Oliver North and Sean Hannity Declare “V-I Day,” (Victory In Iraq) “Coming Soon.”
Reported by Ellen - November 16, 2007 -
Convicted liar Oliver North (his conviction was overturned on a technicality) was the only guest on last night’s (11/15/07) Hannity & Colmes for a discussion about the passage of the Democrats’ Iraq Redeployment Bill in the House of Representatives. Predictably, North and Sean Hannity couldn’t throw enough slurs at the Democrats. But it was somewhat surprising, even for a fabulist like North, to hear him and Hannity insist that the surge has been such a huge success that “V-I Day,” i.e. victory in Iraq, will be coming soon. Of course, North could not predict just when that might really happen. With video.
In his introduction to the segment, Hannity once again gave the lie to FOX News’ “We report, you decide mantra.” He described the bill as “a timetable for retreat” and asked “Does Code Pink have (the Democrats) that scared?”
As the sole guest, North was, presumably, there to provide the audience with some perspective on the situation and not just play the role of a partisan advocate. Wrong. Or at least not the kind of perspective one might expect from a “fair and balanced” news network. No sooner had Hannity started the discussion when North said, “This thing ought to be called the surrender now bill or the appeasement bill… What they’re obviously trying to do is appease the far left in their party. That’s number one. Number two, they’re trying to basically, what they will effectively have done is encourage Al Qaeda and every radical Islamic terror group out there.”
Just one day earlier Hannity decried DailyKos’ Markos Moulitsas for saying “Screw them” about the dead Blackwater contractors in Fallujah in 2004 (even though he recanted and repudiated those words) but Hannity had no such concern about North essentially calling the majority Party traitors on the “We like America” network.
Instead, Hannity enthused about how well the war is going. “We already have witnessed incredible success. All the generals on the ground are telling us.”
Actually, not all the generals, Sean. For example, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded coalition forces from June 2003 until July 2004 recently called Iraq “a nightmare with no end in sight.”
“Look, this has been a remarkable success,” North agreed as he crowed about 3500 troops that will be home for Christmas and another 18,000 scheduled to come home over the next several several months. He forgot to mention that those troops are coming home as part of the scheduled end of the surge.
North went on to attack Nancy Pelosi for saying, “We can no longer sustain militarily the deployment in Iraq.” North asserted, “That defies all the reality of what’s happening on the ground… Every single indicator that you would look for, the number of Iraqi security forces on the ground, the numbers of casualties to Iraqi civilians, coalition forces, US military troops, the numbers of IEDs that are going off. Everything is going in the right direction... We’re about to see V-I Day.”
“Victory in Iraq,” Hannity concurred.
Colmes began his turn by pointing out that Congress is doing is what most Americans want them to do, get out of the war.
“Americans don’t want to surrender,” North argued.
Colmes shot back that the only people who call it surrender are “those who hate Democrats.” He continued by quoting Army chief of staff General George Casey who said the Army is “out of balance” and that “the current demand for forces exceeds the sustainable supply. We’re consumed with meeting the demands of the current fight, unable to provide ready forces as rapidly as necessary for other contingencies.”
North claimed that Colmes got the context of Casey’s statement wrong, that Casey was saying the reason the Army is in stretched too thin is because Congress has refused to grant it enough funding. It’s a ridiculous claim because no funding has been cut off yet.
North said, “You had (Casey’s) words right but the context is wrong."
No, it wasn’t. It’s true that yesterday Casey spoke those words in the context of asking for more money for recruitment. But a little more than a month ago, Casey took the unusual step of asking for a public hearing before Congress to warn that repeated deployments have hamstrung the military's ability to deter future aggression. As Bryan Bender of The Boston Globe summed up, “Casey's testimony (on September 26, 2007) sent a clear message: If President Bush or Congress does not significantly reduce US forces in Iraq soon, the Army will need far more resources - and money - to ensure it is prepared to handle future security threats that the general warned are all but inevitable.”
In other words, Pelosi and Colmes were right.
In response to Colmes’ statement that Americans want out of Iraq, North said in a voice hushed with melodrama, “No, the American people want victory, Alan.”
Well, that might depend on what he calls victory. But the recent polls indicate that a majority of Americans want out, even if it means civil order is not restored. A majority also think that Democrats have not done enough to end the war, that the most responsible thing to do would be to withdraw troops now by 2009 (as opposed to keeping troops there until the situation is stable) and that victory in Iraq is not possible now.
