Republican Reasoning

TPM:

A nice summary of the White House's Iraq reasoning from Maureen Dowd:

The president said an intelligence report (which turned out to be two years old) showed that Osama had been trying to send Qaeda terrorists in Iraq to attack America. So clearly, Osama is capable of multitasking: Order the killers in Iraq to go after American soldiers there and American civilians here. There AND here. Get it, W.?

The president is on a continuous loop of sophistry: We have to push on in Iraq because Al Qaeda is there, even though Al Qaeda is there because we pushed into Iraq. Our troops have to keep dying there because our troops have been dying there. We have to stay so the enemy doesn’t know we’re leaving. Osama hasn’t been found because he’s hiding.

The terrorists moved into George Bush’s Iraq, not Saddam Hussein’s. W.’s ranting about Al Qaeda there is like planting fleurs du mal and then complaining your garden is toxic.

TPM:

Today's must-read story comes by way of the Boston Globe's Peter Canellos, who reports on the highly misleading, if not downright false, rhetoric coming from the Republican presidential candidates on Iraq, al Qaeda, and the terrorist threat.

In defending the Iraq war, leading Republican presidential contenders are increasingly echoing words and phrases used by President Bush in the run-up to the war that reinforce the misleading impression that Iraq was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In the May 15 Republican debate in South Carolina, Senator John McCain of Arizona suggested that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would "follow us home" from Iraq -- a comment some viewers may have taken to mean that bin Laden was in Iraq, which he is not.

Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani asserted, in response to a question about Iraq, that "these people want to follow us here and they have followed us here. Fort Dix happened a week ago." However, none of the six people arrested for allegedly plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey were from Iraq.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney identified numerous groups that he said have "come together" to try to bring down the United States, though specialists say few of the groups Romney cited have worked together and only some have threatened the United States.

"They want to bring down the West, particularly us," Romney declared. "And they've come together as Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, with that intent."

It's a very strong piece. Canellos treads ground that may be familiar to those who follow the issue closely, but he details what the leading GOP candidates are saying and contrasts it with the truth. Not surprisingly, Rudy McRomney has been playing fast and loose with the facts, hoping that audiences won't recognize their carelessness. Somewhat surprisingly, Canellos notes that these three have been willing to go even further than the Bush White House, which isn't exactly known for its veracity on the issue.

Judith Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq analyst, told the Globe, "There's a tendency to exaggerate in a debate. You push the envelope as far as you can."

The GOP's top tier, at this point, is pushing that envelope to the breaking point.