Plans for Success or Failure In Iraq
The silliest thing I have heard lately is the claim that Bush is actually following Kerry’s Iraq policy now. Nancy Pelosi made it yesterday on Meet the Press (just after rationalizing her venomous rhetoric against a sitting President during war by accusing Bush 43 of saying nasty things about his father’s 1991 actions in Iraq – I am not making this up). She bases the claim that Bush is stealing Kerry’s policy on the fact that Bush is involving the UN in the formation of the Iraqi government. This is something he has said he would do all along. The only time it was seriously in question was when the UN turned tail and ran after the terrorist attack on their headquarters in Iraq last year. (I personally believe the Oil for Food debacle destroys any credibility the UN has, especially in Iraq, but Bush has not allowed that to deter his efforts to involve them in the new Iraq.) So why the push to have Kerry linked in any way to the current Iraq policy? Maybe Kerry’s supporters are beginning to fear that the June 30 handover will, in fact, take place and Iraqis will be on their way to democracy by the fall, so they are setting up any success to be seen as the result of policies advocated by Kerry.
On the other hand, Democrats and most of the media are making sure that all aspects of the war effort are described in negative terms. The term I hear used most often to describe the war from Democrats and “historians” and experts that are presented by the media as impartial, is “this mess". They say it as if any war could be anything but a mess. (Read Mark Steyn linked to below on that subject.) I wonder which words were most used during the Clinton years to describe Mogadishu. (Maybe I should research that.) I wonder how they would compare the progress made in Iraq in just over a year to that in Mogadishu or Haiti, or even Kosovo. Things there aren’t exactly perfect these days.
Whether Iraq is seen as a success or failure in the fall, Democrats are trying to set the stage so they can say they predicted it all along.
-- Lorie Byrd