POLITICO 1, LEFTY BLOGOSPHERE ZERO:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed Thursday that he told liberal bloggers last week that he thinks outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace is “incompetent.”
Reid acknowledged similarly disparaging Army Gen. David Petraeus, head of Multinational Forces in Iraq.
But Reid, whose comments to bloggers first appeared in The Politico, also told reporters: “I think we should just drop it.”
I’ll bet he does.
UPDATE: Yes, this certainly calls into question statements like these:
We asked Joan McCarter, who blogs at DailyKos under the name McJoan and wrote about being on the call here, if she recalled Reid calling Pace “incompetent.”
“I don’t remember him saying anything like that,” she answered. “I can’t swear he didn’t say it. But I have no memory that he actually did. It’s not in my notes.” . . .
“I don’t even recall Pace’s name specifically being mentioned,” adds Barbara Morrill, who blogs at Kos under the name BarbinMD and says she was on the call. “If it was, he did not say that he was incompetent.”
Asked if he’d criticized Petraeus, Morrill said: “Not that I recall. I checked my notes,” and there was nothing like this. . . .
Finally, here’s what MyDD’s Jonathan Singer, who wrote about the call here, told us: “I don’t remember him calling Pace incompetent.” He added that while he couldn’t promise that he hadn’t done it, “I just don’t recall those statements.”
Most likely, those sorts of statements just don’t make much of an impression with the netroots. Which is ironic, since Reid probably made them for their benefit.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Stan Smith mocks them for their Scooter Libby stance: “And these folks can’t
even remember what someone said mere DAYS ago….”
Call Patrick Fitzgerald!
MORE: J.D. Johannes, fresh back from Iraq, has more thoughts on Reid’s remarks. “Mr. Reid, these men and women are not toys. When you treat them as pieces in your electoral games you treat them with contempt.”
And reader C.J. Burch emails: “You’re more charitable than I am. I would say that the lefty blogosphere is out right lying…again.” Well, I’d be interested in seeing the traffic from the new, more secure version of the Townhouse list. But I think it’s really just that antimilitary slurs are so common in that crowd that they don’t make enough of an impression to be memorable.