"SEE YOU IN BAGHDAD"
Network Sunday morning news-talk shows have devolved into a muttering sameness. You don’t need a scorecard to know the players and you don’t need a script to know what’s going to happen on at least two of the shows:
Meet the Press: Tim Russert asks overly polite questions without adequate follow-up to the Bushie flack-of-the-week, the position of which elevates to the degree the Bushies feel they are most in trouble (at the height of his Iraq policy PR collapse this summer – here comes Dick Cheney). When not doing that – as he did with John Edwards this week – Russert gets aggressive with a Democrat running for president (or otherwise making trouble for Bush) by tough cross-examination about feet-in-mouth or something or other they said over breakfast 15 years ago. The show usually ends with celebrity-journalist panel – always including at least one wing-nut like Novak or Safire and never anyone to the left of David Broder – describing how good a job the Bush team is doing massaging their message ("...as Vice-President Cheney just said...") and barely controlling their glee at the failure of any of the Dem candidates to break through the media’s barriers to message delivery. This is the standard format – including (especially) the apparently mandatory right-wing "journalist" – of Face the Nation and used to be on This Week, but see below.
Fox News Sunday: The Bushies of Fox News know what you visit the Fox News Channel for, and you get it, with a vengeance, on over-the-air channels on Sunday mornings. Here, right-wing ideologue Tony Snow and right-wing ideologue Brit Hume play the usual softball with Bush flunkies, although with a bit more of a drinking-buddy friendly wink than Russert allows himself. Any Democrat who bothers to show up is pelted with loaded questions that include the usual unfounded right-wing nut assumptions. The hapless Dem is then interrupted repeatedly by their rude, scoffing "hosts" as they try to answer the questions. After thus flexing their muscles, Snow and Hume are joined by right-wing ubber-ideologue Bill Kristol, Republican Mara Liason and, playing the role that Allan Colmes has perfected on FNC of the lefty sell-out, Juan Williams for a discussion, if you can call it that, of the issues of the day and how great the Bushies are doing.
On This Week, George Stephanopoulos has set out to change the format on Sunday mornings, eliminating the commentariat confab, employing tons of flat-screen monitors and several regular segments devoted to the week’s notable items, late-night comics, etc. Like a bad revamped sit-com character, George Will returns as the house right-wing scold, acting as George’s minder in Bushie bigfoot interviews. The show has style and intelligence – as much as the mainstream allows. It also has ratings that are crashing through the floor, so get it while you can. Next month: Best of Diane Sawyer: The Nixon Years. But this morning on This Week, there were actual moments of truth; moments so rare on Sunday morning that the participants literally did not know what to do.
One of the guiding tenets of Republican TV appearances since the Reagan years is that they never allow themselves to be in a face-to-face conversation, much less a debate, with anyone with an opposing viewpoint. If these shows are going to have a Bushie and a Democrat on the same show, the Bushie always goes first and clears out of the studio before the Dem appears. That way, they can never be effectively challenged by their lies and bad policies. Someone in the Bush traffic department screwed up this morning, and Richard Perle found himself sitting in a chair right next to Richard Holbrooke.
This was no small event. Perle is one of the darkest of the Dark Side Bushies, working with Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld since the early ‘90s on the intellectual development of the "doctrine" of "preemption", otherwise known as "Whatever Gets Us Into Iraq". This band of Great Thinkers were determined to play geopolitical chess by getting a U.S. foothold in the center of the Middle East by any means necessary. Since the government of Iraq was the weakest in the entire region, they proceeded to demonize with lies and exaggerations and then overthrow Saddam Hussein, using the U.S. armed forces.
Holbrooke is a distinguished diplomat who did great service to the country under President Clinton and various other presidents, none of them named Bush. He is still involved in the diplomacy of the Middle East, and is not one to trifle with when it comes to the finer points of true diplomacy.
So Perle was asked about the most under-played story of the week – his "back-channel" discussions with the Iraqs about a deal that– with anyone but the war-at-all-costs Bushies – would have avoided the invasion and the quagmire aftermath. After Perle poo-pooed the notion that this dramatic opening, including amazing Iraqi concessions, meant anything at all, Holbrooke swivelled his chair around, looked him right in the eye and wanted to know whether the substance of the offer ever got up to Junior. Interestingly, Perle avoided answering the question (meaning the answer would be "yes") and twaddled on about how the back-channel could not be taken seriously, etc. You could see Perle squirm as he tried to stick to his talking points. Perle has the same look on his face these days as Paul Wolowitz. Their bags are packed and they are ready to Get Out of Dodge at the first hint that the American people have finally figured it all out; that the enraged citizens are finally at the barricades with their torches.
In that great Sunday morning tradition, though, Perle was allowed to wiggle out of his explanation too easily. But Halbrooke was not done. Later, the subject of the Turks and their offer to supply troops in Iraq came up. Perle got caught in a bald-faced lie, saying that the Turks were never asked to supply troops in Iraq. Yes they were, said Holbrooke. He had talked to the Turks and found out that the U.S. asked them to offer troops. But the puppet Iraqi Governing Council didn’t ask them, so it didn’t count, offered Perle. But Paul Bremer asked them to, said Holbrooke, and why are we putting the Governing Council in the position of saying no to an offer of troops that we solicited? That was too much for Perle, who sunk further into his chair and looked sadly to George Will to bail him out. Will just stared back.
The fact is that, even after the lies about WMD, nuclear weaponizing, links to al-Quida, etc., war could have been avoided because the Iraqis were willing to give up everything we said we wanted – even promising new elections. Talking to Richard Perle is no "back-channel". It is talking to someone in the Belly of the Beast. And the Bushie response was: "See you in Baghdad."
The families of the nearly-400 dead and the thousands maimed and wounded have got to be wondering how they got to this place. Bush offered more solace today to the 17 dead in Saudi Arabia than he ever did (or will) to the dozens of his own soldiers who died this week in Iraq.
Where, indeed, is the outrage?
9:38:47 PM 
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