Fred Hiatt should be chained to a pole in Lafayette Park and a dunce cap should be placed on his head. Hiatt thinks that there is a consensus in Congress about what to do in Iraq, and that they Bush administration agrees with that consensus.
A large majority of senators from both parties favor a shift in the U.S. mission that would involve substantially reducing the number of American forces over the next year or so and rededicating those remaining to training the Iraqi army, protecting Iraq’s borders and fighting al-Qaeda. President Bush and his senior aides and generals also support this broad strategy, which was formulated by the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton commission.
Hiatt is smoking crack. But it’s worse than just being wrong. Hiatt has someone who he blames for the failure to shift the mission.
The decision of Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) to deny rather than nourish a bipartisan agreement is, of course, irresponsible…
….For now Mr. Reid’s cynical politicking and willful blindness to the stakes in Iraq don’t matter so much. The result of his maneuvering was to postpone congressional debate until September, when Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report on results of the surge — in other words, just the outcome the White House was hoping for…
…a Democratic strategy of trying to use Iraq as a polarizing campaign issue and as a club against moderate Republicans who are up for reelection will certainly have the effect of making consensus impossible — and deepening the trouble for Iraq and for American security.
So, for the Washington Post editorial board the only reason Congress hasn’t come to some kind of consensus and melded a forward looking strategy with the White House is that Harry Reid is being political.
This doesn’t require any exquisite rebuttal. It just requires derision and mockery. Hiatt has turned the Washington Post editorial page into the intellectual equivalent of The Dartmouth Review. Once again…dunce cap.
