricks speak for himself”, except that I’ll actually tell you what Ricks said –as opposed to Joe:
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The Gamble’s main flaw is that it pulls back from the brink before fully grappling with the profound gap between its grim analytical conclusions about the surge and the author’s clear admiration for the men who pulled it off. Ricks concludes that:
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It is unclear in 2009 if he did much more than lengthen the war… Petraeus found tactical success — that is, improved security — but not the clear political breakthrough that would have meant unambiguous strategic success. At the end of the surge, the fundamental political problems facing Iraq were the same ones as when it began.” (p.9)

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But if that’s the case, shouldn’t that more fully shape the evaluation of those who pushed for and implemented the surge?

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…And shouldn’t the discussion of differences between Ricks and his opponents include his assessment in black-and-white that the “surge” failed?

sorry about the formatting, I’ll lie down again and nurse this respiratory infection…

sz’s point of overemphasis on the neocons caught my eye. I agree. They orchestrated the whole thing, but more importantly, everybody followed. Remembering that flock of bleeting sheep in their wake is as important, or more so, as calling out the neocons fascist program.

SZ
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So your argument is that while Ricks was right to oppose the Surge he wasn’t right enough? I am asking seriously so I will wait for your response.

Why we haven’t seen hula for awhile
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http://twitter.com/HULAgate
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TOTALLY unspoofable
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(h/t jarais)

I saw Ricks say in a few places–including his interview with Sam Seder and in a Washington Post Q&A chat–say that the surge did not work. I think what you see in his book is an insider gently going against the conventional wisdom. And from all the reviews that missed the point he was trying to make gently (including the one by San Francisco Liberal Joan Walsh of Salon), you can see that the Village, like a mule, has to be hit between the eyes with a two-by-four for a point that violates it’s own received wisdom to be understood.
This bit from the WaPo chat gives a hint of how Ricks is pushing the Broderist rock up the endless slope of Village CW:
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Thomas Ricks: [...] The surge worked militarily. It failed politically.
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It is now an unchallenged fact in the green rooms of the Beltway and the Washington Post executive suites that the goal of the surge was to reduce (American) casualties.
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As to why we’re still paying attention to the neo-cons: When the utterly useless and always wrong Bill Kristol was finally let go by the NYT, he was immediately hired by Fred Hiatt at the Washington Post (Fred Hiatt who was recently listed by a conservative outlet, the FT?, as one of the most influential liberals in the media). Hiatt’s reasoning being, I suppose, that the Bush/Cheney/neocon line was under-represented by Krauthammer, Gerson, Applebaum, and bimonthly opeds from some combination of McCain, Graham and Lieberman.

SG:
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So your argument is that while Ricks was right to oppose the Surge he wasn’t right enough? I am asking seriously so I will wait for your response.
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No, no.
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My argument is that Joe should have quoted what Ricks said in print (instead of “letting him speak for himself”), and addressed at least one other important examination of Ricks’ analysis that could be had from the reality-based community –if he would just stop pretending that it isn’t there.
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The reality-based exposition also easily refutes neo-conservative dogma, and has the advantage of being reality-based, so that readers can be exposed to more good information about what’s going on.
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That was my point.

SZ
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How would Joe Klein know where Ricks’ pessimism on Iraq came from? None of what you quoted addresses that. If you have a link to some particular insight Ricks’ gave about precisely why he was pessimistic about the Surge before it was implemented then yeah that would be helpful but I don’t know that that information is out there. And if it was I read it as Joe only being able to speak for himself and as Ricks has a blog at foreign policy’s website just like Marc Lynch does I am sure that if he feels so inclined he can explain why he didn’t think the Surge was a good move before hand. Personally I would rather hear it from the horses mouth than what someone else supposes to be the case. What Lynch focused on wasn’t what Ricks’ has said about the merits of the Surge before hand but an analysis of the book Ricks’ has written and in the same post he says this about the content of the book.
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Ricks has been coming under withering criticism from some on the Left for his conclusion that the United States will likely remain in Iraq for many years to come. This is ironic, because he arrives there in no small part because he agrees with many of the main Center-Left criticisms of the surge: that its tactical successes did not add up to a strategic victory, that security gains were not leading to political reconciliation, that the Awakenings risked fragmenting the Iraqi state. Ricks focuses with brutal precision on the never-resolved tension between the military successes of the surge and its political objectives. For all his admiration for the architects of the surge, his reporting and analysis largely vindicate the perspective of the skeptics — and shows that many of those on the inside shared their concerns all along.
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His characterization of the status quo is important because, to paraphrase The Gamble’s most well-publicized tagline, the political battles for which this book may be remembered probably haven’t happened yet. The Gamble should be essential reading for those anticipating Republican efforts to blame Obama for squandering the “success” of the surge if things go bad. Ricks shows clearly how fragile a situation the surge has left behind, and how few of the underlying political problems it resolved. This should deeply complicate the narrative on which the potential political attack would be based — but should also remind those on the other side of how likely such backsliding may really be. Ricks makes clear that the constant warnings from Petraeus, Odierno, Crocker, and so many others of the fragility of the security gains were never just window-dressing. Ricks doesn’t find many people on the inside claiming that the war is over, or that it has been won. That might not be convenient for those anxious for rapid withdrawals, but it does accurately reflect their views.

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Sounds pretty reality based to me.

Meanwhite, over in Afghanistan, Obama shows some flexibility:

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/29/obama-on-troops-in-pakistan-never-mind/

Here’s an interesting take:

http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2009/03/pres-obama-lionhawk-part-deux.html

I side with Stuart on this. I think that Joe Klein, like Pres. Obama (but unlike QH, apparently) is capable of doing more than one thing at a time.
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Quarantining the Commentary crew is a worthwhile endeavor; but airing the views of people who have not bee wrong about everything is also worthwhile.
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Pretty much everyone who writes for Time, the Times, the Post, etc. have been wrong about everything important, though, too. And a Time columnist generally perceives it to be part of his job to be consistently politically correct. No sense risking being declared prematurely anti-centrist.

SG:
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How would Joe Klein know where Ricks’ pessimism on Iraq came from?
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Umm…from Ricks’ book…?
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You know, the one titled “The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008“…?
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The one from which I quoted above, in which Ricks writes (let’s hope I can get the formatting right this time, despite my head falling apart):
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“It is unclear in 2009 if he did much more than lengthen the war… Petraeus found tactical success — that is, improved security — but not the clear political breakthrough that would have meant unambiguous strategic success. At the end of the surge, the fundamental political problems facing Iraq were the same ones as when it began.” (p.9)

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…?
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That’s how Joe would know about Ricks’ pessimism –he basically said “the surge succeeded temporarily, but failed overall” in the book they’re all talking about.
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Joe “lets Ricks speak for himself”, because Joe doesn’t want to “disparage” the guy by describing Ricks’ conclusions in terms like “Ricks wrote that the surge was a strategic failure“.
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Of course, that’s the whole source of the “controversy”, and this knowledge is what’s being taken for granted by the reality-based community.
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It’s simply presumed by those to the left of Klein that the surge was a strategic failure, and that this is what Ricks said.
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Does that make more sense now, SG?

SZ
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Thats not pessimism, thats analysis of what happened AFTER it happened.

I find it interesting that Ricks seems to put all of this on Petraeus when what should have happened is a multiple-pronged strategy involving a higher military presence and a large diplomatic and humanitarian push. Petraeus put up his part of the deal but did Crocker et al do ANYTHING? I mean honestly, can someone direct me to a great accomplishment since his appointment in 2006(?) that Crocker has done in Iraq? Anyone?

In other news David Gregory made another move today to be crowned King Ass hole of all the Sunday show hosts.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29942437/page/5
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MR. GREGORY: This is your 54th appearance on MEET THE PRESS. Now, I know you’re a competitive guy. Bob Dole still holds the record at 63. And so we’ve been doing the calculations here. We think we can make this up, maybe within a year’s time.
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SEN. McCAIN: I’d love…
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MR. GREGORY: If you’re game for that.

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Can someone explain to me why we need to see McCain 9 more times this year?

That’s less than once a month SG-Gregory/McCain will have no trouble getting the job done.

Can someone explain to me why we need to see McCain 9 more times this year?
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I knew there was a good reason I have stopped watching these programs, esp MTP.

Will somebody else help me out here?
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Thats not pessimism…
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SG:
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That “pessimism” that Joe is using to describe Ricks’ CURRENT perspective on Iraq. Look, Joe starts this post by saying:
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A few days ago, we were talking about Tom Ricks’ pessimism with regard to Iraq.
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OK, by “a few days ago” (because he’s too lazy to link) he means this post:
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The problem is that Ricks remains relatively pessimistic about Iraq. He is more pessimistic about Iraq than I am, more pessimistic than many of those who served in Iraq with Petraeus are–but then, he knows more than most of us do, so I take his worries seriously.

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So what’s this CURRENT pessimism Joe’s talking about?
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Well, (again) he’s either too lazy or too concerned to link to it or quote from it, but the pessimism has to do with that book Ricks wrote (and to which I linked).
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In fact, Ricks says even more than that in his book:
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I think that invading Iraq preemptively on false premises, at the time that we already were at war elsewhere, was probably the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy. Everything we do in Iraq is the fruit of that poisoned tree. But I think also that there are no good answers in Iraq, just less bad ones. I think staying in Iraq is immoral, but I think leaving immediately would be even more so, because of the risk it runs of leaving Iraq to a civil war that could go regional.

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See, SG?
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Combine “I think staying in Iraq is immoral” with “It is unclear in 2009 if he did much more than lengthen the war… Petraeus found tactical success — that is, improved security — but not the clear political breakthrough that would have meant unambiguous strategic success.“, and you have rightist idiots at Commentary attacking Ricks’ sufficient worship of Petraeus and the surge:
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…arguably Iraq would rank among the bigger mistakes in the history of American foreign policy if we had lost the war. It’s worth adding, I suppose, that we would have if we had followed the council of such informed voices as…. Tom Ricks, who, I think it’s fair to surmise, opposed President Bush’s surge. In January 2007, for example, Ricks said this…

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So the Bushist fool at Commentary says that Ricks has no credibility to judge the state of Iraq pessimistically, because Ricks clearly opposed the glorious, wonderful, total solution to Iraq –Our Beloved Leader Petraeus’ “surge”.
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That’s what Joe is talking about.
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Joe is “defending” Ricks by saying that Ricks’ lack of confidence in the surge was understandable, even if wrong. I say that this is idiotic, and that events like the ones starting to appear in the Times (to which Joe links, finally) prove just how right Ricks continues to be.
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Ricks, in the meantime, does actually speak for himself:
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Some guy named Pete Wehner who used to flak for President Bush attacks me on Commentary’s site today. I used to read Commentary quite a lot, and actually remember when its authors read the books they criticized! Lazy Wehner clearly hasn’t. I get the impression that he doesn’t know much about Iraq. Here is Joe Klein’s response. The odd thing about Wehner is that he must think he is supporting the military by tearing me down. I just was looking this morning at a note from an Army major who passed along that my new book is mandatory pre-deployment reading in his unit.

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…and he puts the possible taint of heretical lack of Petraeus worship right into Joe’s lap.
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Joe then goes ahead and lavishes all kinds of silly praise upon the surge, just so that nobody gets the idea that he would ever –ever– question its success!
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This is what this whole argument is about, SG.
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My point to Joe is that he should stop lionizing Petraeus, and start looking at what the surge has “accomplished” in the pessimistic terms Ricks has adopted…along with everybody else in the reality-based community, whose analysis would be right there to back up Ricks’ sober assessments, if he’d just acknowledge its existence.

MR. GREGORY: Has the president been true to his word to change the way Washington operates?
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Are you still employed Mr. Gregory? Then no.
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What a tool.

Sorry, that should read “…and you have rightist idiots at Commentary attacking Ricks’ insufficient worship of Petraeus and the surge…”

SZ
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I am not sure if we are reading the same posts here but allow me to give you two quotes which to me show Joe Klein is NOW referring to pessimism BEFORE the surge.
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By the way, Pete Wehner fired back against Ricks and me on the Commentary blog. His essential argument was that he was “right” about the surge and Ricks and I weren’t.

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The bolded words are clearly in the past tense.
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I can’t speak for Ricks, but my doubts about the surge came as a result of long conversations with members of the Petraeus staff. Key members of the team opposed the operation,including Petraeus’s top counterinsurgency adviser David Kilcullen and others, whose names will remain private because our conversations were. All of us were fans of counterinsurgency doctrine. It seemed the most humane way to protect Iraqi–and now, Afghan–civilians against the chaos and terrorism that we had created (in Iraq) by invading. But there were substantive questions about its applicability in 2007–was the Iraqi government a reliable partner, were there enough troops, enough time?

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Now this is clearly a reference to Joe’s mindset pre surge. He talks about how members opposed the operation which is moot now and he references 2007. Hey I am not going to keep killing the thread with this but its abundantly clear to my eyes that Joe was talking about his trepidation about the surge beforehand. And I would imagine thats what me means when he says he can’t speak for Ricks.

PNNTO
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Don’t miss the fact that the current record holder is also a former Republican Senator that lost several bids for the Presidency. Anybody who doesn’t see MTP for the Republican safe haven it is just isn’t paying attention at this point.

SG-Mary Matalin laid it out as honestly as can be. MTP is a great place for republicans to “control the message”

While I get why the neocons who are trying to sculpt a less laughable legacy the boss would find reasonably acceptable coming up in a google search of the Bush and Iraq war or an ask.com response to why daddy went to jail.
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I don’t understand why the press fails to challenge them now, I mean aren’t they supposed to enjoy tearing down what they build up? The revisionists, complete with their brand new think tank (think is really too strong a word here) claim the surge an absolute, unprecedented, unqualified, evidence of the right to be added to Mt. Rushmore success, even though they and everyone else knows that the objectives of the surge was stop the violence so they could address the political obstacles that had them on the brink of civil war. – Okay that’s not too complex is it? Even a toddler can understand the concept of a time out?
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So why is the press, despite being wired for the Reps, are not chomping at the bit to go into a mad dog frenzy over how the supposed success of the surge the Iraqis are poised to build walls in Iraq?
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Is the mainstream press so wedded to an Obama failed presidency that even when one of their own is saying hit the brakes, the surge was supposed to give them time to solve the problems, and the problems haven’t been solved they just ignore it? None of the political objectives have been met leading to the very real possibility that this thing could still blow regardless of whether any troops are reduced. It’s the reason that Obama’s withdrawal plan does the heavy lifting on the back end just in case this crap goes south after the election.
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In what part of the surge story did anyone talk about building walls around Baghdad? Wasn’t the whole dividing wall one of VP Biden suggested follies in the previous thread?
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I’m just saying that this is starting to sound a bit like story line for 24. Can’t you just see Cheney as the Starkwood guy (oops Haliburton/KBR)?

SG:
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I really do invite you to read the post to which Joe refers
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A few days ago, we were talking about Tom Ricks’ pessimism with regard to Iraq
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, in which he was talking about Tom Ricks’ pessimism with regard to Iraq:
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The problem is that Ricks remains relatively pessimistic about Iraq. He is more pessimistic about Iraq than I am, more pessimistic than many of those who served in Iraq with Petraeus are–but then, he knows more than most of us do, so I take his worries seriously.

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Seriously…SG. I think you’re mistaken.
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Yes, Joe does talk about the idiot rightist at Commentary having raised Ricks’ opposition to the surge –that’s what he’s sort of defending here– but pre-surge pessimism isn’t the “Uh-Oh” to which the title of the post refers.
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I’m actually sort of confused at how weirdly confused you are, and where you’re going with this argument. Even this point of yours about the “pessimism” with which Joe opens the post has no bearing on anything.
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I can’t actually figure out what your argument is, nor how it’s relevant to the point I tried to make originally, which was:
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Isn’t just time to say that the “brilliant gamble” might not be so brilliant after all? Or is there just too much political cowardice on the part of the Serious community to face reality –again?
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If you’d like the last word on this, be my guest. I can’t figure out what you’re saying, apart from something like “Joe’s criticizing conservatives, therefore don’t criticize Joe –or I’ll argue you to death.”

SZ
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Thats a pretty sorry excuse for trying to translate my argument which has been pretty straight forward from the jump. Honestly I would have expected better from you. To put it in the most straight forward terms AGAIN, what you referenced were criticisms of the Surge AFTER it happened as justification for why Joe should have spoken for Ricks about how he felt BEFORE the Surge was implemented. What this post is about is Wehner claiming he was right about the surge BEFOREHAND and Joe and Ricks were wrong and Joe’s response to that criticism. Just to put a nail in that coffin here is what the Wehner guy actually said.
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Perhaps – but I knew enough about Iraq to support the surge, when Ricks (and his tag-team partner Joe Klein) did not

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Again clearly PAST tense.
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I do believe I have said from the get go that you were entitled to your point of view and you still are. But there is no question here of what I was saying and what I refuted you on. It is what it is.

SZ: I don;t understand why you are pushing yourself inspite of your illness. Take it easy, relax and come back when you are well. We will wait for your intervention. Just relax, OK?

MTP’s asshat had yet another EXCLOOSIVE featuring McSimple. What is exclusive about this regurgitator of McPain’s TPS.

This is also a trick used by the Blitz.

McCan – yes McCan said nothing new, and MTP has shown yet again that it is is Asshattery Central.

Thanks for your concern, bitterpill8. I should probably mellow out and lie down. It would save everybody from my degraded formatting skills!
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I actually think that the questions you raise in your comment at #4 are relevant.
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Do you have any thoughts on this question
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Isn’t just time to say that the “brilliant gamble” might not be so brilliant after all? Or is there just too much political cowardice on the part of the Serious community to face reality –again?
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…having to do with Ricks’ assessment of the current situation in Iraq, and supported by the reporting from the New York Times piece to which Joe links?

SZ you are incorrigible!! Okay: let me remind everyone that Petraeus, before he became Mr Big served a first posting in Northern Iraq. He went around and was effective as a regional commander. I had a stint with the British Govt and read a lot of the stuff that Petraeus sent home. He tagged the Northern “resistance’ and contrasted that with the Kurds. I think those were Petraeus’ best days. But the asshats in Baghdad – Bremer, Dan Senor and sundry bloviators did not support him. So he is a thinker! and an intellectual. This may sound odd, but seriously, he did invite criticism of his policies.

The Bushistas gave him his additional stars and he then got in line. Sad that he did so. But the army has the habit of reigning in its off beat guys by giving them medals, money and upgraded quarters.

Perraeus, what a Latin name, saluted Bush and sold himself short.

Oops, sorry, its Petraeus in the last paragraph.

Thanks for your thoughts, bitterpill8, I appreciate the response.

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whoopsie, wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea..end of 3:40 post should read: “too far Right”…

g_crush: went back and read post: great ending.

sz: I hope you are feeling better. You read #4, SG’s response and then mine. At the dinner I attended, which was private and a family gathering, someone mentioned Joe and Commentary. My recollection was some talk about Elliott Abrams in Bush’s White House and his oversight of the Israel file and the “ineffectiveness of Ms Rice”. Nothing sinister: just a fact of life in the Rovian WH. Someone talked about Commentary and EA and the consensus was that they were less effective with GWB because, for all his public support for Israel, GWB did not have any deep feelings for the People of the Book. I had had a testy exchange with JPod sometime before and again the table laughed him off as a buffoon. I came away with the impression that Commentary was on the outs as far as being in the Circle of Power was concenred.

[...] two more posts about me over at his blog at Time. He is enraged at me for my responses (here and here) to some of Tom Ricks’s arguments. In his latest outburst Klein writes that, to the extent [...]

[...] March 29th 2009 – “Today in Iraq – Uh – Oh”, by Joe Klein, not a fan of Bush or the Surg… “Happily, the “surge” operation succeeded beyond our wildest dreams….but, as today’s events make clear, it isn’t over yet.” [...]