Carney: Palin Politicized Afghanistan

It has often been said that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin lives rent-freein the heads of President Barack Obama and those of his top brass in the WhiteHouse.

On Friday, this was evident when the Obama Administration,which has even attempted to politicize the Trayvon Martin tragedy, accused her of politicizing a war in Afghanistan ofwhich she did not speak.

After getting a question about “some Republicans, including Senator [Jeff]Sessions and Governor Palin,” questioning and criticizing President Obama’sgeneral leadership abilities in light of a host of recent incidents that reflect poorlyon him at a White House press briefing, Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney, said Palin had politicized the war in Afghanistan.

The reporter never said that either Palin orSessions specifically tied the photos of American soldiers posing with Talibancorpses to Obama’s failed leadership, but that is what Carney wanted to hear, which set the tone for his answer.

Sessions and Palin did nothing of the sort. Sessions linked the Secret Servicescandal to other scandals like Solyndra and the GSA. Palin definitively did not say anything political aboutthe troops last night on FOX News’s “On the Record,” when she was forced tocomment about the fired Secret Service agent who in, 2008, while on Palin’sdetail, wrote on his Facebook page that he was “checking out” the former vicepresidential candidate.

In fact, the only mention Palin, who has a son serving in Afghanistan, madeof the troops in Afghanistan was when she said, “Thank God that we have theUnited States military fighting for the defense of freedom.”

After saying the wife of a Secret Service agent who was fired for soliciting prostitutes inColombia should force him to sleep in the doghouse (and poking fun at Obama’sadmission that he had sampled dogs as a child in Indonesia), Palinpivoted toward the many symptoms of Obama’s leadership deficit.

Palin said that it was “a symptom of government run amok” and listed the higherunemployment and less energy security since Obama took office, and she notedthat “if the president isn’t held accountable to make sure he’s appointing the rightpeople in these positions to help run our government, then we’re in a world ofhurt if we can’t hold him accountable.”

Palin then mentioned that the top thing Obama is responsible for is the budget,and the country has gone over three years without a budget.

This did not stop Carney from falsely accusing Palin of politicizing, out of allthings, the war in Afghanistan:

We’ve been at war in Afghanistan for 10 years. We were at war in Iraq fornearly nine, I believe. Incidents that have been in great concern have happenedin those war zones on, unfortunately, numerous occasions over the numberof years that our forces have been at war there. The incident that you referto is terrible, it does not represent the standards of the U.S. military or theconduct with which the overwhelming majority of Americans men and women inAfghanistan and before that in Iraq conduct themselves.

Any assertion by those politicians you mentioned should be of the nature that youmentioned should be valued at the cost that you pay for it. It is preposterous topoliticize the Secret Service, to politicize the behavior of — the terrible conduct ofsome soldiers in Afghanistan, in a war that’s been going on for ten years.

When Carney was pressed by the reporter to comment on whether theseincidents reflect badly on Obama’s leadership, Carney again accused Palin ofpoliticizing the war in Afghanistan:

I think on the face of it is a ridiculous assertion that trivializes both the veryserious nature of the endeavor that our military is engaged in in Afghanistan andthe very serious nature both of the work the Secret Service does, the apoliticalnature of the institution, and the seriousness of the investigation underway withregard to the Secret Service and the military and the incident in Colombia.

Carney obviously was ignorant of what Palin said the night before on FOXNews, but, instead of doing what a responsible press secretary would do and notcomment on things about which he knows nothing, Carney could not resist anopportunity to tear down Palin.

And Carney has license to do so, because members of the mainstream mediaeither know too little to know that Carney was wrong, or are so biased against conservatives that they would rather sacrifice some of their journalistic principles so longas the GOP is harmed.