National Security is Gilmore’s issue?

The Gilmore Bloggers are back to insisting that their guy is the best choice because of national security (SWAC Girl/Bloggers 4 Jim Gilmore):

National security is my #1 concern in any election … and Jim Gilmore is the only choice in the U.S. Senate race because of his strong national security background.

Now, SWAC Girl is one of the leading good guys in the Augusta County War, and we both agree on the best choice for RPV Chairman, but I have to part company with her on this.

I must bring up once more Gilmore’s Washington Post op-ed from eleven months ago on Iraq (just as the “surge” deployment was being completed).  I ask all of you, dear readers, to read the whole thing – every single word. 

He claims the President’s policies “fostered an environment for a Shiite-Sunni civil war,” without ever once mentioning the infiltration of Iraq by Iran, something which was obvious even then and getting many to rethink the “civil war” nonsense.  The plays political chameleon, sanctimoniously claiming to oppose the Democrats even as he throws the President under the bus and calls for a “third way.”

Nearly everything afterwards is akin to this sort of hedge, supposedly supporting the President’s aims while call on him to reduce the number of troops that were making those aims achievable, until the end, when he offers the coup de grace.

American interests come down to protection of our national security, protection of Israel’s right to exist, and averting, if possible, a general war in the Middle East, nuclear or otherwise. Our present conduct in Iraq distracts from or is detrimental to those goals. I urge you to refocus American policy toward Iraq to further these strategic goals. (emphasis added)

Remember that sentence; you’re likely to hear it from every Democrat in Virginia – demanding to know if Gilmore still believes this – between now and November.

Bob Marshall may not have led a task force, but he didn’t go wobbly on the war either.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal