Journos distort Newt Gingrich's Iraq comments to fit Vietnam script
BY JAMES TARANTO
Best of the Web Today
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Et Tu, Newte?
From reading the coverage of a speech Newt Gingrich gave in South Dakota earlier this week, you might think the former House speaker had joined cower players John Kerry* and Jack Murtha in calling for a cut-and-run policy.
Here's the Argus Leader of Sioux Falls:
<<< Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House, told students and faculty at the University of South Dakota Monday that the United States should pull out of Iraq and leave a small force there, just as it did post-war in Korea and Germany.
"It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003," Gingrich said during a question-and-answer session at the school. "We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it." >>>
But Gingrich makes clear on his own Web site, Newt.org, that these comments were taken out of context:
<<< Gingrich's position on Iraq has been consistent and clear:
1. The decision by Paul Bremer to go from a liberation model to an occupation model in June 2003 was a major mistake (Gingrich first said this publicly in December 2003).
2. The United States needs to train the Iraqis as rapidly as possible and "pull back" from the cities to bases and air fields and serve as reinforcers as opposed to occupiers (this position is outlined in today's WSJ as the official policy).
3. The United States is likely to need to keep some forces in Iraq for a very long time (Gingrich has been saying this as far back in 2003). >>>
Newt.org also has an extensive excerpt from the transcript of the question-and-answer session. Here's Gingrich:
<<< Remember, most of the people who die everyday now are Iraqis. So this is not about the Iraqis cutting and running. This is about one group of brave Iraqis who want a democracy versus a much smaller group of vicious thugs who hope that they can kill and murder and terrorize to get back to a dictatorship. And that's what's at stake. And yes it's a hard thing to do, but so was the civil war, so was Washington crossing the Delaware, so was winning the cold war. And we may lose this fight, but if we lose it there will be millions of Iraqis who lose it with us. >>>
Not exactly the Kerry-Murtha position, is it? It's just the latest example of journalists following the Vietnam script, "according to which a war is supposed to become a quagmire, which provokes opposition and leads to American withdrawal." Gingrich offers some strategic criticisms, and the Argus Leader makes him out to be some sort of hippie.
* The second man ever to serve as Michael Dukakis's lieutenant governor, who by the way served in Vietnam and, according to anonymous sources, looks French and has a "haughty air."
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