Why does Mr. Franken think it’s ridiculous spending a day debating something as important as MoveOn.org’s defamation of a commanding general in wartime?
Because:
- The advertisement was in no way defamatory. It isn't defaming if the criticism is true, and in this case, it is demonstrably true;
- It's wartime, and topic "a" is an advertisement in the New York Times, not the war, not the troops, not stridently working on a practical political compromise (to whit, how can we expect the Maliki government to reach a grand compromise if we can't?));
- The continued reliance by the radical right wing of the republican party on hashing and rehashing a partisan grassroots level organization advertisement is wearing thin, to the point of becoming a hostile act, possibly even treasonous (we are at War!).
- Spending time debating this is an absurd waste of resources, and it would be laughable were 160,000 of our troops not in harm's way.
Why should Mr. Franken get away with not speaking out against a radical fringe organization after they’ve accused Gen. Petraeus of lying?
Al isn't getting away with anything. His op-ed was in response to an advertisement run by Norm Colman a day or two after the Senate voted to condemn Move On, attacking him because he was not joining in the condemnation (for those of you keeping score at home, this is Franken not getting away with it). However, MoveOn is not a radical fringe organization, nor did they not fully substantiate all of the claims in the ad. You've linked to the page on their web site, as I do above, with their fully-attributed and documented claim. Go back and look at it again... the evidence is pretty overwhelming.
Your next fisk is the best part, though, because you shoot yourself in the foot saying "Would Franken stay silent if a Republican called Hillary a liar? Of [course -ed.]he wouldn’t stay silent nor would anyone expect him to." Setting up the classic straw man analysis requires parallel examples in the analogy. The better phrasing of this argument would have been "if a republican called Admiral Fallon a liar," in reference to Fallon's statement that Petraeus was an "ass-kissing chickenshit." But what is delicious, to borrow your term, is that you chose a highly political example because either you agree that Petraeus is a political figure, as anyone who undertakes water-carrying for the White House would be, or it just naturally came out due to subconscious thoughts or feelings that only a good therapist and several years on the couch could uncover. I don't think it's the latter.
But being intellectually honest, you have to look at Al Franken's stand on the issues, particularly Iraq before you say he "hasn’t shown even a slight interest in defeating the jihadists or in securing the Middle East." Just because he doesn't agree with you doesn't mean his stand is ill-conceived or he has not given serious consideration to his position. Not knowing what you're talking about betrays your partisan position as superior to all else. Gary Gross is as guilty of mouthing anti-democratic talking points as he accuses Franken of likewise.
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