2008 August 25 | Hanlon's Razor

Dick Morris: We were invited into Iraq

By Will, on August 25th, 2008 at 04:58 PM

Once again, I just have no fucking response besides staring dumbfounded at the quote. On the 22nd, Dick Morris appeared on Hannity and Colmes where he said, I shit you not:

“Where he’s wrong is that we went into Iraq at the invitation of the government, not as an invasion.”

We were now invited into Iraq. Amazing. Of course, Colmes called him on it and he immediately backpedaled and stammered with “Well, we were invited by democracy and the government wants us there now and it totally wasn’t an invasion because invasions usually include planning.”

It’s completely ridiculous. We did invade Iraq, and we’ve been essentially occupying it for the last five years. Only now are there rumblings of us finally getting out by 2011, rumblings that have conveniently come only months after Obama was attacked for wanting to set timetables to have is out of Iraq around that time.

Also, Dick Morris’ head is shaped like a potato. It is one of the most potato-shaped heads I’ve ever seen on television. And while we’re on the subject, Terry MacAuliffe has a giant Ted Danson forehead, and Joe Scarborough looks like Chandler from Friends.

Just… wanted to point that out.

An anecdote on Biden’s “decency”

By Hanlon, on August 25th, 2008 at 02:37 PM

I wholly expect Biden to take a bit of a beating from the die-hard liberal wing of our party, and probably for good reason. The grassroots Democrats tend to be a paritcularly well-informed bunch, internet savvy and on the pulse of a lot of issues in that realm, where Biden’s performed rather poorly.

The reason I like him, however, isn’t his policies down the line. After all, Obama will be the man in charge and he’s not going to go Bush on us and let Biden take care of business while the President plays with his blocks. What I like about Biden is that he’ll play an important role in the campaign, and what a writer over at FOX likes is his decency. He’s got a few stories to support his claim, and here’s a great one:

Back in late May 2001, when the Senate was evenly divided with 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, every vote counted in trying to pass President Bush’s tax bill. Senator James Jeffords hadn’t yet officially become an independent. Democrats were putting up amendment after amendment to try to defeat the tax bill, and the debate was lasting late into the evening.

Senator Joseph Biden noticed that 98-year-old Republican Senator Strom Thurmond was looking quite ill. But Thurmond couldn’t leave because the Republicans needed his vote. Biden, seeing the predicament, offered a solution. He offered to “pair” his votes with Thurmond. Biden promised not to vote while Thurmond left the floor so that the passage of amendments would remain unchanged. It was the decent thing to do.

This is significant for many reasons. On the face, you can understand why the Democrats were mad: Thurmond’s lost vote would have swung the total toward their side. An easy accusation would be that Biden didn’t believe in his own convictions if he was willing to help the other side out. Not so.

What we see instead is that Biden believed not only in his own vote, but in the integrity of the institution he was elected to. One of his fellow Senators was unable to vote, and rather than capitalize on this, he crossed the aisle so that the vote would, in essence, be honored. Thurmond’s declining health did not change that he was still an elected Senator whose voice, for all the disagreements I have with him, be heard, and Biden helped make that happen.

So that nicely encapsulates Biden’s character, which in this case really does give an indication of how he’ll conduct policymaking in the White House. Hanlon approves.

Agreement between Iraq and US reached on timetable

By Hanlon, on August 25th, 2008 at 01:25 PM

I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that, somewhere in the US right now, John McCain is extremely, extremely unhappy.

“There is an agreement actually reached, reached between the two parties on a fixed date which is the end of 2011 to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil,” Maliki said in a speech to tribal leaders in the Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.

“Yes, there is major progress on the issue of the negotiations on the security deal,” Maliki said.

The Iraqi government has said it is proposing U.S. troops end patrols of Iraqi towns and villages by the middle of next year and U.S. combat troops leave Iraq by 2011.

It’s worth pointing out that this plan is, in a way, a faster withdrawal than even Obama’s proposal. He had planned taking one or two brigades out each month until withdrawal was complete, this time it’s full pullout in Iraqi cities by July, leaving them all in bases where they’ll wait to head home, Afghanistan, or maybe Iran. There was no way Obama was going be that far along six months into his term.

A lot of pundits are also taking this opportunity to say how this is somehow good for McCain, making the odd claim that this means the surge worked, Iraq has been made safe, so now thanks to Bush’s policy our troops can head out. This is absolute malarkey, hogwash, and bunk. Plain and simple.

The anti-timetable mantra was not based upon current conditions; it was an absolute statement: Giving timetables tells bad guys when we leave so they can all sit it out and wait until then. It was never qualified with “but they’re okay if conditions X, Y, and Z are met,” it was over and over again saying that timetables are verboten, terrorists will wait it out. End of story.

Crowd chants “F*ck FOX News” live… on FOX

By Hanlon, on August 25th, 2008 at 12:35 AM

Ooo de lally this is a good one.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDGhs_LN7Fk

The really funny part is that “Griff” keeps saying “don’t you believe in freedom of speech?!?” Absolutely they do. They believe in their freedom to yell “fuck FOX News” at the top of their lungs. That’s the nice part about freedom of speech: it means we have the freedom to say things to you that you won’t like. Such as “fuck you”.