Is there anything more hilarious than watching the White House spin machine having Bush morph himself from the inflexible, bullheaded, incurious jerk that he is into a flexible military tactitian? Feels like one of Jim Carey's films where his rubber-like face takes on many forms right before your eyes. Perhaps Carey has made a few late-night visits to the residence.

If "blame the military" doesn't work, they'll try "blame the media", and if that doesn't work, it will be a secret network of Osama operatives poisoning our minds with misinformation. Bush will never admit he/Cheney/Rumsfeld did anything wrong. Tragic for all those people who have needlessly lost their lives, but the gruesome threesome will all die in their comfortable beds with generous public pensions, not to mention all the booty from corporate America, or maybe even Saudi Arabia.

was the same as the crux of the Vietnam problem. We say we are fighting for "democracy." But in Vietnam, the other side was fighting for nationalism. In Iraq, we are told in this iteration of the war's purpose that we are fighting for democracy in Iraq. But Iraqis are fighting a religious war that no one can win until the other side is annihilated. Hanging around in Iraq - or even adapting for victory -is the martial equivalent of the cop who shows up at a domestic dispute and ends up getting pummeled by both sides. How come no one bothers to question why we can take a high school dropout, send him or her through four months of training and produce a soldier who is fit to fight for someone else's democracy but four years isn't long enough to train Iraqis to fight for their own democracy? The answer is simple and cuts to the heart of the "stay the course" matter. Iraqis are standing up and fighting. They just aren't fighting on our side or for what we say we are fighting for. As Don Meredith used to say "turn out the lights, the party's over."

Never mind Bush and the GOP moving the goalposts on 'stay the course', what about the endlessly deferred '12-18 months' for troop reductions/withdrawals that seems to get wheeled out at times of crisis/emabarrassment for the President? Is that 12 months from now, or from when they last said it? If they said 12 months last year, it's obvious they're nowhere near ready yet.

I checked the dictionary and idiot isn't spelled "djt", Skeptical Geek. Reread what I wrote carefully:

"Let's not get wrapped around the axle on the appearance of changing the course.

The policy is to drain the terrorist swamp via the creation of democratic, liberal societies in the Middle East.(ITEM A)

The strategy was to jar the region by invading Iraq and planting the flag of freedom there.

The tactics are to clear, build, and hold.

Stay the Course means sticking to the policy. There is no change. That is a worthy goal, and should be acknowledged as such.

Now, on to reality. Despite the worth of the goal, the US has minimal ability to make that happen. (ITEM B) Given the minimal ability to make that happen, invading Iraq was a high risk attempt at an impossible but critical goal. It was completely botched by Bush's handpicked staff. The tactics are largely irrelevant in this struggle due to all the screw ups to date. So, take a worthy goal, a 1% best case probability of it working, cut that probability by 99% due to Bush's staff, and the probability is .01% of that working.

Stay the course means keep the objective. The objective is worthy, just not within the US's, or Bush's power to achieve.

Points for a good idea!"

___________________________

So, would liberal, democratic societies in the Middle East give rise to terrorists (ITEM A)?

Probably not. Therefore, this is a desirable situation.

Then note that I said (ITEM B) that the United States cannot influence or create this situation. Therefore, I conclude, the chance of this working was too small to pass any test at all. Regardless of the real intention to invade Iraq, the stated intention served as no justification at all, since it didn't pass even the most casual analysis. That is why the Iraq war is so stupid: the stated goals were not achievable, yet congress went right along. With no hope of success.

I still stand behind the notion, completely independent of the Iraq war and the reasons for going there, that liberal, democratic societies (integrated with the worldwide economy) would not give rise to terrorists flying planes into building. Too bad we have no means to affect the creation of liberal democratic societies in the ME.

Invasion of Iraq was a primary goal of PNAC while Clinton was in office. There were no initial tactics. The policy was fucked from the get-go. The only purpose of all this was a very narrow personal political agenda assembled by simplistic ideologues.

These neo-con assholes have turned our country into everything we have been opposing since WW2.

The objective is clearly unworthy and it was a fucking terrible idea.

It's total bullshit that Bush is trying to back away from "Stay the course." That is the phrase that got him elected in 2004, because admitting a mistake is a sign of weakness to the dumbasses who elected him. He painted Kerry as a waffler because he actually considers changing his strategy based on circumstances.

And now Bush and his ilk want to avoid "stay the course"? Well, fuck 'em. If the Republicans can constantly pin "cut and run" on the Democrats, we should continue to pin "stay the course" on Bush.

They're trying to out-Orwell Orwell, but it ain't flying this time out. And where's Joe the Apologist?

It is very likely the Operation Iraqi Freedom, a lie from the get go, will turn into Operation Blame Someone Other than US.

It may be that Bush and company, draft dodgers by any other name, will blame their 'good soldiers. They may well take advantage of these general's Powell like obedience to civil authority to tow the company line to set them up for this type of scapegoating. We likely won't see the rightwing anti-Powell books until after a Dem is elected president but they are coming and the rest of the generals will be unindicted co-conspirators to this desparate attempt to salvage the "we were right, we just got sabotaged by a vast left wing conspiracy led by the generals," type of argument.

These books and these arguments will be like eight track tapes were to the move from LPs to CDs; a brief distraction to keep the issue focused until the better excuse rears its head once again.

Blame the media.

Everything we write, everything we hear, everything we see on TV will be recorded, mixed, remixed and eventually used in soundbites to support the argument that it is really the media that lost the war in Iraq by harping on the bad, failing to report the good (because they were cowards who wouldn't leave the comforts of their airconditioned Caligula like life in the green zone to see the efforts of dedicated Iraqis working to build democracy) and disrespecting our troops by their morbid fascination with counting the dead while dismissing the living fighting soldiers with their typical elitist snobism against the hard working class patriotic soldiers who so fought and died for their right to drink Starbucks, eat tofu, drive Volvos and denigrate their very sacrifice.

This is the 'war' yet to come.

What it must not be recognized is as a war that was a fiasco, prosecuted as a reckless adventure by arrogant fools, drunk on the self delusion they were pursuing a righteous ideal, blinded in the belief superpower means omnipotence, and goaded on by there well dressed, high papered, but greed driven frat boy friends in industries dominated by Haliburton, Bank of America and Exxon Mobil.

This is history in the making and it is, in many ways, the history of 'boys with toys,' and their pursuit of their personal dreams of glory at the expense of the rest of us, be they political or philosophical ideals, acquisition of resources, or the senseless game of exploitation of military personal or material.

Sadly, this will not be the way it will be written, at least by anyone who is not marginalized by the media smarting for being blamed for losing wars and being unpatriotic and, in commie speak, 'an enemy of the state.'

Instead, more palatable excuses will be created by future talking heads. As John Ford directed in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, (paraphrased) "When the truth is harder to accept than the myth, print the myth."

The blame may well start with the military, but it will not linger there for long. The military is a necessary tool of these people.

Instead, once the initial shock has worn off, it will come knocking on the door of the media.

The real question is how much will the incredibly deep and rich record of the internet influence this coming anti-media hysteria. How will the criticisms of people like Frank Rich, Seymour Hirsh, even such dedicated followers of the Marines as "Fiasco's" Hicks, be used against them in a phony 'war crimes' trial over who lost Iraq.

Then once, the naysayers are all purged and all is forgotten...

We will do it all again.