Are you satisfied?

Bush has stayed the course for another year and Iraq is in civil war.

How many more Americans have to die or be maimed for life before you say: “Enough!”

Initially, the Bush administration wanted to draw down to 30,000 troops in Iraq months after deposing Saddam. His critics argued that more troops than what was already there were needed and accused him of “cut and run”.

The military argued successfully against both to balance footprint with security.

Then the partisans switched sides, which happens a lot.

The partisan debate about withdrawing troops is about influencing the perception of reality, not about understanding it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/02/AR2005120201409.html

According to Jonathan Rauch, it’s all over in Iraq. The withdrawal of American troops has been scheduled to begin next year.

This will neutralize Democrats and the Republicans will keep their control of Congress.

See: Rauch

Libs have been asking to have the troops brought home for some time. For this, they were labeled bed-wetters by the right wing nuts.

If Bush brings the troops home, will the right wing nuts call Bush a bed-wetter?

a) finishing the work of terrorists for free (or at least on behalf of advertisers)

or

b) taking money from the government/military to run factual, albeit one sided, propaganda?

Thoughts?

As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

The articles, written by U.S. military “information operations” troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said. Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as “Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism,” since the effort began this year.

Even as his poll numbers tank, however, Bush is described by aides as still determined to stay the course. He resists advice from Republicans who fear disaster in next year’s congressional elections, and rejects criticism from a media establishment he disdains.

“The President has always been willing to make changes,” the senior aide said, “but not because someone in this town tells him to – NEVER!”

For the moment, Bush has dismissed discreetly offered advice from friends and loyalists to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and bring back longtime confidant Karen Hughes from the State Department to shore up his personal White House staff.

“He thinks that would be an admission he’s screwed up, and he can’t bring himself to do that,” a former senior staffer lamented.

So aides have circled the wagons as Bush’s woes mount, partly hoping they can sell the President on a December blitz of media interviews to help turn the tide.

My compliments to Leon Winer. To have a son who has done so much to develop community should give you a warm feeling.

We have all seen the “God Bless America” stickers on cars.

It’s time for a change.

The prayer we should be sending up should be a sincere request to save us from the ever present incompetency of the Bush/Cheney Administration.

Yesterday’s NYTimes, on page A8 carries a story entitled “U.S. Lacks Plan to Curb Terror Funds, Agency Says.” Here are the first two paragraphs:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 – The government’s efforts to help foreign nations cut off the supply of money to terrorists, a critical goal for the Bush administration, have been stymied by infighting among American agencies, leadership problems and insufficient financing, a new Congressional report says.

More than four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, “the U.S. government lacks an integrated strategy” to train foreign countries and provide them with technical assistance to shore up their financial and law enforcement systems against terrorist financing, according to the report prepared by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress.
see: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/national/nationalspecial3/29terror.html

On page A27 in the same issue of the NYTimes, we see an op-ed piece entitled, “Think Inside the Box.” The first paragraph follows.

THIS week President Bush will seek to focus the nation’s attention on border security and immigration reform. But the president’s proposals won’t protect Americans from our gravest cross-border threat: the possibility that a ship, truck or train will one day import a 40-foot cargo container in which terrorists have hidden a dirty bomb or nuclear weapon.
see: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/opinion/29weinflynn.html

God Save America.

I assume you believe that statement.

No, these conditions would not face any president. Even after shaking his finger, Clinton was never treated with the disrepect shown by this WH press. Never. Ever. His spokesman was never treated with total disrespect. Never. We even see people screaming at Scott McC. The press is out of control and their behavior is unacceptable.

You think we have adopted the “victim’s mentality” and I believe you are either blind, deaf, or bias. I refuse the ‘victim’ label as I don’t think I qualify. I consider it facing facts. Fact: Probably 80% of the MSM (or press) vote Democrat. Now I can ignore that fact, or I can understand the deck is stacked. Out of every ten articles I read, at least eight will be either attacking Bush directly or something that can be tied back to Bush.

Has it always been this way? Yes, but never to this extent. Think of the MSM (your press) coming out of the closet, rather like France. The WH press now screams. Ex-presidents now trash current occupant, even on foreign shores. Senators have become so simple-minded that they can be ‘mislead’.

Yes this WH does horrible PR. I would have fired them all. They are still playing under old rules that do not apply since the ‘coming out’.

That is also Bush’s problem. Not that he will not admit mistakes, but he is still Mr Nice Guy. Every error I have seen on his part gets traced back to this. Kerry thumps his chest and declares himself a hero, Bush when asked said yes he is a hero but never mentions even ONE time that a coward would not have been flying fighter jets. LA Blanco sits an hour and a half up the road on top of enough buses to bring her people out of NO. She sits on them, keeps the water out and won’t sign while the MSM is having a fine time, but Bush never pointed his finger at Blanco. It happens over and over with Mr Nice Guy. His PR team should have learned to overcome this flaw in their boss.

If you are going to fight international organizations, terrorists, a couple of wars, the Democrats and the MSM, you need an effective PR team. I admit it. Bush’s PR stinks.

In their shrillness they don’t see that rants are pointless and do not move the discussion forward. Ah. but it is pointless for me to point it out. Sigh. And yet I try.

Point taken. I look at the question less confrontationally than you. I believe that “ending this thing” and “winning this thing” are just two ways of describing the same phenomenon, an honorable end to the US military occupation of Iraq. That is why I find rhetoric of “quagmire” and “cut and run” counterproductive–both are designed to make such common ground unreachable.

My quibble with your argument is this: in a democracy it is inappropriate that there should be a realistic private discussion at the Pentagon and in the White House and a “public” discussion where such realism is discouraged as “destructive.” If these “reasonable” questions are good enough for our leaders to discuss, they are good enough for everyone.

The fundamental problem is that we are losing the minimum level of trust between the major parties which is necessary for a functioning democracy. The analogy I would use is this. Imagine a couple on the brink of divorce, the wife is driving, and they suddenly find themselves in a blizzard. There’s nowhere to stop, so they have to keep going. Suddenly they hit a patch of ice, and the husband starts screaming commands at his wife. That’s what things feel like right now.

No offense intended, but your comment is a case in point of the sterility of much of the Iraq War debate.

You state the choice as “to see things through” versus “withdrawing now.”

What does this mean? Is no one allowed to advocate withdrawal not now, for example, but in 18 months? What “things” are we supposed to see through? What is the criterion for establishing when they have been successfully seen through? With what troop levels should we “see” them through–200K, 100K, 10K? At what high troop levels do US forces start making matters worse, inflaming the resistance with the heavy hand of occupation? At low troop levels do US forces start making matters worse by demoralizing the forces of communal comity and secular democracy?

There are countless questions to be asked about Iraq policy, all of which are dodged by your content-free formula of “seeing things through.”

In any event that’s all in the past. What we have now is a hopeless situation in Iraq and a throughly disillusioned American public. What do the right wing nuts offer now?

The US and UK are so desperate to get out of Iraq that they are handing over control to local militias, most of whom are extreme Islamists. We have created a terrioble situation over there.

The fact that comments such as those from John Q. Wilson are still being taken at all seriously in America, just shows how biased and one-sided the media is there.

Yep, so is the Democrats’ doctrine, shared by their supporters and the self-proclaimed “reality-based” community, of apocalyptic doom, abject failure and wild conspiracies – resulting in even lower poll numbers and greater public mistrust.

Interestingly, during the 5 year clash of doctrines since the 2000 election, the Republicans re-elected the President and control of Congress while the Democrats have lost political standing.

Wierd, huh?