THE ORIGINAL KING OF IRONY…. Anyone looking for reasoned, sensible analysis from Karl Rove is bound to be disappointed. But since President Obama took office, the man the former president affectionately called Turd Blossom has spent most of his time acting like a child who believes it’s “opposite day.”
As Ali Frick reported, Rove appeared on (where else?) Fox News yesterday, arguing that the abolition of U.S. torture policies will make it easier for terrorists to recruit new members. As Rove sees it, now that Obama has “forsworn” Bush-era interrogation tactics, it’s given terrorists “a tool to make it more attractive to recruit people.”
The irony is, it was Rove’s boss that made terrorist recruiting easier by using the very torture techniques Obama has rejected. Rove’s argument doesn’t even make any sense — terrorists will find more willing volunteers to strike at the United States because we’re not torturing detainees? Humane treatment of prisoners has become some kind of rallying cry for radicals?
As Frick explained, “Experts from FBI special agent Jack Cloonan to torture victim Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to former Army JAG Major General Thomas Romig all agree that Bush and Rove’s “enhanced interrogation” program recruited terrorists who have killed thousands of Americans. Indeed, former military interrogator Matthew Alexander cited Bush’s interrogation program as the most effective means to recruiting insurgents in Iraq who were battling Americans every day.”
I’d just add that this fits into a larger pattern with Rove. He identifies some of the worst developments of the Bush/Cheney White House — in this case, the fact that the Bush administration made terrorist recruiting easier — and projects the same faults onto President Obama. Consider some of Rove’s recent arguments: Obama is guilty of using hardball political tactics; the president looks at every policy issue “from a political perspective“; the White House is making “power grabs“; Obama, unlike Bush, is “polarizing,” because of his “petty” partisanship.
About a year ago, Rove accused the New York Times of having “outed a CIA agent,” which “obviously puts the CIA agent in danger.” Rove added that disclosing the name of a CIA operative represents “a very callous view about our nation’s security and interests.” It was, at the time, one of the most ironic things I’d ever heard.
Apparently, it was just a sign of things to come.
