The Sunday Jack Kelly Column

Now this one should be fun.

Take a look at Jack Kelly's column this morning. The article was also published (as they all are) at the Toledo Blade, the P-G's sister paper. While it appeared this morning in Pittsburgh and yesterday in the Toledo Blade, can someone tell me why it was publised three days ago at Real Clear Politics? I would think that the newspaper company paying his salary would get first crack at the columns he writes. I could be wrong, though.

Anyway, onto the column. Jack's doing his usual song and dance around the facts. His opening:

Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kan., walked out of a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee because she couldn't stand to listen to what retired Gen. Jack Keane, former vice chief of staff of the Army, was saying.

"There is only so much you can take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while ... after so much frustration of having to listen to what we listened to," Ms. Boyda explained to reporters later.

Take a look at those three dots. It's call an elipsis - and it's supposed to signal that some material has been removed. And take a look at the last three words. Jack Kelly is saying she said those words "to reporters later." Did she ever go back to the hearing? Sure if she did, Jack Kelly would have said so - it's only fair and accurate, right?

Take a look at what Conservative columnist Michael Barone had to say about this very incident over at US News and World Report:

Their argument is one many Democrats in Congress don't want to hear. Literally. This is the transcript of the response of freshman Rep. Nancy Boyda of Kansas at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last Friday to the optimistic testimony of Gen. Jack Keane, one of the original advocates of the surge:

And I just will make some statements more for the record based on what I heard from—mainly from General Keane. As many of us—there was only so much that you could take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while. So I think I am back and maybe can articulate some things—after so much of the frustration of having to listen to what we listened to.

But let me first just say that the description of Iraq as in some way or another that it's a place that I might take the family for a vacation—things are going so well—those kinds of comments will in fact show up in the media and further divide this country instead of saying, here's the reality of the problem. And people, we have to come together and deal with the reality of this issue.

Take a look at how Barone sets-up the quotation. Borda said this to the committee (not to "reporters later" as Jack Kelly, ace fact-checker, reported) and she said it after she returned.

If he had any question about it, he could have just taken a swing through youtube.

And Jack Kelly had to know that she said this to the committee as that's where is elipsis is. If he didn't, he should have checked. Either way, it does not bode well either for a columnist at "One of America's Great Newspapers." Does it?

But while General Keane's military bona fides are obvious, he's hardly an objective witness to the surge. Why? He's one of its architects.

When President Bush announces his "way forward" in Iraq Wednesday night, expect to hear some of the thoughts of a former Army paratrooper who ended up with four stars on his shoulder.

"Defeat is unacceptable" in Iraq, says retired Gen. Jack Keane.

That was back in January. If the Surge fails, General Keane fails. Something else Jack Kelly left out.

Then J-Kel moves over to the Op-ed by Pollack and O'Hanlon. I blogged about it here. The two guys from the Brookings Institution ingore the very data coming out of the Brookings Institution.

Then on to Representative Clyburn:

If Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, says things are getting better when he reports to Congress in September, that could be "a real big problem," House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., told The Washington Post Monday.

"Clyburn noted that Petraeus carries significant weight among the 47 members of the Blue Dog caucus in the House, a group of moderate to conservative Democrats," wrote reporters Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza. "Without their support, he said, Democratic leaders would find it virtually impossible to pass legislation setting a timetable for withdrawal."

But take a look at what Clyburn actually said in that interview with Dan Balz of the Washington Post (this from mediamatters.org):

BALZ: What do Democrats do if General Petraeus comes in in September and says, "This is working very, very well at this point; we would be foolish to back away from it"?

CLYBURN: Well, that would be a real big problem for us, no question about that, simply because of those 47 Blue Dogs. I think there would be enough support in that group to want to stay the course, and if the Republicans were to remain united, as they have been, then it would be a problem for us.

So I think we, by and large, would do wise -- be wise to wait on the report. None of us want to see a bad result in Iraq. If we are going to get in position to yield a good result, I think Democrats want to see that. We love this country. We're as patriotic as anybody else about this. And we have loved ones involved in this issue just like everybody else. I've got family and friends involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so I certainly want to see a good result. But I'm certainly not going to just roll over because the president said. It is only because we get good intelligence from those people like General Petraeus who can be trusted to give us good information. [emphasis added]

He said (but Jack Kelly failed to say he said it) that "None of us want to see a bad result in Iraq."

It's getting painfully obvious that Jack Kelly's general outlook is getting more and more untenable. Just see what he has to excise in order to paste a seemingly coherent argument together? If I can take 90 minutes and so easily shred his arguments simply by googling the main points, then how solid can those arguments be?

I mean really.