Media sucker punches itself with Greenspan quote

Jonah Goldberg:

"While there are significant long-term risks associated with such contractual arrangements, the well-informed actor, motivated by some historically recognized intangibilities -- maximization of regalement, binary association, et al -- finds that those outweigh the downside risks. To wit, would you -- exigencies and externalities permitting -- enter into a matrimonial association of indefinite duration with me?"

That's not a direct quote, of course, just my speculation. But on Sunday's "60 Minutes" profile of Alan Greenspan, we learned that the former Fed chairman dated NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell for 13 years before he asked her to marry him. "He used Fed-speak," Mitchell recalled. "Who knew he was proposing? I couldn't figure it out."

Greenspan observers were similarly befuddled by a seemingly plain-spoken statement in his memoir, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World."

Greenspan wrote that the Iraq war was "largely about oil," according to an excerpt in the Washington Post on Saturday. The statement quickly raced around the globe, with headlines like this one from Britain's Daily Telegraph: "Iraq was about oil -- Greenspan attacks U.S. motivation for war." The Independent began its own editorial by declaring: "The credibility of President George Bush's policy on Iraq has suffered another devastating blow. It is all the more powerful for having come not from a political enemy but from someone who was showered with plaudits by the administration."

The quoted phrase ran through the Sunday news shows and the blogosphere like a bad intestinal virus. On CNN's "Late Edition," Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame) was asked if he agreed with Greenspan. "To a very large extent I agree with him, and I think it is very remarkable that it took Alan Greenspan all these many years and being out of office [to state] the obvious."

Well, that is very interesting. But first we should clear the air about something. Greenspan claims that the quote was taken out of context. Greenspan called the Post -- Bob Woodward, no less -- to say that, in fact, he didn't think the White House was motivated by oil. Rather, he was. A Post story Monday explained that Greenspan had long favored Saddam Hussein's ouster because the Iraqi dictator was a threat to the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world's oil passes every day. Hussein could have sent the price of oil way past $100 a barrel, which would have inflicted chaos on the global economy.

In other words, Greenspan favored the war on the grounds that it would stabilize the flow of oil, even though that wasn't the war's political underpinning. "I was not saying that that's the administration's motive," Greenspan told Woodward, "I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?' I would say it was essential."

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The rest of Goldberg's comments are well worth reading as he skewers the politicians who voted for the war and now call it a war for all. He also gets some good licks in on the medias' obsession with using anything to bash President Bush.

What struck me about the last quoted paragraph is how much more applicable it is now for Iran. That would be a good war for all, that would also eliminate a genocidal theocracy who has been at war with us since 1979. I am sure that when we do go kinetic in our war with Iran there will be many who will call it a war for all. In fact that will be just another collateral benefit of regime change in Iran just as it was in Iraq.

Greenspan's analysis makes much more sense than the projections the media put on the phrase. It is inarguable that Iraq's oil has not paid for the cost of the operation to keep Iraq out of the clutches of the terrorist.