Lieberman = Bush = More Failure

A few notes on the NewsTimes op-ed yesterday.

"Resolution against Bush policy gains momentum
As the U.S. Senate prepares to vote on a non-binding resolution opposing President Bush's plan to escalate the war in Iraq, the White House is once again trying to define support of the president as support of the troops.

"The one thing the president has said is, whatever you do, make sure you support the troops," said White House press secretary Tony Snow. "And the question people who support this resolution will have to ask is, how does this support the troops?"

Shame on Snow.

American military personnel have performed heroically in Iraq, despite the many failures that have made their mission more difficult and more dangerous."

Yes, American soldiers have done the best they can given the dysfunctional leadership that had no real plans AND have refused to give the American soldiers the proper equipment to do the job safely. But this situation is only multiplied exponentially by the fact that the Iraqis have never been given the tools they need to take over the job there:

“In the interview yesterday, Maliki said many American and Iraqi lives would have been spared if the Iraqi forces were better equipped.”

Quotes like that show that the president is either: A) delusional; or B) is purposely trying to keep us there by refusing to get Iraqi soldiers going in the right direction; C) a bit of both. How are the Iraqis ever supposed to take over a job - you know, stand up so we can stand down - that the American soldiers have been unable to handle if the Iraqis are even more ill-equiped than the American soldiers?

Frankly, we don't care anymore about whether or not bush is failing because he is delusional or if he is failing to continue war-profiteering, or any other number of reasons that could explain his failed policies. We have had enough of his failure for whatever reasons.

The president had the opportunity to forge a new Iraq strategy and win congressional and public support. Instead, he has offered a dressed-up version of his failed stay-the-course strategy.

Just how much of this is dressed-up "Stay the Course!" BS? Take a look at this graph showing troop levels past, present and future (If the incompetent bush gets his way):

Note: Proposed Surge Assumes 20,000 Troops (Graph H/T Tparty)

WHOA! Is this a familiar pattern? And someone out there representing CT supports this rinse and repeat policy? Sure enough, Bush can always count on Joe Neocon Lieberman:

During his campaign last fall, U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman claimed he was ready to carefully scrutinize the president's policies on Iraq. Safely re-elected, Lieberman is as enthusiastic as ever about Bush's policies and plans for escalation.

Umm? That isn't quite what Joe said before the elections... Here is the money quote provided in an excerpt from Matt Browner Hamlin at MLN:

"David Sirota has a can't-miss op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle on what politicians and pundits said about Iraq before the war and if any of them have taken responsibility for their words since the war has become a disaster. John Edwards famously owned up to his mistake of voting for the war, but we know that he's an exception not the rule. Joe Lieberman, on the other hand, is more of the rule than the exception.

Similarly, consider U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Independent-Conn.). Facing a difficult Democratic primary challenge, Lieberman said of Iraq in July that "the sooner we are out the better," and that, by the end of 2006, he would support efforts to "begin to draw down significant numbers of American troops." He later said that "no one wants to end the war in Iraq more than I do and bring our troops home." But weeks after being re-elected, Lieberman is now leading the charge for military escalation, sending a letter to President Bush last week saying, "[I] strongly encourage you to send additional American troops to Iraq."

Pundits and news analysts are employed to expose this sort of nonsense so that our democratic discourse -- and the policy choices that come out of it -- are grounded in fact. But that has not happened. Instead, we have seen a furious stampede by the most prominent media figures to cover their own hides with either more lies, or more out-of-the mainstream bluster.

Lieberman's hypocrisy and intellectual shallowness is the model for "liberal" hawks like Joe Klein and Tom Friedman. The lack of incrimination of people like Lieberman for their damaging public positions and subsequent shunning of guilt for their words and actions imperils the future of our nation to handle crises of national security and national conscience. Sirota nails this home with his concluding paragraphs.

How can we expect to change course in Iraq, if a president is given a pass to claim he has never stayed the course in the first place? How can we expect to hold lawmakers accountable if they are never questioned about their efforts to deliberately mislead us? How can we expect the media to be a watchdog if its leading analysts and news framers face no public sanctions when they disrespect the truth or give credence to fringe ideologies?

A country whose national political conversation is dominated by voices that deny their own complicity in national security tragedies; downplay human casualties, and generally make dishonesty mundane, is a nation prevented from reflecting on its bad decisions -- and thus is doomed to repeat such bad decisions in the future.

Demanding that the proponents of war accept their failures of vision and the consequences of these failures is crucial to avoiding a repetition of the calamity in Iraq."

Yep! What they said... It is the responsibility of these newspapers to dig a little deeper and point out the lunacy of positions taken by liars like Joe Lieberman.