April 26, 2004 PERMALINK
The Sunday Talkshow Breakdown
A weekly feature of LiberalOasis
(posted April 26 2:30 AM ET)
The White House ceded the Sunday terrain yesterday, sending no reps to the shows.
And the Bushies found once again, similar to two weeks ago, that when Iraq is the issue, they have few surrogates who will squarely back them.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), on CBS' Face The Nation, continued pressuring the Administration to call up more troops.
Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN), on CNN's Late Edition, seconded that, and added that giving Ahmed Chalabi a high-profile role in Iraq was "in retrospect, probably not a good idea."
Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT), on Fox News Sunday, seconded Lugar on Chalabi ("He's not trusted in Iraq, and yet he's part of the government.") and broadly criticized the post-war strategy:
We made some big mistakes...
...We should have kept the government in place and then routed out the bad folks. We should have left the army in place and gotten rid of the bad folks there.
UN Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who Bush is publicly leaning on to shape the new government, on ABC's This Week, criticized US officials who said Iraq will only have "limited sovereignty" after June 30:
I don't know what limited sovereignty is.
(A sidelight: Brahimi implied Chalabi should be off the interim government, if he has plans to run for office later on. Chalabi lambasted Brahimi on FNS, saying with a straight face: "[Brahimi] already is a controversial figure in Iraq. He is not a unifying figure.")
Leading Senate Dems were venting concerns also.
Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), on This Week, while stressing that "I want the President to succeed," demanded that Bush "level" with the public on the future costs.
And he also fretted about possible military offensives in Fallujah and Najaf:
There's a siege in two cities now. I don't want to see us to have to have a siege in 10 cities or 12 cities...
...these poor guys we have in there, who we expect to be able to do everything now, to go in and surgically take him out...and surgically take out the insurgency, it's virtually impossible in my view...
...it's a little bit like saying...what we should do is have a siege of Rome during World War II, take out the Vatican, take out anything we need to do...
While the above were uninterested in criticizing Bush directly, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) -- the only one on the shows who voted against the war -- was the only one to explicitly take him head on, on FTN:
I don't think we're being given a straight story by this administration...in terms of cost, in terms of number of troops, I don't think we've been given a straight story at all.
And I don't think that they have expressed to the public what the true costs are going to be in this war, including the nature of the insurgency itself...
...When the administration says we've got two options, either stay the course or cut and run, that is a false choice.
There's a third choice, which is to correct the course, to change the course that we're on so that we can succeed by involving the international community...
The best Bush had was Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ), also on This Week, who effectively threw up his hands:
We're not competent, sitting here, to know exactly what should be done in this precise situation.
Give the guy the break. He's just a mere United States Senator.
Though he was daring enough to offer this keen insight:
At the end of the day, a military security force has to get security.
And if that takes military action, then at the end of the day, that's the way you're going to have to deal with bad people.
Fortunately, This Week's Fareed Zakaria was there, to say to those who casually talk about going in with guns blazing in Fallujah and Najaf, "This is insane."
QUICK HIT
What March?
The March For Women's Lives was nowhere to be found on the Sunday shows (save for brief news updates on CNN).
We can't be sure if that was direct oversight on the part of the networks, because they couldn't appreciate the significance of one the largest rallies in history.
Or if march organizers decided not to pitch themselves, sensing that they would probably get paired with anti-feminist women, muddying the day's message.
Despite the oversight, here's some on-site reports and photos from Women's eNews, Daily Kos, Feministing and more Women's eNews.
(UPDATE April 26 9 AM ET -- More from Ms. Musings and Livejournal for Choice.)
