Saturday, July 3, 2010

Michael Steele Caught Lying About Afghanistan - Faces Calls to Resign

This is why I love the idea of Progressives taking their video cameras to Right wing events. I'm not sure if this was the case in this situation, but it shows that such a strategy could yield political treasure. Catching these hucksters in their macaca moments, or when they are telling lies should be an important part of Progressive efforts to get off of defense and take back the PR initiative.

Propaganda and lies are a huge part of the GOP strategy. That goes for the Tea Party as well. They have to lie. So it should be the duty of Progressives to catch them when they do.

Steele made a huge gaffe at a recent Republican event.... his biggest gaffe of all, according to Chris Good of the Atlantic. And the calls for Steele to resign have started to pour in. Steele stuck his foot....and leg in his mouth by making the claim that the war in Afghanistan was a war of Obama's choosing. Of course it was a war perpetrated by George W. Bush in 2002 and heavily supported by Republicans ever since. Steele's attempt to make the invasion Obama's idea now that it's becoming unpopular is amazing.

He went on to slam the war effort. Ironically, in his attempt to lie and mislead, Steele ended up accidentally telling a few truths about how daunting a task Afghanistan is and how the effort to nation build may be unrealistic. OOppps!
But once he was caught...he turned around and released a phony statement that basically said he didn't mean it, and he gave assurances that he supports the troops and the war effort. Hilarious.



Qoute From the Atlantic:

Keep in mind, again, our federal candidates, this was a war of Obama's choosing. This is not, this is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in. It was one of those, one of those areas of the total [horde?] of foreign policy...that we would be a background sort of shaping the changes that were necessary in afghanistan as opposed to directly engaging troops. But it was the president who tried to be cute by...flipping the script deomonizing iraq while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well if he's such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that's the one thing you don't do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right? Because everyone who has tried over a thousand years of history has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways that we can engage in Afghanistan without committing more troops...
And so now for our candidates, whether they're running, you know for, Congress or the United States Senate, there is a whole text of resources available to them through our office, through the RNC, through the congressional committees, the senatorial congressional committees, and even some of the think tanks that help frame those arguments so that you know you don't get stopped on, 'Well, George Bush--' you know, fill in the blank. I think that that's going to be very helpful...

He also describes the McChyrstal fiasco as "comical".

Read more from CBS.