Hadley Pulls Bait-And-Switch With Russert On Whether U.S. Had Enough Troops At Start Of Iraq War

[JABBS]

Click here to read the whole story.

<snip>

RUSSERT: (C)ould the president step forward and say, “I acknowledge we were wrong about WMD, we were wrong about troop levels ...

HADLEY: He’s done a lot of that. He’s acknowledged that ...

RUSSERT: How about troop levels?

HADLEY: He’s, he’s acknowledged that, that in terms of troops we need to be building Iraqi forces to provide greater security. ...

***

Russert was clearly referring to the claim Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff at the time, made to Congress, saying the U.S. would need several hundred thousand troops in Iraq. Shinseki's suggestion was refuted by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Undersecretary Paul Wolfowitz, among others. Last month, the top military commander in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, admitted Shinseki was right.

So it's a nice bit of bait-and-switch by Hadley. Bush has admitted to the mistake of not having the right number of troops ... oops, he didn't.

Unfortunately, as is too often the case, Russert failed to notice.

[tabatha]

1. and this was also a lie

"You know, Tim, people forget that, that we had hoped to have 150,000 to 200,000 Iraqi army forces to help in the security proposition, and those forces melted away at the close of the war. ...."

The truth is that Bremer disbanded the troops.
Their lying and blame-shifting is disgusting.

[JABBS]

2. right

that's in the linked story.

people like hadley live in a pre-Internet world, when you could say something completely different a year or two later, and then if anyone caught you in the lie, claim that your words were being misrepresented. or that the other person's memory was bad.

[Supersedeas]

3. When Pundits like Russert are held accountable--then maybe we'll get real answers