Say Anything Blog

On his own network with Soledad O’Brien:

Brief transcript:

  WARE: Well, let’s bear in mind that this is a report that was leaked by an unnamed official of some kind to a blog somewhere on the Internet. No one has gone and put their name forward. We certainly haven’t heard McCain say anything about it or any of his staff come forward to say anything about it.

  I did not heckle the Senator. Indeed, I didn’t say a word. I didn’t even ask a question. In fact, when I raised my hand to ask a question, the press conference abruptly ended. So what I was suggest is that anyone who has any queries about whether I heckled, watch the videotape.

First, it’s laugh-out-loud funny to hear a reporter disparage a “leak” by an “unnamed official.”  Especially when the information being “leaked” was something that took place during a public press conference.  I mean, I wasn’t aware that the things reporters did and said at press conferences were secret.

Second, Ware is dodging O’Brien’s question.  She asks him straight out if he was laughing at McCain.  Ware says he “didn’t say a word.”

Nice cop out, Mike.

Ware also reiterates his complaint about McCain’s suggestion that the surge has resulted in a new level of free movement in Baghdad.

WARE: Unfortunately they chose a very poor way of displaying those signs of change and those signs of progress. The fact that Senator McCain and a delegation can drive from the airport and walk around parts of Baghdad wrapped in a heavy security envelope is not new. Generals and American representatives have been doing such things throughout the war. Indeed, it’s the old reinvented as new, and in no way a sign of the real progress of the surge which the Senators should be talking about.

I wonder if Ware thinks Gen. Petraeus was lying as well when he made these comments:

‘I WALKED down the streets of Ramadi a few days ago, in a soft cap eating an ice cream with the mayor on one side of me and the police chief on the other, having a conversation.” This simple act, Gen. David Petraeus told me, would have been “unthinkable” just a few months ago. “And nobody shot at us,” he added.

Granted that Ramadi isn’t Baghdad, but it’s evidence of the surge working akin to what McCain himself is suggesting.  Which isn’t to say that McCain’s original comments were a good idea, but neither are they entirely without foundation.