Dowd: Defining Victory Down (MoDo Scores a TD on *'s War)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/opinion/09dowd.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

The president prides himself on being a pig-headed guy. He is determined to win in Iraq even if he is not winning in Iraq.

So get ready for a Mohammedan mountain of spin defining victory down. Come what may - civil war over oil, Iranian-style fatwas du jour or men on prayer rugs reciting the Koran all day on the Iraqi TV network our own geniuses created - this administration will call it a triumph.

Even for a White House steeped in hooey, it's a challenge. President Bush will have to emulate the parsing and prevaricating he disdained in his predecessor: It depends on what the meaning of the word "win" is.

The president's still got a paper bag over his head, claiming that the daily horrors out of Iraq reflect just a few soreheads standing in the way of a glorious democracy, even though his commander of ground forces there concedes that the areas where more than half of Iraqis live are not secure enough for them to vote - an acknowledgment that the insurgency is resilient and growing. It's like saying Montana and North Dakota are safe to vote, but New York, Philadelphia and L.A. are not. What's a little disenfranchisement among friends?

"I know it's hard, but it's hard for a reason," Mr. Bush said on Friday, a day after seven G.I.'s and two marines died. "And the reason it's hard is because there are a handful of folks who fear freedom." If it's just a handful, how come it's so hard?

[StephanieMarie]

1. Didn't some general estimate that

there were over 200,000 insurgents?

[mitchtv]

2. that was the chief of Iraqi Intel

if I remember correctly

[hedda_foil]

3. Seems to me that this is what DUers have been telling them from the start!

Mr. Scowcroft was not deterred. Like Banquo's ghost, he clanked around last week, disputing the president's absurdly sunny forecasts for Iraq, and noting dryly that this administration had turned the word "realist" into a "pejorative." He predicted that the elections "have the great potential for deepening the conflict" by exacerbating the divisions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. He worried that there would be "an incipient civil war," and said the best chance for the U.S. to avoid anarchy was to turn over the operation to the less inflammatory U.N. or NATO.

Mr. Scowcroft appeared at the New America Foundation with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, who declared the Iraq war a moral, political and military failure. If we can't send 500,000 troops, spend $500 billion and agree to resume the draft, then the conflict should be "terminated," he said, adding that far from the Jeffersonian democracy Mr. Bush extols, the most we can hope for is a Shiite-controlled theocracy.

[Career Prole]

4. "If it's just a handful, how come it's so hard?"

A handful who know why they're fighting can put up a fiercer fight than an army with doubts.

[Pirate Smile]

5. God, is that the truth! The whole thing is Un-friggin-believable!

[indigobusiness]

6. "Matters of state and the heart that start with a lie rarely end well. "

You think he would at least have this much wisdom.

Cleverness is king in Bushland.

[hansolsen]

7. MoDo, what would we do without you, voice of reason, shining light? N/T

[progressivedancer]

8. Well,

Everyone here knows I don't like her incessant whining, but the WOMAN speaks the truth damn it. She really does.

[hansolsen]

9. You hear a whine, I hear a torch song. N/T