THE SPIN ON BREMER

Belmont Club does its best to rescue the Bush administration from Jerry Bremer’s gaffe – hastily retracted in a subsequent email. (Bremer was hoping for a big job in a Bush second term, after all. I’d say the chances of that just diminished.) Their point is that Bremer was only referring to the troop levels at the very beginning of the conflict – not the levels subsequently. The quote could be interpreted either way, so perhaps we should give Bremer the retroactive benefit of the doubt. Wretchard blames the Turks and the State Department for not allowing the Fourth Infantry Division to invade Iraq from the north. But it’s odd that this talking point has not been made today by the Bush people; amd wasn’t made at the time. Ken Mehlman was on CNN this afternoon, for example, arguing that the reason for the low troop levels was that the military commanders never asked for more. Even over at the Corner, no one has tried to spin the Bremer quote away (although Ledeen takes a swipe at Bremer himself). At the time, Rumsfeld’s response to the looting and chaos in Baghdad was not: “Wait till the 4ID gets there.” It was: “Stuff happens.” So you either blame the Turks, the military, the State Department, or Bremer, or, like Rumsfeld, you claim that nothing was awry and so there’s no reason to blame anyone. The important thing in this war is never, ever hold the president to account for anything. Remember? Somehow, I forgot.