OK, Joe Klein has written some dumb stuff in the past, and he’s written some stuff which the liberal blogs decry as dumb, but which I don’t really have a problem with. And of course I, myself have been called just about every label that they like throwing at right wing republicans by some left wing blogger or another (not necessarily well known ones, I should note).
All that being the case, I’m trying to figure out what reasoning Joe Klein had to execute in his brain to come to this conclusion:
Today on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Klein cheered President Bush’s response to the NIE, stating that it was “an amazing moment of candor by the United States”:
The Bush reaction to this — he didn’t try to block it. He didn’t try to postpone it. He didn’t spend weeks, he didn’t ask the intelligence community ‘give me a couple of weeks, let’s see if we can figure out some kind of negotiating initiative or some way to respond to this.’ He didn’t try to spin it to our advantage. This is an amazing moment of candor by the United States.
Um, sure. That’s why the White House is saying nothing has changed and we still need to put pressure on Iran so that they’ll stop their nuclear program which they’re no longer working on?
And yes, Bush and the White House did try to postpone the release of the NIE…for a year. And in the meantime went out and were talking about Iran like the conclusions of the NIE didn’t exist.
This, after famously showing he knows jack about the new FISA bill in Congress, I’m trying to figure out how one could be unintentionally that misinformed, especially when it’s your job TO be informed.
