“The Truth Shall Prevail: This, Sir, Is Your War”

I couldn’t respond with any more forcefulness or reason than MSNBC-TV news anchor Keith Olbermann did last night to the ludicrous assertion by the Pentagon that Senator Hillary Clinton’s supposedly “premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq.” Huh? Now we can’t even talk about the necessity of withdrawing military forces from George W. Bush’s disastrous war on Iraq, because that it is by some twisted logic giving aid and comfort to “the enemy”? The Bushies really do believe that we live under a dictatorship.

Olbermann hit the Pentagon hard and rightly for its statements during his “Special Comment” on Thursday’s edition of Countdown:



The full text of Olbermann’s “Comment” can be found here. It ends with this justly exasperated instruction to Bush:

Though the words might be erased from a million books and a billion memories, though the world be covered knee-deep in your lies, the truth shall prevail.

This, sir, is your war.

Sen. Clinton has reinforced enemy propaganda? Made it impossible for you to get your ego-driven, blood-steeped win in Iraq?

Then take it into your own hands, Mr. Bush.

Go to Baghdad now and fulfill, finally, your military service obligations.

Go there and fight, your war. Yourself.

Not surprisingly, Senator Clinton--who is currently considered the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008--has addressed the Pentagon’s assertion of her reinforcing enemy propaganda in a letter to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, calling that assertion (made specifically by Eric Edelman, the Defense Department’s undersecretary for policy) “outrageous and dangerous.”

READ MORE: “Exclusive: Hillary’s Stinging Letter to SecDef Gates Obtained,” by Greg Sargeant (TPM Café); “Clinton, Kerry to Require Pentagon to Brief Congress on Redeployment Plans” (Think Progress); “The Pentagon Insults Hillary Clinton: Big Mistake,” by Fred Kaplan (Salon).