Hume: Conservatives Waiting Until September Are Inviting A ‘Tet Offensive’

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/13/hume-september/

Hume: Conservatives Waiting Until September Are Inviting A ‘Tet Offensive’

Division over Iraq continues to rage on the right. This morning on Fox News Sunday, Fox News managing editor Brit Hume ripped into conservatives who claim they will demand a change in war policy if President Bush’s escalation policy hasn’t shown results by September.

“It’s been said that the setting of a timetable for withdrawal is the worst idea,” Hume offered. “If that’s true, the second worst is the announcement by Republicans and others that September is the drop-dead date for serious and major progress.”

Hume said conservatives who are waiting until September are placing “an enormously useful bit of intelligence in the hands of the enemy” and allowing terrorists and insurgents in Iraq to mount “something on the order of the Tet Offensive.” Watch it at link~

So, according to Hume, the United States should not only not set a timeline for ending the war, but should never talk about when it expects to see results of its military strategy. The perfect recipe for staying in Iraq forever.

Transcript:

HUME: It’s been said that the setting of a timetable for withdrawal is the worst idea. If that’s true, the second worst is the announcement by Republicans and others that September is the drop-dead date for serious and major progress. That places an enormously useful bit of intelligence in the hands of the enemy and allows the enemy to mount possibly around that time something on the order of the Tet Offensive, which was a major defeat for the insurgent forces in Vietnam, but it was a huge public relations and political triumph because it came across in the coverage because it was bloody and spectacular and so forth as a —

WALLACE: Why do you think John Boehner at this table last Sunday, why do you think he said that?

HUME: I think John Boehner is reflecting as leader sentiment that he’s hearing from his caucus.

:crazy:

of propaganda.

...I hope they keep it up.

with the neocon propaganda can't be a 'patriot'.

There, let's cancel '08! The "enemy" must not be allowed to know what Americans think!

I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that Hume brought up the Tet Offensive. For years, the rightwing windbags have been insisting that Iraq is nothing like Vietnam. For Hume to even bring up Tet shows he's losing faith in his own fairy tales. Frankly, I expect more from the managing editor of Fox News

But since he's brought it up, let's talk a little bit about the Tet Offensive. In the years following the massive US escalation which began in 1965 the Johnson Administration and the US military issued repeated claims about progress being made, the enemy losing his will to fight, the war being won. The Vietnamese insurgency's ability to stockpile the logistical wherewithall and launch a nationwide coordinated surprise offensive demonstrated that those predictions of success were wildly optimistic and largely untrue. American public faith in a military victory began to erode and the country began to look for a way out of the war.

American publc opinion about Iraq is already in the post-Tet phase. Only a handful beleve that the Administration's claims about progress being made are anything but tired, recycled lies. Victory? Who can even say what "winning" means... and who believes that it might be achieved? No, as Mr. Hume well knows, no Tet Offensive is needed to break the will of the American people to continue this war. That will has already been broken by four years of lies, of endless claims of progress totally divorced from reality, and of the steady stream of wounded and dead.

So all I can conclude is that Mr. Hume believes that the Iraqi insurgents do have the capability of launching a widespread military offensive that would threaten the very existence of our military forces there. And to believe that he must have even less faith in the past four years of our military and political progress than do I.