So the other day, Tim Russert was discussing the surge on TV with a correspondent. Russert mentioned that William Kristol of the Weekly Standard had cautioned that anything less than a 40,000 troop surge would be a disaster.

Here’s what I’m wondering: Who the hell cares what William Kristol thinks? Has he had any sort of military training? What are his qualifications in war and/or foreign policy that make his opinion worth a damn? And hasn’t he thus far been wrong about Iraq every step of the way?

I also found a quote from Mitch McConnell yesterday interesting. Responding to the growing chorus of skeptics with respect to the surge, many of them Republicans, McConnell replied:

“It strikes me, in listening to the critics emerging already, that the president can’t win either way. Before he changed directions, he was being criticized. And now that he’s changing directions, he’s being criticized.”

No. The surge is no “change in direction.” It’s a switch from blindly tottering along in one direction to keeping your eyes and breaking into a brisk jog — but still in the same direction.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 9:46 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.