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Pundit Pap Quick Take: The Tell
by JJ Balzer
Nov. 26, 2006 -- We'd intended to give Pundit Pap the weekend off, but we happened to catch what The Daily Show's Jon Stewart would refer to as a "Moment of Zen" on CNN's Late Edition.
But first, let's take a look at the set-up.
Late yesterday, The New York Times posted a substantial article to their site, "U.S. Finds Iraq Insurgency Has Funds to Sustain Itself" (registration required). The story by John Burns and Kirk Semple was based on "a classified United States government report... obtained by The New York Times, [that] estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities." The report spells out a litany of evil deeds used to raise the funds and says the report "offers little hope that much can be done."
Late yesterday, both sides of the political blogosphere were weighing in on the report.
Oddly, we didn't see much in the way of outrage among warbloggers or conservative-aligned commentators and/or bloggers over the Times once again putting classified information within their pages.
Likewise, we were struck by the serendipitous timing
of the Times report and pending recommendations by the much-hyped Iraq study Group.
But we were not alone -- David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo weighed in late yesterday with this:
What makes the piece murky is no distinction is made between "insurgents," "terrorists," and other militant groups in Iraq. Maybe that's the approach of the secret report that the NYT piece is based on. But it would seem to me that lumping all of the various armed factions in Iraq into one category called "the insurgency" would be to miss many important differences in the goals and strategies--and the means of funding--of the many disparate groups currently operating in Iraq.
...
The overwhelming impression I'm left with from the piece is that more than three and half years after ostensibly seizing control of Iraq, the U.S. government is still largely ignorant of the armed groups arrayed against its efforts there.
You should read the entire entry here.
My reaction after reading Kurtz's piece was that a poker analogy was badly called for: the cards are being dealt in the form of the news story -- and the reactions among politicians, players and the elite beltway media will prove "the tell."
And it came this morning on CNN's Late Edition.
The guests included Sen. John Cornyn, one of the most right-wing members of the Republican caucus. CNN Washington fixture Wolf Blitzer asked Cornyn about the story, and quoted a chunk of the sixth paragraph of the story:
To this, it adds what may be its most surprising conclusion: "In fact, if recent revenue and expense estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq."
That paragraph almost seemed Rove-tailored to convey the old "Terror! Terror! Fear! Fear!" message.
Now, did Cornyn express indignant anger over hush-hush data being leaked to the New York Times? Did he call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to convene a probe into how the Times got their hands on the classified report?
Nuh-uh!
Instead, Cornyn called for the Pentagon to "Go big" and send tens of thousands more Americans into the meat grinder that is the Iraq Civil War.
A viewer could be forgiven if they were to think that maybe, just maybe, the question, the pull quote and Cornyn's response were not choreographed in advance -- well in advance.
Which begs the question: which "Go big" Iraq hawk leaked the story to the Times?
It's a safe bet to rule out Donald "Do it on the cheap" Rumsfeld. He's over -- and the Times story does nothing to vindicate Rummy's crushed reputation.
A more likely source would be someone in Dick Cheney's Axis of Weasels -- after all, "Dicky Ticker" has a lot to gain in both Halliburton warbucks (plus recovered credibility among the rubes) by throwing the dice and hoping that "Go big" looks good for him, his Neocon fellow travelers, and his bottom line.
But my gut tells me this one came from someone on the media-hyped, "centrist" (not!) Iraq Study Group. A close examination of the usual suspects on that panel runs the gamut from moderate DINOs... er, Democrats to out-and-out doctrinaire Neocons.
Only one thing is certain -- someone's trying to tweak the Conventional Beltway Wisdom on the matter of what next in Iraq to push press sentiment -- and therefore public sentiment -- toward dumping more resources into the bottomless pit.
And I'd bet you a leftover "turkee" sandwich John Cornyn knows who it is.
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