A likely error by the White House
The White House this afternoon accidentally sent to its extensive distribution list a Reuters story headlined “Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan – magazine.”
The story relayed how Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the German magazine Der Spiegel that “he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months … ‘U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,'” the prime minister said.
All of which leads to overheated rhetoric at the Daily Kos as if this is a major faux pas of a panicked administration.
My take: The WH was obviously freaking out after the announcement that al-Maliki supports Obama’s plan, and of course was planning to email this around internally get some some advice from advisers and get their talking points together. This also ensures additional coverage of this issue. The Obama camp of course has already pounced on this:
But those wizards at the Huffington Post have figured out the deep conspiracy behind it all
The White House says it was an accident and the story was only intended for its “internal distribution list.” At first blush that sounds believable. After all, a story saying that the Iraqi government wants us gone certainly goes against the message Bush pushes at home about a long term presence, so it would seem to be a foolish mistake. Plus, every second term presidency is down to the “C” team in the final year because the better people have bailed.
What if it wasn’t an accident?
What if it was on purpose, a Machiavellian/Rovian method to the madness? The definitive book “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” is a primer on tricks like this.
This is part of the usual cognitive dissonance on the left: Bush is clueless, except when he’s engaging in a brilliant multi-layered conspiracy. It seems Bush Derangement Syndrome is still in full flower on the Left…. leaving me wondering what they’ll do with their time and energy when Bush has left office. Maybe they can get together and reminisce about the good old days.
July 21st, 2008 3:38 pm
Phil I read the huffpo about the “accidental” email sent far and wide by the White House, the one tying Obama in with how Muslims think. Contray to what you write here, the huffpo didn’t suggest that Bush was behind it, or that “Bush is clueless except when he’s engaging in a brilliant multi-layered conspiracy.” That’s basically a lie, in fact.
The huffpo piece merely suggested that if it were not an accident, Rove might have been behind it. You misread that big time. So I gather three things: A/ You have not read the book “Bush’s Brain” B/ You know little to nothing about Karl Rove over the past three decades, and C/ you’re not the “generally curious” person you claim to be. Other than that, Phil, not bad!
July 21st, 2008 4:18 pm
I take that to mean that you subscribe to the “stupid Bush” but “brilliant Rove” canard. I know some on the Left find that attractive… Others on the Left, however, see Rove as a Bush surrogate, not the other way around, and ascribe everything they don’t like about Rove to Bush, so that they become, in essence, an identity, and so that anything Rove is assumed to have done is assumed to have been at least authorized by Bush. Of course, Bush Derangement Syndrome knows no bounds, and can tolerate any amount of cognitive dissonance, so there’s no surprise there.
Surely you don’t deny that the Left simultaneously accuses Bush of being stupid, except when he’s being brilliantly, covertly conspiratorial?
On the Left, Occam never lived.
July 21st, 2008 4:25 pm
Oh, one other comment: as is typical on the Left, partisan screeds like “Bush’s Brain” are taken to be gospel by people who haven’t cracked an actual history book in years. Oh well. In any case, I wasn’t writing a book review, I was commenting on the incoherence of the Left in evaluating Bush’s capacities.