Tuesday, April 04, 2006

A talking point escapes from Elba

Here's how bad things are for the Iraq war: the White House is recycling old talking points, and worse still, boomerang talking points. Hence Peter Wehner in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd, alt. free link), responding to criticism from conservatives:

Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a democracy activist from Egypt, says different. Mr. Ibrahim, who originally opposed the war to liberate Iraq, said it "has unfrozen the Middle East, just as Napoleon's 1798 expedition did. Elections in Iraq force the theocrats and autocrats to put democracy on the agenda, even if only to fight against us."

This is the exact quote used in a Jim Hoagland article last November and sourced in the same way; we noted at the time that this is not the kind of historical analogy the war needs. Then again, as Napoleon said:

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

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