Spreadin' the Surge

If I were working for John McCain's BS Express and spreading it on thick about the blessings of the Surge™ I might say something like "McCain's political fortunes have improved with the apparent success of the troop surge...but the surge and success were a long time in coming." Sure I'd know that it was a complete lie, something any reporter could could debunk in a flash by doing a little, tiny bit of reading in say maybe The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Dahr Jamail's dispatches, or Juan Cole's analysis. Amazingly, Senator McCain has a full-time volunteer spokesperson at NPR who says exactly such rubbish; his name is Scott Horsley.

Horsley wasn't satisfied with just selling the Surge Success Story, he also jumped on the McCain band wagon of revisionist make-believe about the Vietnam War being lost because "civilian leaders had mismanaged the war." Horsley tells us that "McCain spent nine months...studying how America had entered and lost the Vietnam War. He didn't conclude the war was wrong, but...he did resent how badly civilian leaders had mismanaged the war and how ineffectually senior military commanders had resisted." Just in case you reasonably think that McCain's deluded thinking may be a danger to others and better suited for the Straight-jacket Express, Horsely reminds us at the end of the piece that "McCain himself is a student of history." Yeah, and Scott Horsely is a great reporter, too!