Ugh - Safire carrying the torch for the PNAC wet dream

[swag]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/07/opinion/07SAFI.html


Dreary Excerpt:

WASHINGTON — In light of about a dozen American combat deaths yesterday, we should keep in mind our historic bet: that given their freedom from a savage tyrant, the three groups that make up Iraq could, with our help, create a rudimentary democracy that would turn the tide against terror.

. . .

Do the apostles of retreat realize how their defeatism, magnified by Arab media, bolsters the morale of the insurgents and increases the nervousness of the waverers?

Does our coulda-woulda-shoulda crowd consider how it dismays the majority of Iraqis wondering if they can count on our continued presence as they feel their way toward freedom?

These are the times that try men's souls, and — as Tom Paine's enlightened acquaintance, Mary Wollstonecraft, would have added — women's, too. This is the crisis; we'll come though it.

[David Dunham]

1. How more wrong can this guy be?

[NWHarkness]

4. None.

None more worse.

[RobertSeattle]

2. Safire is waaaay past his prime

Of course, that assumes he had a prime.

[swag]

3. I think his prime was his line for Spiro Agnew,

"Ours is the greatest nation in the country."

At least Gore Vidal speculates that that is a Safire line from the speechwriting days.

[yellowcanine]

5. "nattering nabobs of negativism"

was Safire's line for Spiro to use when describing the "librul media"