As Hugh has said before, there is a difference between wrong and rotten.  Robin Williams is wrong on his politics, Bill Maher is rotten.  Wolf Blitzer interviewed the remarkably unfunny comedian on CNN's Situation Room today. Here's what he had to say about George Bush and General David Petraeus.



Maher calls President Bush a liar because he claimed that we've killed an average of 1,500 terrorists and extremists each month since January, and then questions who the enemy even is.  That's the problem with many on the left.  They won't even try to understand who the enemy is, because in their mind, George Bush is their enemy.  He fails to recognize that there are not just Iran and Saudi Arabia backed extremist Iraqis we're fighting, but also foreign fighters from all over the Middle East.  He doesn't understand that the late leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, was directly affiliated with Zawahiri and bin Laden.  It doens't matter to him.  Bill Maher's hatred of George Bush is almost all-consuming. 

Once Blitzer got the soundbyte he was looking for, it was time to try for for the sweep of the doubleheader, and see if Maher would bit and slander General Petraeus.  Maher didn't disappoint, calling General Petraeus and democratically elected Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki stooges of the President.  A career four-star general who has served his country with honor and distinction for decades is now a stooge because he won't recognize world in the same way the anti-war crowd does.

The intellectual dishonesty of Maher, and Blitzer for that matter, is staggering in this clip, because Maher claims Petraeus is a stooge of the President because the report presented to Congress was a "Bush report," and that Bush put the words in Petraeus' mouth.  The dirty little secret is that the reason the White House prepared the formal report to Congress is because it was legally required to by Congress.  The Bush administration was following the directive set out by Congress to report back in September.  But Maher didn't seem to want to realize that fact, and Blitzer certainly didn't seem to want let facts get in the way of a good soundbyte. 

Blitzer at least tried to counter by saying the General stated that his testimony was drafted by his own hand, and was not previewed by anyone in the administration, and doesn't Maher take Petraeus at his word.  Maher said flat out no, essentially calling Petraeus a lying stooge. 

The next thirty days promise to be remarkably turbulent for this country, especially in the Senate where MoveOn.org obviously has taken deep root with the Democratic Party and is demanding hard-core retreat provisions be lined up one after another.  Hopefully, Republican leader Mitch McConnell will be up to the task of defeating the defeatists on the other side of the aisle.

It's really a sad commentary when you have to look at the world today and say that in order to protect the Republic, you have to continue to defeat al Qaeda abroad, and defeat the Democratic Party here at home.