I’m listening to Wolf Blitzer talk to Senator Dodd. Wolf plays a tape of the president saying that if we leave Iraq before the job is done, that it will be a disaster in the war on terror. Dodd’s response? This isn’t a transcript, but it’s pretty close. “There are terrorist attacks all over the world. I don’t know how the president can think that by staying in Iraq, we will end them.” Wolf follows up, and he says something similar again.

In other words, President: “Leaving Iraq prematurely will worsen things.”

Dodd’s strawman version of President: “Staying in Iraq will solve the problem.”

I can see why he’d like to knock down a foolish statement that no one made, since it’s a lot easier to do that than to actually respond to the question of what will happen if we leave. I was disappointed (well, that’s not the right word, because it was, after all, Wolf Blitzer) that he wasn’t called on it. You know he would have if he’d been of a different party (speaking of which, Russert let Murtha get away with a disgusting amount of nonsense this morning–he never followed up, but just went on to his next sound clip each time).

[Update in the afternoon]

I will give credit to Murtha for having more class than Russert in this exchange. I was shocked, in fact, because it’s the first time I’ve seen a Democrat decline to cloak themselves in faux victimhood for their beliefs (they generally do it unprompted, but Russert couldn’t drag it out of Murtha today).