Damned hippie Rumsfeld, making us lose this war...

Watch this and see if you can stomach Bill Kristol claiming that the reason Iraq is FUBAR is that Shock and Awe wasn't shocking and awesome enough:

BILL KRISTOL: There would not be civil war if Zarqawi had not spent the last 2 1/2 years – had ex-Saddamists with him, very skillfully going on the offensive slaughtering Shia in Karbala, now blowing up the mosque.

CHRIS WALLACE: They’re there. There are going to be more mosques to blow up. What do you do about the terrorists?

KRISTOL: Kill them. Defeat them.

CHRIS WALLACE: We’ve been trying.

KRISTOL: We’ve been trying, and our soldiers are doing terrifically, but we have not had a serious three-year effort to fight a war in Iraq as opposed to laying the preconditions for getting out.

CICI CONNELLY: I think that really begs the question then: what have we been doing over there for three-plus years? You say there hasn’t been a serious effort to rid that region of the terrorists. I just wonder what secretary Rumsfeld would say in response to that or all the U.S. soldiers who have been over there all this time.

KRISTOL: Secretary Rumsfeld’s plan was to draw down to 30,000 troops at the end of major activities.

This is the "throwing under the bus" moment for the conservative movement, which seeks to remain untarnished by the incompetence and arrogance of the war in Iraq. Watch this metastasize into blaming the all-powerful antiwar movement for shifting public opinion and undermining the effort (you know, the movement that gets coverage on CSPAN-3). It's Vietnam all over again; the generals weren't allowed to fight the war (even though the public statement is that the generals are given everything they need, and only they will determine troop levels, not politicians in Washington). The conservative movement, like a shark, must continue to move forward or it dies. Problems and failures are simply shrugged off, "Bush weas never on the team anyway."

I don't think it will work. There's too much public record of support from places like the Weekly Standard for them to completely disavow it. They should not be able to throw this down the memory hole along with everything else.