Falling for the Spin

"3) Since troop levels can't be sustained, this is in fact what happens beginning April so that by November of 2008, the number of troops in Iraq is just about precisely what it was two years (!) previously, when the awesome surge began."

Bill Kristol takes a big swipe at Joe Klein:

"On August 19, the New York Times published an op-ed by seven enlisted soldiers critical of the Iraq war. At midnight on August 24, the Weekly Standard posted on our website a response by seven Iraq vets. The Times had rejected the vets' response.

"The piece carried the straightforward headline 'Iraq Vets Respond . . . to the New York Times seven.' It was a sober rejoinder to the arguments in the Times op-ed. It suggested the antiwar soldiers' analysis was incomplete and 'misguided.' The vets emphasized, 'We understand the frustration our fellow soldiers feel . . .

"At 10:21 that morning, Joe Klein of Time posted the following on his blog, under the headline 'Heroes Trashed':

" Well, I suppose it was inevitable that the Weekly Standard would figure out some way to trash the 7 enlisted men from the 82nd Airborne, who wrote the courageous Op-Ed piece about the unreliability of our Iraqi allies in the New York Times last Sunday. At least the piece is written by other Iraq war vets and the tone is respectful . . . although the neocons continue to try to use Anbar, an all-Sunni province, as an avatar of what will happen in the rest of Iraq, which is utter nonsense.

" But where on earth are the Democratic politicians on this? Why haven't they embraced the grunts from the 82nd the way the Republicans have embraced the 'liberal' Brookings scholars? It's just very frustrating and truly outrageous.

"Now Joe Klein prides himself--quite often, in print--on being different from nutty, hysterical, suffering-from-Bush-derangement-syndrome left-wing bloggers. But here he is exhibiting nutty, hysterical, Bush-derangement syndrome himself. After all, how had the Weekly Standard 'trashed' the seven enlisted men? By publishing a substantive op-ed that called no one's motives into question, that expressed good will to the seven antiwar soldiers--and whose tone Klein himself called 'respectful'? . . . It does suggest that even the respectable elements of the antiwar movement have jumped the shark."

We anxiously await Joe's response.

First Larry Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in an airport men's room, then he said he wished he hadn't. Last week he said he was quitting the Senate, and now he's . . . reconsidering?

The guy is nothing if not decisive, huh? Does he really want several more rounds of the media examining his toilet habits?

"If he remains in the Senate," notes the L.A. Times, "Craig would face an embarrassing Senate Ethics Committee investigation. Additionally, Senate Republicans have stripped him of his leadership positions on several committees."