Editorial Harmonic Convergence
This is off-topic for the blog, but interesting. The editorial page of the Washington Post is a steady, reliable source of opinion from the mainstream liberal perspective. The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is pretty much a mirror image on the conservative side. So what to our wondering eyes should appear this morning but a pair of editorials in these two newspapers on the Democratic candidates' statements regarding the Iraq "surge." Can you guess which is which?
What Ms. Clinton, Mr. Obama, John Edwards and Bill Richardson instead offered was an exclusive focus on the Iraqi political failures -- coupled with a blizzard of assertions about the war that were at best unfounded and in several cases simply false. Mr. Obama led the way, claiming that Sunni tribes in Anbar province joined forces with U.S. troops against al-Qaeda in response to the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections -- a far-fetched assertion for which he offered no evidence.
So what we take away from the four Democratic Presidential candidates' stunning display of misinformation and false statements about the surge Saturday evening is that they have simply stopped thinking about Iraq. They seem to have concluded that opposition to the war permits them to literally not know what the U.S. or the Iraqis are doing there. As the nation commences the selection of an American President, this is a phenomenon worth noting.Check your answers here and here.