http://thinkprogress.org/2007/08/06/ohanlon-six-monthsO’Hanlon And Pollack Call For Another ‘Six Months Or So’ In IraqLast week, in their now infamous New York Times op-ed, Brookings Institution analysts Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack declared “there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.”
On Fox News Sunday yesterday, O’Hanlon and Pollack put a timeframe on their call for stay the course: six months. “It’s basically saying nothing more dramatic than give it six more months or so, maybe nine more months,” said O’Hanlon. “I agree with Mike entirely that we can’t give this much more time,” added Pollack. Watch it:
The media watchdogs at FAIR noted in 2006 that New York Times columnist Tom Friedman had been repeatedly claiming the “decisive” six months in Iraq were right around the corner. FAIR report that Friedman’s “‘decisive’ six months have lasted two and a half years.”
Many in the blogosphere warned that O’Hanlon and Pollack were engaging in the same tactic. As Atrios has frequently noted, many proponents of the war have offered “Friedman Units (F.U.)” — i.e. a continual “six-month period that would be required in order to determine the outcome of the Iraq War” — as a way to seek public acquiescence for the occupation.
This is not the first time O’Hanlon and Pollack have called for six months to bring stability to Iraq. On March 1st 2007, O’Hanlon penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal arguing for the same extension he called for yesterday:
There are good reasons to give the war effort, now almost four years old, another six to nine months before concluding that the current strategy should be discarded and a much different one…
On March 2 2006, Pollack told students at Georgetown that there was “a critical six month window of opportunity to bring some form of stability to Iraq.”
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