This is classic. From what one can gather from this late piece in the Post, the White House is having a hard time figuring out who to smear as a liar over the Bremer debacle.
In this morning’s Post a “senior defense official” denied that Bremer had ever pressed for more troops in Iraq, as the former administrator claimed he had in various speeches (at least not until two weeks before the end of his tenure and then to secure the borders.)
The claim that Bremer was lying, however, only seemed to last about half a news cycle because in the follow-up piece that went online at 4:41 PM a Bush campaign spokesman, Brian Jones, confirmed that Bremer had in fact requested more troops.
The specific remark was a bit oblique, but clear enough: “Ambassador Bremer differed with the commanders in the field. That is his right, but the president has always said that he will listen to his commanders on the ground and give them the support they need for victory.”
This later zig in the party line also effectively cuts off at the knees the regime-change dead-enders who spent the day zagging, or rather arguing that Bremer was only talking about the delay in the arrival of the 4th Infantry Division. (This sorry excuse is ably noted here by Andrew Sullivan.)
Once Bremer arrived on the scene, the delay in the arrival of the 4th ID wasn’t a matter of policy but logistics. If the issue was one of policy disagreements between Bremer and the military commanders on the ground that means that he couldn’t have been talking simply about the absence of the 4th ID during the early stages of the occupation.
Who would have thought that a crew that’s done such a bang up job in Iraq would have so much trouble organizing a smear and damage control operation?
