Matt Taibbi Calls the Dems to Task

Over the last year or so, I've really started to enjoy Matt Taibbi's writing in Rolling Stone. Over the summer, I read a book he wrote about the 2004 campaign and he seems to be the closest thing to a HST fix I'll get this season.

Anyway, this week, he calls Congressional Democrats out on their cynical behavior since the 2006 election.

Anyone who even remotely paid attention to that campaign knows that the Democrats had a strategy (orchestrated primarily by now-Madame Speaker and former Clintonista, Rahm Emanuel) to promise some progress on getting out of Iraq. That's not debatable and at the time they were making the claims, they had access to enough intelligence to know that it was either not feasible or wise.

So they haven't done shit for all you saps who voted for them. Rather, they're now talking about how they have to wait until after the next election, when perhaps a more reasonable President is in office.

That's basically the article in a nutshell and I could not agree more. But I'd actually take the argument a bit further.

While Hillary and Barack have rightly noted that presumable GOP nominee McCain has stated that we could have some presence in Iraq for 100 years (not unlike our continuing presence in, say, West Germany or South Korea), at least the old coot is being honest with you.

Say what you will about the so-called warmongers on the right. They'll tell you that they intend to blow the balls off of any towelhead that gets in their way and, darnit, they go out and try do it no matter what.

A good portion of the national Democrats, though, have co-opted the anti-war position because it's politically expedient and gives them more window dressing with which to attack the GOP when they have no intent on spending any of their political capital to make good on their promises.

It's at least debatable which position is worse.