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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Ty --

1. This is not how politics is supposed to work. The "machine" in CT is pushing a popular candidate out because he's not towing the party line, which is dictated by a strident, foolish minority. You admitted as much when you said Lieberman had to go because he was bucking his own party too much. This is an example of exactly what politics shouldn't be. It's exactly the sort of idiot extremist tale wagging the dog the Democrats decry in the GOP. It reminds me a little bit of the GOP running over McCain. That was wrong and stupid, and this is just as dim.

It's a primary. CT Democrats can pick whoever they want. If they pick someone too far to the left, a moderate can run as an independent.

I happen to agree that there's a place in the system for moderates. I happen not to like Lieberman for reasons that don't relate to his positions. When you say he's bucking his party, it sounds like you mean his positions, but that's not it.

And on Iraq, I suspect that Lamont's position is closer to the average CT voter than either Lieberman or the GOP dude.

2. The theory that pulling troops out will stabilize Iraq is a feeble attempt to come up with a justification for cutting and running. We pull the troops and the place will fall into civil war. Doing that is a senseless risk. If we're wrong on that gamble, we'll have to send troops back in, at considerable increased loss of life and cost. I will grant you this, that position does a surprising level of creativity in Democratic rationalizations. I didn't know they could be that imaginative.

"Cut and run" is a slogan, not a policy. Don't you think we've had enough of sloganeering instead of policy? The place is in a civil war already.

That said, I could be convinced that leaving the troops there is the right thing do. But I have zero confidence that Rumsfeld can get it right. He has made a total mess of the situation. You need a Sec'y of Defense who doesn't have his head up his ass.

Since Bush is going to continue to stand by his man, you get an utterly immaterial debate about whether we should withdraw the troops or not. We should be discussing what kind of policies will work over there, but there's no point in having that conversation because Bush and Rumsfeld wouldn't listen, and because the GOP couldn't score political points from it.

Like I said, I don't know why you waste your time complaining about the lack of convincing Democratic solutions, since the Democrats are not going to have any meaningful say about Iraq policy until January, 2009, at the earliest.

3. We're not going to war with Iran, and you know better than to make blanket statements like that. Come on. We can discuss this without getting into that level of broad brushed deflection and grandstanding.

I wish you were right. But check out this and this, about the planning for war with Iran. For example:

• The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium. . . .
  
  There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”
  
  A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”
  
  One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

What are they smoking indeed? But you could ask that question about Iraq, too.

Ask yourself, why are people in the Pentagon leaking this stuff to Seymour Hersh? Obviously, because they are trying to head this Iran stuff off at the pass.