The Administration is presenting it’s on the ground Bagdad team this morning as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker. The actual newsmaker got 15 minutes, the political panel the rest. Crocker realistically rebutted Russert’s extreme negativity.
Crocker gave a killer response to Russert’s argument that counter insurgency warfare is ultimately futile because it’s like “whack a mole”. Crocker said with a straight face that surging troops allow several moles to be whacked simultaneously. Crocker focused on positive political and security developments and Russert, being a classic liberal, simply ignored all evidence of progress and reiterated the infinite regression of doubt that liberals substitute for argument.
Russert’s line of questioning perfectly fed into his first panel issue: Leonard Robinson criticism of Tony Snow for refusing to project specific schedules because the “bait and switch” of criticism will use the absence of complete victory as evidence of progress. One has to wonder how Russert and Robinson would have felt about the D-Day break out being two months behind schedule in ’44. Robinson actually concedes the premise of Snow’s argument by saying that the Administration has changed its targets if there isn’t complete victory by September. Snow’s statement merely recognized that Democrats will define the existence of conflict and causalities as defeat.
Russert devoted most of the rest of the panel to a series of artificial argumentative constructs designed to erode confidence in W, although he did at least mention that W’s approval ratings, bad as they are, remain higher than those of his Democrat adversaries. You’ll never see that comparison on the NBC evening news, that’s for sure.
Russert, like Stephanopoulos and Wallace, gave some coverage to the new South Carolina poll that shows Fred Thompson pulling out to a big lead in that state. The panel consensus was Hillary appears to have it and the GOP is too early to tell, although Fred T got some love on the issue as well.
Crocker gave a killer response to Russert’s argument that counter insurgency warfare is ultimately futile because it’s like “whack a mole”. Crocker said with a straight face that surging troops allow several moles to be whacked simultaneously. Crocker focused on positive political and security developments and Russert, being a classic liberal, simply ignored all evidence of progress and reiterated the infinite regression of doubt that liberals substitute for argument.
Russert’s line of questioning perfectly fed into his first panel issue: Leonard Robinson criticism of Tony Snow for refusing to project specific schedules because the “bait and switch” of criticism will use the absence of complete victory as evidence of progress. One has to wonder how Russert and Robinson would have felt about the D-Day break out being two months behind schedule in ’44. Robinson actually concedes the premise of Snow’s argument by saying that the Administration has changed its targets if there isn’t complete victory by September. Snow’s statement merely recognized that Democrats will define the existence of conflict and causalities as defeat.
Russert devoted most of the rest of the panel to a series of artificial argumentative constructs designed to erode confidence in W, although he did at least mention that W’s approval ratings, bad as they are, remain higher than those of his Democrat adversaries. You’ll never see that comparison on the NBC evening news, that’s for sure.
Russert, like Stephanopoulos and Wallace, gave some coverage to the new South Carolina poll that shows Fred Thompson pulling out to a big lead in that state. The panel consensus was Hillary appears to have it and the GOP is too early to tell, although Fred T got some love on the issue as well.
0 comments:
Post a Comment