Frank Rich's Sunday column is (alas) behind the "firewall" at the New York Times website.
http://select.nytimes.com/...
The column is quite long, and is entitled "Don't Laugh at Michael Chertoff." So, keep a straight face.
Below the fold, a synopsis and a few quotes from the column.
Frank Rich starts off by noting that Michael Chertoff was only the second choice for Secretary of Hameland Security, after Rudy Giuliani's pal Bernard Kerik. Chertoff is remembered best as the official who claimed that the Superdome was "fine" - even as the other half of the split-screen showed misery and chaos.
So, Brownie got all the blame, and Chertoff stayed.
Though Mr. Chertoff may be the man standing between us and Armageddon, he is seen as a leader of stature only when standing next to his cabinet mate Gonzo.
Rich goes on to note that Mr. Chertoff went "off the reservation" as he announced his "gut feeling" that the real al-Qaeda, the one that has reconstituted itself in Pakistan, might attack this summer.
In this White House, the occasional official who strays off script is in all likelihood inadvertently coughing up the truth.
Mr. Rich notes the rising use of the term al-Qaeda in Administration and military propaganda, conflating al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia with the "real" al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
Fittingly, one of the first in Washington to notice the rollout of the latest propaganda offensive was one of the very few journalists who uncovered the administration’s manipulation of W.M.D. intelligence in 2002: Jonathan Landay of the McClatchy newspapers.
This time around, he was ahead of the pack in catching the sudden uptick in references to Al Qaeda in the president’s speeches about Iraq — 27 in a single speech on June 28 — and an equal decline in references to the Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence at the heart of the Iraqi civil war America is powerless to stop. Even more incriminating was Mr. Landay’s discovery that the military was following Mr. Bush’s script verbatim. There were 33 citations of Al Qaeda in a single week’s worth of military news releases in late June, up from only 9 such mentions in May.
So, now, the mission in Iraq has changed. It's no longer about the absurd fantasy that Iraq can govern itself. No, by jingo, we're fighting al-Qaeda (you know, the "fake" al-Qaeda, not the one in Pakistan).
Inconveniently, Bob Woodward has leaked the news that
Michael Hayden, the C.I.A. director, told Mr. Bush last November that Al Qaeda was only the fifth most pressing threat in Iraq, after the insurgency, sectarian strife, criminality and general anarchy.
Rich indignantly notes that it will be "all al-Qaeda, all the time," as Bush tries to kick the can down the road. I happen to disagree with that assessment, since blaming Iran for everything seems to be catching on. But, I digress.
Rich then notes that the "report card" on the surge was gloomy, and notes that it is hard to believe that security in Baghdad is really improving when the Green Zone is under increasing attack.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
But you can never underestimate this White House’s ingenuity. It turns out that the "surge," which most Americans thought began shortly after the president announced it in January, is brand-new! We’re just "at the starting line," Tony Snow told the network morning news shows last week, as he pounded in the message that "we have a new course in Iraq, and it’s two weeks old."
Mr. Snow’s television hosts were not so rude as to point out that the Pentagon had previously designated Feb. 14 as the starting line of the surge’s first operation, and had also said that its March report on Iraq should be used as the "baseline from which to measure future progress." That was then, and this is now. The Baghdad clock has been reset. July is the new February. As we slouch toward the sixth anniversary of 9/11, the war against Al Qaeda has only just begun.
Newcasts, as Mr. Rich notes, still do not distinguish between al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Success in Iraq has been dumbed-down to be defined as arming Sunnis in Anbar to drive "foreign fighters" out - to Diyala province, apparently?
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, al-Qaeda is BAAAAACK!
The capital’s entire political debate over Iraq — stay-the-surge versus "precipitous withdrawal" — is itself pure hot air.
Even though felons and the obese are now being signed up to meet Army recruitment shortfalls, we still can’t extend the surge past next April, when troops for Iraq run out unless Mr. Bush extends their tours yet again. "Precipitous withdrawal" (which no withdrawal bill in Congress calls for) is a non sequitur, since any withdrawal would take at least 10 months.
Republicans in Washington are scrambling for cover, to provide evidence that they opposed the "handling" of the war, even as they vote to continue the occupation.
That leaves Mr. Chertoff, whose department has vacancies in a quarter of its top leadership positions, as the de facto general in charge of defending us from the enemy he had that "gut feeling" about, the Qaeda not in Iraq. Last week we learned from a sting operation conducted by Congressional investigators that this enemy needs only a Mail Boxes Etc. account, a phone and a fax machine to buy radioactive material from American suppliers and build a dirty bomb.
For all Washington’s hyperventilating about the Iraqi Parliament’s vacation plans, it’s our own government’s vacation from reality this summer that should make us very afraid.
It's an interesting column. Of course, we knew this stuff already, but it's nice to have it wrapped up in a convenient package by Frank Rich.