Sunday, January 14, 2007

"What we need to be asking is, what happens if we lose?"

So says Pam Hess of United Press International on CNN's Reliable Sources.

What reporters know and what Martha says is that 20,000 really isn't that big -- isn't that big a jump. We're at 132,000 right now. It's going to put us even less that we had going in going across the line.

What we're not asking is actually the central question. We're getting distracted by the shiny political knife fight.

What we need to be asking is, what happens if we lose? And no one will answer that question. If we lose, how are we going to mitigate the consequences of this?

It's so much easier for us to cover this as a political horse race. It's on the cover of "The New York Times" today, what this means for the '08 election. But we're not asking the central national security question, because it seems that if as a reporter you do ask the national security question, all of a sudden you're carrying Bush's water. There are national security questions at stake, and we're ignoring them and the country is getting screwed.

Nowhere in the show did anyone refute this or agree they should be asking this question.

Hot Air has the video.

Jules Crittenden discusses Hess's throwaway remark, plus what would have been happening in Iraq if we hadn't invaded (and there wouldn't have been kite-flying).