Cognitive dissonance on display at Comedy Central

I had my “I told you so moment” last night while watching John Stewart interview Nancy Soderberg. She came on to promote her book, The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might. Her intention was to point out faults in Bush’s handling of foreign policy, but instead, she squirmed and looked uncomfortable as John imploded on camera. She did her best to poo-poo any credit to Bush, but it just wasn’t happening. At a couple of points during the interview she even begrudgingly admitted that things appear to be going in the right direction. The audience was pretty quiet, not knowing how to react while John wondered allowed if Bush was right all along – rubbing his eyes as if he didn’t know the world anymore. Soderberg’s book came across as bunk and Mr. Stewart finally found a way to be funny and behind the curve at the same time, though I’m not sure that was his intention.

Update: a letter to Jonah I found on the Corner reads:

From a reader:
Jonah,
The common complaint of Stewart and the anti-hygiene anti-war crowd seems to be that the freedom of Iraqis was an after the fact rationalization for the war. It got me thinking, so I did some heavy research and was quite surprised to learn that the military operation was not named “Operation Iraqi WMD”! Apparently it was called—get this!—Operation Iraqi Freedom.