Gene Lyons on the use of rhetoric over reality

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But when policy-makers start thinking like screenwriters, things can get dangerous. Consider last week’s Senate “debate” over two Democratic proposals for setting a rational timetable for leaving Iraq. On cue, almost every Republican in Washington began chanting, “Cut ’n ’ run.”

Any and all proposals for withdrawing U. S. troops constitute evidence of Democratic cowardice, if not treason. Except those subsequently revealed to the press in a “classified briefing” (whatever that is ) by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U. S. commander in Iraq, of course.

What nobody’s supposed to notice is that if the White House and Republicans were truly serious, one option would be increasing troop levels to deal with metastasizing sectarian violence among Iraqi factions. Military experts such as Gen. George Shinseki, all but forced out of the Pentagon back in 2002 for testifying to Congress that several hundred thousand troops would be necessary to pacify a nation as large as Iraq, warned that the force Bush was sending was inadequate to do the job.

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