Pumpkinhead's main attractions this week were billed as annointed Presidential contenders: George Allen (R-VA) and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-MBNA). Then we had two very familiar talking heads from the runup to the war shilling their book: Michael R. Gordon (Times man) author, and Bernard Trainor (professional retired Marine Lieutenant General). The topics were Iraq, Iran, and, not so much, the Ports controversy.

Interestingly, Biden supports an embargo on Iran. Gosh, could the Iranian nukes be another ginned up crisis? Because if there were a crisis, Biden wouldn't be supporting an embargo, since that takes time to work.

[As usual, I've bolded the BCW talking points.]

Biden, Allen
Just looking at the two of them, they're peas in a pod; both Beltway apparatchiks. Allen is a real Chatty Cathy--the talking points just roll off his tongue, a paragraph at a time, sometimes so fast he can't stop himself. And Biden--though this may be due to my extremely old, extremely snowy, one-channel TV--doesn't look nearly his age. Both of them got off some good lines, especially Biden, but are either one of them Presidential timber? From the visuals, from the body language, from the tone of voice, from the tropes, I'd say No, regardless of Tweetie's blessing. Neither has the gravitas the times demand. They just don't look serious enough.

RUSSERT How's it going in Iraq?

ALLEN "Tough." That Reichstag fire where the Sunnis burnt that mosque was a setback. They're made "lots of progress politically." But it's hard to form a government because of the 2/3 vote required.

RUSSERT General Pace says Iraq is going "very very well." Are you as optimistic?

ALLEN Things moving forward.

RUSSERT Were you wrong to vote for the war?

BIDEN Never imagined they'd be this incompetent. Stunned me. Pace is wrong, we're at a point where in the next 6-8 weeks we have to decide whether to go to plan B, to "contain rather than build."

RUSSERT Should we get out?

BIDEN No! [Vehement] The administration is already drawing down to 100K. That's not much different from the Murtha plan. [Senator, why are you not throwing Bush an anvil?] We have vital interests there, and a regular war would be worse than a civil war. The President should get on a plane and convince these folks to get together.

RUSSERT Knowing what you know now, no WMD, would you still vote yes?

BIDEN No. Knowing how the President used the powers he gave him. The Resolution was to give the President the ability to pressure. [That was the figleaf. In reality, with the troops prepositioning by March, it was quite clear Bush was going to war to anyone with the eyes to see.] I didn't think they'd be as incompetent as they were.

RUSSERT 62% say the war is going badly and 57% say the war wasn't worth it. Can we continue the war without the support of American poeple?

ALLEN The war is vitally importnat. It's important to get information out about the positive aspects. It's important for the elected representatives to form a government, but that's hard. In this country, if we had to get a 2/3 vote, we'd still be fussing over 2000 election. [Nice!]

RUSSERT If the Iraqis can't form a goverment, what do we do?

ALLEN We have to. Regardless of how it's done, we do need to get it done.

BIDEN We're worse offl; we traded a stable dictatorship for chaos, you even have generals on the ground [saying this].

RUSSERT When do we know?

BIDEN If they haven't formed a government by this summer, it's game over.

RUSSERT Do you argree?

ALLEN We have to look at the situation. The longer we wait, the longer the terrorists can create uncertainy. I don't want a deadline. There Needs to be some credibility in the security forces.

BIDEN This is a test of the President's leadership. [Now comes the anvil.] We need to bring international pressure. This is not terrorism, it's a gigantic civil war!

RUSSERT [Plays a clip of Cheney's line: "impose meaningful consequences."]

RUSSERT Must the President go to Congress for authority to strike Iran?

ALLEN He should and would [NOTE: Not "must"] Back to Iraq, let's not get everyone so depressed that it's definitely going to fail. [That is the lamest talking point I've ever heard.]

Fortunately, we have the French [!!], Germany, the UK, the Russians. Russia is the most important, because of the technology offer it's made to Iran. Will be a step by step approach. We're dealing with a theocracy that is deadly serious. They want to take Israel off the map. They're dangerous to Israel, dangerous to our friends, dangerous to us.

RUSSERT What would you do?

ALLEN Sanctions. Embargoes need other countires. Internally, you hope for a change from within but that's a long shot [after Iraq, certainly]. Ultimately, you never want to take military action off the table, but you never want to go that far.

RUSSERT Do you agree with Cheney?

ALLEN Yes. We can't allow a nuclear Iran.

RUSSERT Senator Biden, must the President go to Congress for authority to strike Iran?

BIDEN He must. The amdinistration has gotten it right, finally, on Iran. [Why give them anything?] They joined with the international community. Why hasn't the administration done a cold calculation on the oil embargo? Iran cannot sustain an embargo, they import everything manufactured. If they were going to get the bomb in six months not 10 years the embargo wouldn't work--but we're not allowed to talk about that. But there is time here. [Good heavens! Can Biden be saying that Iran is a manufactured issue for 2006?] It is critically important keep pressure on, go to sanctions. Obviously no president can take force off the table.

Iran will not get nukes, all states agree: Europe, Russia, China, all agree.

BIDEN Ultimately we can stop them short of war.

ALLEN I agree with Joe on this, it's essential we have the rest of the world with us on this. In addition to Israel threat, they are a state sponsor of terrorism, they could give nukes to Hamas. [Another lame talking point. As if!] This is also a time to realize we need greater energy indepednence.

RUSSERT What about the straw poll, where Bill Frist came in first?

ALLEN It was fun. The main thing was the great hospitality. We all got rejuvenated. It's a pick up game.

RUSSERT Not even an intra squad scrimmage?

ALLEN No.

RUSSERT Would you like to see South Dakota's abortion law apply to the whole US?

ALLEN I think each state should make the decision. I support rape and incest exceptions, "I look at that person as a victim." These laws should be determined by the states.

RUSSERT If a state had unlimited abortion on demand, would you support it?

ALLEN That would be the right of the people of that state, the law does reflect the will of the people. Roe v Wade has been interpreted to preclude rights of the people to make these decisions.

RUSSERT What has the ports controversy done to the President?

BIDEN Stripped away the curtain that there was any competence on homeland security. In 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 we proposed legislation to protect the ports and they spurned it. These guys have priorities that are backwards and are dangerously incompetent, and this is the next place it's going to show.

RUSSERT [Shows the 35% poll. Are you proud to run as a Bush Republican?

ALLEN I run as a commonsense Jeffersonian conservative... [a whole paragraph more like this, it just rolls out. Guy can filibuster with the best of them.]

RUSSERT 96% of the time you support Bush. Are you concerned that you are a rubberstamp?

ALLEN Look at the votes. I'm for tax cuts [for small business]. We need oil exploration on the North Slope. Regardless of President's position, I felt that way when I voted.

RUSSERT If the 2006 election held today, what would happen?

BIDEN The Democrats would take back the House and maybe the Senate.

Gordon, Trainer

These two sound like they're doing The Great Conservative Walkback together. And watching them do it has about as much appeal for me as synchronized swimming does. I mean, Gordon was an in bed embed, and Trainor's been a talking head for years, so they were busily manufacturing the BCW way back when Rummy and Inerrant Boy first shit the bed. And only now do they sense, from the aroma, that things didn't turn out as not planned? Please. Plus, they're shilling a book (Cobra II. Despite the title, it's not a novel. Rats. I was hoping for some classic Republican manimal on manimal action.)

Russert is oddly undisciplined in this interview; he starts with the first of five errors that Trainor and Gordon list in their book, but never to the second point. FWIW, here's error 1:

1. Underestimated opponent and failed to understand the welter of Iraqi tribes

RUSSERT How did we misread the Iraq situation so much?

GORDON We fought the last war. [See also this week's Foreign Affairs.] We thought the enemy was the Republican Guard. [It is! It is!] We failed to see that the Fedayeen were the main enemy. We had the simplistic view that if you take the enemy's capital you win. The center of gravity was not Baghdad but the Sunni triangle.

RUSSERT What about the assumption that we would be greeted as liberators?

GORDON The core assuumption: We didn't want to do the "heavy lifting of nation building." The concept was of a turnkey operation, we'd hand it over to the Iraqis and and international forces.

RUSSERT You write that in April 2003 Franks had planned for 30,000 troops by September 2003.

GORDON Yes, Franks gave that guidance.

RUSSERT Did not bring right tools to the fight. Shinseki said we'd need hundreds of thousands for years. There were other studies too.

TRAINOR It was a philosophical thing with Rummy. He's a businessman, he wants efficiency and lowest price. [I'm really starting to think that the best definition of fascism, or at least authoritarianism, in the American context, is "running a government as a business." Fortunately or not, that's not possible. Hence the bad results, framed as "incompetence."] Great lethality. OTOH, the military is conservative; "if 1 is good 3 is better." So thhe military estimated 385,000 for governing. The administration said, that't nots needed for victory, which is correct, but Rummy had pooh-poohed the idea of a long occupation, and so we went in with less. The smaller number was enough to win the war, but not the peace. [Funny, that was exactly the position Kerry took in the debates; we were right again. Does anyone mention this? N-o-o-o-o-o.]

RUSSERT Should the military have been tougher?

TRAINOR Rummy has a management technique of endless questioning. It wears you down. The miilitary in effect gave up. [Sounds exactly like what Cheney did with the intelligence community.]

RUSSERT What about the attack on Saddam at the start of the war?

GORDON The CIA, in the 48 hour ultimatum right before the war started, said that they had absolute knowledge of where Saddam was. We did airstrikes and 40 cruise missiles. Then Saddam comes on TV! Now, we know now Saddam was not there, and hadn't been there in years. Later we discover that not only was Saddam not there, there wasn't even any bunker.

RUSSERT We were wrong about WMD, wrong about the insurgency, wrong about the bunker.

TRAINOR The whole buildup to war was flawed by intelligence. [To this very day, these guys carry water for the administration. No mention of cherry picking, no mention of the Downing Street Memo. And, oddly or not, no mention of Judy Miller's "flawed" reporting on WMDs. Appalling. I hope CraigsList guts these guys.] Our intelligence is stretched thin across the world. We're looking at Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan. We had no agents in Iraq, so our intelligence was imperfect. But there was also a mindset. If you are convinced there is a threat, you don't cook the books, but you look for evidence that supports the preconception. [So very, very plausible. And what part of "fixing the intelligence and the facts around the policy" does not translate to "cooking the books"?] Our assumptions were almost consistently wrong and never adjusted. The people in the field realized that but from Franks upward the administration completely misread events on the ground

RUSSERT Differing military and political perspectives were discouraged. [And, see above, still are."] General Wallace said, "The enemy we are fighting is different from the one we wargamed against." Wallace was almost removed from his command.

RUSSERT [Goes to the tape of Bush on the Lincoln. Jeebus, he looks shifty and weak. ] "Major combat operations have ended." That was nearly 3 years ago. What do we do now?

TRAINOR The war has changed in its complexities. Stages: (1) open battle, (2) the rise of the insurgency, and now (3) the target is Iraq governance, moving (4) into sectarian war. Each time we have seen a different complexion. At this time, America is like policeman on the beat getting involved in a domestic dispute. No policeman wants to do that. Hopefully someone in Iraq will step foward with a unity plan, and we can stay in the background. We should look and accept the fact that this will require an Iraqi solution.

RUSSERT The ambitious plans the President announced to for transforming the military conflicted with the ambitious plans to remake the region. [Translation: Rumnmy's Revolution in Military Affairs didn't help us win the peace in Iraq at all, and now the RMA is in doubt too, having failed in war.]

GORDEN We wanted to take Iraq and make it a friend, and teach the Iranians and the Syrians an object lesson. [Which we have in fact done.] But the resources committed were insufficient for that task. In 2003, alomost all senior military officers thought there was a window of opportunity....

RUSSERT What are your fiernds at the Pentagon telling you?

TRAINOR They're frustrated. Hopefully both Shia and Sunni want a national conciliatary govennment. But whatever happens, we are somewhat helpless. This is an Iraqi problem that requires an Iraqi solution. [Translation: We're fucked.]