John Brennan, who isn't beloved by the left has actually been speaking up for the administration quite forcefully against the Republican bedwetter attacks on the way Obama is handling our national security. For conservatives, that's a little too much for them to handle.
mcjoan writes about the always pathetic Kit Bond, who is now calling for Brennan to be fired because they aren't used to being called terrorist enablers.
Republicans are back to their usual election year trick of fear-mongering, attacking--of all people--John Brennan, the former Bush director of the National Counterterrorism Center and current counter-terror chief. Kit Bond has called for him to step down, primary because Brennan has been taken the lead in fighting against Republicans attempts to protray Obama as weak on national security. The White House is on the offense...read on
Chris Wallace then dutifully did his part as a GOP shill to help embrace conservative criticisms of the president by feigning outrage over what Brennan had to say to his pals yesterday on Fox's Happening Now with Jane Skinner:
Wallace: Well, I don’t know if there’s a precedent or not, but it really is more a matter of the kinds of things Brennan has said. He went on one of the Sunday talk shows – not Fox News Sunday – last week, and really went after the Republicans. And then he had an article in USA Today on Tuesday, in which – and I don’t have it in front of me – he basically said, and this is pretty close to a quote, that the politically motivated criticism of opponents served the purposes of Al Qaeda.
That gets awfully, ah – and the Republicans certainly were offended, and I think there’s a question as to whether or not that really crosses a line, the idea – I mean, you can agree or disagree on the way that Abdulmutallab was handled, or the decision to try the co-conspirators, the alleged co-conspirators in 9/11 in downtown New York, but for the top counterterrorism advisor for the president in the White House to be saying that criticism of those policies serves the purposes of Al Qaeda, ah, it kind of crosses a line.
And you know, we’ve seen this crossed before. We saw the Bush administration do it after 9/11. But to somehow equate political criticism, or policy criticism, with lack of patriotism really doesn’t do much to help the debate.
Wallace does admit that Republicans used this tactic immediately after 9/11, but now that the shoe is on the other foot, it's totally unacceptable for him.
George Bush and Darth Cheney attacked our patriotism because they wanted to invade a country that didn't attack us and lied in the process of selling the Iraq war to the American people. Then they made sure that anyone who disagreed with them was labeled either a traitor, anti-American or simply soft on terrorism.
It's kind of funny watching their heads spin in shock like Linda Blair after being played by Brennan, who played by their own rules to do so.
And as usual, Fox News gets involved in an all-out smear campaign against Brennan.
