Letters to the Editor
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M.O'Hanlon's Hilarious Statement/Admission...
..."That oped may in retrospect have been somewhat too optimistic; I was wrong then myself in believing..."
If even the incandescently brilliant M.O'Hanlon can occasionally be wrong, so too can Patreaus, and stuff.
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We was wrong before and we gonna stay that way.
With the General Petraeus report sure to be on the NYT's Best Seller Fiction list, the Administration's everchanging definition of success in Iraq has reached its penultitmate zenith; namely calling it anything, anything at all, but failure, because only by refusing to speak the actual word can they avoid its reality.
"We are succeeding...because by strength of will alone, we have have refused to utter the word failure."
And the American public?
Few but the willfully blind fail to recognize the Administration and it's apologists' child-like attempts to make the bogeyman disappear by covering its eyes and incantations of "I can't see you!"
And so the magic show will go on as the "very serious" audience on Capital Hill oohs and ahhhs with pretense over the reliably-amateurish sleight-of-hand that no one fails to see.
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Yellow Dog and a typo
Every word Petraeus speaks, every order he gives, every sentence he writes, every interview he grants in support of Smirky's and Darth's Endless War is a betrayal of his Service Oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and his responsibility as a commander to his troops.
Posted by Yellow Dog, Friday, September 7, 2007 07:25 AM
Yes. Perfect summation. All the spinning and rah-rahing can't disguise this basic fact. American kids and Iraqis are dying every day for a big lie. The Constitution is being shredded for a big lie.
Glenn -- first para you have "renown", should have an "ed" at the end. Your spellcheck won't pick it up.
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Question for Glenn
What do these reporters gain by writing this nonsense?Eventually (and it might take months or years) they will be proven fools for spouting all this BS. What do they gain now or even a year from now? Some kind of allegiance with Bush and Cheney? Am I missing something? I understand the politicians supporting this ridiculous mess called The Iraq War but what about the reporters?
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The Base
"demonstrating that Americans overwhelmingly (57-38%) believe "the United States should set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq sometime in 2008." How is it possible for Ignatius to continue to be published asserting that only the "base," but not the country as a whole, favors this?"
It appears that "the base" turns out to be 57% of Americans.
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Straight Shooter Petraeus
Yes, he's such a straight shooter that he's shooting straight over to Fox to be grilled by Brit Hume. Can you imagine the tough questions that will come out of that interview?
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The DC/New York boys and girls are scared and scarred
More than any other group of people in the nation, the inner circle media of the East Coast and many of our politicians including the president himself, are still, within the depths of their souls, scared out of their minds by what happened on September 11th. But they're also in total denial of that fact. So their actions from that day to this have been akin to whistling past the graveyard late at night.
Their fear and their inability to look in the mirror and realize how it has shaped everything they've done from that day to this is the reason why they remain devoted to the authoritarian ideals of Cheney/Bush/Petraeous (or whomever the next puppet/general will be).
The echo chamber reporters and political insiders can't see things critically because they need to believe. They want to believe. They have to believe. To let go of their faith in the current approach feels to them as if zombies and ghouls will suddenly arise from the graveyard, snatch them and their loved ones and rip them apart. Of course it is the nature of such things that their dysfunctional/shadowed behavior contributes to the liklihood that what they fear most will, indeed, happen. If we don't take things out of their hands soon, they will inevitably take us from debacle to disaster.
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POT = partly off topic - casualty figures
I'm having a problem with some casualty figures. I was told by a source which will have to remain anonymous (I distinctly was NOT given permission to use his/her stuff), who was of very high reliability, that the ratio of wounded to dead for American forces in Iraq was 16:1. If you work the numbers from the number of American dead, that gives about 59,000 wounded. The official number is about 27,000 wounded.
I know there was a problem with defining "in combat" for casualties earlier in this war, where the Bush people at the Pentagon were denying benefits and honors to people who did things like drive in supply convoys, even if they were wounded or killed by IED's or enemy fire, because those jobs were not "combat roles".
So my question is: does anyone know whether there might be a problem with that 27,000 figure as well?
The interesting part is that if you take the 16:1 figure, and, because the figure for Vietnam was 2.5:1, calculate the number of dead in this war had the ability to save people been what it was then, you get about 18,000 American dead. If you then calculate, based on the ratio of American dead to enemy dead in Vietnam, using that figure, and scale it to the current war, you get that if the American military is equally as lethal as it was in Vietnam, there are over 600,000 Iraqis dead. Which is the Lancet figure, arrived at by completely independent means.
But does anyone know about the wounded figures?
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The most disturbing aspect of using Petraeus
Glenn,
Thanks for your diligence in pointing out Petraeus' lack of truth in both his current and past announcements. By far, the most frustrating aspect of Bush using Petraeus for this report is found in question 66 of the NYTimes survey you cite:
66. If you had to choose, who would you say you trust the most with successfully resolving the war in Iraq -- the Bush Administration, Congress, or U.S. military commanders in Iraq?
Bush Admin:5 Congress: 21 Military commanders: 68 None:3 DK/NA:3
9/4-8/07
Bush is using Petraeus to lend legitimacy to his own talking points because he knows the public trusts the military commanders. The press has simply failed to point out in sufficient detail how Bush has removed all high level commanders whose message differs significantly from his. Bush knows, from previous experience as you point out in your post, that Petraeus will deliver the message that Bush wants.