David Brooks does with so many pundits do….Make stuff up…Case in point…Meet the Press. Even Timmeh got a piece…
Download | Play Download | Play
MR. WOODWARD: And the problem, though, is, we don’t know. People can say, “Oh, it’s going to be a disaster.”
MR. BROOKS: Uh-huh.
MR. WOODWARD: I mean, you cite numbers which you have pulled out of the air of 10,000 dying. I mean, that’s—that—where does that come from?
MR. BROOKS: It’s based on this unknown. I don’t think there’s any possibility that within five years that we’re going to see a drastic diminution of violence. So we could be losing 125 Americans every month for five years.
MR. WOODWARD: I mean, that’s just…
MR. BROOKS: On the other hand…
MR. WOODWARD: …politically impossible.
MR. BROOKS: But, but—so you think OK, get out.
MR. WOODWARD: No.
MR. BROOKS: On the other hand, if we leave…
MR. WOODWARD: Glide plane.
MR. BROOKS: Well, if we leave, we could see 250,000 Iraqis die. You had the John Burns’ quotation earlier in the program. So are we willing to prevent 10,000 Iraqi deaths a month at the cost of 125 Americans? That’s a tough moral issue, but it’s also a tough national interest issue because we don’t know what the consequences of getting out are. And the frustration of watching the debate in Washington, very few people are willing to, to grapple with those two facts, that there’s—that the surge will not work in the short-term, but getting out will be cataclysmic. And you see politicians on both sides evading one of those two facts. But you’ve got to grapple with them both.
MR. HAYES: And, and one of the things that the president said at this discussion that David was at, and I was at as well, was that he intends to make the case that, “Look, this is going to be a disaster if we get out.” He didn’t say it in exactly those terms, but he’s going to start making, in many cases, the negative case. “Look at what Iraq will look like if we leave. We have a moral obligation to the Iraqis to stay.”
MR. WOODWARD: And the problem, though, is, we don’t know. People can say, “Oh, it’s going to be a disaster.”
MR. BROOKS: Uh-huh.
MR. WOODWARD: I mean, you cite numbers which you have pulled out of the air of 10,000 dying. I mean, that’s—that—where does that come from?
MR. BROOKS: Well, A, it comes from John Burns. Second, it comes from the national intelligence…
MR. WOODWARD: Well, no, he doesn’t say 10,000.
MR. BROOKS: Well, no, no, but it talks about genocide.
MR. WOODWARD: Yeah.
MR. BROOKS: So I just picked that 10,000 out of the air.
MR. WOODWARD: OK, but that—we’ve got…
MR. RUSSERT: But, David Brooks, you, you will hear a lot of people will say, you know, “The administration has made misjudgments before about WMD, about the level of troops needed, about being greeted as liberators. They could be wrong about what would flow from a redeployment of American troops.”
MR. BROOKS: Absolutely they could be wrong. And, and so we’ve—and, and it could be that peace will break out. But I think, if you look at Iraq, you see four or five civil wars going on at once. You see Shia fighting each other. You see the Sunni-Shia thing. It could be that there’s—this is just a process they need to go through, and there’s no way we can stop it in any case. Joe Biden was very honest this week. He said it’s a moral failure if we leave, but we’re going to have to do it. That at least is grappling with the issue.
MR. RUSSERT: Steve, I want to read a quote from your book in a second.
But, Bob Woodward, last week on this program I cited a piece you wrote in The Washington Post about the head of the CIA, General Hayden, ranking threats to Iraq security, and had al-Qaeda last. Senior intelligence officials sent us a statement saying, “He was not rank ordering the causes of violence. He does not list al-Qaeda last.”
MR. WOODWARD: Well, he list—at that moment, he listed it last. And that’s, and that’s all I said. And clearly there’s a debate about whether it’s al-Qaeda, is it sectarian violence, is it criminality, is it all of these things. The point is, in, in that report, it was General Hayden saying late last year that the situation of the government governing seems irreversible. Now, that is a giant word. Irreversible, meaning we can’t change it whether, he said, in the short run or in the long run. via MTP
One Trackback To “Battle of the Beltway–Woodward confronts Brooks for making up S*&t“
Ok. Now I know why I no longer read Brooks or watch the talking heads.
My Bullshit-O-Meter can’t handle it.
“glide plane?”
what?
Yanked that number right out of his ass, did he? As if anyone gives a damn about what he thinks.
Al Franken found a number of instances of Brooks making things up a few years back–in one of his oh-so-reasonable sounding books about the exurbs or some such he made a claim that he went to a Red Lobster, I believe, and could find nothing for less than $20 on the menu, and this Red Lobster was in the Philly area, and Franken had his guys check out all the red lobsters they could and voila, they found plenty of things for under $20. Brooks makes stuff up, and has to be fact checked. True to form, Timmeh failed to follow up on this very important made up number that Woodward busted Brooks on.
pissed off patricia @ 3:
Now,now. He made a “rectal estimate”.
and he’s a New York Times columnist?
OOps, should have checked my own facts. Franken cited this piece which reverses what I say above-Brooks tried to claim that in his favorite red counties he could not find an entree OVER $20 and the reporter for this piece found those at such haunts as the Red Lobster.
Red Faced, I apologize for the above. Now it is your turn Mr. Brooks.
mister mix @ 6:
Yeah. And the bad news is…he didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last nite.
.
PAID POLITICAL HACKS…
ALL FOUR OF THEM.
.
calguy, nothing wrong with making a mistake. I made one once. ;)
I dont think hs really makign facts up. He was more or less giving an estimate and a likely situation if we left. Nothing really dishonest about that, as many Americans will agree. But overall i thik David Brooks does gave a point–it’s a tradeoff.
Liberal AND Proud @ 8:
what does that mean? i don’t get the holiday inn comment.
Odd how the same people who said that “collateral damage”, a euphemism for killing innocent men, woman and children, was an unavoidable consequence of the invasion of Iraq and we should all just get over it, are the same ones who now are so concerned about the collateral damage caused by our leaving.
RasslinGod @ 11:
no he doesn’t make a good point. he makes a baseless assumption. he also ignores what death rate is right NOW among iraqis. in addition, he ignores that this is a repeat of a similar situation in vietnam which people wrongly drew the same conclusions.
mister mix @ 6:
He’s the Alan Colmes of the NY Times op-ed page.
marbotty @ 2:
Yeah. What’s that mean? Was it turrette’s?
Wow, people “making up stuff.” Sounds like some of the excuses I’ve heard lately. “Hay, we don’t like your content, Hillary — maybe we should put your under surveillance.”
What a load. I mean who would actually believe that they could get away with spewing forth misleading information; expect the public not to respond; then shut down a subsequent discussion of that misleading information; then yank down a discussion related to that concern with the misleading information?
Why does the GOP hate America?
The people who cite “morality” as a reason to not pull out of Iraq are fooling themselves. There’s other places in the world where it is as equally immoral to not be involved, such as Darfur today or Rwanda in ‘93, not to mention Sri Lanka or East Timor. And I’ve never heard anyone address the moral issues of withdrawing from Vietnam, where, coupled with the earlier insurgence into Cambodia, led to the Khmer Rouge regime.
To devalue the lives of the Iraqis who’ve already died, while at the same time placing an unknown number of Iraqis, who *might* die if the US withdraws, on a pedestal to showcase their moral righteousness, is to reveal a complete lack of interest in morality.
Charles @ 18:
Charles @ 18:
Nicely put.
Turk Meister @ 13:
BINGO!!!!! I alway tell my repub ‘friends’ A) you’re a repug, don’t tell me you give a damn about brown people in the first place and B) You were hot and heavy over Shock and Awe, lots of innocent Iraqis killed there.
Finalfuckingly!
Isnt it something…
LIARS AND PROPAGANDA NETWORKS ARE ALL DIRECTLY PARTICIPATING IN OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE AND THE COVER-UP OF CRIMES, PAST AND PRESENT.
If our soldiers and national guard were back here in the US,
they would be encircling the white house and the propaganda media companies.
Enter in Veterans….
Injured Iraq War Veterans to Sue VA Head
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....e-lawsuit/
RasslinGod says in post 11 above:
When you give a number of 10,000 that is suggestive of the idea that someone has made an effort to provide a detailed estimate and tried to reason what might happen. Brooks is trying to scare us and has nothing to back himself up, and Woodward to his credit exposed that. Whether you think his scenario is reasonable or not, we have to get to the reality based world where people who are hailed as wise actually back their shit up with something solid. Brooks has a history of making up stuff to bolster his theories, rather than check to see what is really there. When you are talking about the exurbs, there is not a lot at stake (see my posts 4 and 7 above). When you are given a seat to blast your views at the most notable paper in America and on popular news shows, you have got to be more responsible than this.
And you have bought the whole Brooks allure. Brooks always has this veneer of sounding reasonable! He never raises his voice, never writes polemic, always disguises his views in this smooth, reasonable sounding language. He must be one of those good thinking conservatives, right?
Not in my opinion–rather, he is just the sweetest sounding pipe of the mighty right wing Wurlitzer, and the harsh notes always come from ones labeled Ann Coulter or the like.
woodward? the bastion of truth? are you fucking with me?
“Facts” - These neocons state their theories as facts. Morons. We need to call BS every time. They have no proof that there will be increased violence. But yet the press accepts their theory as fact and demands that the Democrats provide the nation with a plan. Yet, where is the Republican’s plan? Where is the Administration’s plan for withdrawal?
The Iraqi people want us to leave - it is there decision to make.
IMPEACHMENT is the first step to effectively ending the WAR.
Vietnam WAR ended when Richard Nixon was put to trial.
Well Mr.David Brooks, I am struggling with the fact that If we stay in Iraq, two million Iraqis will die every month. I just pulled those figures out of my arse, like you pulled your “if we get out” figures from your arse, so mine are just as valid as yours.
Brooks talked about how bad if may be if we leave Iraq because there are currently at least five different sectarian sides killing each other in Iraq now. No one pointed out to Little White House Message Boy Brooks, that all those sectarian groups got jump started by his Chicken Hawk Neo-Con Fantasy Warrior Friends cheerleading us into their Iraqmire.
…
Timmeh’s idea of balance? Brooks, Woodward, Hayes. And Woodward provided the only non-neocon voice. WTF?
Concerned AMERICAN @ 27:
Wrong on all counts. Cutting off Iraq War Funds will end the War. First step, sounds so attractive, but it is meaningless. You Stop a War Machine by refusing to refuel the goddam thing, and not by taking first steps to consider changing the driver of it.
The Vietnam War ended when Congress voted to Cut off funding it. Do your homework before making so many wrong claims.
…
Speaking of big mouths, Chris Matthews has Michael Moore on hardball. Chris the big mouth, not Moore. :)
seamus @ 30:
Both wrong.
Reinstituting the draft will end the war. ;)
can you imagine people that are supposed to be mature, sitting around and arguing about the academic death of thousands?
it is getting rather depressing looking at the mainstream media. we are looking to you to become the new mainstream media. reporting the truth as it happens on video is the easiest way to show unedited content that
nobody can deny.
it is the truth, and it will rid of us of disc jockeys like timmeh and the potato, orally and such. I for one, have never understood why someone with an education in reading would want to watch anyone else’s opinion about facts? Who would care about someone telling you about what you just saw? how absurd. truth is truth, it stands up to daylight. comment does not.
They both sounded like lying a**holes to me.
Liberal AND Proud @ 32:
Wrong again. It would give the likes of Bush millions more poor young people to use as cannon fodder. The Elites will alway find a way to save their own. If Bush had the draft avaliable to him, we would now have millions of Troops in Iraq, and poised to go into Iran and Syria.
….
edit: available.
Damn hand me down fingers failed me again.
….
Charles @ 18:
I don’t know - I’ve heard cons refer to the killing that followed our withdrawal from Vietnam as a reason to stay in Iraq. (If they had their way, I suppose our soldiers would still be dying in Vietnam.) It also comes up in the context of their “stabbed in the back by liberals” meme - as in, “we could have won in Vietnam, and prevented all that later killing, if the liberals hadn’t lost the war for us.” Prepare for more of that if (when) things are not instantly picture-perfect after our withdrawal from Iraq.
please decapitate me so I no longer have to listen to shit like this…please!
and it could be that peace will break out.
Only in the mind of a right wing hack would “peace” be a violent action.
You notice how the talking heads always refer to Bush vs. The Democrats? It’s like they are acknowledging that the republicans don’t exist or at the very least, their opinions are assumed and therefore not worth mentioning. Politically speaking, I think that’s good for Democrats. Even the republicans that have broken ranks are getting no love for it.
Given how things are in Iraq right now, and given that so much of the violence is sectarian in nature, no one should expect a U.S. pullout to induce an immediate peace or the flowering of democracy.
On the other hand, what Brooks and most stay-the-coursers never explain is how a continued occupation is supposed to keep a lid on Iraq. And for how long.
Maybe 10,000 Iraqis will die if we pullout. But how many of those Iraqis will die if we stay? And how many more American soldiers in the process?
SteveinSC @ 29:
Yeah, that was my thought: Bob Woodward, the accomplished progressive.
Isn’t it nice how the liberal media is helping Hayes sell his Cheney-love book by giving him exposure on so many talk shows? Who do you have to orally satisfy to get into that clique?
As to the substance, rather than the personalities: we’ll leave eventually, and all the terrible results of a hasty withdrawl (cue Ysbaddaden) will happen whether we leave sooner or later. We aren’t going to stabilize Iraq - we are the problem. First rule when you find yourself in a hole: stop digging.
Kudos to Timmeh for calling out Brooks (and Hayes?), “So, we should believe you now because you were so correct about the reasons for getting into this war?”
seamus @ 30:
actually you are the one who should do your homework. the impeachment of nixon came FIRST. after he was gone then they were able to process with cutting funding and all else. The first step would be to deal with bush.
The range of debate on these shows runs from ‘corporate stooge’ to ‘fascist nitwit’. Here’s one more example.