Conservative Blogs, Newspapers Spin Durbin’s ‘Very Discouraging’ Iraq Assessment

[babylonsister]

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/08/09/blogs-durbin-spin/

Conservative Blogs, Newspapers Spin Durbin’s ‘Very Discouraging’ Iraq Assessment

Sen. Dick Durbin (I-IL) recently returned from a trip to Iraq and reported that, while he sees some signs of quietude in select areas, the larger mission is doomed because political reconciliation is “coming apart”:

There were two important parts of this story, the military part as Senator Casey said, where men and women were doing their best and making real progress. {…}

But I have to tell you there’s another side to this story…As we are seeing military progress, the political scene is very discouraging. We are seeing this al Maliki government, which was once branded the government of unity, coming apart. We see Shia’s leaving, Sunnis walking out. It’s not the kind of promise that we want in terms of bringing stability to this country.

Watch it at link~

Durbin explained further on NPR: “I think we’re making some measurable progress but it’s slow-going. And the fact that as our troops show some progress towards security, the government of this nation is moving in the opposite direction. This is really unsustainable with the American people.”

But, the conservative blogosphere, desperate to maintain Bush’s escalation, have spun and distorted Durbin’s claims. Rather than recognize what Durbin actually said — that the escalation lacks a political solution — conservatives conveniently noted only one of “the two important parts of this story”:

Red State: “Well, lo and behold, Democratic Senators Durbin (the #2 ranking Democrat in the Senate) and Casey, after actually visiting Iraq, now admit that the surge is, in fact, making precisely the military progress that Senator Reid declared to be impossible.”

Power Line: Some Democrats have noticed that the “surge” is producing results on the ground in Iraq

National Review: Dick Durbin says the surge is “making real progress”

Even some newspapers such as the D.C. Examiner and the New York Sun echoed the conservative spin, giving false impressions about Durbin’s assessment:

New York Sun: Durbin “is conceding that the surge of American troops has led to military progress in Iraq. could open the door for the majority party in Congress to pivot away from its insistence on a deadline for an American retreat.”

DC Examiner: The U.S. military surge…is working. Even as vocal a war critic as Deputy Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has now acknowledged as much, telling CNN that the U.S. military is “making real progress.”

In fact, as General Wesley Clark said at the YearlyKos conference last week, military “progress” alone in the escalation cannot forge a sustainable peace in Iraq.

“We can’t succeed in Iraq with the numbers of troops, no matter how good they are,” Clark said, “because you can’t succeed in this war just by killing people or intimidating the opposition. Dave Petraeus would be the first one to tell you that. The military’s part of the solution. It’s not the answer. The answer’s the politics.”

[TwilightGardener]

1. Did anyone think our military ops would be a total disgraceful failure?

Of course there's areas of progress--flood an area with soldiers, and people tend not to act up as much--but then the soldiers will have to leave, at some point. BushCo WANTS us to focus on the "surge"--because it keeps us seeing the trees instead of the forest. That's been their plan all along, and that's why Petraeus has now been elevated in status to just below Jesus (but probably ahead of Mary and the Holy Spirit). We, and the media, have bought into it. The big picture is, where's our exit strategy? We are delaying the inevitable, which is also Chimpy's plan--the next (Dem) President will have to pull the plug, and we will own the bloodshed and the chaos. Durbin and the other Dems in Congress know this, despite the desperate GOP spin. This is why many good folks in Congress were so opposed to escalation. Just makes it that much harder to get out.

[rodeodance]

2. Send this to Durbin and tell him to HIT BACK HARD!