Dismal

Katie on the Today show Wednesday morning, in re the Zawahiri tape: "The fact that this was produced by Al Quaeda's in-house production unit shows how sophisticated they are".

I sat, dumbstruck, for a moment.

Then I, the Production Unit of the Northern Alliance, went to work, here at my undisclosed location in Blogistan, with a video camera and a laptop, smiling at my extreme sophistication.

I don't watch Today much; by 7AM, I'm in the thick of getting kids on their buses. And I don't know any conservative who's under any illusions that Today is a balanced source of news; Katie Couric in particular is a shill for the left's smuggest impulses.

But today seemed...worse? More blatant? Dumber? Anyway, different than earlier run-ins with Today.

Whenever the leftymedia wants to try to seem serious about defense and the war, they trot out retired general Barry McCaffrey. Perhaps this is a good sign: perhaps Bush's PR "blitz" of this past week is starting to have an effect on how the media sees the public's perception of things; rather than play to raw regurgitation of leftover Vietnam-War-era tropes, it's sounding like they're trying to build a pseudo-military case for withdrawal (while slipping all sorts of Post-Vietnam-era code phrases into the message). This morning was no exception.

Matt Lauer interviewed McCaffrey about the Zawahiri tape mentioned above; Today was visibly panting about the "significance" of the tape (wherein Zawahiri - gasp - tells Al Quaeda to start attacking Americans in Iraq!)

Lauer put a herculean effort into leading McCaffrey into thinking the tape is a morale hit to the troops on the ground in Iraq; three straight times, he tried to edge the retired general into saying some permutation of "this tape is going to be a gut-shot to morale" or some such.

Then:

Lauer: "Should commanders lose their jobs over the screwups in Iraq?" Do troops on the ground think someone should pay for this?

McCaffrey: "One would think Rumsfeld would be held accountable for this?"

Lauer: "Do you think [comnanders] want Rumsfeld held accountable?"

McCaffrey "...I think most [field grade officers] have a lot of loyalty toward the civilian leadership...

Lauer: "Do you think Rumsfeld will hold onto his job?"

...followed, again, by a couple of attempts of Lauer's part to get McCaffrey to say in as many words that he wants Rumsfeld fired. McCaffrey danced around it - he mentioned "accountability" several times - but never quite took the bait, at least not in a form that NBC could put on the Evening News in the form of a "call from Barry McCaffrey for Rumsfeld's resignation" tonight.

Needless to say, it was never mentioned that McCaffrey was an office-holder under the Clinton administration, and will likely be one in any future Democrat administration.

Barry McCaffrey is like a human spray-can of gravitas that the frat boys of the Democratic Party can spray around the dingy apartment of their military policy to cover up the smell of their own rotting ideas.

Posted by Mitch at December 7, 2005 07:35 AM | TrackBack