Chicanery and The Man

Bomb, Bomb Iran
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 10, 2007

John McCain has been captured on YouTube singing “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” to the tune of “Barbara Ann” by the Beach Boys.

Emboldened by her tour de farce in her Schlesinger schtick, Maureen Dowd unleashes an air assault of alliterations. A Democrat heckling Hillary falls into MoDo’s modus operendi.

A Democrat, Randall Rolph, asked Senator Clinton why he should back her when she did not learn her lesson after voting to authorize W. to use force in Iraq. He did not understand how she could have voted yea to urge W. to label Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, possibly setting the stage for more Cheney chicanery.

"Cheney chicanery" is verbal shorthand nothing short of genius that covers a wide range of dubious deceptions. He was one of the most vocal proponents of the Weapons of Mass Destruction meme and the Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection wishful thinking. Veep Vader has been itching to invade Iran for some time.

Hillary’s hawkish Iran vote was an ill-advised move, especially given her private view that Cheney is untrustworthy and given Sy Hersh’s New Yorker report claiming that Cheney had pushed to devise a plan to attack the Revolutionary Guard facilities in Iran.

Hillary voted for the resolution to use force against Iraq along with other warhawks, chickenhawks, and party hackhawks. Many, including Dowd think this was a political act designed to inoculate this distaff senator against charges of softness. As the war has become more unpopular, Clinton has had to spend more and more time telling the tale of the albatross around her neck.

When Hillary voted to let W. use force in Iraq, she didn’t even read the intelligence estimate. She wasn’t trying to do the right thing. She was trying to do the opportunistic thing. She felt she could not run for president, as a woman, if she played the peacenik.

Playing the peacenik would fall into the Republican plan to paint her as pawn of her draft-dodging partner.

And once Dowd runs out of consonants to confuse she returns to the “verb-up” formula she found so hip a few columns ago:

It was odd, given her success in the debates conveying the sense that she is the manliest candidate among the Democrats, that she felt the need to man-up on Iran.

And so ends another amazingly alliterative sarcastic salvo of Hillary hatin'.