Friday, July 08, 2005

With all due respect Major Hackett

Paul Hackett has served his country and fellow Ohioans as an officer in the Marine Corps fighting in Iraq. Porkopolis thanks him for his service and for putting his life on the line. That being said, it appears he's using the recent terrorists bombings in London for political gain; particularly when he attempts to juxtapose the Vice President's recent comments on the Iraq insurgency being in its 'last throes'.

It's not clear if Cheney utilized the wording "last throes" or "death throes"; as Hackett notes in his press release.

Let's do a little Googling for each:

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For both Cheney - "last throes" and Cheney "death throes" it appears that every news report on Cheney's statement was specifically referring to the Iraq insurgency. In fact, he made the comment on the Larry King show. If that's the case, Paul Hackett conveniently takes the Vice President's statement and applies it to the larger global war on terror and "Al Queda" (he probably meant Al Qaeda) in general with the following statement:

Vice President Cheney said recently that Al-Qaeda is in its ‘death throes.’ An organization capable of carrying out coordinated operations to devastating effect is not in its death throes,” said Hackett.

That's too cute by half, Major Hackett. Candidate Hackett has every right to argue the merits of the policies and decisions in going to war, but he's not entitled to manipulating the statements of the Vice President for political gain. If anything, Cheney and the administration have said, and continue to say, that the global war on terror is a long term effort.

With regard to the merits of the Vice President's specific statement, it's not a totally unreasonable argument to say that the Iraq insurgency is in its "last throes". Evidence is starting to mount that even the local population is starting to get fed up with the foreign fighters (see: Red On Red In Iraq) . Could this be the reverse "enemy of my enemy is my friend" effect starting to take effect? That would be pretty last throe-ish.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Between this and commenting that President Bush is more dangerous to our security than Osama bin Laden, Paul Hackett has lost any credibility his veteran-status may have bought him.

July 9, 2005 at 1:41 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, but the meida will not point out Hackett talking out of both sides of his mouth. The Enquirer's front page pic and story yesterday was better for Hackett than his own team could produce. And the Schmidt campaign appears, as of now, committed to taking the high road. The result will be a narrow victory for Schmidt, which will attract more mudslinging, misleading Dems in '06.

July 28, 2005 at 12:05 PM  

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