I missed the interview, but Colonel Pat Lang, the former senior intelligence officer and Middle East expert whose blog I always find highly informative, plain-spoken, and not a little provocative, is certainly asking the right questions about Bill Kristol’s reference on Fox News today his recent visit, along with a “small group,†to Fort Hood to talk to Gen. Odierno, who has just been confirmed as Gen. Petraeus successor and Washington’s top military commander in Iraq. I can’t imagine what Kristol, who reportedly speaks with Sen. John McCain pretty regularly and has long been close to some of McCain’s top foreign-policy advisers (Randy Scheunemann, Bob and Fred Kagan, etc.), would tell Odierno about Iraq or military strategy that the general does not already know, so the question is why Odierno wanted to arrange a talk with one of the neo-conservatives’ top polemicists, if not to seek his advice about how to wage the war on the home front, or, worse, how to help boost McCain and the Republicans in the run-up to the November election. And did the Pentagon actually pay for the trip???
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