Falling For It Over And Over

Brad Sherman is causing Petraeus some consternation. He's first of all making a complete distinction between the White House report slated for later in the week and the loony spin that it is the "Petraeus report". He's gotten both Petraeus and Crocker to admit that the report we will see later is the White House report, and he got them to demur over whether or not to give an unvarnished, written assessment of their own. He also tried to put the General in the midst of a Constitutional crisis, inferring that the President would order the military to carry on in Iraq no matter what the Congress limited or barred as part of the appropriations process.

But more important, he obliterated the idea that we should take Al Qaeda statements at face value.

Gen. Petraeus: If I could follow up on just one item you said, Congressman. For what it's worth, Al Qaeda believes that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror.

Rep. Sherman: Well, Al Qaeda is telling us they think it's the central front. They might be lying. They've been known to do so, General, and if we allow Ahmadinejad and bin Laden to tell us where to fight them, they may not give us their best advice.

I abhor the notion of blithely conflating Iran and Al Qaeda as if they're part of the same committee, but there's an important point here being made. Wingnuts are constantly taking statements from Al Qaeda at face value, as if they have any interest in appearing to be rational actors. Over and over again they have fallen for this, particularly with respect to bin Laden's most recent statement. It's astonishing how many times we hear Republicans saying "Just listen to what Al Qaeda says" without any sense of irony at all.