Frank Rich Takes Down John McCain

Frank Rich, a New York Times op-ed columnist, was critical in yesterday's paper of those in Congress who got the Iraq War wrong and who are now advocating for more troops in Afghanistan, namely Senator John McCain.

Rich said, "Here we are in another debate about another war that we're not sure about." He highlighted McCain's errors: wrongly thinking Saddam Hussein had WMDs in Iraq; believing Saddam was involved in the anthrax attacks in Washington, DC; and claiming the Iraq War would be won easily.

"As Obama makes up his mind, I want people to put on the breaks and look at who is saying what, and where they're coming from," said Rich.

Obama has been vague on what he'll do in Afghanistan, and vagueness has been a problem for the President, on this and other issues like health care. Yet Rich thinks Obama backing away from the "war of necessity" rhetoric on Afghanistan is okay.

"Something big happened that entitled him to re-look at it, which was the election in August," said Rich. "Karzai is a really corrupt president, with drug runners all over the place — some in his own family — and if we're going to pour more troops in there we have to think twice about who would be our ally."

He later compared Karzai stealing the election in Afghanistan to what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did in rigging the Iran presidential election in June, and posed this question: Why do we have a different moral stance about Karzai?

Imus, for one, was prescient as ever about Karzai, telling Rich he immediately questioned the bastard's character when he saw him draped in fancy garb from head to toe.

"You're just so naïve, Frank, I don't know what we're going to do with you," Imus said.

McCain is similarly naïve, in Rich's view, because he believes we "won" the war in Iraq. "He wants the history of the Iraq War to begin in January 2007, when we sent in the so-called 'surge,' which he endorsed," said Rich. "By then, the surge was to clean up the mess that had been made by going in there in the first place!"

The war in Iraq, he added, is not over, and anything can and will happen once the U.S. officially leaves. Imus offered what Rich called "a great primer" on this topic.

"It will be some thug in charge killing a bunch of thugs they don't like, and the rape rooms will be back, and all the other horrible stuff, and we'll be trying to codify them so we can make a deal and still get the oil," said Imus, oddly coherent.

Before he said goodbye, Rich shared his thoughts on David Letterman, who is accused of having ongoing sexual relationships with members of his staff while involved in a serious relationship with another woman for 20 years. Rich is "not hugely bothered by it," and said that whatever happened with Letterman and his co-workers is "between them."

To which Imus replied, "Maybe when we get off the phone, you can explain to Mrs. Rich how you're minimizing the commitment David had to this woman."

-Julie Kanfer