Democrats attack al-Maliki for not condemning Hezbollah’s attack on Israel. McCain says al-Maliki has condemned Hezbollah, and that the Democrats criticizing him are “not qualified to lead.”
One small problem: McCain is lying.
Progress Report catches Mr. Straight Talk in another flat-out lie.
Now of course al-Maliki would have to be out of his mind to condemn Hezbollah; the main beneficiary of such a move would be Moqtada al-Sadr. That’s the problem with democracy; if the population hates Israel, a government that faces elections can’t make nice to Israel. But we shouldn’t let the neocons forget how they pretended to believe Chalabi’s b.s. about the new Iraqi government not only recognizing Israel but opening an oil pipeline to Haifa.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
Backwards
Atrios & ThinkProgess & Mark Kleiman take issue with John McCain's fantastically dishonest attack on Democrats in Congress, and wonder if it's his dishonesty that makes him "not qualified to lead." I'm actually pretty sure "willingness to spout utterly…
Is there any chance we could get any Democrats to issue a statement as reasonable as this diary, Mark? To wit.
a. McCain is lying.
b. It is unreasonable to expect al-Maliki to condemn Hezbollah.
c. McCain's lies build upon a long chain of neo-con lies and fantasies.
Frankly, I can't imagine it. Well, maybe Russ Feingold or Dennis Kucinich.
I'm afraid the posturingj of Capitol Hill Dems on this issue is almost as disgusting as McCain's mendacity.
I think the theory of democracy in the middle east is not that democratic governments would immediately make nice with Israel, but instead that democratic governments would not have to feed hatred of outsiders in order to distract from their own crimes, and so the population's hatred of Israel might eventually subside, instead of being actively maintained at a fever pitch.
You gotta love the web.
Anyway, Mark, there's an even scarier possibility, viz., that they weren't pretending.
Brett, that article linked to was discussing this happening immediately, done by Chalabi.
Of course, so many things promised are permanently in the land of 'just you wait - someday - soon!'.
Any chance to get a new swift boat org. going? We could allege that McCain got brainwashed into being a sleeper agent while in POW camp.
Heck, we could just re-use Bush material which was used against McCain in 2000. If he complained, we could tell him that he didn't mind it from Bush, so we figured that he was cool with it.