Every Which Way But Loose

TwistingInTheirOwnWhirlwind
NeoConnedVille


Apparently, sometimes even a prop-a-gannonist extraordinare can't tell which way the whurlitzer will blow even if he does keep an entire legion of weathermen on retainer.

Case in point - the pre-hibernatorial spate of Iraq War blade-blaming* that was published in the pages of Vanity Fair yesterday.

At the time, we only quoted David Frum's words, but the article contained multiple quotes of a similar nature from the likes of neoconian barbarians named Adelman, Ledeen and Perle.

The thing is, as the first 24 hour news cycle proved, the apologia backfired and the spin started going backwards, fast and out of control.

So Frum immediately (or previously, just in case?) cut a deal with Arianna Huffington and posted up a velvety smooth screed filled to bursting with self-justificatory solipsistic codswallop like this:

"It's true I fear that there is a real danger that the US will lose in Iraq. And yes I do blame a lot that has gone wrong on failures of US policy.

I have made these points literally thousands of times since 2004, beginning in An End to EvilState of Denial (start herehere.) I have argued them on radio and on television and on public lectern, usually in exactly the same words that are quoted in the press release. 22-part commentary on Bob Woodward's State of Denial (start here and find the remainder here.) I have argued them on radio and on television and on public lectern, usually in exactly the same words that are quoted in the press release.

"[T]he insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them."

"I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything."

And finally that the errors in Iraq are explained by "failures at the center."

Nothing exclusive there, nothing shocking, and believe me, nothing remorseful.

My most fundamental views on the war in Iraq remain as they were in 2003: The war was right, victory is essential, and defeat would be calamitous."

Sure sounds like the words of a reasonable ideologue, eh.

Unless, of course, you have been paying attention.

In which case, you might agree with the great majority of the commenters to his post who relentlessly, and righteously, point out that the entire thing is nothing but a bald-faced attempt by Mr. Frum to whitewash the Acts of Evil perpetrated on millions of people by himself and his very best friends and colleagues.


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*"Blade-Blaming" is a hockey term, which involves involves looking down at your stick, shaking your head, and blaming it for your own screw-ups on the ice.


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