Decision ‘08

McCain On The NIE Leak

From an interview with Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics:

…I think the timing has got to be political. It was issued in April, and now here we are in October, September-October, so what do you think? So I think it’s clearly political. Also, only parts of it were leaked. And I don’t know what the whole thing is still, because the administration released their parts of it, but the casual observer would conclude it’s political and designed to damage the administration there’s no doubt about that. So when I say that’s the only conclusion that I draw.

Second of all, I guess, that there’s clearly some validity to the fact that when we have not had the success that we had hoped in Iraq, that always emboldens our enemies. That’s what happens in wars. And I would still argue that, if that’s true, then it makes a more compelling case for us to succeed in Iraq because if we fail further, then that will embolden them more. So in a way, they bolstered our argument, my argument, that the benefits of success in Iraq are enormous and the consequences of failure are catastrophic.

By the way, I don’t mean to stray from the subject but a really entertaining thing happened day before yesterday. The Democrats had this hearing with two generals and a colonel, and it was a Rumsfeld-as-pinata encounter. But the interesting thing is that at the very end they made a terrible, cardinal error: they asked the generals and the colonel what we should do and they answered “stay the course,” “more troops,” “can’t afford to lose.” Oops. Hearing over. I thought it was wonderful. I’m sure they weren’t pleased to hear the generals say we need more troops and we have to stay the course and we can’t afford to lose. I’m sure some staffer probably got reprimanded or fired for allowing such a question to be asked.

Rudy’s got a bit of a momentum, but McCain remains a real contender…