Surge report coming soon!
General Petraeus’ 6-month surge report is coming soon, and I feel about as much excitement as I would watching a bad western, knowing it will be a happy ending and our hero will ride off into the sunset.
The media will be all ‘a-twitter’ for a few days, but we all know what it will say, or at least what the spin will be. Sometimes I wonder why they even bother. I guess they have to pretend…
As a nation, we’ve now forgotten the last giantly hyped ‘benchmark’ report, the Iraq Study Group report, though it was less than a year ago. This was the one we all anxiously awaited, then watched as the Bush team downplayed it and somehow decided to take a 180 degree turn and increase our troop levels.
Last week an incredibly bleak report on the Iraq political situation came and went, making news for a day or two, but likely to be forgotten. The GAO report on the Iraq surge (which could not have been more critical of the claimed progress in Iraq) was released (leaked?) a week earlier than expected, so as to make news before the White House had a chance to whitewash it (though they are still doing so).
Recently, Our fearless leader has begun a campaign of comparing this war to previous wars, somehow attempting to twist the dire struggle in Iraq to previous world struggles against fascism, or aggression, or…who knows?
Now, the man who knew nothing of Sunnis and Shiites is lecturing the country in new versions of war history which, once again, would be highly amusing if the stakes were not so depressing. As one military analyst said:
“This was history written by speechwriters without regard to history”
Now, for the first time, the Boy Commander even compares Iraq to Vietnam, after claiming for several years that the comparison is unfair. In this case his spin was so outrageous that the Washington Post reported:
“Bush’s most controversial assertion — that U.S. troops could have prevailed in Vietnam had they stayed longer — is a neoconservative fantasy that almost all historians ridicule. But the overall campaign may still work”
Where will it end?
Perhaps the more realistic (not cynical…you can’t be too cynical about these guys) will foresee the selling of some bullshit benchmark progress on the media and the people. Perhaps they will expect the WDNBOC (Wimpy-Bend over-Do Nothing-Congress) to debate it in a flurry of hot air for a few days…then once again, in fear of looking weak (or somehow not supporting the troops), hand over another $50,000,000,000 (at the least) to continue Bush’s masturbatory ’spreading of democracy.’
I think it will end, as all stories do, with an unexpected twist. One that, in hindsight, was really not so unexpected.
To be continued tomorrow. Stay tuned…
UPDATE: TO BE CONTINUED ON 9/10/07
(IN ORDER TO BRING THE CONTINUATION OF STORY ON THE EVE OF THE RELEASE OF THE ADMINISTRATIONS ‘NEW PRODUCT.’)