At one of them, Hockenberry explains, a well-known pollster told about a briefing he gave to all the senior officials at the White House about how the polling data from the Arab world showed that America's negatives were simply off-the-charts. Everyone was quiet. Condi asked a few technical questions and then finally Karl Rove spoke up. "Well, that's just until we start throwing our weight around over there," he said.(My emphasis)
I can't even read that without getting furious. "Our weight," Mr. Rove, that you so casually wanted to throw around, consists of American men and women, 3200 of whom have died for reasons that remain unclear. We certainly haven't improved Arab opinion of us, if that's what you were hoping.
Secondly, here's a blog post that contains this amazing revelation:
Mitchell said that “moderate Republican” senators had told her that they didn’t believe the escalation would work but voted for it anyway. “They really are not in favor of the surge. They don’t believe it’s going to work. But they basically said the president has until August, until Labor Day. After that, if it doesn’t work, they’re running.”
If you really do believe the surge will work that's one thing, but voting in favor of it while believing it will fail boils down to gambling with other people's lives, it's as simple as that.
I've said before that I try not to question people's patriotism or morals, but after reading these two quotes, and seeing the callousness with which these people make decisions that effect the lives of our soldiers, how can you not wonder? It seems to me that they've got their priorities so mixed up that politics is more important than human life. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's tough for me to draw any other conclusion from the quotes above.
