Paul Krugman explains how the Dems ought to tackle the Petraeus hearings and delivers this ahistorical nonsense:
Fourth, the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will
accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do.
Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002; their reward was
an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam,
that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
Congressional Democrats gave Bush everything he wanted in 2002? It was five long years ago, yet I remember as if it was only four and a half years ago that Democrats wanted strict Federal job protection for the workers covered by the reorganization and Bush wanted the President to have greater flexibility in hiring and firing. Democrats wanted to protect Federal union employees, Republicans wanted to protect Americans - surely Krugman remember this as a campaign issue?
But don't trust my memory (I wouldn't!) - here are the NY Times editors following the Republican success in the 2002 mid-term election:
The president set two very appropriate goals for the necessarily
brief lame-duck session that begins next week. Neither will be easy to
finish but both are achievable. One is to complete work on a Department
of Homeland Security. The other is to approve terrorism insurance. We
would add a third: helping the unemployed.
Homeland security
has been blocked by Democratic opposition to Mr. Bush's plan to reduce
civil service protection for the employees of the new department. This
is no longer a fight worth pursuing. While we believed the Democrats
had the better position, the one thing voters made clear on Tuesday is
that they support the president on the homeland security issue. The
Democrats should go along, and Senator Robert Byrd, the powerful
Democrat from West Virginia who believes that the antiterrorist
apparatus was constructed too quickly, should drop his threat to
filibuster the bill.
A bill the President was willing to sign was then passed later in November.
USA Today had a bit on the Cleland connection in their 2002 election coverage:
Cleland defeated by conservative
Few believed Republican Saxby Chambliss could paint Sen. Max Cleland, a
veteran who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, as soft on national
security. But that's just what the conservative congressman did to
score a surprising victory over the one-term Democrat.
Chambliss, 59, a four-term congressman from Moultrie, was virtually
unknown in Atlanta and its Republican suburbs, where a hefty share of
Georgia voters reside. But his message that Cleland was too liberal for
Georgia resonated statewide. He cited the incumbent's vote on a
proposed department of homeland security; Cleland had sided with fellow
Democrats by insisting that workers' civil-service protections be
retained. Chambliss even ran a TV ad picturing Cleland with Saddam
Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
The left-leaning Wikipedia has more under a fair and balanced subheading of "Political slanderings":
Max Cleland lost the 2002 general election to Republican Saxby
Chambliss. A key element in that loss was a negative ad that challenged
Cleland's votes in Congress on the formation of the Department of
Homeland Security.
The text of the ad is as follows:
- "As America faces terrorists and extremist dictators, Max Cleland runs television ads claiming he has the courage to lead.
- "He says he supports President Bush at every opportunity, but that's not the truth."
- "Since July, Max Cleland voted against President Bush's vital homeland security efforts 11 times."
- "But the record proves, Max Cleland is just misleading."
The issue in 2002 was civil service protections for Homeland
Security employees, which Bush opposed and Cleland supported. The ad
failed to point out that Cleland supported the creation of a Department
of Homeland Security before Bush did. Cleland originally
co-sponsored the enabling legislation and eventually supported it, but
as the bill moved through Congress, he cast a number of votes against
it in hopes of getting a better bill. The Republican attack ads made it
look as though Cleland was voting against Homeland Security itself, and
one TV ad morphed Cleland's face into Saddam Hussein's while suggesting
that Cleland was indifferent to the safety of the American people. This
ad was so disgusting that Republican Sens. Hagel and McCain both
protested it]
Well. It is an article of lefty faith that the Evil Reps questioned Cleland's patriotism. But has it also now become an article of that faith that Congressional Dems gave Bush "everything he wanted" in the summer and fall of 2002? I am not qualified to put Prof. Krugman on the couch but I am curious - does he sincerely remember that 2002 election as he presented it (which would be a troubling example of selective memory), or is he deliberately presenting a falsehood, i.e., lying?
As Will Rogers observed, "It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so." One wonders how many other factoids Prof. Krugman "knows". Well, I often enjoy a juice drink "based on real fruit juice". Close inspection of the label reveals to the once blissfully ignorant that the product is 10% "real fruit juice". One hopes that Krugman's "reality-based" analyses achieve a higher proportion of reality, even though his end product is clearly a bit diluted by fantasy and misinformation.
WILL ROGERS ANTICIPATES GEORGE BUSH: Who knew Will Rogers would back Bush:
"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
Or more broadly:
A fool and his money are soon elected.
BUT SERIOUSLY: Prof. Krugman cites this Sept 26 2004 article by Gen. Petraeus as well as this Oct 5 2005 press briefing as examples of his reliable optimism. However, let me pick this out from 2005:
Q
General, given the -- you have listed some caveats such as political
progress and stopping of infiltrators. Given the fairly bright picture
of progress you've just painted, would you venture to predict that U.S.
troops could begin leaving Iraq in fairly significant numbers by the
end of next year?
GEN. PETRAEUS: I never thought anyone would ask that question! (Laughter.)
Let me
say, really, you know, again, this is going to be very
conditions-based. And I think, again, these events that I talked about
-- and it's really three events: the referendum, the elections, and
the formation of the government -- all will be very, very important in
forming or contributing to an environment in which, with adequate
security forces at proper readiness levels, and with assistance in
those other areas I talked about, particularly from neighboring
countries in restricting the flow of foreign fighters and terrorists,
that would make such reductions possible. Obviously, that's the goal.
That's what everyone is pointing to. But again, very, very
conditions-based. And I think that that was laid out pretty well last
week.
Q I
understand. Everybody's saying conditions-based. Would you venture a
prediction -- you know the situation very well -- do you think that
enough political progress will be made; do you think, given the
improvement in the training, that that significant number of U.S.
troops could begin to leave Iraq by the end of next year?
GEN.
PETRAEUS: I wouldn't venture that. And I will tell you that I'm a
qualified optimist, and that the qualification is that, again, Iraqi
leaders very much doing what they want to do and what they need to do
over the course of the next few months to keep the country together, to
reach out to those that feel they may not have a stake in the success
of the new Iraq; to provide competent, honest leadership at the
national level, in the provinces, in the ministries; and, of course, to
do the same in the security forces. So --
Well, I think we all agree that Petraeus at least understands the issues in Iraq. His statements about the quality and quantity of trained Iraqi security forces have not stood up well:
Iraqi Army Unable To Take Over Within A Year, Report Says
Breakup of National Police Is Urged
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 6, 2007; A01
Iraq's
army, despite measurable progress, will be unable to take over internal
security from U.S. forces in the next 12 to 18 months and "cannot yet
meaningfully contribute to denying terrorists safe haven," according to
a report on the Iraqi security forces published today.
The report, prepared by a commission of retired senior U.S. military
officers, describes the 25,000-member Iraqi national police force and
the Interior Ministry, which controls it, as riddled with sectarianism
and corruption. The ministry, it says, is "dysfunctional" and is "a
ministry in name only." The commission recommended that the national
police force be disbanded.
KRUGMAN ON SECURITY: The Earnest Prof wrote this:
First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq
is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and
police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is
almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment
by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in
the average number of daily attacks.
So how can the military be
claiming otherwise? Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret
formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other
deaths (not important); according to press reports, all deaths from car
bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington
Post that “if a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s
sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.” So the number
of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.
"No independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq
is down"? Let's cut to the Iraq Body Count,a Brit group - they report that average daily civilian deaths in 2006 were 52 from gunfire/executions and 8.5/day from car bombs; the comparable figures for 2007 are 29 and 14. With deaths from gunfires/executions down but from car bombs up, the total daily civilian violent deaths for 2007 has dropped from 60.5 (2006) to 43.
The Iraq Body Count people are not delighted to be reporting this, so they offer this caveat and spin:
These charts sometimes indicate a modest improvement in the security situation
for ordinary Iraqis post-surge, and this is not disputed. But these charts
will tend to under-represent reported violence for the more recent periods,
for the reasons stated above. The observed downward trend in these charts
will likely become less marked as data still in the pipeline is added (see Recent
Events for as yet unprocessed data).
It is important to place the events of 2007 in context. Levels of violence
reached an all-time high in the last six months of 2006. Only in comparison
to that could the first half of 2007 be regarded as an improvement. Despite
any efforts put into the surge, the first six months of 2007 was still the
most deadly first six months for civilians of any year since the invasion.
One wonders, yet again, what factual basis Prof. Krugman imagined for his assertion that "the daily number of civilian deaths is
almost twice its average pace from last year". The Saturday Times has more on this, with no suggestion that Krugman might be right.
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