So MoveOn, which accuses a four-star respected General of betraying his country, decided to swing back at America’s Mayor. Eh, they missed. Jim Geraghty sums up:
The MoveOn.org ad against Rudy Giuliani would carry more weight if the Iraq Study Group was some widely-hailed, significant group of leaders in the public’s mind. One week after unveiling their proposals, they had a 46 percent approval rating, and 32 percent of Americans had no opinion on the ISG. Forty-one percent of Americans said the Group “did not have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq.” I can’t imagine that about nine months of obscurity have enhanced the group’s reputation. I wonder how many Americans could name a member, or even two of their recommendations.
MoveOn describes the chance to serve on the Iraq Study Group as “the chance to actually do something about the war”, which I think is an unsupportable assertion. The ISG report came and went; today, nine months later, you don’t hear many lawmakers calling for Bush to immediately enact its hodge-podge of recommendations. The Iraq Study Group ended up being a widely-hyped, but ultimately generic and predictable stew of old recommendations. In the list of Rudy sins, this doesn’t even make the top ten.
Perhaps MoveOn should’ve actually looked into the recommendations of the ISG before opening its big, accusatory mouth. See, one of them was…the surge, as Geraghty notes in an update:
Further, adding more American troops could conceivably worsen those aspects of the security problem that are fed by the view that the U.S. presence is intended to be a long-term “occupation.” We could, however, support a short term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad, or to speed up the training and equipping mission, if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective.
So, summing it up, MoveOn is criticizing Giuliani for not taking part in a commission that most people don’t even remember anything about, and that recommended a troops surge that MoveOn is against. Not smart, these MoveOn folks, are they?
Allah has the video.


by Stephan Tawney on September 17, 2007