With the Bremer debacle still seeping out into the national consciousness, there is a reassuring sense of clockwork and regularity in watching the designated GOP foot soldiers responding to the orders from Winger Central to zig or zig on command.
So for instance yesterday we first heard that Bremer had been misconstrued and that he was only talking about the delayed arrival of the 4th Infantry Division.
Now the folks at the Wall Street Journal editorial page are pulling the standard dump on Bremer, claiming that he, in addition to getting this or that wrong during his tenure in Iraq, now can’t keep his story straight about whether he was asking for more troops on the ground in the country or not.
Trouble is, we haven’t found a single other senior official involved in the war or its aftermath–in or out of uniform–who attests to Mr. Bremer’s version of events.
“I never heard him ask for more troops and he had many opportunities before the President to do so,” one senior Administration official tells us. Or to be more precise, Mr. Bremer did finally ask for two more divisions in a June 2004 memo–that is, two weeks prior to his departure and more than a year after he arrived.
Poor Bremer, really getting the treatment …
But when the Journal editors were zigging, the Bush campaign had already started to zag. And the party line became predictably tangled.
Yesterday afternoon the Bush campaign told the Post that Bremer had requested more troops, but that the president preferred to take the counsel of his military commanders.
So it’s either Bremer never said anything and now he’s just making excuses (the Journal line.)
Or, yes he said something, but we chose to ignore him (the Bush-Cheney 04 line.)
Is BC04 lying too? In a cynical ploy to shift blame onto the president?
So with the regime-change dead-enders’ media strategy you have dishonest arguments, poor coordination, lack of a game plan. Remind you of anything?
