Not Your Sweetie

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#62 by SusanClevelandOH
 After letting it rest overnight, and looking at the transcript here just now, this morning my thinking on it is:
   General Wes made several big forward moves.
  The ones that stirred up the pot were when  
  1. General Wes "took it to" Ken Adelman by bringing Iran into it. This rattled Adelman. (Wes knew that Adelman had just done a major interview on Fox on the Iran card, though Wes never mentioned this.)
 So General Wes decided to bring Iran into it, in a matter-of-fact way last night, as if talking about the weather. (You know how Wes is,and speaks that way. It's his natural way. But can be, after you think about it a minute: POW!)
  Wes surprised Adelman with this. Wes had obviously planned this (quickly) and won the debate point on the way he chose to bring Iran into it. And bring it in early on.
 The way Wes did it and the timing of Wes bringing Iran into it and the substance too all rattled Adelman.
 Adelman was shocked to hear Wes say so calmly and deliberately (behind Wes' "General's face and eyes") that he, Wes, had believed and said, before the Iraq war, that Iran was more important than Iraq. That confounded what Adelman had said the night before on Fox about Iran. And Adelman went into orbit.
  2. After the moderator, Carol Lin, cutting off Wes, he managed to quickly slip it in  in a moment for the "cakewalk" card. (Adelman's most disastrous advice, and very public remark at that, in Adelman's official position on the Defense Policy Board, just before we, the U.S., went into the Iraq War was that it would be "a cakewalk".) This cost us a lot of blood, as many believed Adelman.
  These above two moves by General Wes, I believe, particularly the latter one, got the producer's guard up. They know General Wes and know that he knows and they get wary and on guard with him, watching his every move and not giving him room to surprise them (even tho they like him), they know that he can roll right over everyone, one way or the other, before anyone realizes what he's doing.  
  It's that wariness of him that had the producer have Judy Woodruff in the first Democratic Debate, box General Wes in with shields, and treat him like the oncoming force.   Last night, toward the end, the producer had Carol Lin do what was a mini-repeat of what the producer had Judy Woodruff do with Wes in the First Democratic Debate.
  "En garde!!" "The scary-smart General looks quiet and at ease, but he's been challenged and he's likely to suddenly spring to the attack!!!  Watch out!!! It may be his "quiet attack"!!!  Move out the way!!
 Sound retreat!!  Cut off the mike!!!
Let me outta here ---
 You won't believe what that soldier, that general at that, can do when attacks!!
"Stewpot" indeed.  :)