<This article by Richard Cohen was in my paper this morning. The headline: "War Not Going Well? Just Tell Us The Truth."

The short analysis is that the elections are rolling up next year and the Democrats are beginning to panic. Bush's high numbers aren't really the issue--2004 is a long ways away, and remember the numbers Bush Sr. had? Still, it is critical that something be done to cut George W. off at the knees. I'm sure this poll has made a big impression.

Is there any doubt that the person who wrote this article is eager to see a military failure?

Now, the long form.

Just for kicks, I'm going to dissect one of these dogwhistle articles. I could do this a lot, but it would be a full-time job.

Richard Cohen



Tuesday, November 6, 2001

When asked last week about the progress of the war, President Bush did not acknowledge it had gotten off to a slow start. He did not say that the Taliban had turned out to be a more formidable force than initially expected and that the mass defections once anticipated had not materialized. Instead, the president said "we're making very good progress" and "tightening the net on the enemy." It is, however, the administration's own credibility that is slowly strangling.



All of the above is left-wing media opinions presented as known facts. Despite constant hammering by the administration that this effort could take a long time, Cohen writes as though Bush had never said this at all.

All over Washington I was hearing unhappiness about the war's progress. Some thought we had prematurely initiated hostilities -- taken a shot or two before the Pentagon was fully prepared to wage war. The effect had been to buoy the Taliban, leading it -- and the supposedly wavering tribal chieftains -- to conclude that the U.S. was only the U.S.S.R. without the last two initials. The Afghans would win again.



Others had no problem with the war's timing -- only its execution. The Pentagon was faulted for the timidity of its bombing campaign -- why such parsimony in the use of B-52s? -- and its near-reluctance to use ground troops. It seems the United States was pounding rubble into dust while for some reason -- a reluctance to allow the Northern Alliance to capture Kabul? -- sparing the Taliban's front-line fighters.



"All over Washington." "Some thought..." "Others had..." Who are these people? Generals? The shoeshine guy? Again, notice opinions being projected as facts. I can hazard a pretty good guess as to the people Cohen talks to "all over Washington." Bet there aren't a lot of Republicans in the mix.

Not only that, but somehow Cohen is privy to the innermost thoughts of the Taliban leaders. Wow. Too bad he wasn't reading their minds in August.

In any case, this article was more than worthwhile for the three minutes of unalloyed glee I enjoyed after listening to a left-wing liberal complaining that we aren't using enough B-52s and ground troops.

Whatever the case, this war appears to be behind schedule. The administration, of course, will not say so. But this administration is already operating from a credibility deficit. It is hard to forget that concoction of fibs trotted out to explain and excuse Bush's hop-scotching the country on Sept. 11. Air Force One itself had been targeted, it was said; a credible threat, we were told. As it turned out, neither the threat nor the administration's account of it was credible.

"Behind schedule." Again, whose schedule? I heard Bush's speeches on the length of the war. Didn't Cohen?

As for the "Air Force 1" crack, it's amazing how this bald-faced lie about the day after the attack has already become one of those media "everyone knows" things. The main source right now for this particular load of horseshit seems to be an article from the World Socialist Web Site. Every reference to this I have found on the web so far tracks back to this story, or uses direct quotes and phrasing from it.

This is only the latest example of attempting to propel a leftist lie into an "everyone knows." Bush is an idiot. Bush is a coward. Bush is being run from behind the scenes. These and other lies permeate every sentence of this article.

The administration's credibility problems are exacerbated by the virtual goof du jour regarding anthrax. I give it a pass on that. This was a wholly new threat and no one knew quite how to handle it. Even the medical community was befuddled.

Wow. How generous. Bush gets one pass.

War is as old as mankind, but every war is different. They are fought by the young, who have no experience in these matters, and that is often the case with their leaders as well. We all recognize this as we do the reality of war itself. Little goes according to plan. We understand.

"and that is often the case with their leaders as well." Nice "Bush The Idiot" cheap shot again. Does anyone think that Cohen would be commenting on Clinton's military experience (fleeing like a weasel from service) if he were still President?

But the Bush administration seems genetically tight-lipped. It even withheld the evidence against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, citing the usual security concerns. Then Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, not unaware of security concerns himself, briefed Parliament and all of Britain on some of the evidence.



At the Pentagon, the briefings more and more resemble the ones conducted daily during the Vietnam War. In the current New Yorker, for instance, Seymour Hersh quotes from the briefing conducted by Gen. Richard Myers on the Oct. 20 raid into Afghanistan by Army Rangers and a squad from the Delta Force. The units "were able to deploy, maneuver and operate inside Afghanistan without significant interference from Taliban forces," he said.

Not so, reports the indefatigable Hersh. "Twelve Delta members were wounded, three of them seriously." What's more, Hersh says that the Ranger operation was mostly a PR effort. The Rangers dropped onto a Taliban airfield only after it was determined that the enemy was gone. This was the raid that was videotaped with excerpts shown on television. Needless to say, the Pentagon -- as it sometimes did in Vietnam -- disputes Hersh.



Here comes the Viet Nam bit. We have discussed Hersh in earlier posts. The Pentagon says he is lying in his teeth. Cohen apparently sees no inconsistencies in the above paragraph, which simultaneously claims serious losses during a raid, and that the Rangers dropped into the airfield after the enemy was gone.

It is Vietnam that haunts the military -- not only the fear of a quagmire but the concurrent fear and loathing of a critical press. But it is another aspect of Vietnam that should haunt both the military and its civilian bosses -- the erosion of trust. As the war dragged on, little the brass said was taken at face value. When, for instance, the Pentagon maintained that the Tet offensive was a setback for the enemy, its interpretation was dismissed. Few were willing to give the military the benefit of the doubt.

Viet Nam was the epitome of the leftist press attempting to destroy the military effort and bring America to its knees. The "fear and loathing" the military has of the media was well-earned. Any "trust" that was eroded was eroded by the constant undermining efforts of the press. It was the press that "dismissed" the interpretation of the Tet offensive, and twisted it into a major defeat. "Few were willing to give the military the benefit of the doubt." Damn straight, and nothing seems to have changed.

George Bush now has an approval rating that, in his own lingo, will not stand. How far it sinks depends partly on the economy, partly on the course of the war -- and partly on whether he is perceived as candid in his reporting of both. The two are seamless. He cannot have credibility on one and not on the other.

This is pure wishful thinking. Cohen is already imagining Bush's destruction, although there is not a scintilla of evidence that this is happening.

"How far it sinks depends partly on the economy, partly on the course of the war..." You bet your sweet ass it does, and Cohen--along with all the rest of the left--knows it down to his marrow. For this reason, the Democratic Party and their media symbiotes are going to bust their butts to see that neither the economy or the war is going to go well. And I'm going to strip the pretense off their attempts as often as I can.

The war is not off to a great start. We know that. We are not worried. We are prepared for a bitter and lengthy fight. We don't expect miracles but we do expect candor. So far, we have received neither.

Again, who's "we?" Maybe Cohen has a tapeworm? You know who "we" is (are?). The same people I mentioned before. The leftist "intelligencia" that Cohen hangs out with in Washington. More isolated opinions presented as universal facts.

I'm not buying ANY of this crap, and neither should anyone else with a working brain.

And, as election fever runs high, look for this to get a lot worse. If there is a close election today, look for the Big Recount tactics to show up again.

The left is hanging by its fingernails right now--like I said earlier, 9/11 turned over a lot of rocks no one was looking under before. As they get desperate, the fight is going to get dirty.