10-9?

In the infamous "ten-codes" used by Police/fire/rescue to communicate with each other...the code 10-9 stands for

Say Again...or more loosely translated: WTF????

And so it is with Bill Kristol's latest column which has been getting a lot of commentary in Left Blogsylavnia..here's a taste of it....courtesy of Talking Points Memo.

first the Opening paragraph which proves to be prescient:

"I suppose I'll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one."

and then, he proves it right:

Let's step back from the unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds that have characterized the Bush administration. Let's look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see? First, no second terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- not something we could have taken for granted.

Second, a strong economy -- also something that wasn't inevitable.

And third, and most important, a war in Iraq that has been very difficult, but where -- despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless "benchmark" report last week -- we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome.


Jay Carney over at Time Magazine's The Swampland has a great commentary...the words "mendacious hack" come to mind (thanks to Atrios).

snippet"

Blowing past years of disastrous mismanagement of the war, Kristol says that Bush will ultimately be viewed a winner because "we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome" in Iraq. Now, even if you believed from the beginning that invading Iraq and toppling Saddam was the right thing to do. And even if you've never wavered from those convictions. And even if you argued last winter that more troops were necessary and that "surging" was the right thing to do. And even if you insist that there have been some modest -- very modest -- signs of improvement in a few (not many!) areas of Iraq in the past few months, wouldn't you be deluding yourself, and testing the gullibility of your readers (given the cumulative experience of the past four-plus years, and all the mistaken predictions you and others had made about how well things were going in Iraq), if you suddenly decided that these few modest signs of improvement somehow proved that a) "we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome", and b) Bush's presidency will therefore be judged a success?


Tapped has a good commentary heretoo...