The Right Has No Sense of Irony Whatsoever

Technorati Tags: Sen. Carl Levin, John McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, Iraq, Iran, Syria

Right-wing bloggers are passing around this video of Carl Levin questioning John McConnell about stopping the flow of weapons from Syria to Sunni insurgents:



The wingnuts are convinced that Carl Levin is calling for military action against both Iran and Syria. Kim Priestap at Wizbang, in a post titled "Carl Levin Sees the Light on Syria," crows:

Believe it or not, he's now calling for attacks on Syria. That's quite a turn around, one that the nutroots are not going to like. ...
[...]
I'm pleased to see that Senator Levin starting to see the light on the dangers of Syria. He is also finally acknowledging that al Qaeda, 5,000 of them, is in Iraq. ...

QandO wonders if "reality has somehow found Levin and [if he has] finally realized that the best way to protect the troops is to go after those trying to kill them. ..."

Brennan at Political Pit Bull declares that Carl Levin "has seen the light."

Erick at RedState, in his excitement, turned the siren on [emphasis in original]:

Get ready for Carl Levin to get shot by Cindy Sheehan or some other angry lefty. I'm not sure what happened to him, but he's making sense right now. On Sunday's Meet The (De)Press(ed), he finally admitted that Al-Qaeda is in Iraq and American troops needed to stay there for "a counter-terrorism purpose."

Today, he got bolder and called for escalation of the offensives against both Iran and Syria. Bravo. ...

I think the entire right side of the blogosphere has missed one of the most masterful examples of irony I've seen in a long time. Levin is playing John McConnell like a violin. It's especially interesting to me that not one single blogger on the right included the line that gave the strongest clue to Levin's game. It comes when Levin says he thinks we should go after Sunni weapons sources as well as the sources supplying Shiites in Iraq. McConnell responds:

Two comments: One, there is an attempt to stop the flow of any traffic across that border but most of the weapons that are being used inside Iraq are there now. I mean, it's not a matter of resupply, it's just that, that, the stocks that were there from the --

Levin breaks in:

I understand it's huge. I understand that. But there also are weapons you've testified coming in now, from Syria. Is that true?

McConnell's response: "Some, yes sir."

Levin pauses -- a staged, theatrical pause -- then lifts his head, looks straight at McConnell and says:

I think we ought to take action on all fronts, including Syria and any other source of weapons coming in, and obviously Iran is the focus but it shouldn't be the sole focus.

There's even a little smile playing around his lips at the end there. It's clear to me that Levin is trying to underscore the Bush administration's singleminded focus on the threat to U.S. soldiers from weapons coming in to Iraq from Iran, while utterly ignoring the supply sources for Sunni insurgents -- who are, after all, the ones who have been killing our troops, not the Shiites. And McConnell falls right into Levin's trap. He falls through the trapdoor and Levin slams down the doors.