Okay, not that it’s a surprise. But let’s just stipulate for the record that the election results earlier this month didn’t mean jack to the president when it comes to Iraq. Here’s a story in the Times with the president not only blaming everyone but himself for the disaster he’s created in Iraq but specifically laying the whole thing on al Qaida.
Said the president: “Thereâs a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented, in my opinion, because of the attacks by Al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal[s].”
To the extent that we can read ‘al Qaida’ as a gloss for ‘people blowing things up’ this is no doubt true to a certain extent. But that’s sort of like the president saying not to blame the Katrina debacle on him when it was mainly the hurricane’s fault.
The Times piece does a pretty good job explaining how everyone in the military and intelligence circles now agrees that ‘al Qaida’ (whatever that means in Iraq exactly) is not the real issue in what’s happening. But to the president, it’s still us versus al Qaida. Possibly with outside support from Dr. Evil and KAOS. I really never thought this country could be run for a significant period of time by a president who seems captive of dingbat conspiracy theories and the strategic complexity of a children’s bedtime story.
The illusory couple-week post-election window of non-denial has closed.
