Focus: Secret memos fuel US doubt on Iraq (analysis of DSM)

[Pirate Smile]

Focus: Secret memos fuel US doubt on Iraq
ANDREW SULLIVAN
He’s vowed to complete his mission in Iraq, but President Bush faces growing disillusion as leaked documents reveal the hidden path to war and the mood changes in America

You can sometimes tell when a political conversation is at a turning point because the rhetoric goes nuclear. With respect to the Iraq war, that is what is beginning to happen in America.

-snip-
It’s not that the Bush administration policy is likely to change any time soon. It’s that the American people have reached a point of no return with the president and his constant and unpersuasive assertions that everything is just peachy in Mesopotamia.

A poll that showed 60% of Americans want to start removing troops from Iraq merely confirmed the obvious: Bush’s war policy can no longer be sustained by the kind of “trust us” condescension that he has previously employed.

-snip-
In all of these positions there is a new intensity. That intensity suggests that the long period of acquiescence in a policy barely explained and riddled with inconsistency is coming to a close. Some kind of tipping point is approaching — either for or against the entire venture.

much more at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1669291_1,00.html

[Pirate Smile]

1. Rove's blather is just the beginning.

"The signs are all there that the administration now realises this and is also deeply worried. The president will, we are told, be launching a series of speeches to rally the country. His less scrupulous allies are preparing to accuse all critics of undermining the troops and aiding the enemy. "

[FreedomAngel82]

2. Yep

And the speech coming up on Tuesday. It's all going to be about Iraq and 9/11 and how Saddam Hussein was an evil man and we have to "win" the "war on terror."

[shraby]

3. You forgot...freedom is on the march.

[Pirate Smile]

4. The LIES continue - lie, lie. lie

"Internal Bush administration assessments of the war have been nothing like as optimistic as the White House’s public arguments. The CIA’s recent report on the insurgency argued that, just as American forces have learnt a great deal from fighting the terrorists and insurgents in a difficult urban terrain, so have the jihadists.

-snip-
The Bush administration always doubted that it could carry the public into a war as long and as difficult as Iraq was bound to be, so it fatally understated the risks and minimised the troop commitment. It never believed in nation-building, so it walked backwards into the task with insufficient resources. "