Truth, Put Your Boots On

What is the old saying - the pursuit of truth makes strange bedfellows? Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard finds himself in alliance with James Kirchick of The New Republic, and both are debunking a new attack on Joe Lieberman.  Let's go to Michael Goldfarb:

Here's the video of Lieberman giving Obama a good smack on Fox. Jane Hamsher, instead of putting the man in blackface, decides to just insert an error in her transcript of the interview [Actually, Fox News did; see "DIGGING DEEP, below - TM]. She quotes Lieberman:

If we did what Sen. Obama wanted us to do last year, Al-Qaeda in Iran would be in control of Iraq today. The whole Middle East would be in turmoil and American security and credibility would be jeopardized.

Unfortunately for this attack meme, anyone who actually listens to the tape will hear that Lieberman said "Al Qaeda *and* Iran".  Ooops. [But in Jane's defense, Fox News almost surely erred in the rush transcript, then corrected it - see "DIGGING DEEP, below.  However, since Ms. Hamsher prominently featured a link to the video and opened with "There's nothing quite like seeing it live", I think it is reasonable to expect her to have actually seen and listened to the tape, yes?  Well, maybe her defense is that she trusted Fox News.  Hmm, time to resume the boycott?] [A bit later - Ms. Hamsher's defense, easily explained by any pop psychologist, is that she does too hear "in Iran".  But what would Greenwald do?  I don't see any update to her initial post.]   

Mr. Goldfarb exhorts Matt Yglesias and the Democracy Arsenal to get the wax out.  Mr. Kirchick thumps Democracy Arsenal.

But can I play too?  How about this, from what I guess is not The Blog of Record; here is the NY Times Caucus Blog, penned by Ariel Alexovich:

Senator Joseph Lieberman, one of Mr. McCain’s biggest supporters, spoke freely (and unflatteringly) about Barack Obama yesterday on Fox News.

“Well, I think that - let me say generally that Sen. Obama doesn’t come to this debate with a lot of credibility,” Mr. Lieberman said. He added, “If we did what Sen. Obama wanted us to do last year, Al Qaeda in Iran would be in control of Iraq today. The whole Middle East would be in turmoil and American security and credibility would be jeopardized.”

(Presumably, Mr. Lieberman meant to say Al Qaeda in Iraq, not Iran — a mixup that has bedeviled Mr. McCain as well.)

Presumably Ariel wants to check whether that internship can be revoked for cause.  Instead of merely providing a link to the Hamsher post, would it be expecting too much of a Times scribbler to actually listen to the tape?  I guess so.

And if the NY Times stumbles, surely the LA Times will trip — Borzou Daraqahi in Beirut devotes an entire post at the LA Times blog to the improbability of Al Qaeda in Iran:

MIDDLE EAST: Another Iran faux pas?

Sen. Joe Lieberman was trying to portray presidential contender Barack Obama as a no-nothing on Iraq. But he may have stumbled himself, inventing a whole new militant group supposedly destabilizing Iraq.

My well-intentioned advice to Mr. Daraqahi - when relying on lefty blogs for factual content, mistrust but verify.  [The LA Times now has an update noting their error and citing the Lieberman staffas their prod.]

Where else has this Foxy Hamsher invention gone?  The Salon Blog Report (sorry, I can't figure out how to permalink the archives) is currently promoting the Democracy Arsenal mis-post as its lead "From The Left" item.

And can we bust Steve Benen, the Salon Blog Report editor, at his own blog?  Yes we can!

Can we bust Steve Benen for promoting this at Air America?  Yes we can!

Can we bust a fellow Firedog at The AlterNet for parroting Jane?  Yes we can!

Can we bust Crooks and Liars for joining in the faith-based initiative by highlighting "Al Qaeda in Iran" and adding this in an UPDATE:

Update: John Amato: OK, we know McCain had to be corrected by Lieberman when he said that Al-Qaeda was being trained in Iran, a major gaffe for the man running on his foreign policy experience, but what’s Joe’s excuse? Seems like he’s planting this one on purpose. In an email exchange with Digby, she said that it worked so well with Saddam and  9/11.

Yes we can!

Can we bust Digby for uncritically accepting this faux-gaffe in the course of a glorious 'what it all means' exposition?  Yes we can!

Can we bust ThinkProgress (InventStuff) for propagating this in their UPDATE?  Yes we can!

Can we bust EIN NEWS for this daft headline:

Lieberman Creates New Imaginary Foe: Al Qaeda in Iran 3 Apr 2008 18:33 GMT

Yes we can!

Can we bust the Mother Jones blog for excessive MoJo?  Yes we can!

Finally, can we bust Fox News for botching the transcript?  No we can't Yes we can! [see "DIGGING DEEP", below.]

If we did what Sen. Obama wanted us to do last year, Al-Qaeda and Iran would be in control of Iraq today. The whole Middle East would be in turmoil and American security and credibility would be jeopardized.

Another tough day for Team Reality.  Just mulling out loud here - if someone is going to link to a tape and tell me I really ought to listen to the tape, don't you think they ought to listen to the tape as well?  Fair's fair!

Let's start a pool - how long until we see corrections ebbing and flowing through these prominent lefty sites?

(a) later;
(b) way later;
(c) How about "never" - does "never" work for you?

MORE:  For the truly dark-hearted, a second pool - which big-time lefty journo will be the first to promote this?

(a) Keith Olbermann       (b) Chris Matthews

(c) Paul Krugman           (d) Maureen Dowd

(e) Keith Olbermann       (f) Keith Olbermann

Punters, do keep in mind - the print people can just rely on the bum Hamsher transcript; Olbermann and Matthews would almost surely feel obliged to play the clip and strain to mishear it.  Doesn't mean they aren't capable of it.

DIGGING DEEP:  News.Google tells me that FoxNews originally used the phrase "Al Qaeda in Iran" but links to the rush transcript where Fox has the phrase as "Al Qaeda and Iran".  I have no idea how the Fox transcription process or their corrections/editing process works or how long it took them to correct this mistake (or how it came to their attention), but this disclaimer is featured prominently at the top of their article:

This is a rush transcript from "America's Election HQ," April 1, 2008. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Mistrust but verify. 

As to who got what wrong and how, who knows?  *IF*, I say if Jane Hamsher included a link to the initial rush transcript in her initial posting then one might look askance at Michael Goldfarb's contention that she "invented" the gaffe.

OTOH, Ms. Hamsher may have been prodded by the TNR piece to include a link to the transcript somewhat later in the process.  In that scenario, it may have been that all Mr. Goldfarb had to go on was Ms. Hamsher's link to the video and an unsourced transcript.

The Google cache is not helping me here; if there is a way to crack this, I welcome suggestions.  Something suggestive but not decisive - The Carpetbagger presents the transcript with no link or citation; his reference to a source is "Jane Hamsher has the video".  One infers he simply cut/pasted the Hamsher transcript, but why no link to Fox?  Is this some lefty boycott, an attempt to give the credit to Ms. Hamsher, or is it becasue he was not aware of the Fox transcript?

ThinkProgress also provides a bit of a transcript without actually linking to a transcript, but they do credit Ms. Hamsher in an UPDATE.  Again, suggestive but not decisive.

And you may well ask, what is my excuse?  I am troubled - by the time I waded into this dust-up there were plenty of hints that should have alerted me to a rat-like scent, and eventually I picked up on them - Just for example, I stumbled across this stray lefty who linked only to the Fox transcript, which did not even match his text - a clue!  Frequent commenter Foo Bar also noticed a problem.

Apparently Jane Hamsher is going to stick with the "I heard 'in', so sue me" defense; since people do hear what they want and expect to hear, who can say she is not telling the truth?  However, it certainly leaves one thinking, not for the first time, that the "Reality-Based" Community spends a lot of time in a self-invented reality.

Meanwhile, our fond hope is that we will see appropriate Updates at Salon, the NY Times, Firedoglake, The CarpetBagger, Democracy's Arsenal, and so on, but our breath is unabated.  And of course our not-so-secret hope is that by the end of the week we can mock Krugman, Dowd, Rich, and the usual suspects.

DO KEEP IN MIND: In the Fox interview the very next question was about McCain's gaffe linking Al Qaeda with Iran; Lieberman said this:

LIEBERMAN: Well, just ridiculous. I mean John McCain knows that the Iranians are supporting Shia extremists, and that's different from Al- Qaeda. He misspoke. Every one of the other candidates for president at one time or another has misspoken. I have, too.

When I heard him do that, I leaned forward and I said, "I know what you meant to say, but here's what you said." But you know, what is really important about that exchange, if I may quote from the Bible, that wonderful challenge, "How is it that you can see the speck in your brother's eye but you don't see the log in your own?"

They made a big deal out of John McCain misspeaking. But what senator McCain was saying is Iran is training Iraqis who are killing American soldiers and that's what we should be angry about.

So, did Lieberman invent "Al Qaeda in Iran" and forget his own invention thirty seconds later?  Or did Fox fluff the original transcript?  We make these tough calls every day.

Comments

[GMax]

SI! Se Puede!

That is hillarious.

[centralcal]

(c)

[DebinNC]

Huffington Post

[DebinNC]

Oops.. my mistake. HP was about McCain, not Lieberman.

[SteveMG]

Any bets on whether the pretend news anchor Keith Olbermann blasts Lieberman tonight for this "lie"?

He's one of the big players in the lefty loop(y) that goes from leftwing websites to the MSM.

[Porchlight]

Townhouse v2.0!

[Sara]

Another Maguire classic.

[Danube of Thought]

Where can we hear the audio? Did Maguire include a link?

[Danube of Thought]

Never mind--you link to it through the "quotes" link. And it couldn't be clearer that he's saying "and." Sheesh.

[Seixon]

I can't wait until the Norwegian media picks this up. Well, OK, they won't. It's Lieberman, after all.

[GMax]

Yes Tom I think you a true code breaker and are reading encrypted Townhouse memos. None of the moron brigade bothers to verify it, it was just too delicious. It was even more than delicious, they could pummel Lieberman and McCain at the very same time. Like getting ketchup and mustard for your ballpark burger.

[SteveMG]

Two sidebars stories to this are (1) the continued insistence by the Left and the press that Shi'a would never support Sunni and vice versa (despite the *documented evidence of them assisting one another in fighting the Great Satan and/or Israel) and (2) the fervid attempts by the progressive bloggers to attack and weaken McCain foreign policy credentials.

In this instance, we see them attempting a "twofer".

*From the 9/11 Commission Report (link):

"In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between al Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support-even if only training-for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States. Not long afterward, senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. In the fall of 1993, another such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for further training in explosives as well as in intelligence and security." (more at the link)

[SteveMG]

Arrh, never mind. Kirchick made the same points I made (or tried to).

Read the links first, then comment, dummy.

[clarice]

I loved it so much I blogged it--it IS another TM classic..Bravo!

[SteveMG]

How does TM produce all this so fast?

Geez. Scary.

Stay away from those $5,000 call girls at least until the election is over, TM. We'll need you.

Aftewards, well.....

[Bill in AZ]

a work of art TM...

[TM]

Thanks, all. I stood on the shoulders of giants at TNR and Weekly Standard. And it's only fair to thank our friends on the left who keep the laughs coming...

[Ann]

Another Maguire classic...Ditto!

SteveMG,
I agree, it drives me crazy when someone says AQ is not in that country or this country. We should just call them all "radical Islamic jihadists" that want to cut our heads off and they are in our country, Iran, Iraq, Syria, etc. They are all the same enemy.

It would be easier if we were fighting "Martians" or little green men.

(Did any of that make sense? Maybe, I'm the dummy. :)

[Chants]

c-never

Tom, this blog entry goes to 11.

[SteveMG]

I agree, it drives me crazy when someone says AQ is not in that country or this country.

I'm quite sure AQ would slaughter all the Shi'a and vice versa once they were done killing the Jews and Americans.

However, until then they'll set aside their differences and focus on the task at hand.

The record shows it.

[Sara]

Zawahiri Admits To al-Qaeda’s War On Islam

[SteveMG]

Cyrllic alphabet, English alphabet, ideograms, (a) through (z), it's Olbermann.

Not even close.

Even when they played the tape (e.g., the Rudy comment about Obama willing to negotiate with Ahmadinejad and Syria), Olbermann and Huffington blasted Giuliani for claiming that he said al-Qaeda.

[Danube of Thought]

Because I am so old, I plead an excusable unwillingness to go to the various Moonbat sites. So let me inquire of anyone who has: do any of them respond on the merits to what Lieberman said? I.e., do they address the fact that last April Obama introduced legislation that, had it been enacted, would have resulted in the last American soldier leaving Iraq on Monday?

And let me add my amazed congrats to TM.

[Cecil Turner]

I'd take issue with this bit of conventional wisdom as well:

OK, we know McCain had to be corrected by Lieberman when he said that Al-Qaeda was being trained in Iran, a major gaffe . . .

There's not so much direct evidence of AQ training, but the ridiculous "analysis" by media campaign followers (essentially: Al Qaeda is Sunni, Iraq is Shia . . . what, is you ignorant?) ignores some rather well-documented evidence of Iran supporting both, like:

Iran is supporting both Sunni and Shiite terrorists in the Iraqi civil war, according to secret Iranian documents captured by Americans in Iraq.

An American intelligence official said the new material, which has been authenticated within the intelligence community, confirms "that Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups."

[Cecil Turner]

And then there's this:

Given the overwhelming evidence of Iranian support for both the extremist militias of the Sunni al-Qaéda and the Shi‘ite Badr and Wolf Brigades and al-Mahdi Army that have caused so much chaos and destruction to Iraqi society . . .

Numerous other reports claim similar support, including a couple from a former CIA Ops officer (Clare Lopez):

“We know that Iran has set up a network of terrorist training camps on Iranian soil, which employ al Qaeda experts to train Iraqi insurgents in the latest explosives techniques.”

If "gaffe" means "telling an unpalatable truth" . . . well, then, yeah, guess he did.

[GMax]

Breaking Jake Tapper of ABC is starting to get the impression Obama or Obama campaign lied to him about quitting smoking. Apparently when he asked the campaign about it they claimed he had quit but on MSNBC Obama admitted his plan to quit was not going that well.

Its not the smoking, its the lying dude.

[Daddy]

Great post TM. I cannot wait to see who the Dem's nominate for their next Vice Presidential Candidate. Ala, Joe Lieberman and Geraldine Ferarro, it'll be fun to know who will be the next number 2 Dem politician on the ticket to wake up 4 years down the road and find themselves ostracised by the Party as racists or sexists or militarist tools of the Conservatives. Shoot, if only we could get them to nominate VP candidates by the thousands, we could expand the rolls of the VRWC in nothing flat. And maybe that's why Hillary and Barrack won't accept the number 2 post under each other; they don't want to wake up some morning in 2012 as a closet Bill Buckley.

[centralcal]

LOL, Daddy!

[GMax]

OT

There are now reports of police raids on the victorious ( In parliament ) opposition in Zimbabwe and also foreign journalists being rounded up. Sounds like its steal the election time, or maybe we dont need no stinkin' elections time.

A minor condolence is at least Mugabe didnt let dunce extraordinaire Carter into the country to bless the whole rigged mess.

[Foo Bar]

Finally, can we bust Fox News for botching the transcript?

Yes, we probably can bust them for botching the transcript and fixing it later. Check out the keyword highlighting in the sole result (which is subject to change or disappear, but should be good for a while) of this Google search.

I agree that all these bloggers ought to go back and fix things, but it appears the error originated with Fox News.

[Soylent Red]

Good call Cecil...

I've never seen anything, anywhere, that suggests AQ is choosy about whom they get their money and weapons from.

Further, if you hearken back to the the hoary old left-lib meme that Iraq wasn't harboring AQ, the left would seem to want it both ways.

Bottom line is, terror organizations are a tool of despotic Middle Eastern politics. What brand or flavor you use is entirely situational and subject to availability.

[Sue]

Is FooBar saying Hamsher is using Fox as a source? Holy moley. Her crowd won't like that if word gets out.

[TM]

Foo Bar - hmm, great minds, same channel, I had actually put in an update before your comment.

However, dare we fault Jane for her lead:

There's nothing quite like seeing it live:

She links to what was almost surely a bum transcript, but she provides a prominent link to the video and certainly conveys the impression she has also watched the tape.

Maybe on a better day she would see it live *and* listen to it live.

Too bad - she could have made Faux News look bad, but instead they make her look bad. And how does one excuse the Times, which linked to Jane Hamsher, not the bad transcript?

[Sara]

I don't understand this need for the left to imbue al-Qaeda with some kind of noble motives. They operate, it seems to me, the same as all those other Middle Eastern despots - on the philosophy that:

The Enemy of my Enemy is My Friend.

[Danube of Thought]

Again: do any of them discuss the merits? Do they have anything at all to say about the fact that, had Obama's legislation passed, the field would have been abandoned on Monday?

Of course, I suppose there could be a "strike force" somewhere, just itching to go clean up the neighborhoods in Fallujah, etc., all over again.

[Sue]

It has never ceased to amaze me that AQ is in every country on the planet but Muslim countries. Kind of weird how they stay away from Muslim countries.

[hit and run]

TM:
Too bad - she could have made Faux News look bad, but instead they make her look bad.

Rove.

[Rick Ballard]

"Of course, I suppose there could be a "strike force" regional advisory mediation workgroup somewhere"

"strike force" carries some heavy negative connotations that would be found to be doubleplusungood under Chairman President Obama. The word "strike" denotes a reprehensible act by an oppressor against a weak and helpless victim while the word "force" carries a similiar yet subtly distinct message concerning the imposition of the strong's will upon the weak.

Under Chairman President Obama's unified diversity plan, neither "strike" nor "force" will ever be necessary. Well, except for those rare occasions when a concept judged to be doubleplusungood is actually expressed. There are limits to what is tolerated under the "zero tolerance for intolerance" plan.

[Ann]

WooHoo!

Another fundraiser scandal for Hillary?

[royf]

To me the best example of Sunni and Shia cooperation is Syria and Hezbollah. As well as Iran and Syria.

The liberals and their arrogant attitude act like your stupid if you talk about the two sects working together. But they are the stupid ones, They fall for muslims lies and propaganda time after time.

[narciso]

Besides Mugniyeh and Bin Laden back in the late 90s, besides Seif al Adel (aka Colonel
Mohammed Mokkawi)living in Iran as well as
Saad Bin Laden, besides the fact that one of
the streets in Tehran is named after Sadat's
assasin; Istambouli. Borzoi (isn't that a dog name)of course, eludes the point, saying
AQ was going to take over Iran; which isn't true, it's unclear that they would even take over Iraq' but holding parts of Ambar/
Al Dulaimi province is enough' look at what they've done with Waziristan in Pakistan; specially after the truce with Musharaff a year and a half ago.

[Ann]

Kase Lawal, William Jefferson, Joe Wilson, Nigeria, Niger, Clinton.....

Wouldn't it be fun if someone connected the dots. It has to be a Rovian plot.

[clarice]

Iran is still to my knowledge sheltering Osama's son.

[SteveMG]

It has never ceased to amaze me that AQ is in every country on the planet but Muslim countries.

This is going to be re-visited numerous times over the campaign.

McCain will have to overcome the advantage that Obama has with the press who, for some odd reason (and it's not, I think, mostly ideological), just cannot grasp the possibility of these various sects (religious or atheistic, e.g., North Korea and Iran/Syria) cooperating with one another on larger goals.

[Danube of Thought]

Such notions are beyond their ken, SteveMG. Not one in ten of today's journalists is aware that after Pearl Harbor, FDR invaded, in order, Tunisia, Sicily, Italy, and France.

The questions that would have been posed back then by today's reporters would be "what did Tunisia have to do with Pearl Harbor? What did Italy or France have to do with Pearl Harbor?" The concept of malevolent nations or groups acting with a common purpose, despite having little else in common, is simply too complex for them. It cannot be covered in a sound bite, and thus it is unworthy of consideration.

[J. Peden]

Shouldn't Progs clue the real world in on the fact that it is not behaving correctly?

[Uncle Pinky]

Well;

It's been a long day and it will be an early morning ahead, but I can not retire before offering my humble ('umbled, for we Pinkies are 'umble people) recognition of a truly fine post.

Mr. Tom, your snark-fu is the best in the land and more refreshing than Irish butter and honey on fresh-baked bread.

Pool 1:c, in a walkover
Pool 2:b Seems counter-intuitive, but he's got so much more air-time to be a fool in.

Does that make me "truly dark-hearted"? I signed the contract with somebody else's blood. Does that count?

[MayBee]

From the transcript FooBar linked to:

LIEBERMAN: Well, just ridiculous. I mean John McCain knows that the Iranians are supporting Shia extremists, and that's different from Al- Qaeda. He misspoke. Every one of the other candidates for president at one time or another has misspoken. I have, too.

I mean, one paragraph later the man makes it very clear he doesn't think it's AlQaeda IN Iran.

[steveaz]

Crazy thing is, Al Qaida and most of the organized obstacles to America's project in Iraq (ex. the Sadrists), could well be being trained in Iran...and still the Dem's media hacks like Chris Mathews would not allow themselves to report it.

The stated reason being, to report it would be to "Beat Bush's Drum of War..." or some other such Prog nonsense.

These progressives wear more silk netting than a Victoria Secrets model.

[MayBee]

This is making me remember that there was a time many people thought Osama was hiding out in Tehran.

Anyway, TM. First rate.
You so often are that I forget to compliment you.

[Jim Miller]

Danube of Thought - Your point about North Africa can be made even stronger, because our initial attack there was not on the Nazis, but on the Vichy French, who resisted for about three days. And the resistance was not formal; we killed thousands of their troops and they killed hundreds of ours. (I'm sure you know this, but there may be some people, journalists, for instance, who don't.)

So, FDR's first big move in the eastern hemisphere part of World War II was a surprise attack on a neutral nation!

Now, back to the subject. This is indeed, a great post. And there is a warning for all of us in this incident: The leftists wanted so much to believe that Lieberman had made a gaffe that they didn't check, even though mistakes in transcripts are common.

[Syl]

It has never ceased to amaze me that AQ is in every country on the planet but Muslim countries.

Actually, according to Obama, al Qaeda is only in Afghanistan/Pakistan. The al Qaeda in Iraq are only faking.

Great post, Tom!

[Rick Ballard]

OT,

The Beeb gives "global warming" a good kick down the road. It's gonna take more than a $300 million ad campaign by the Gorbuncle to keep this fraud alive if the Beeb is joining the Times in shifting the propaganda.

What next? Discovery that we're not actually in the Second Great Depression?

[GMax]

I thought all the oceans were going to rise and Manhattan was going to be 2 feet under water. Now within 5 years when another El Nino returns we will have record hot temperatures? This Michel Jaraud sure sounds like a peach. If they recast the Wizard of Oz , he should put in for the Wizard part. "Pay no attention to that man in the booth, I am the great and powerful Oz."

[Bill in AZ]

I dunno, Rick, that article gives progs plenty to keep hope alive the way it's written. The way it's written, La Nina is cooling the earth, so this is a temporary glitch, and El Nino will come along and warm it right back up again. I reckon the devil is somewhere down in the bottom of the deep blue sea shovelling ice for all he's worth into the ocean to create La Nina and cool the earth. In a couple years, I reckon he'll light up a nuclear reactor down there and make El Nino warm it up again. No notion whatsoever that changing Solar conditions might actually contribute a tiny bit to what we're seeing. That would be an inconvenient truth. Gorebots are better off with incoherent strewths, and the article carefully avoids dispelling them.

[RichatUF]

What next? Discovery that we're not actually in the Second Great Depression?

That's a bridge too far Rick. I'll expect more of this. The election is 7 months away.

[Syl]

But Mr Jarraud insisted this was not the case and noted that 1998 temperatures would still be well above average for the century.

1998 was LAST century, silly.

What next? Discovery that we're not actually in the Second Great Depression?

I gotta admit that some of the stuff I've been reading lately has me a bit freaked out. 1790s to the 1820s temperatures (Dalton minimum) by 2050.

Short growing seasons and biofuels will kill us all.

I don't think it will take as long as Jarraud's five years to find out which direction we're really heading.

[Danube of Thought]

I think we're irrevocably on the slippery slope to cannibalism. It'll be eight degrees hotter, all the crops will die, civilization will collapse.

[Daddy]

Look on the bright side. It'll take less energy to cook the people we're eatin' cause global warming will already have prepped em warmer than normal. Cannibals everywhere rejoice!

[J. Peden]

Looks like the ipcc, enc., could have had 10 years already to actually study the climate scientifically without undue "risk" - which is proof that our audacious Obami-type hope rays certainly don't work on that crew.

[Americaneocon]

Great post!!

[dday]

Wading into enemy territory here, and I didn't rush out to post this Lieberman quote myself, but could we stop for a moment and look at the quote as corrected?

"If we did what Sen. Obama wanted us to do last year, Al-Qaeda and Iran would be in control of Iraq today."

First off, Iran already IS in control of Iraq, or at least their proxies. Maliki ended the debacle in Basra by adding 10,000 members of the Badr and ISCI militia, which is as close as you can get to Iran. Iran brokered the recent cease-fire. Their President was welcomed in Iraq with flowers and sweets. The idea that we're on some side with the Maliki government in opposition to Iran is absurd.

Now, second half. Al Qaeda will never be in control of the nation of Iraq. Never. The Sunnis were kicking them out before the surge started. If we "listened to Obama" and didn't go forward with the surge, they still would have kicked them out. It's reductivist to the extreme to consider "Al Qaeda" as any sort of major force that could take over the Iraq, where they are hated by practically every major faction.

Now, please, return to your regularly scheduled mockery. Amusing! Jamil Hussein! (how did THAT get in there?)

[MayBee]

Now, second half. Al Qaeda will never be in control of the nation of Iraq.

dday, nobody ever suggested they'd be jointly in control or have a 50/50 power share.

So tell me...what do you think would be going on Iraq if today was the last day for our last troop in Iraq?

[kim]

dday, Sistani, the most powerful cleric in Iraq, the Master of the Mosque, refused to see Ahmadi-Nehjad. The Iraqi Shia are Arab and distrust the Persians. You see what you want to see over there.
======================================

[kim]

Syl, nice to see you at DotEarth. Andy Revkin moderates well and is curious. He still doesn't believe the skeptics, but may be beginning to wonder. There are some fine skeptical voices over there. You want a blockbuster, the January 24 thread about the AGU went 1200 comments, and was a rousing debate.
==================================

[kim]

Rick, gad I hope this one from the Beeb is not just a temporary aberrancy. However, Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, has publicly wondered if somehow someone has got their sums wrong. The Argo buoy data, combined with the satellite tropospheric data is starting to get the warmers on the run.

I'm particularly amused by Gore's comment calling skeptics 'Flat Earthers'. If we are headed for decades of cooling, and CO2 is shown to be hysterically exaggerated as a climate modulator, the 'Warm Earthers' may earn as much disdain as Flat Earthers. Perhaps more, because a mistaken belief in a human caused warming globe is going to be a lot more tragic than belief in a flat earth. Nobody ever fell off the edge of the earth, after all, but there are people at the margin who are starving now because of the delusion about biofuels. It'll only get worse if it gets colder.
================================

[clarice]

Let 'em eat Gore, I say. Looks like enough to feed a multitude.
I think he (who latched onto this as post-election therapy) ought to speed up the marginalization of the warm earthers by making Ted Turner his co-spokesperson for the movement.

[Jane]

Good Morning everyone, and TGIF!

It's gonna be hard to beat this post TM, but my money is on you!

[Neo]

My first guess is ..
(e) Keith Olbermann
.. and my second choice is ..
(f) Keith Olbermann
.. and I'll go out on a limb here for my 3rd ..
(a) Keith Olbermann

[J. Peden]

where they are hated by practically every major faction.

dday, from the fact that pure emotion-driven wish runs your mind, it does not follow that the real world must follow suit.

[Just Some Guy]

Great post!

I noticed another oddity on the LA Times piece, and have posted a commented (still under moderation) as follows:

*****
I'm struck by the first sentence of your post, which says Lieberman is trying to portray Obama as "a no-nothing on Iraq". The term is "know-nothing". It derives originally from the politics of the pre-Civil-War era, and it doesn't refer to people who intend to do nothing or to people who actually know nothing, but to people who themselves sarcastically feign ignorance as a way of avoiding questions about their political allegiances.

This may sound pedantic, but your use of "no-knothing" is inscrutable by itself, and in the light of historical and etymological context, it sounds plainly ignorant.
*****

[Syl]

kim

You are doing a fantastic job over at DotEarth! I think it was a comment of yours either here or over at Watts that made me pull up that thread from the 24th. I had it up on my screen for three days and still didn't finish reading all of it.

I'm still trying to dig through some of the unthreadeds at CA. Whew.

[themesong]

Speaking of a gaffe within a gaffe, shouldn't the LA Times blogger be told that the phrase is "know-nothing" NOT "no-nothing"? Perhaps he already nose that and was just checking whether we'd NOtice. :)

[kim]

Andy Revkin has threatened to turn sociologists loose on the AGU thread to analyze it. It was certainly a 2X4 to the snout of some in the alarmist crowd. It's fun riding the waves with a following wind and an increasing swell. I'd pity the true believers in AGW if I weren't so angry at them. Science has been savaged and the poor and powerless of the earth are being suckered again.
=====================================

[Sue]

Now, please, return to your regularly scheduled mockery.

Gaw!!! You make it so easy.

[Sue]

Discovery that we're not actually in the Second Great Depression?

This is funny. Last month, Obama collected $40,000,000. During a depression. Outstanding.

[MayBee]

This is funny. Last month, Obama collected $40,000,000. During a depression. Outstanding.

Yeah, I thought of that too.

[SteveMG]

The Sunnis were kicking them out before the surge started

No, as I understand it, they were trying to kick them out. One of the reasons that came to the US was for assistance in defeating al-Qaeda.

It remains a question as to how effective militarily they would have been without US support.

To wit: Why did they come to us for help if they were kicking al-Qaeda out?

Second, as Michael Totten (among others) have pointed out, the Anbar (and other) "awakenings" are more than just military ventures between the Sunnis and the US. An entire panoply of political and social recognition and conciliation have emerged over the past couple of years.

Sunnis from these regions have joined the Iraqi Army. Additionally, those elements among the Sunnis who were fighting against the government and us have either been turned or captured/killed.

None of these changes - the local conciliation, the turning of the Sunnis towards us - would have happened had we not been there.

Second, if you truly believe (somehow) that Iran (or their proxies) controls Iraq, there's nothing I can say. That's just flat out fundamentally wrong.

Influence among some Shi'a and Shi'a parties is not "control" of Iraq.

[cathyf]

Brilliant, JSG and themesong!

[Tom Maguire]

Wading into enemy territory here, and I didn't rush out to post this Lieberman quote myself, but could we stop for a moment and look at the quote as corrected?

No enemies here, just friends we haven't met yet. OK, and lefties we haven't mocked yet. And, in a Turner Classic, eaten yet.

Anyway, I too quibble with Lieberman's use of "control". E.g., I question whether Al Qaeda even controlled Afghanistan when the Taliban was giving them safe haven. Certainly no one is expecting Al Qaeda to set up a government in Sunni-land and start running the schools and hospitals.

However, I took his meaning to be pretty clear - Al Qaeda in Mesop would have a safe haven in Sunni-land and the Sunni-Qaeda split there would not have developed if we had begun withdrawing troops a year ago. As to timing, I have a hard time believing that the Sunni chieftans would have picked Al Qaeda as their enemy if US troops were headed to the exits.

As to Iran's influence, well, I deplore this inflammatory talk suggesting they already control embattled sections of Iraq - waddya trying to do, start another war?

But again, I don't think Lieberman is saying that they have zero control or influence now, just that it would be even greater absent US troops.

[J. Peden]

What are the AGW true Believers going to do when they suddenly discover that they've been led by their Messiahs, Apostles, etc., into having to accept Nuclear Energy as a sine qua non involved in any possible solution to their AGW Apocalypse?

Well, they just might-could find out that they are also the real Deniers.

[Danube of Thought]

Just Some Guy:

"This may sound pedantic, but your use of 'no-knothing' [sic] is inscrutable by itself, and in the light of historical and etymological context, it sounds plainly ignorant."

Sound pedantic? Gee, what ever gave you that idea?

To flesh out the historical and etymological context, you might want to follow the link to the LA Times blog, where the term "no-nothing" was coined, and from which the entire passage was quoted verbatim here. (Does that make Maguire's usage a little less inscrutable? Now, if he really had said "no-knothing," that would indeed have been inscrutable, not to mention a bit dicked up etymology-wise.)

Thanks so much for the US history refresher.

[Ranger]

Well, this kerfufle won't be around for long.

Capt. Ed just posted soemething at Hot Air that will will shift the Iraq debate back to Obama's camp. It seems one of Obama's top advisors on Iraq is saying we should keep 60,000-80,000 as a "baseline" force after 2010. Obama now has to either fire this guy to keep his 'I will end the war' theme alive, or accept that McCain is right about keeping troops in Iraq for a long time. Bonus now, because if he fires this guy Obama can be tagged with 'only keeping the advisors who tell him what he wants to hear.'

[GMax]

Kim

What do you make of the Dr Willis release "explaining" the temperature buoy data? Seems like Rivkin almost brought himself to the right conclusion but then stepped back away from it. Dr Willis would never just cover his ass.

So his contention is now that the shitty models we have, predict periods of no warming in the Oceans for 4-5 years occasionally. OK I can wait, lets go another few years and see what the results are.

think the goalposts keep moving?

Isnt a day soon to come, similar to the Raylian cult when your predictions of a space ship coming (but a comet is hiding them from detection)to pick up the believers, that it becomes obvious to everyone but the cult that its not just the wrong comet but there is no alien spaceship?

[Appalled Moderate]

Turner Classic -- Global Warming will make us cannibals.

Turner Classic Movie -- Solyent Green

[Sue]

AM,

::grin::

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Certainly no one is expecting Al Qaeda to set up a government in Sunni-land and start running the schools and hospitals.

Never misunderestimate Sen. Patty Murray.

[kim]

Willis has been disingenuous in his article for the National Post. He says there is no evidence for warming, when he knows there has been very slight, albeit insignificant, cooling in the oceans. Elsewhere, I've also read that the Argo buoys are demonstrating that there is insufficient understanding of the various oceanic processes, like the oscillations, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, to validate the general climate models.

Willis is a warmer, and the rhetoric and reasoning of the believers is disintegrating like a glacier in the tropics. Kilimanjaro has snows again, too. No one told you that, eh?
=============================

[Porchlight]

DoT, I think Just Some Guy was giving us the text of the comment he'd posted at the LA Times, not criticizing TM's use of the phrase. I read it the way you did at first, too.

[kim]

I think there are two little known factors for the Anbar Awakening, related, and important. One is that the rural, tribal Sunni recognized that the US military were rescuing their city mouse cousins from Shia violence. The other is that some of their spiritual mentors in Saudi Arabia were beginning to recognize the menace from Persia. Saudi Arabia, though a source for money and ideology and bodies, is no friend to al-Qaeda.
====================================

[GMax]

Well I am amazed at the level of really bad science that keeps coming out of supposedly serious scientists. The allegations of serious malpractice in the research of Wang is something I just learned about. Add that in to the hockey stick nonsense where the author refused to show his underlying data, Hansen and his "errors" in the NASA data ( again withheld from the public ) and at least one more pretty significant public event that is escaping me at the moment, and you start getting a collage that aint pretty.

At least in Copernicus' time, there was the very real fear that the Church might have you killed as a heretic. What are these men of learning going to point to, when the fraud becomes apparent? Wang is pretty damn significant if he is indeed caught out.

[Just Some Guy]

Porchlight, thanks for clarifying my comment. My post was rather clumsily constructed, and yes, I was trying to point out another problem with the LA Times writer's post.

[Kevin R.C. O'Brien]

Hey, you have to realize that Jane Hamsher is dying slowly and painfully of a disease that has corrupted the very cells of her body, and that's what makes her vicious and bitter.

She has cancer, too.

[GMax]

Hey, you have to realize that Jane Hamsher is dying slowly and painfully of a disease that has corrupted the very cells of her body, and that's what makes her vicious and bitter.

She also has several white dogs that she takes in the car with her everywhere she goes. But that is not what makes her look ridiculous.

[Soylent Red]

Obama now has to either fire this guy to keep his 'I will end the war' theme alive, or accept that McCain is right about keeping troops in Iraq for a long time.

Ranger:

If you can easily find it, throw up a link for that please.

Also...

We should just keep that little gem under our hats for a while. Imagine the impact of springing that, with sourcing, during a debate. Right after Obamessiah spouts his 100-year-war nonsense. Then point out why the advisor was right in saying it.

Oh that would be beautiful.

[boris]

It's at hot air.

[Rick Ballard]

GMax,

We aren't gonna make it to a climate Copernicus until the "scientists" involved get done creating epicyles and deferents explaining their Ptolemaic projections. Mann, Hansen, Wang et al have done science a disservice which will last at least as long as the time it has taken to so thoroughly "cook the books".

Eppur - non si scotta may be the absolute truth but politicians have a very high investment in this particular peculiar lie. The UN may prove more resistant to reality than the Vatican ever was (Bruno's auto da fe not withstanding).

[Jane]

That's an amazing admission by Colin Kahl - well I guess no one admitted anything.

Obama is as dishonest as Hillary, and that's saying something. Maybe he'll now go back to the Samantha Powers doctrine - it's all about importing dignity to those who want to kill us.

[MayBee]

Jane is on to something. Those won't be 80,000 combat troops, they will be a Dignity Strike Force.

[Rick Ballard]

"they will be a Dignity Strike Force Regional Advisory Mediation Workgroup" (vide sopra)