BELYING BARONE

Michael Barone, a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report, writes glowingly of the op-ed by O'Hanlon and Pollack without seeming to understand that this is merely military progress and there has been precious little political progress. Barone urges us to read Hewitt's interview of John Burns and apparently he completely missed this part:

JB: In other words, the Bush administration’s hope that the military surge would be accompanied by what they called a political surge, a movement towards some sort of national reconciliation, uniting around a kind of national compact, that has simply not occurred.

Normally, it is pretty embarassing to be contradicted by a source you refer to but I don't think Barone cares. He has a history of lying to promote his wingnut ideology. Later in the same column, Barone falsely claims that Democrats believe "military success for the nation" is a big problem for them. He references a WaPo interview of House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) but fails to provide the crucial context: the majority of Democrats want a timeline for withdrawal. The problem enough "military success" causes is the probable refusal of the Blue Dog Democrats to go along with a bill mandating a timeline:

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. Without their support, he said, Democratic leaders would find it virtually impossible to pass legislation setting a timetable for withdrawal.