Bush's Iraq Escalation Speech

[drmomentum[$]]

AuntieEmma said

If it wasn't for the media getting in the way, we would be so much more effective on the battlefield.

You're reading it wrong, Emma. They're crediting the media with the setup which makes a surge successful. It's like a one-two punch. A head fake, if you will.

Except, in this case, it's a head fake that gets you past one guy on the court, and there's no plan to get past the rest of them.

-JP

[erik_kosberg]

"Surge and Destroy"

As far as I can tell, Bush's Plan B is to leave a mess for the next president to clean up.

Bush may not have a Plan B, but it looks like the Pentagon is thinking about one: Operation Get The Hell Out Of Dodge.

[erik_kosberg]

"Even if we had a million men to go in, it's too late now."

How bad will things get in Iraq -- and what price will the world ultimately pay for the president's decision to prolong the war? To answer those questions, we asked our panel to sketch out three distinct scenarios for Iraq: the best we can hope for, the most likely outcome and the worst that could happen.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

And it's all the media's fault. Victory would already be ours if only they had believed!

It's all revealed in "The Secret." The media visualized defeat in its heart, and lo, defeat was manifested in the world. It's the law of the Universe.

Seriously, I sometimes do wonder if war proponents have read too many "power of postivite thinking" type books. Think, and it will be so!

[erik_kosberg]

First there was the surge. Then there was the surge to the surge. Now there's going to be a surge to the surge's surge.

Escalation cubed. But everything's under control. Move along. Nothing to look at here folks.

BTW, a sobering Pentagon report about Iraq (PDF format).

[erik_kosberg]

Informed Comment

For all those journalists and politicians who keep insisting that there are new "glimmers" of "hope" in Iraq because of the new security plan started 6 weeks ago, here is a sobering statistic from the Iraqi government. ...

Iraqis killed in February: 1806 (64.5/day)
Iraqis killed in March: 2078 (67/day)

...

(Of course, the real numbers are much higher than these government statistics suggest, since passive information gathering on casualties only catches a fraction).

Last one out of Iraq, please turn off the lights.

[erik_kosberg]

Remember all that talk about benchmarks and goals? So, how's it going?

And I guess that last week's announcement of an additional 12,000 National Guardsmen counts as the surge to the surge of the surge's surge.

[erik_kosberg]

‘Do not believe anyone who tells you that the situation is getting better’

[erik_kosberg]

"Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces."
~ ~ ~ ~
Close observers were writing about this problem more than a year ago, but then, you know what slow learners the Bushites are. In any event, "As the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down" now joins the "Mission Accomplished" banner and "Plan for Victory" signs on the rhetorical junkpile. How long until the "surge" joins them?

[erik_kosberg]

As if it were needed, proof that Bush is officially stark raving mad.

If he were anyone other than POTUS, he'd be in a locked psych ward.

[drmomentum[$]]

You said you didn't like being slapped in the face anymore, so I kicked you in the crotch.

-JP

[erik_kosberg]

"The notion that the 2006 elections showed a mandate for the surge has now become a key White House talking point. That such a piece of blatant up-is-downism has become one of the White House's major arguments says all you need to know about the mounting desperation in the pro-war camp."

[drmomentum[$]]

The bigger the lie, the better the chance you get away with it.

If Bush hedged, you could actually use reason against him.

[erik_kosberg]

"It is a milestone in the Bush Administration's public spin of the war, marking the first official acknowledgment that the surge and all the attendant fuss were nothing more than an elaborate stop-gap intended to buy time so that the colossal failure of the President's foreign policy can be pawned off on the next president."

People are dying so that Bush can save face. Wonderful.

Impeachment is too good for him.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

Though a simpler explanation would be that they are merely trying to keep the bad evidence out of the press / out of public awareness.

TPM quoting the NYT, from Erik's link said

The Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September

TPM's comment on this said

The first official acknowledgment that the surge and all the attendant fuss were nothing more than an elaborate stop-gap intended to buy time so that the colossal failure of the President's foreign policy can be pawned off on the next president

In order to explain this, I don't think you have to assume, as TPM seems to, that the administration knew in advance that the surge wouldn't work, or that they didn't care if it worked or not. It makes just as much sense (and is the simpler explanation) to say that the adminstration hoped (maybe even expected) the surge would work, but when it turned out that it didn't, then they tried to spin the facts for PR purposes.

We know the administration will ALWAYS try to present as much of a positive picture as they can get away with, both by exagerrating (or in some cases inventing) positive facts and stories, and by hiding, delaying, fudging, fancifully explaining away, etc. any negative information. (If it doesn't get into the news, it hasn't happened, as far as the public is concerned.) It seems to me that is all that they are doing here. I'm not defending that, of course, but that's something different from their expecting the surge not to work.

Either explanation is possible -- it's just that mine is simpler, and therefore (according to Occam's Razor, anyway), perhaps more likely to be true.

[drmomentum[$]]

You attribute the situation to ignorance/incompetence instead of malice, which is a safer policy.

We've seen repeated evidence, as well, that the administration sets itself up to filter out evidence that doesn't coincide with what they want. This is a sort of willful ignorance. It's, perhaps, not malicious, but beyond just plain incompetence.

I think it's a testament to this country's strength that we haven't just fallen apart after so many years of crappy leadership.

-JP

[erik_kosberg]

Suddenly, Bush cares about al Qaeda again

The cravenness of the man never ceases to amaze me.

[erik_kosberg]

"Though President Bush seems psychologically incapable of the act, it is time for everyone else in the United States to recognize the inevitable: The occupation of Iraq is an utter, irredeemable failure. We cannot win there militarily or politically."

Gosh, ya think?

[erik_kosberg]

"Petraeus starts lowering expectations for September"

Traslation: EVERYTHING Bush says is a lie.

It's times like this that I wish that I believed in a literal hell. Just so Bush could have a space reserved there. People are dying just because he can't admit defeat. No other reason AT ALL.

[erik_kosberg]

"Meet the new plan, same as the old…"

Brilliant, just brilliant.

BTW, why have the war's supporters here been so quiet lately?

[AuntieEmma[$]]

BTW, why have the war's supporters here been so quiet lately?

If people could openly admit their mistakes, then they could learn from them, and history wouldn't have to keep on repeating itself. And what fun would that be?

< / snark >

[drmomentum[$]]

erik_kosberg said

BTW, why have the war's supporters here been so quiet lately?

Dick Cheney doesn't have an account here anymore.