Trajan’s Blog

TP Watcher “Dean CT” (aka CT_V1 aka Comptroller Version 1) wrote this exposé of the hypocrisy over at Think Progress last September. This is a classic pre-TPWatch post.

Enjoy.

Today, the typing-fingers [syn: talking-heads] over at Thinkprogress.org had their usual William Kristol-directed bashing-piece, the topic being troop numbers in Iraq.

Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, opined that troop levels in Iraq would remain at 100,000+ when President George W. Bush leaves office. The TP crew was outraged, responding to a Washington Post article reporting a “bitter clash” between General David H. Petraeus, top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Admiral William J. Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command. Like Thinkprogess, Fallon supports a drastic troop cut in Iraq, while Petraeus has his own plans. It’s interesting for the folks at Thinkprogress to take such pride in Admiral Fallon’s judgment, given their previous claim of him being the ”wrong man for the job” at CentCom. From the thread, here’s an advertisement of his judgment:

…….no background in land warfare to oversee these operations.

…….little background in the Middle East or land warfare.

Where’s the basis of his troop-cutting or troop-sustaining judgment? Given Thinkprogress.org’s original worry that Adm. Fallon may be “loyal” to the administration and advocate the “escalation” of forces in Iraq, they took to his lack experience directing ground forces. But now that his opinion has come out in their favor, they’ve allowed that to pass and have instead taken to neglecting Army Gen. Petraeus’s experience. Petraeus is an actual ground commander who has the affiliation and might to have continued the Army-Marine Corps tradition of leadership at CentCom. Since Petraeus has experience in Iraq and is currently assigned there, I wonder:  whose judgment on troop numbers should be of highest consideration?

If it doesn’t fit Thinkprogress.org’s billet of leadership, then it must not be leadership at all.

The crew of ”hard-hitting research and analysis” may find it in their best interests to re-search their archives every once in a while.

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