My goodness, I’m disagreeing with Spinsanity! That’s pretty rare for me.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has been one of the Bush administration’s harshest critics, especially on economic issues. But in two recent columns on Iraq, the economist has stretched the facts and made arguments that presume to know things that, in reality, he can’t.

In his July 20 column, Krugman enagaged in a series of accusations that impugn the motives of President Bush and his advisors without presenting evidence to back them up. He accomplishes through a rhetorical sleight of hand that frames all his accusations as hypotheticals, playing off “The Manchurian Candidate,” a movie in which Communists send a brainwashed agent to take over the US government.

“This time the enemies would be Islamic fanatics, who install as their puppet president a demagogue who poses as the nation’s defender against terrorist evildoers,” the columnist writes. “The Arabian candidate wouldn’t openly help terrorists. Instead, he would serve their cause while pretending to be their enemy.”

With this conceit in place, Krugman then impugns the motives of the Bush administration while still feigning to be talking about the hypothetical “Arabian candidate”:

…

Despite the setup, Krguman is clearly intending for readers to take these as serious accusations against the President. And by accusing Bush of outright indifference or sinister motives, he goes beyond any semblance of reasonable argument. Instead of arguing that the Bush administration’s planning for post-invasion Iraq was inadequate or incorrect, he claims it was non-existent. Similarly, he states that the President actively allowed the looting of Iraq, instead of failing to prevent it. And though he has no access to the evidence behind them, Krugman claims that terror warnings are “obviously timed to drown out unfavorable political news.”

The accusations may be true, but it’s also possible that Bush planned for post-war Iraq but did so inadequately; wanted to stop looting in Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s government fell; and has simply issued terror warnings when warranted by intelligence. Krugman doesn’t know what’s going on in Bush’s head or what the counter-terrorism intelligence is. His accusations are simply irresponsible speculation regardless of the hypothetical conceit.

First, Fritz seems to think that Krugman’s rhetorical device is misleading on it’s face, which is kind of silly. Next, I think they misread the points of Krugman’s article. A working article link is here. I won’t quote any of it; you have to read the whole thing. Here’s what I see Krugman’s points as:

1. That Bush’s performance has been so bad that it parallels the policy of an Islamic Jihadist agent as our president.
2. (the larger overall point of the two) That the conservative sentiment that bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to win (or wants Kerry to) is absurd.

Fritz sees the articles as a vehicle to impugn Bush’s motives. I see it as a vehicle to show that his policies, regardless of their underlying motives, are not that far off from some kind of Islamist double agent, debunking the notion that bin Laden would choose Kerry over Bush. His actual motives are irrelevent to the point being made.