O'Hanlon does a fake mea culpa:
First, I think that to an extent, at least, it's certainly fair to go over a person's record when that person themself is being held up as playing a certain role in the debate. So while I'm not entirely happy with some of the coverage I've received here [on this blog] and elsewhere, I agree with the basic premise: that if I'm being held up as a "critic of the war", for example by Vice President Cheney, it's certainly only fair to ask if that is a proper characterization of me. And in fact I would not even use that characterization of myself, as I will elaborate in a moment.
(Emphasis supplied.) But O'Hanlon is lying here. He DID use that characterization of himself:
As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
(Emphais supplied.) O'Hanlon acts as if Dick Cheney invented the idea that he and Pollack were Iraq Debacle critics. In fact, it was O'Hanlon and Pollack, knowing that the only way their reporting would be newsworthy was if they were seen as Debacle and Surge critics who had seen the light based on their observations on this trip. It was O'Hanlon and Pollack who chose to be dishonest first about this. And O'Hanlon and Pollack, also knowing how Cheney, the Right, the GOP and the Media would spin this "conversion," did this in order to support the Bush Administration's Surge strategy.
Too many have decided to give this blatant dishonesty a free ride, Jon Chait most prominently among them. That is simply unacceptable. A "dishonest" expert cannot be believed. there was no reason to address the substance of O'Hanlon and Pollack's points because they decided to be dishonest. They disqualified themselves.
Glenn points out many other decpetive aspects of O'Hanlon and Pollack's work on this that further disqualifies them from serious consideration. They did not disclose that the US military organized the trip for them. They did not disclose that they spent virtually no time in any of the areas for which they reported progress. Most importantly, they did not disclose that their "analysis" really is basically the regurgitation of the military's analysis:
GG: Given that some of the claims in your Op-Ed are based upon your conversations with Iraqis, and that the Iraqis with whom you spoke were largely if not exclusively ones provided to you by the U.S. military, shouldn't that fact have been included in your Op-Ed?
MO: If the suggestion is that in a 1,400 word Op-Ed, we ought to have mentioned that, I can understand that criticism, and if we should have included that, I apologize for not having done so. But I want to stress that the focus here was on the perspective of the U.S. military, and I did a lot of probing of what I was told, and remain confident in the conclusions that we reached about the military successes which we highlighted. But if you're suggesting that some of our impressions might have been shaped by the military's selection of Iraqis, and that we might have disclosed that, that is, I think, fair enough.
In short, O'Hanlon admits he is a charlatan. Personally, I do not believe we need consider more. There is no reason to even consider the views of a "scholar" as dishonest as Michael O'Hanlon.
As for the Media, their performance was typical, Media malpractice. I simply expect nothing else from the Media.
