Am I the only one who really enjoyed the fisking of wingnut blogger Hesiod in the mainstream media? Jon Podheretz administers the smackdown:
Then there are those who argue that Bush took the trip not because he wanted to spend time with the troops, but because he wanted – get this – to overshadow Hillary Clinton’s visit to Iraq.
“Bush probably planned on visiting the troops sometime around Thanksgiving, but hastily decided to give the ‘go’ command when Karl Rove realized that Bush’s ‘daring’ midnight run into Iraq would be laughed at by the entire country if Hillary Clinton already beat him to it,” according to the blogger Hesiod. “It turns out that Hillary’s people informed the White House of her trip to Iraq way back in September . . . Anyone still believe this was a ‘spur of the moment’ decision?”
Yeah, that’s why Air Force One flew in the dark over the Atlantic – to rob Hillary Clinton of a one-day news story.
Bwahaha. Again, wingnuts- check this Dana Milbank quote:
Nashville, Tenn.: Is there any indication that Hillary Clinton’s Thanksgiving trip to Iraq played any role in motivating the President’s decision to make the secret trip?
Dana Milbank: None whatsoever. But that doesn’t stop people from speculating. Fodder for conspiracy types: The Pentagon knew weeks in advance about plans for her trip. Cold water for conspiracy types: the Clinton trip was to have been the week before but was delayed because of Medicare votes.
(via Hanks)
Gregory Litchfield
Guess I’ll have to saunter on over to Hesiod’s site and congratualte him. I’m sure he’s very proud.
I saw the Milbank quote this morning as well. Bear in mind that Milbank has generally been quite critical of Geo. W. Bush, so I tend to think that the “he went to Iraq to upstage Hillary” thing will die a quick death.
Gregory Litchfield
Congratulate. Congratulate.
Preview is your friend.
mark
Has someone told Matt Yglesias yet?
Jay
Oh come on John! You know that the vote on Medicare was put in there SPECIFICALLY by Bush minions to delay Hillary’s trip so that Bush could purposely upstage it!
How stupid do you think the Bush-haters are anyway??
caleb
Why else do you think they dragged out the vote for nearly 3 hours?
;-)
DaveL
Hey now, give me some props! I predicted the birth of this meme within hours of Bush’s trip:
http://www.steveverdon.com/archives/2003_11.html#000765
Andrew Lazarus
One of the reasons I so dislike Bush is his teenage boy’s sense of thrill coupled with intense self-centeredness. The trip into Baghdad wasn’t dangerous enough already (careful readers of the comments section will recall I thought this trip was a good idea to boost morale); it has to be made a super-duper-special operation that almost had to be aborted:
The Bush Administration a/k/a The Hardy Boys and the Big Bad Baghdad Trip.
For some reason this story reminds me of the Bush Administration’s insistence that the hijacked airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania was aimed at Dear Leader’s White House, when intelligence has concluded that it was headed for the Capitol, home of the inferior adjunct part of the government. (Even without interviewing Al Qaeda detainees, I figured that out considering the relatively difficulty of a half-trained pilot hitting the respective targets. Any of you who know the contours of downtown DC and that the White House is not very tall will see what I mean.)
Slartibartfast
Andrew’s got Bush and his aides all swirled together, it appears.
Ricky
When in doubt, muddy the water.
Andrew Lazarus
Actually, Bush’s aides turn out to have been much closer to correct than I thought. The cute colloquy between pilots was invented, but a BA pilot DID hold such a conversation with his control tower. (The original story also got the location of the incident wrong; as a conequence BA asked the wrong pilots.)
For future use, the aides part is an ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS defense. Did Hitler gas any Jews personally? (Sorry for Godwin’s Law violation.)
Slartibartfast
Ah. Now fish stories get equated with genocide. When will the silliness end?
Dean
AND Andrew gets to make the Bush=Hitler claim, only in a more subtle way.
Nice goin’!
Slartibartfast
In his defense, he did acknowledge the Godwin violation.
Still, there’s a problem of scale, here. Killing several million jews is heinous beyond words. Telling a tall tale where the media can hear you is just a little bit stupid. If Andrew doesn’t see the problem of scale, I propose hauling him up in front of the Hague next time we catch him in a minor fib.
And anyone who expects the White House to publicly retract every unofficial statements made by any of its employees that make it into the newspapers is being a bit unreasonable. The retractions’d never make it into the papers. And the daily press briefings would last all day.
Slartibartfast
Or, we could give Andrew the chair if one of his kids (assuming he has any) indulges in untruth.
Just Passing Through
From this post to Podheretz to Hesiod was an interesting little trip. I think the whole point of the Podheretz smackdown was completely lost on him. His response post either deftly dodges the question of the adverse effect his sort of dementia (Podheretz term) has on the mainstream democrats or simply misses the point entirely. A couple of folks have pointed out in the comments in Hesiod’s response post that his response is just reinforcing the rationale for the smackdown, but that fact seems to be lost on Hesiod and just about everyone else who commented. Podheretz has the problem pegged and anyone supporting the democrats would do well to feign ignorance of any knowledge of Counterspin. Not sure that the past, present, and increasing levels of damage could be reversed though.
John Cole
Hesiod responded? This should be rich.
Just Passing Through
I’ll save you the trouble. The blog post response refers to Bush as ‘president yellow-stain’, and in the comments Hesiod comments under the name Frodo (or someone else does attaching Hesiod’s email and homepage). In that comment, Frodo is revising his position. Scrolling down a bit on the homepage gets you to posts and comments from Hesiod that completely put the lie to the revisions.
A random example in the comments to Hesiod’s response is one worthy’s claim that Bush picked ‘that precise day’ to avoid be upstaged and then somehow Bush claimed that precise day did not matter. Of course, that ‘precise day’ being Thanksgiving had absolutley nothing to do with scheduling, only Hillary’s impending arrival the next day.
To be fair, another commenter does question the self-parody of the response post, but doesn’t get very far with the crowd there. Another specifically points out the point of Podheretz’s article and the mistake that the response post is and is ignored. That’ about it as far as comments that don’t carry the ‘upstaging Hillary’ premise.
If Podheretz wants to follow up his Post article, Hesiod and his commenters have provided the ammunition in a single post.
Slartibartfast
Rich in the same sense that fertilizer is rich, then. Typical.