Michael Ledeen: Grunts in Iraq are Fakers — And Living the Life of Riley
(posted by Mona)
ABC News recently reported a lot of support for Obama (and some for Hilary) coming from our troops in Iraq. Neocon warmongers undergo neurological synapse disconnects with such news, so they must rhetorically destroy such “wrong” military opinions.
Michael Ledeen is at his most rebarbative, officious best on that score, my emphasis:
We’re at the 5th anniversary of the Iraq war, and still it is very hard for most people to get anything approaching an accurate picture of life in Iraq. It’s understandable enough; that picture would be a mosaic, you’d have to get a lot of little shards and pieces to fit together somehow, always running the risk that you’d mistaken a piece for the whole. If you talk to returning vets, they will invariably tell you that they can’t talk about Iraq as a whole, only about what they saw and what they did. If you hear a soldier much below the rank of lt. col. talking as if he had a big picture, just ignore it. He’s faking.
This is the same Michael Ledeen who accuses our soldiers in Iraq — with tens of thousands now dead or maimed — of behaving as if they are merely on vacation, my emphasis:
We’ve got lots of soldiers sitting on megabases all over Iraq. They should be out and about, some of them embedded, others just moving around, tracking the terrorists, hunting them down. I don’t know how many guys and gals are sitting in air-conditioned quarters and drinking designer coffee, but it’s a substantial number. Enough of that.
Words sometimes fail even me.
April 12th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
“ I don’t know how many guys and gals are sitting in air-conditioned quarters and drinking designer coffee, but it’s a substantial number”
Wow, I was acting like a US solidier in Iraq today, and I did not even know it!
April 13th, 2008 at 12:30 am
The hypocrisy is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
Those people are ordinarily the ones most likely to demagogue you to death for not “supporting the troops.” Look at their sanctimonious treatment of Kerry for allegedly showing disrespect in the Winter Soldier hearings, or all the howls of feigned outrage when someone suggests that military atrocities are widespread in Iraq.
But this only lasts as long as the soldiers remain good little martyrs who keep their mouths shut and play the part scripted for them in the Republican morality play. If they ever open their mouths and express an opinion to the contrary, hell hath no fury like their betrayed erstwhile “sponsors.” Witness Coulter’s remarks about Max Baucus, and Limbaugh on the “fake soldiers.” The troops are only “worthy victims” so long as they act as silent props for Republican talk radio’s patriotic pornography.
Same goes for those saintly 9-11 widows–saintly, that is, until they got on Ann Coulter’s bad side. Coulter talked about the widows in terms at least as harsh as those Ted Rall used against Lisa Beemer–but that was *different*.
April 13th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
jackson sez:Wow, I was acting like a US solidier in Iraq today, and I did not even know it!
My basic training remains incomplete. It is cold where I am, and so I’m still turning the heat on occasionally — no A/C for moi, yet. And designer coffee? I don’t think Eight O’Clock Breakfast Blend qualifies.
But I’ll betcha Ledeen, and so many of his fellow NR staff ,have been though the A/C and finer-coffee hell, and could be shipped over there to enormous benefit if it only were to occur to them! And if doesn’t, and to quote Ledeen: “Enough of that.”
April 13th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
It’s 82 degrees in the san francisco bay area today.