Senator Bill Frist is concerned

Senator Frist (R-UT) complained on August 30th that the Democrats are:

taking the spotlight and doing whatever they can to focus that spotlight on Iraq, and trying to separate Iraq from the larger challenges that we have with the rise of the fundamentalist extremists

Gee, why would those dirty, rotten scoundrels be doing that? Hmm, perhaps because that's where US soldiers are fighting and dying? Nah, that can't be it. The Democrats must be up to something sneakier. Greenwald suggests that perhaps that's because:

We have 140,000 troops in a country on the verge of all-out sectarian war, a country which happens to sit in the middle of the most strategically important and inflammable region on the planet. That's the result of a war in which we've lost 2,600 American lives, have had tens of thousands more wounded, killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, and spent hundreds of billions of dollars.

But nah, that can't be it because the Democrats are taking attention away from "Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, plus other areas where terrorism [exists]."
That must be it! The Democrats are just trying to confuse us! This makes Senator Frist angry. Of course, that makes it difficult to explain why, at the 2006 President's Dinner, Bush himself described Iraq as "the central front on the war on terror." But to remind folks of that would simply bring bothersome, y'know, facts into the picture. Greenwald then details how Frist intends to spotlight his preferred issues over the next few months.

In other news on demagoguery, DefSec Rrumsfeld came out swinging. Paul Begala remarked that Rumsfeld sounded like "a batty old man." Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) remarked that:

I have long thought that the Secretary of Defense’s judgement has been impaired.
-------
...we have been in Iraq- longer than in Europe for World War II. For him to talk about moral clarity when Abu Ghraib happened on his watch and destroyed our moral credibility in the world is interesting as well.
------
...you must know your enemy. Clearly the Bush Administration did not when it went to Iraq. [Transcript cleaned up]

So Democrats gave as well as they got! Hoo yah! Now they need to keep this up into November and we're all set!

Update: Rumsfeld actually made a few decent points, but they're points that demonstrate he's not fully thought the things through.