Zarqawi! He dead!

Chris’ lead-in to his opening interview with General George Casey made clear it would be all Zarqawi, all the time, and interestingly, posited the possibility that his death may have changed the “War On Terror,” although that promise was never realized.

General Casey, speaking from Baghdad, kept his focus pretty much on Iraq. Yes, it had been a good week in Iraq. (And they call “liberals” relativists.)

Actually, the General was fairly modest in his claims for the impact of getting Zarqawi. And I have no wish to downplay the incredibly well-deserved nature of Zarqawi’s demise. I only wish it had happened when the Bush administration had a chance to take him out from the air before the invasion of Iraq.

I’ll eschew going for any suspense here and tell you right off there was no framing of this week’s triumphal event as “Bush Gets Zarqawi, Three Years Late.” In fact, there was not a single mention of that well-known and well-documented story, first reporter by Jim Miklaszewski, and corroborated in 2004 by the WSJ as discussed by Laura Rozen here.

Hey, you didn’t expect there would be any, did you? Come on, these folks may be propogandists, but they aren’t stupid, well, not so stupid that they can’t spot a story damaging to their side.

The most chilling fact about Zarqawi mentioned during the hour, by Wallace - reports that he had already trained up to 300 visiting Jihadis, who have returned to their own countries, there to wait for the cue from their leader as to when to launch home-grown attacks. But let’s not dwell on that, a person could start to get really angry about this administration’s feckless devotion to its own self-named war on terror.

General Casey clearly didn’t wish to dwell on it, and without being wildly upbeat, or talking about a turning point, he clearly wanted to present the message that the confluence of the Prime Minister finally being able to reach agreement on filling the last three and most important positions in his cabinet, and the prospect of an Iraq sans Zarqawi, an Iraq governed by a unity government, which it sounded as though our military is depending on to work exactly as we expect it to, meant a real improvement of the situation on the ground.

Casey assured viewers that having met with the three ministers, he could vouch for them being intelligent, committed, and hard-charging. He also avowed that they were hands-on guys, who would not be confined to the Green Zone. Asked if Zarqawi’s death was a blow to Al Qaeda In Iraq and world-wide, Casey said that Z was a leader, losing a leader hurts any movement. Hmm, can we conclude that the same could be said of Bin Laden?

The General’s general message on Iraq and our role there - we and the Iraqi’s are heading in the right direction. Well, that means they are one-up on us, according to most polls of the American people.

General Casey will be attending the President’s two day “war council,” that’s how Chris referred to it, being held at Camp David, but he was reluctant to share with Chris what might be his advice to his Commander-in Chief.

Next up was a typical Fox News panel, one Democrat, Jane Harmon, and two Republicans, Newt Gingrich, and Dan Senor, Bush administration spokesman, and an advisor to the CPA.

Here’s my headline for the whole hour: Jane Harmon rocked, staking out a position on Iraq that I think Democrats can run on.

Although Newt, who hasn’t changed a jot, (more on that later), was determined to characterize Harmon’s comments as “cut and run,” she was having none of it.

The focus of the trio’s remarks was on that Presidential War Council, and after noting that there were not going to be any Democrats at that particular table, and thanking Fox for having at least one on this morning, and after giving full credit to the importance of having taken Zarqawi out of the equation, Harmon’s position on what should happen next in Iraq, as far as we’re concerned was this: that his death and the even more important selection of the final three ministers should be seen as a reason to seriously plan for re-deployment of American troops, as part of a six month plan to change the focus of our policy from a military to a political solution to Iraq’s problems.

“While we’re part of the politcal solution, we’re part of the military problem,” were her exact words, sounding quite a bit like Jack Murtha.

Harmon made clear that she wasn’t talking about the return home of all troops; her view of re-deployment is like Murtha’s - military assets being held “over the horizon,” if needed, while the American footprint becomes increasingly limited so as to provide a shrinking target for the insurgency.

Harmon also mentioned the importance of getting services to Iraqs and continuing to fund reconstruction. And as a way to communicate to the world that our policies in Iraq are changing, Harmon insisted that a new Secretary of Defense should be the first step.

Newt had gone before Harmon; his view of the War Council, an opportunity for the President to “re-set” his Iraq policies, and then to communicate to the American people our will to victory, or some such crap. Newt still believes in the shinning-on power of words to change any and all realities. Truly, he is as unreality-based as George W. Bush, and that whole lot.

Dan Senor’s take was essentially the same as Newt’s, except that Senor talked about “recalibrating” the Bush policies and communicating them….

What both Newt and Senor were talking about was continuing the same damn policy that got us here, though a policy tricked up in some new language here and there. It’s still mainly about running against Democrats as defeatists ; both Gingrich and Senor insisted that we’re finally at a key psychological moment, or as Newt bloviated, a moment when Iraqis are waiting to see which side seems the most likely to win, because the most committed to victory - as in Vietnam, and they, the Iraqis are thinking back to Vietnam, according to Newt, wondering if Americans will be getting into their helicopters to leave Iraq undefended against its enemies. Wow. These right wingers still don’t get that Vietnam was a civil war, and apparently they don’t want to admit that Iraq is an incipient one.

So how does this translate into military policy? It means a military policy geared to this singular goal - “kill the bad guys.” How did this guy ever con anyone into taking him seriously. For backup, Newt made reference to a book title, which he informed as was the best thing written on counter-insurgencies tactics - see what I mean about him not having changed - when it comes to theorizing, no one is faster on the draw than Newt. Actual fighting, actual on the ground knowledge of a war zone, not so much.

So, as the roundtable was being introduced, Hume, Liasson, Kristol, and J. Williams, we’d been returned to square one - a refusal by Republicans to acknowledge that many of the so-called bad guys are ordinary Iraqis, not terrorists, and that hearts and minds will not be changed by even the most brilliant of counter-insurgency tactics.

I don’t need to tell you that Hume and Kristol thought the Zarqawi week represented an importance for our eventual victory in Iraq that couldn’t be exaggerated. It won’t surprise you that Mara Liasson’s thoughts were instantly forgettable. It might surprise you to learn that Juan Williams held his own in insisting that the American people were sick of the Iraq war, and had little trust in and patience with the administration that had spawned it.

Kristol echoed Gingrich, without the explicit Vietnam references, proving that Bill is smarter than Newt. Both he and Hume emphasized the Democratic culture of defeat, which they saw as a more powerfully noxious culture for American voters than the culture of corruption Democrats hope to win on, according to the panel, that is. Yes, it did seem that the week in Iraq melded with the only other topic discussed on this Fox Sunday, Francine Busby’s defeat by Mr. Bilbray.

Hume and Kristol were singing from the same hymnbook on the War Council; good stuff, important stuff, no need to retool significantly, certainly don’t expect Donald Rumsfeld to be relieved of command, and bold credit goes to the President for calling the council; now maybe we’ll get serious about winning in Iraq.

Winning means definitive defeat of the insurgency, which means renewed commitment to pacify Iraq, piece by piece, and then to hold it. Apparently the plans start with Baghdad; Kristol allowed that it was outrageous that three years later Baghdad has not been secured. No kidding, Bill, and why do you think that happened, and who should be held responsible?

Maybe what Democrats should take from a program like this Sunday’s is that it is pointless to calibrate with such caution and care their remarks on “what next” in Iraq, when even as “centrist,” and as well-known as a security/intelligence maven as Jane Harmon is can’t get a break from the neo-cons who will be running Republican foreign policy as long as Bush is in the White House, so let it rip, damnit, culture of defeat be damned.

What nerve! Three years of defeat in Iraq, no closer to any kind of genuine reconstruction of the country, despite the expenditure of billions of American wealth, no closer to delivering services, a ruined reputation for our country around the world, the strengthening Al Qaeda around the world, and these idiots are still yammering about victory.

Juan Williams spoke for the majority of Americans this morning when he said, with the appropriate regret and fatigue, that we’d been down this road before, more than once, more than twice, gee, have you lost the count, too? It will take more than another gimmick like this week’s War Council to make believers of the rest of us.

One added note, mainly because it was so bizarre.

At the end of the interview with General Casey, Chris Wallace made a special point of explaining the backdrop against which Casey was standing - one of Saddam’s palaces, it turns out, one, which Wallace made a special point of reminding his audience had been paid for by money in the care of the UN, meant to buy food for Iraqis, but which went to building palaces for Saddam.

Let me know if anyone can figure out what that was all about? Isn’t it old news at best. Why now? Not to mention that the UN food distribution kept Iraqis alive for years. What? Is Fox worried that Bush might actually try and internationalize our efforts in Iraq? After six years, they still know the immense limitations of the man they engineered into the White House?