David Brooks invents the facts

Busy day today at work so I only have time for this quick hit and run. Hot on the heels of admitting he doesn't have a clue about Iraq, (scroll down to media bytes, serious pundit David Brooks admits he just makes shit up to justify his talking points.

Yesterday, Media Matters observed that on this week’s Meet the Press, New York Times columnist David Brooks admitted to using a made-up statistic in order to argue against withdrawal from Iraq.

Specifically, Brooks rehashed the right-wing talking point that withdrawal in Iraq would certainly lead to “genocide,” alleging that 10,000 Iraqis a month would die after redeployment. But Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward quickly forced Brooks’ to admit his statistics were baseless:

BOB WOODWARD: I mean, you cite numbers which you have pulled out of the air of 10,000 dying. I mean, that’s–that–where does that come from? […]

DAVID BROOKS: So I just picked that 10,000 out of the air.

And they call me unserious? Brooks has been wrong about everything for five years and now he admits he lies. So how come this guy is getting the big bucks for punditry? In a just world, Brooks and all these idiots like himself and Kristol would have been laughed off the airwaves by now.