As we get ready for tonight's debate, there's one story left over from the last debate that's still slogging through the lonely sludge of conservative blogs. During the last face to face with Clinton, Obama told of how an army captain had talked to him about severe shortages faced by American forces in Afghanistan. This captain told how his platoon was short of both men and supplies, and was forced to use captured materials to get by.
Since the Right Wing sites are capable of producing more instant experts than you can get from a bag of educated sea monkeys, they immediately began deriding Obama, claiming that he had made up the story. Didn't he know that platoons weren't commanded by captains? Didn't he know that our forces in Afghanistan have like six zillion bullets each? Most of all, didn't he know that the trillions we're pouring into Iraq has nothing, hear that, nothing to do with any possible shortages in Afghanistan.
You even had the spectacle of the former Republican chair of the Armed Services Committee, John Warner, demanding that Obama produce the captain in question. And then Obama... well, produced the captain, who confirmed everything Senator Obama had said. Which left Warner sputtering that he'd never heard of these issues, even though they occurred primarily on his watch as Armed Services chair.
Did confirmation of the story mollify the right wing bloggers? Hey, since when have facts stood in their way? Over at The Weekly Standard, editor Michael Goldfarb gave the definitive conservative armchair analysis.
Overall, I think Obama would be better sticking to his "message of hope"--hope that nobody will ever ask him to make any substantive statements on military affairs, ever again. ... The idea that our guys were scrounging weapons and ammo because they were short is ludicrous.
It's a good thing that the right wing has experts like Goldfarb to show them the way. Otherwise, they might be stuck with listening to amateurs like Senator Obama and General Casey, the Army's chief of staff.
Gen. George Casey, the Army's chief of staff, said Tuesday he has no reason to doubt Barack Obama's recent account by an Army captain that a rifle platoon in Afghanistan didn't have enough soldiers or weapons. ... "I have no reason to doubt what it is the captain said," Casey said.
Will any of this make the right hesitate for one second before making fools of themselves over the next military matter in the news? Hardly. Goldfarb and his pals don't need to know what's happening in the real war. The film festival in their heads is so much more fun.
I can't wait for their columns tomorrow, explaining how Casey doesn't know anything about the war.