"I was up there in the cockpit of that airplane coming into Baghdad," the President told the press corps assembled on the White House lawn after his dash into and out of the war zone last week. "It was an unbelievable, unbelievable feeling." In fact, George W. Bush's body language—let's call it the full jaunty—was reminiscent of his last, infamous cockpit trip, onto the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 to announce the "end" of major combat operations in Iraq, beneath a mission accomplished sign. His public language is more cautious than it used to be, but he seemed downright frothy in a private session with the congressional leadership after his press conference.
He called the new Iraqi Defense Minister an "interesting cat" and Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the deceased al-Qaeda leader, "a dangerous dude."
This guy is Time magazine's idea of a liberal. Sad.
Digby makes a good point about this article: why is this column about the president so... well... sexual? "The full jaunty," multiple mentions of the word "cockpit" for "airplane," the reminiscing about W's now-infamous USS Lincoln photo op (where, oddly, a number of male pundits including Chris Matthews focused on the president's codpiece), the "frothy" bit (though frankly I dunno what the hell he's talking about there).
Of course, Joe Klein is probably the only person on the planet who didn't roll their eyes when W said "interesting cat" and "dangerous dude." What an ass.
This article is also a great example of the kind of arguments--let's call them logical imperfections-- that pundits generally use in an effort to make us think that Democrats are wrong no matter what they're doing. Joe says that Kerry started out making a good speech this week,
but then—as is his awkward wont—Kerry overreacted and called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of the year. It was a proposition that garnered all of six votes on the Senate floor when Senate Republicans gleefully submitted Kerry's idea to a vote later in the week.
Ha ha, stupid Kerry, he's such a scaredy little stupidhead that he stupidly and scarededly wants out of Iraq by the end of the year!
The imminently wise and courageous Joe Klein, proud worshipper of the Presidential Codpiece, knows better, though (emphasis mine):
What can the Democrats do? They can play politics or be responsible. The political option is to embrace "cut and run"; call for an immediate withdrawal, as Kerry did; and hope the public is so sick of Bush and sick of the war that it will punish the g.o.p. in the fall. But embracing defeat is a risky political strategy, especially for a party not known for its warrior ethic. In fact, the responsible path is the Democrats' only politically plausible choice: they will have to give yet another new Iraqi government one last shot to succeed. This time, U.S. military sources say, the measure of success is simple: Operation Forward Together, the massive joint military effort launched last week to finally try to secure Baghdad, has to work. If Baghdad isn't stabilized, the war is lost. "I know it's the cliche of the war," an Army counterinsurgency specialist told me last week. "But we'll know in the next six months—and this time, it'll be the last next six months we get."
So you see, unlike John Scaredy who wants out of Iraq at the end of the year, Joe doesn't want out for another 6 months.
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