Newt Ginrich "The Phony War" - Complete Speech

Missing Newt's Point on the "Phony War on Terror"
Andy McCarthy From the National Review

By taking one sound-bite out of context, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has Newt Gingrich saying pretty much the opposite of what he said in a speech last week.

In a report on Saturday, they have the former Speaker grousing in a speech last week that "the Bush administration is waging a 'phony war' on terrorism." If you read what he actually said, however, Newt said that the war is entirely real. What is "phony," he argued, is the administration's approach to the war — including the reluctance to come to terms with the facts that radical Islam is the enemy, that you can't win it in a single theater (like Iraq), and that any serious approach would require real thought about energy independence.

I think he might have used a better word than phony — inadequate or superficial spring immediately to mind as possibilities. But this was not like John Edwards' bumper sticker drivel that the war is phony, as in a pretext for what is really an executive power-grab. Newt thinks we need a better strategy to win the real war. That's about as different from Edwards as it gets.