Why isn't Frank Rich doing a Sunday morning talk show or working in the White House press corps?
By Bruce B. Brugmann
I ask this question week after week when I read Rich's splendid column in the Sunday NewYork Times.
Perhaps, if he were on the Sunday talk shows or in the White House press corps, he would be asking the tough questions that are so painfully needed nowadays as the surge doesn't surge and the Iraq war escalates. .
For example, he writes in his lead, "By this late date, we should know the fix is in when the White House's top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam's aluminum tubes. 'We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,' said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq--the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America--had officially begun.
"America wasn't paying close attention then (B3: neither was the Washington press corps nor the mainstream media.) We can't afford to repeat that blunder now. Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we'd be wise to heed.
"The first was a confirmation of recent White House hints that the long-promised September pivot point for judging the success of the 'surge' was inoperative. That deadline had been asserted as recently as April 24 by President Bush, who told Charlie Rose that September was when we'd have 'a pretty good feel' whether his policy 'made sense.' On Sunday General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker each downgraded September to merely a 'snapshot' of progress in Iraq. 'Snapshot,' of course, means 'never mind!' Doesn't this raise some tough questions?
"The second message was more encoded and more ominous. Again using similar language, the two men said that in September they would explain what Mr. Crocker called 'the consequences' and General Petraeus 'the implications' of any alternative 'courses of action' to their own course in Iraq. What this means in English is that when the September 'snapshot' of the surge shows little change in the overall picture, the White House will say that 'the consequences of winding down the war would be even more disastrous: surrender, defeat, apocalypse now.
So we must stay the surge. LIke the war's rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/ll and a high-stakes congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill.)"
The appropriate headline on his op ed column, "They'll break the bad news on 9/ll?" Doesn't all this raise even tougher questions?
Repeating: Wouldn't it be nice to have Frank Rich, or someone like him, asking these tough questions on a regular basis when the Bushies appear on Sunday morning talk shows or Bush holds a press conference or any administration official pops up publicly anywhere? B3
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