Sunday, June 26, 2005

Fareed v. Fwill on Snuffaluffagus

The ever fantabulous Fareeeeeeeed! Zakaria was on the roundtable panel on ABC's This Week with George Snuffleupagus Stephanopoulos facing off against conservative columnist and man of occasional principles George Fwill. Mr. Fwill had to do double back flips to evade the obvious.

I think on Iraq, Secretary Rumsfeld has been Orwellian, not truthful. He has consistently said things were going well when they were not, consistently said we didn't need more troops when we did, then quietly increased the number of troops by 25,000, all the while saying we actually didn't need more troops. I think it's very difficult to make the case that Rumsfeld has been truthful about the war in Iraq. — Fareed Zakaria on This Week, June 26, 2005
However, George Fwill does point out some valuable history, too:
If that fog had not been in the East River after the Battle of Brooklyn in August 1776, our Revolution might have ended two months after the Declaration. If Atlanta had fallen — and this really gets to where the weakness is — if Atlanta had fallen on December 2, 1864, instead of September 2, Lincoln would have lost the 1864 election, President [George B.] McClellan would have sued for peace, the Union would have been dismembered. So these near-run things don't always have to come out the way they did. — George Fwill, June 26, 2005
But then Fwill presses his luck:
In fact, it is the 2008 election in this country that could produce a victory for the insurgency. [George Stephanopoulos: How is that?] By electing a President who says "if elected, I will withdraw." — George Fwill, June 26, 2005
But Fareed, with a nice assist from Martha Raddatz, pulls Fwill back to reality:
I think it will actually happen earlier than that, George. My understanding by people who know more about this than I do, by the end of next year you will get to a point where the Army really is stretched beyond capacity because of the use of reserves. — Fareed Zakaria, June 26, 2005
There's more, but there are naked homosexuals cavorting (behind a privacy fence) in public, so I shall take my leave.

[Spelling of "Snuffleupagus" corrected 2005-07-14, thanks to my brother Bill. Misspelling left unchanged in the title 'cause it's part of the URL. — ed.]