Hewitt Blog

James Lileks, Powerline, Ed Morrisey, my pals at Fraters, Shot In The Dark, and SCSU Scholars --all will have important news and observations to supplement the reporting at The Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune.

The Red Cross phone number for families affected by the tragedy is 612-871-7676. 

Mitt Romney is urging a "surge of support" for the troops and featuring a number of great organizations which serve the military at his website.

It is a great idea, and I hope the other campaigns join in. 

Stephan Hayes' new Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President is a tremendous read. Hayes will be my guest today but even a long interview won't do the book justice, so order it and read it for yourself.

I have been rereading a couple of chapters this afternoon which detail the response to the attacks of 9/11. Perhaps because of this morning's meeting I am more aware of how consuming the defense of the country has become for the president and the vice president, but Hayes brings home the relentlessness with which the threats to the country have been pursued.

The next president has got to chose a vice president as skilled as Cheney and a team as experienced as that which was around President Bush after 9/11 if only because the scale of the responsibility is so great and the need for clear thinking so profound. The people diseased with BDS will never get this, but the country is extraordinarily blessed to have had President Bush and Vice President Cheney and their senior aides during these first few years of a very long war. Reading Hayes' book drives that point home again and again. 

Earlier this morning, I blew a story about The New Republic’s scheduled vacation. You can see the post below. Some people have asked, Why is the post still up there?

Fair question. If I could make the post disappear, I would or at least I would be tempted to. Since I learned of my error before anyone else did, doing so might have been a viable option. Instead, I’ve chosen to leave the post up there so that I might eat my well-deserved plate of crow rather than try to make the entire matter disappear down the memory hole. This is one plate of crow that I definitely have coming.

For what it’s worth, I don’t retract the other parts of the post, especially the passage that said:

LET’S REVIEW, SHALL WE? It’s been over two weeks since the Beauchamp Diarists hit the Internets and the storm they kicked up began. It’s been over two weeks since TNR’s editor-in-chief Franklin Foer began what he promised would be a dogged investigation to corroborate the details of those Diarists, something a responsible editor would have done before running the piece. It’s been almost two weeks since Franklin Foer said he unearthed “much to corroborate” the details of the piece and yet has declined to share those details with a curious public...

From the start of this thing, I’ve said that the editorial decision to run the Thomas Diarists was unconscionable. Even if they turn out to be true and TNR had done the proper due diligence in qualifying them before publishing them, printing them without putting them in context of the 160,000 men and women who are honorably serving in Iraq unconscionably slandered our soldiers. This was a horrendous and morally appalling editorial decision, the kind for which offers of resignation should have been tendered.

Franklin Foer’s stonewalling since the publication of the Diarists has exacerbated his slanderous editorial decision. It has now been over two weeks, and The New Republic has not clarified whether it has blown the whistle on profound wrong-doing at FOB Falcon, or instead slandered every soldier, NCO and officer serving there. Indeed, if the Diarist is untrue and Franklin Foer’s sole contribution to the argument regarding its veracity for over the past two weeks has been to insist on its accuracy, those actions would cry out for his termination if he lacks the honor to resign.

There’s a reason why I really regret my post earlier today beyond my ordinary commitment to getting things right here. Certain disingenuous members of the left have been eager to paint this matter as a conflict of The New Republic vs. Right Wing bloggers, The Weekly Standard and National Review. By making the mistakes I did this morning, I made their self-appointed task a shade easier.

But this has never been a match between The New Republic and its right wing antagonists. The true battle is The New Republic vs. fair editorial standards and the truth. All that we on the right who have written about this story have done is frame that conflict and bring it into stark relief. As I’ve said many times before, The New Republic faces a moral obligation to explain why it chose Scott Beauchamp, out of 160,000 service-members in Iraq, to be its man in Baghdad. And, to salvage whatever is left of its reputation after justifying that dreadful decision, it needs to establish the truth of the Beauchamp Diarists.

Franklin Foer began his investigation two weeks ago. Independent investigations such as the one launched by Matt Sanchez have already discredited much of the Beauchamp Diarists, and yet Foer remains oddly silent except for occasional interviews where he insists he has corroborating details that support the Diarists - corroborating details that he hasn’t seen fit to share with the general public. Franklin Foer’s only hope for riding this thing out is to become a hero on the left for standing up to the big bad Right Wing noise machine.

Once again, I profoundly regret the error in my earlier post and apologize to the readers of this site and to The New Republic.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

 

President Bush invited ten talk hosts into the Oval Office for an hour of conversation today --Glenn Beck, Bill Bennett, Neal Boortz, Scott Hennon, Laura Ingraham, Lars Larson, Mark Levin, Michael Medved, Janet Parshall and me. This was an off-the-record conversation, and so I won't be quoting the president.

I will say on today's show that I am confident about the course of the war and about the momentum in Iraq, as well of the president's absolute commitment to doing right by the troops and his concern for every lost and wounded soldier and their families. President Bush's command of the details and his broad view of the conflict is reassuring, and among my comments to him was the wish that he found more opportunities to engage in long interviews that would allow the American public to see that grasp and that commitment. 

Okay, this is positively bizarre.

In its latest issue (published yesterday I believe), The New Republic announced that it's taking an unscheduled week off (Note: Please see correction below) and will push back the publication of its next issue by seven days. After taking several gratuitous (although not unwarranted) whacks at the Iraqi Parliament’s extended holiday, TNR’s editors finally get to the nub of the matter:

Of course, our decrying of America's aversion to vacation will only do so much to solve this growing crisis. Which is why we're happy to say that, with the publication of this issue, The New Republic will try to do its part by joining those Iraqi M.P.s and taking some time off in August. It won't be the month our Baghdad brothers will enjoy, only seven days, but that means the next issue of tnr won't be published for another three weeks instead of the customary two. What you, dear reader, will do without tnr for that one week is hard to fathom, but we'd be remiss if we didn't offer one suggestion: Maybe you should take a vacation, too.

LET’S REVIEW, SHALL WE? It’s been over two weeks since the Beauchamp Diarists hit the Internets and the storm they kicked up began. It’s been over two weeks since TNR’s editor-in-chief Franklin Foer began what he promised would be a dogged investigation to corroborate the details of those Diarists, something a responsible editor would have done before running the piece. It’s been almost two weeks since Franklin Foer said he unearthed “much to corroborate” the details of the piece and yet has declined to share those details with a curious public.

Like I said, above, this is quite strange. Periodicals don’t just go on unscheduled holidays because the staff is collectively jonesing to visit Wally-World. If you look at the inside of any magazine you subscribe to, you’ll see the publication schedule clearly delineated right below the Table of Contents. To wit, every issue of The Weekly Standard includes the following:

“The Weekly Standard is published weekly except the first week in January, third week in April, second week in July and fourth week in August.”

Although I don’t have any issues of The New Republic lying around the house to check for similar boilerplate, I bet its there. So, what gives? Has the entire staff of TNR decided to go to FOB Falcon to investigate the Beauchamp Diarists? Or, as is more likely, is the magazine in full crisis mode? (Again, Please see Correction below.)

LEST I BE ACCUSED OF taking delight in The New Republic’s problems, allow me to point out a couple of things. From the start of this thing, I’ve said that the editorial decision to run the Thomas Diarists was unconscionable. Even if they turn out to be true and TNR had done the proper due diligence in qualifying them before publishing them, printing them without putting them in context of the 160,000 men and women who are honorably serving in Iraq unconscionably slandered our soldiers. This was a horrendous and morally appalling editorial decision, the kind for which offers of resignation should have been tendered.

Franklin Foer’s stonewalling since the publication of the Diarists has exacerbated his slanderous editorial decision. It has now been over two weeks, and The New Republic has not clarified whether it has blown the whistle on profound wrong-doing at FOB Falcon, or instead slandered every soldier, NCO and officer serving there. Indeed, if the Diarist is untrue and Franklin Foer’s sole contribution to the argument regarding its veracity for over the past two weeks has been to insist on its accuracy, those actions would cry out for his termination if he lacks the honor to resign.

Under the best case scenario for The New Republic, it published a story whose details were accurate but which painted a grossly distorted views of our troops. It appears increasingly unlikely, however, that this “best case scenario” will pan out for the justly beleaguered publication.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: Alert reader JB emails TNR's media kit. This week was a scheduled vacation. I apologize for the error. In case the TNR staff feels like making it a working vacation, I hear FOB Falcon is lovely this time of year. I'm sure there are some soldiers there who would enjoy their company.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

 

Speaker Pelosi is reaching out to lefty journalists, and Harold Meyerson reports her comments on Iraq:

Pelosi (understandably, given the administration's mountain of misrepresentation on all war-related matters) is wary. "The plural of anecdote is not data," she said. "I'm very concerned they'll pass off anecdotal successes as progress in Iraq."

What an inane statement. Incredibly, Pelosi seems to fear good news from Iraq more than she does reports of defeat.


"Nothing less than the planet is at stake," she tells the friendly audience, but she isn't talking about the war she is committed to losing, but the energy bill. Through the looking glass with Nancy, and we have 17 more months of this ahead.

 

The man who would be president promises a new front in the war on terror:

Let me make this clear," Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

And the "high-value" targets in Iraq?

 

I wonder if the die-hard opponents of the YouTube debate aren’t operating based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the debate format. This is evidenced by Reid Wilson’s RealClearPolitics column urging candidates not to participate:

Some of the questions Democrats were asked were not anything a consultant could expect, and that leads to danger. If you want your candidate to stay on message, why would you allow them to face questions the likes of which you are unable to predict? (emphasis added)

This is along the lines of the critics who suggest the candidates could get “ambushed” by Swift Boat-like attacks at the debate.

No they couldn’t.

That’s because this is the first debate in history where every single question will be posted online in advance of the debate, for candidates and their campaigns to review and prepare for. That makes this possibly the most candidate-friendly format… well, ever.

Candidates wouldn’t sit down and personally review every submission, but the campaigns could isolate the 50-100 most potentially damaging questions and prepare responses. That enables candidates to put to rest some of the most serious reservations about their campaigns with answers well-thought-out in advance. In fact, I find this lack of surprise to be a flaw in the format — one that’s fundamentally inconsistent with the narrative that this is somehow the Wild West of debates.

There are two instances in which I believe Hillary Clinton was the clear beneficiary of this preparation, the first on the “How could you be taken seriously by Arab leaders?” question and the second on the “Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton” question. On the second, she absolutely hit it out of the park with a disarming joke about it being a problem that Bush was elected in 2000. In both cases, it was clear that she had been prepped specifically for those questions or ones like them.

It’s now clear that none of the candidates embrace the rather strident rhetoric adopted by some of my friends opposing a debate. Governor Romney, though critical of a single debate question, hasn’t said he is opposed in principle to participating and appears open to appearing in a rescheduled debate. Senator McCain, after some backtracking, is still eagerly participating despite criticizing the “snowman question.”

At the end of the day, the other members of Save the Debate and I are confident that one question from the previous debate won’t prevent a full and fair debate. Now let’s see the candidates step up and accept a rescheduled debate.

 

I just checked in after flying across the country, and think these are a few of the most devastating paragraphs I have ever read, posted by Dean earlier today:

Does Andrew think nobody notices? He attacks General Petraeus as a man of no integrity and bluntly accuses him of a willingness to lie, and then asserts "[t]here's been no 'smearing' of General Petraeus, as far as I can see."

There are only three possible explanations: (1)Sullivan does not understand his libel of General Petraeus on July 18 to be offensive, which would reveal Sullivan as an individual of no honor at all; (2)Sullivan forgot he smeared Petraeus; or (3)Sullivan doesn't care what people think of him, provided they think of him. (I fell for it before, but no more.)

For a concise summary of the smears directed at Petraeus, including a citation to Sullivan's, see this.

Even the anti-war fringe must be disgusted with Sullivan, who is with them until he realizes that he's gone a slanderous bridge too far.