The Media Did It (Cont.)
Finally, at long last, we now know who messed up Iraq. It turns out it was the media, of course, that had promoted those unrealistic expectations for postwar Iraq. Shame on those cowardly reporters for their shoddy handling of Phase IV ops!
Retired Gen. Tommy R. Franks, former Central Command chief, figured it out Tuesday while talking to some reporters.
_____In the Loop_____
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Some Low, Some High, but 3 on the Money (The Washington Post, Nov 10, 2004)
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Payback Time for Enviros (The Washington Post, Nov 8, 2004)
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Got a Caddy for Your Anti-Terror Gear? (The Washington Post, Nov 5, 2004)
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Victory at Sea -- for Someone (The Washington Post, Nov 3, 2004)
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Newcomers' Guide to Onerous Paperwork (The Washington Post, Nov 1, 2004)
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More In the Loop
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Friday's Question:
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"I remember a time long about the 9th, 10th, 11th of April of last year where there was a lot of media coverage of the fact that Saddam's statue came down in Baghdad," Franks said. (Yeah. Wasn't that the event hoked up by the military as a photo op for the television cameras?)
"We all remember that," Franks said, "when that happened. And then pretty soon there was created -- and I would not take credit as the guy who created an expectation, I will just say that all of the reporting -- and none of it was evil -- but the reporting we all saw kind of created an expectation, 'Well, probably peace is going to break out very, very quickly.' "
Of course! The press did it. No one in the administration would have predicted a quick military campaign and elections or a cakewalk or anything like that.
"My caution about Fallujah is that we need to take an expectation suppressant," he advised. Not to be confused with expectoration suppressant.
Hooray for What's-His-Name
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) may well have been the first one out of the box Wednesday with a news release to "applaud President Bush for nominating White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez as attorney general." Frist will doubtless learn later how to spell the name. It's Gonzales.
Moving On at the NSC?
Back on the foreign policy front, there's talk that Victor D. Cha, professor of Asian studies at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service and a Pentagon consultant, is the front-runner to replace Michael J. Green as senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council.
