XDA

They're ugly and they lie. They lie like other people sleep--every day and for long periods. I remember hearing the normal fare from Carville, when he was being bested by Laura Ingraham on the Today show earlier this week (despite the David Gregory tag team). He said, at about 3:17 into the Expose the Left clip, three statements of questionable truthfulness in a very short period. First he said former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was "on the ground" in Iraq when in fact Allawi left Iraq shortly after he was nearly killed by a crowd at a mosque in Baghdad, and then voted out in December, 2005. Carville would not let facts stand in the way of his opinion and would not be corrected by Laura Ingraham, who knew better. Then Carville repeated something from the widely questioned poll by James Zogby. But he saved the best for last, Carville said: "...Martin Van Creveld, who is the foremost military historian in the world, says this is the most foolish military operation since Caesar Augustus, in 9 BC, invaded Germany. I assume he knows what he's talking about." Assume what you want, James, but that doesn't make it true.

Begala, it turns out, said about the same thing about the obscure professor Martin Van Creveld, whom he called "one of the most esteemed military historians in the world." I guess we should be thankful for the qualifier "one of" But I still ask, What? I read military history all the time, and I've never heard of this guy.

Here is a partial list of Van Creveld's World eteemed work. World's foremost military historian my ass.

And don't get me started on the non-foolish nature of the fighting in Germany by Roman troops in 9 BC, the Teutobergwald massacre notwithstanding, because comparing Teutobergwald to the Coalition's incredible success in Iraq would of course reveal that you are one of the World's dumbest military historians as well as one of the least known. Besides, it was Varus who lost the legions, not Augustus.