By May 2006, uneasy officials at the State Department and the National Security Council argued for a review of Iraq strategy. A meeting was convened at Camp David to consider those approaches, according to participants in the session, but Mr. Bush left early for a secret visit to Baghdad, where he reviewed the war plans with General Casey and Mr. Maliki, and met with the American pilot whose plane’s missiles killed Iraq’s Al Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He returned to Washington in a buoyant mood.
The visit meant that the reconsideration of strategy was not as thorough as some officials hoped.
“… and met with the American pilot whose plane’s missiles killed Iraq’s Al Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.” By this point, our cup overflows with the evidence that President Bush is an incurable juvenile, a composite portrait of the video war game generation, a man who has mistaken the joy stick for his dick, and his dick for the golden key to “victory”. John Burns story in the NYT is, obviously, a special plea for the surge strategy – Burns being an incurable hawk. It builds the case for the increase in troops by using that odd Bush era strategy of referring to the gross and criminal mistakes of the krewe running the country to justify … a new twist in the way the krewe wants to run the country. Thus, the article, obviously written with info channeled from a lot of White House insiders, concedes that frankly, 2006 was a bad year. We all fucked up. Rumsfeld was a fuckup. General Casey was a fuckup. Nobody actually understood Iraq. And… so, let’s increase our commitment to the place!
Apparently, the Rebel in Chief is concerned not that American soldiers are dying needlessly, nor that the ungrateful Iraqis are dying by the tens of thousands, but that General Casey didn’t use the word “victory” enough when explaining what he was doing. We gotta get us some of that “victory”:
“Mr. Bush came to worry that it was not just his critics and Democrats in Congress who were looking for what he dismissed last month as a strategy of “graceful exit.” Visiting the Pentagon a few weeks ago for a classified briefing on Iraq with his generals, Mr. Bush made it clear that he was not interested in any ideas that would simply allow American forces to stabilize the violence. Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine commandant, later told marines about the president’s message.
“What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win,” he quoted the president as warning his commanders, “not how we’re going to leave.””
And:
“Mr. Bush still insists on talking about victory, even if his own advisers differ about how to define it. “It’s a word the American people understand,” he told members of the Iraq Study Group who came to see him at the White House in November, according to two commission members who attended. “And if I start to change it, it will look like I’m beginning to change my policy.””
To which, let me add LI’s own outraged voice. My fucking God! We don’t want it to look like he’s beginning to change his policy! Why, he racked up a score of 700 and got a win sign just the other day on his favorite machine! They want to take away his joystick, his specially ordered “I am the champ” “George Bush” “President” nameplate, and his Decider stationary. Has this great nation ever been so threatened? No wonder so many of our best minds have already concluded that, from the perspective of the long long long long war, the Islamofascists are much more dangerous than the communists ever were.
I am tempted to make this into some trendy feature article. I need some hook to make some desperately needed bread lately. Something along the lines of The Culture of Shallow: How Shallow became Hip! Just right for Slate - pure pablum and babyshit, allowing for some pic of a cleavage happy blonde, one of the indistinguishable many that slide across the glossy covers, with just that right touch of ... snark and contrarianism ... to float the thing. Oh, I can see it now, a completely useless braindrain - just what the editor ordered.
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