Pentagon tells Clinton to shut up!

This is just incredible. The Pentagon and the Bush administration can not seem to win the debate on the war in Iraq. All their happy talk of progress in Iraq is certainly not convincing the American people, and it is drawing a lot of criticism by the Democrats. But this latest MSNBC News story is just incredible:

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has issued a stinging rebuke to Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, arguing that she is boosting enemy propaganda by asking how the U.S. plans to eventually withdraw from Iraq.

Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman wrote a biting reply to questions Clinton raised in May, urging the Pentagon to start planning now for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

A copy of Edelman's response, dated July 16, was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.

"Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia," Edelman wrote.

He added that "such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks."

Read it again--the Pentagon has just told Senator Hillary Clinton to "SHUT UP!" All this talk of U.S. troop withdrawals is reinforcing enemy propaganda! So now the Pentagon considers Senator Clinton to be the enemy because she's providing propaganda to the terrorists and they are trying to stifle Clinton's First Amendment rights by demanding that she shut her trap! Is the Pentagon now being staffed by eight-year-olds? If Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman cannot defend the Bush administration's pro-war policy in Iraq, even as Iraq descends into a complete disaster, then the only immature argument Edelman has left is to tell Clinton to clam it? I just have to laugh at the incompetence and immaturity of Edelman and the Pentagon here. Continuing with the MSNBC Story:

Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has privately and publicly pushed Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace two months ago to begin drafting the plans for what she said will be a complicated withdrawal of troops, trucks and equipment.

"If we're not planning for it, it will be difficult to execute it in a safe and efficacious way," she said then.

Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines called the response "at once outrageous and dangerous."

"Redeploying out of Iraq with the same combination of arrogance and incompetence with which the Bush administration deployed our young men and women into Iraq is completely unacceptable, and our troops deserve far better," said Reines, who said military leaders should offer a withdrawal plan rather than "a political plan to attack those who question them."

As she runs for president, the New York senator has ratcheted up her criticism of the Bush administration's war effort, answering critics of her 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq invasion by saying she would end the war if elected president.

This Bush administration no longer has an argument, or a rationale, for supporting this war in Iraq. No one, except for the hard-core conservatives, even believes the stale arguments for supporting the war that are now coming out of the Bush PR Department. It is why this story is significant. It shows that since this administration can not make a convincing argument for supporting this war, that they are irrationally and illogically lashing out at their critics--SHUT UP Hillary Clinton! You're supporting the terrorists! I suspect we'll see more of this irrational lashing as September comes around.