I have seen and heard some serious beatdowns of rightwing idiots, but I have not seen anything like this. Hewitt interviews Gen. Odom and throws every rightwing talking point/fantasy at Odom and he just destroys every last one of them.
The interview is very lengthy and touches on all the familar rightwing talking points on Iraq, Israel and Iran. Here are just a few highlights:
On Iraqi elections:
HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?
WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.
HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?
WO: Sure they want order, but voting doesn't produce order.
HH: I know that, but I'm trying to get at, do you thing they aspire to freedom?
WO: Sure, but the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesn't just mean free to kill each other?
HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?
WO: We have made it much worse.
HH: Much worse than Sadaam?
WO: Yeah.
On getting out will lead to a bloodbath:
HH: So you don't think it can get worse?
WO: Yeah, it can get worse. It's gotten worse every year.
...
HH: Do the numbers [of future Iraqi deaths if we leave] matter at all to your analysis? If someone came to you and said 100,000 people will die ...
WO: Yes, they matter, and what I'm telling you is that we can't affect, we cannot improve the numbers of survivors by staying longer.
...
HH: So how many [post withdrawal Iraqi casualties] do you think that will be?
WO: I don't know. You don't know, either....
...
HH: And as a result, that doesn't matter, though?
WO: And so you can sit there and fantasize any scale [of Iraqi casualties] you want to, to scare people into continuing to do stupid things.
Stupid indeed. The General is pretty clear here. It may get worse it may not we don't know. But staying there indefinately simply won't affect this one way or the other.
On Iran:
HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejah alarming to you? Why not?
WO: No. Because I've done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shah's time up to about 1995. And notwithstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were NOT. They were pursuing... they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. They've had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel and the other's been toward us.
On Israel:
HH: Are you gambling with Israel's future , then, to allow a radical regime [in Iran] ...
WO: No, Israel's gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.
...
WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmert's policies and Bush's policies, I would fear for my life.
On al Qaeda and Iraq:
HH: And then you go on to say, "Whether such foreign elements [al Qaeda] could remain and thrive in Iraq after the resolution of civil war is open to question." Now they are deterred by our presence there, are they not?
WO: No. They are absolutely ecstatic over it. They're killing us. They couldn't get to us otherwise.
HH: Do you believe that safe haven for al Qaeda will empower them to strike the US again as they did on 9/11?
WO: Look, they're getting one [safe haven] back in Afghanistan. They've got one right now in Pakistan. They've got them in other countries. If you get out of Iraq, there's one think, two or three things you can be sure of. Then cannot operate effectively in Kurdistan right now. The Shiites will catch them and decapitate everyone they can get their hands on. Most Sunni's don't like them. They deal with them largely because they provide them with suicide bombers, et cet. to take on the Shiites. With us getting out of the scene, and if the Shiites were to win that civil war, al Qaeda will be gone.
This is just a flavor. The beat down goes on and on. In particular, his complete destruction of the WWII Nazi appeasement argument is just a thing of beauty. Hewitt is just thoroughly destroyed in every argument/rightwing fantasy he put forward. Please read the entire interview. It really is a outline of how to respond to rightwing fantasy on Iraq, Iran and the Middle East in general.
The interview is dicussed and linked to by Barry Sussman.
http://niemanwatchdog.org/...