Newt, Clueless As Ever

From the Moonie Times:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says he's proven his critics wrong � including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and former Republican Rep. Jack Kemp of New York � who had "taken me to task" for arguing that the State Department was engaging in a "deliberate and systematic effort" to undermine President Bush's foreign policy.

Writing in the July/August issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Mr. Gingrich observes: "Only six days following my remarks, Bush made the following statement to a group of Iraqi Americans in Dearborn, Michigan: 'The Iraqi people are fully capable of self-government.' ...

"Contrast that vision with a recent classified report by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, titled 'Iraq, the Middle East and Change: No Dominoes,' " says Mr. Gingrich.

The report, first obtained by the Los Angeles Times, states that "liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve" in Iraq, while "electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements."

This item, from the reliably sub-literate John McCaslin, is so poorly written it's hard to tell exactly what Newt is claiming. Is Newt arguing that the State Department is "deliberately and systematically" trying to undermine Bush's foreign policy by writing a classified report, or by leaking the report? In either case, it's hard to see how the State Department is undermining Bush's policy by pointing out the blindingly obvious. Does Newtie seriously think that if elections were held in Iraq there wouldn't be anti-American candidates? Not bloody likely. Does he think that democracy will arise in Iraq if we all just play along with Bush's politically-motivated cheerleading?

Call me crazy, but I'm not buying the argument that anti-American sentiment in Iraq is the product of a confidential State Department report never seen or read in that country.