WaPo’s Eugene Robinson and bumpersticker journalism

Columnist Eugene Robinson researched for his latest column from ANSWER posters;

The “mission accomplished” president, once so full of certainty and swagger, isn’t telling Americans that victory is proximate or even inevitable, just that it is still possible.

When I heard those words, I thought that either the president had decided “can be won” is now the outer limit of public credulity, or — foolish me — that maybe he had finally begun to see Iraq as it is, not as he would like it to be. But then he reverted to form, raising the specter of the Sept. 11 attacks, and the speech sounded like just another attempt at spin control rather than the product of any sort of presidential epiphany.

Sigh. The White House remains an epiphany-free zone.

Iraq had nothing at all to do with Sept. 11, as Bush himself has grudgingly acknowledged. Yesterday, Bush brought up Sept. 11 in the context of what would happen if the United States decided to “pack up and go home.” Iraq would become a haven for terrorists and a possible launching pad for attacks on the United States, Bush warned, much as Afghanistan was on that tragic day.

One thing the president failed to mention was that the al-Qaeda presence in Iraq was zero before the American invasion, which was a big welcome sign for jihadists from around the globe.

No one ever questions Robinson – it’s like he just allowed to say anything. “Possible to win” means it’s not impossible to win in Iraq, dimbulb. I know that’s tough for you to wrap your peanut-sized brain around, but take my word for it. You should listen to the whole speech rather than cherry-picking bumpersticker phrases. 

So allow me to arrange for someone to counter Robinson’s idiot blathering - Christopher Hitchens;

…[T]he presence in Iraq of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a very dangerous al-Qaida refugee from newly liberated Afghanistan, was established [before the US invasion of Hussein’s Iraq]. The full significance of this was only to become evident later on. 

The Bush administration never claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001. But it did point out, at different times, that Saddam had acted as a host and patron to every other terrorist gang in the region, most recently including the most militant Islamist ones. And this has never been contested by anybody. The action was undertaken not to punish the last attack—that had been done in Afghanistan—but to forestall the next one.

Maybe Robinson should do a moment’s research before he tries to assemble bumpersticker slogans into a Washington Post column. I’d also remind Robinson that Abu Nidal died in his Baghdad apartment just a few months before the invasion. He’d been living there for more than decade. I guess that’s not a terror ist connection is it?

More Robinson;

George Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of this administration encountered a dangerous, unstable Middle East and proceeded to make it more dangerous and more unstable.

Yeah, right. How does a flat tire go more flat? The only thing that makes the Middle East more unstable is weak-kneed and ineffectual handwringing about the US using too much force in the region. Remember how Arafat almost broke his neck rushing to the negotiating table after the first war against Hussein, but by the end of the Clinton years, he was turning down sweetheart deals from Israel. That should be our example – those sixth century clods only understand force, but force without the crybaby intellectualism from braindead idiots on the WaPo’s staff.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Media