The unbearable stupidity of being shooter242.

One would think that a lawyer intent on preserving rights for unlawful combatants would do the same for the President. Sadly, no. Tsk.

The President's legal rights have not been infringed upon. Its his own fault for going before the public and admitting he authorized illegal activities.

Or are you suggesting we just presume he was lying?

-- Iokannan in the Well

***********

Little scooter has been off his game lately and shooting himself in the foot. We all hope he would aim a little higher.

I read Liasson here as saying that the American people want Obama to look at facts on the ground.

Me too. My point is that Glenn made her out to be asserting that the American people do not want troops to be withdrawn within 16 months. That is a very different statement than what we both took Liasson to be saying.

As for reducing half the American people to the "left wing base," that is no what she was doing. She did not assert that only the "left wing base" wants troops to be withdrawn within 16 months. Her claim was that only the "left wing base" wants the next commander in chief to stick to the 16 month campaign promise regardless of any new assessment of the facts on the ground in Iraq. Even if a large majority of Americans want our troops to be withdrawn from Iraq within 16 months of the beginning of the next presidency, it is still entirely consistent for the vast majority of those so desiring to want the next president to also choose policy based on the facts on the ground. That would leave only a fringe remainder of those desiring withdrawal within 16 months who just don't care what the facts on the ground are or may be. Liasson's claim is that this fringe remainder is the "left wing base."

You raise a good question that has many answers. From Foucault down through Noam Chomsky, many thinkers have provided ample and thoughtful responses to that question.

"That would leave only a fringe remainder of those desiring withdrawal within 16 months who just don't care what the facts on the ground are or may be. Liasson's claim is that this fringe remainder is the "left wing base."

-- Foodle "

You can spend all day writing this same statement another 100 times and it won't obscure how completely you're distorting the point.

Neither I nor anyone claimed that Liasson's point was that "the American people don't want to withdraw from Iraq within 16 months." So stop saying that.

I am not distorting.

So Liasson just flatly stated that "the American people" -- as opposed to "the left wing base," which is (of course) a different animal altogether -- don't want to withdraw troops from Iraq within 16 months but instead favor withdrawal only when "facts on the ground" permit it.

That is simply not what Liasson said.

...thank you for your stellar posts. We need to repeatedly look at the historic threads stitched through the strategic manipulation, corruption, duplicity, death and destruction exercised by Power Structures. Whether it be the (in my opinion, much-overlooked) carnage we inflicted on El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 80s (per El Cid) or the insidious intrigues of the Peloponnesian War (kudos to DrEast), there are similarities that can teach us a lot about America's current power class and the way it operates.

Point taken, although I did not write "commander in chief of the American people." President Bush is the American people's current commander in chief of the armed forces even though he is not the commander in chief of the American people.

That is simply not what Liasson said.

The last time. Liasson:

Look, Samantha Power got in a lot of trouble . . . where she said, "Well, of course he's not going to just stick to some campaign promise of 16 months. He's going to look at the facts on the ground."

Well, that's what the American people want a commander in chief to do. That might not be what his left-wing base does.

"He's not going to just stick to some campaign promise of 16 months. He's going to look at the facts on the ground"

=

"The American people don't want to withdraw troops from Iraq within 16 months but instead favor withdrawal only when 'facts on the ground' permit it."

Those two statements are exactly equivalent.

I agree; not only do polls show that people want an end to the war, popular entertainment, which on some level must try to reflect popular values to sell advertising, seems against the war.

So, my question is why, and its not meant to be taken rhetorically. Why is Obama trying to distance himself from a position that so many people accept as normal. I don't think its a willful gravity towards self-absorption, as you indicate. There must be something else going on or why would candidates be risking their candidacies this way? In my mind, it would be one (or both) of the following:

1. There are areas of the US in which majorities actually do support the war, and want it to continue. These may have been deemed crucial to electoral victory, and Obama is angling towards them, knowing that he already has the anti-war blocks sewn up.

2. There are other extra-electoral actors involved. To go that way is conspiracy, I know. But I often wonder how much of that is going on. Not to say there is a cabal, but I have noticed a trans-partisan agenda concering energy policy and foreign policy. On certain issues, especially Iraq, Democrats and Republicans have sounded eerily similar for nearly a decade.

"I don't think it's fair to call the position that we should look at the facts on the ground before withdrawing a "fringe" position based on the data you presented...

...The Mara Liasson position is a minority position, but it is certainly not fringe."

-- NaR

You completely missed the point of Greenwald's argument. It is precisely the pundit class that feels free to lie and cast the clear majority position of the Americans as the 'fringe' position of the 'radical left'. As he points out, this is their SOP for dismissing any majority positions which they, as insulated elite, don't personally like. And he was using a technique called 'sarcasm' to point out that if there is ANY position which is fringe, it is the one held by Mara Liasson and other Fox News and MSM bimbos like her.