Kristol Defends Palin

Watching him do this is going to be one of the highlights of this election season. Here's what Palin said in that absurd interview last night in her speech yesterday:

Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

Really? The people who "planned" the 9/11 attack? They're in Pakistan, governor, where your beloved president allowed them refuge. The people who "carried out" the attacks of 9/11? Most of them are now dead, but the few remaining are in Pakistan, not Iraq. Kristol defends thus:

Palin is evidently saying that American soldiers are going to Iraq to defend innocent Iraqis from al Qaeda in Iraq, a group that is related to al Qaeda, which did plan and carry out the Sept. 11 attacks. It makes no sense for Kornblut to claim that Palin is arguing here that Saddam Hussein’s regime carried out 9/11obviously Palin isn’t saying that our soldiers are now going over to Iraq to fight Saddam’s regime. Palin isn’t linking Saddam to 9/11. She’s linking al Qaeda in Iraq to al Qaeda.

No, but she is saying that the people who planned and carried out the attacks on 9/11 are in Iraq. They're not. No sane person believes they are. More to the point, Kristol knows that on 9/11 al Qaeda in Iraq didn't exist in any meaningful form. His president helped create them by invading so incompetently a security vacuum sucked them in. AQI is simply a franchise spawned by 9/11 and the Iraq invasion. To say that entity - created entirely after 9/11, was somehow responsible for 9/11 is piffle.

Memo to Kristol: you may think Palin is sophisticated enough to grasp the high-level fantasies and abstractions that you have devised in your own head to defend the indefensible. But she isn't, buddy. She has a degree in sports journalism from the University of Idaho, and went to several colleges in several years. She thinks Leo Strauss is a brand of jeans. She doesn't have a clue what she's talking about. Remember: she doesn't know what the Bush Doctrine is and heard about the surge "on the news."

This is your lipsticked pitbull, buddy. Own it. And all the immense incuriosity, minimal education, and fact-resistant ambition that comes with it.