What Bush wouldn't say...
The NYT headline sounds like vaguely encouraging news: “Bush, in Iraq, Says Troop Reduction Is Possible.” Of course, given the circumstances, it’s not nearly as important a breakthrough as the headline suggests.
President Bush made a surprise eight-hour visit to Iraq on Monday, emphasizing security gains, sectarian reconciliation and the possibility of a troop withdrawal, thus embracing and pre-empting this month’s crucial Congressional hearings on his Iraq strategy. […]
After talks with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the ambassador to Iraq, Mr. Bush said that they “tell me that if the kind of success we are now seeing here continues it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces.”
How big a withdrawal is possible? Bush wouldn’t say. When might the withdrawal begin? Bush wouldn’t say. Exactly kind of conditions are needed to spur a withdrawal? Bush wouldn’t say. The president would only say that he’s now willing to “speculate on the hypothetical.”
In other words, don't believe the spin. As Digby explained, "[T]he press knows they are being manipulated and yet they continue to write stories like this because that's how they perceive their jobs. They report facts --- and the fact is that the president did say this ridiculous swill. But there's something terribly wrong when a large portion of the public, the elite media and all politicians see through this completely --- and yet everyone pretends they don't."
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Is there a title for this?
TOTALLY disagree.
Bush knows that the U.S. military CANNOT keep the "surge" up for much longer. He'd have to extend tours even longer than they already are and that would be political suicide for Republicans running for re-election in '08. Bush doesn't care about them getting re-elected, but he does care about Congress forcing him to withdraw in Iraq.
So, he's preparing to declare victory (reality be damned) and start bringing some troops home. And as a result, Republicans in Congress will continue support Bush's overall policy in Iraq.
I'll believe the troops are coming home when I see it, especially if it is coming out of Bush's mouth!
Folks don't send any campaign money to anyone until you see action on impeachment of this administration and the TROOPS COMING HOME.
Don't believe anything they say until you see it. Actions speak louder than words.
Bush is just trying to score points for the GOP.
We all know how egomaniacal Bush is... If he were forced to cave on the Iraq "war" then he can at least make it look like it's his idea. He goes to Iraq, sees for himself how great things are, and declares "Mission Accomplished!" all over again.
Anyone who believes anything shrub co. says should be checked out by a psychiatrist for a mental disorder.
I've met chronic gamblers who have more credibility than that load of chimp droppings.
Did he need his special black water troops to keep the regular army away from him during his visit this time? Or did they just bus in the three or four non-violent section 8 folks who they could trust for the photo op?
I have no doubt shrub was making a lot of empty promises. He's probably scared shitless one of those human targets he left behind to keep up the oil properties he's stolen will decide it's time for a regime change of their own.
"Yup yer goin home... someday. No really. This time for sure... watch me pull this rabbit out of my ass...." all the while inching toward his transport.
Swashbuckler @ 3:
Personally, I think he knows that there's a snowball in Hell's chance that the next Prez. will be a Repub. He's going to stretch this out as long as possible, dump it on a Dem Prez's lap, and then that way, the GOP can blame the Dems. for the whole Iraq mess.
I've give it more stock if he actually had managed to get the sentence out without stammering, and had looked the soldiers in the eyes (he was looking down at his notes). Once he got back to the usual tautology and talking points, he had no problem.
If you believe that.....
Find a very tall building....jump and start waving your arms....and you'll fly like a bird....trust me...Tom DeLay, Fox Noise, Rush Limbo, Grover Norquist, ExxonMobil, & Donald Rumsfeld told me it would work...
Shadowgm @ 8:
Dude... he can't even order breakfast without stammering. You're giving him one hella challenge.
He's just setting the seed so that if somehow we get to pull troops out, it will be because of how successful everything is.
Bingo, stonicus!
Kiki @ 4:
There is a very good chance that our withdrawl will turn into one big "Black Hawk Down" retreat with everyone and their grandmothers taking pot shots at us. Revenge/retribution is an important component of their culture and there's alot of anger in the bank over there.
The British just let our supply lines from Kuwait become vulnerable.
Let me make a prediction. By next April we will begin reducing the troop level in Iraq. Ain't I smart.
Of course, anyone who has read a newspaper, watched TV or chatted about politics around the watercooler could make the same prediction. Even al-Qaeda knows that we will have to start reducing our troop levels by next April. George wants to make this sound like it's a plan when it's really a collapse. It is a timetable that everyone on the planet knows about.
Bush always have to make these "Surprise Visits". And we all know that if he announced his coming to Iraq, the same guys that tried to shoot that Congressional delgation of Inohofe and Crew out of the sky last week, would be gunning for Air Force One the same way.
Quit calling these visits "surprise" visits. That's the only way he or Cheney can go to Iraq without the insurgents mounting a "surge" of their own.
Bush is talking without his brain so give him some space.
I think we are going to see alot of this till he leaves, telling people what they want to hear and then doing the opposite, remember the campaign?
No one to keep him in line at the White House. This behavior may even anger the 25 percenters!!!
Bush's 'announcement' should be taken in light of another story, his plans for retirement. In a New York Times article detailing an interview and pending book with Robert Draper, Bush admits his plan is to keep his hand in the chipper-shredder until his successor feels comfortable with maintaining a force in Iraq. Not withdrawing. Not drawing down. Maintaining.
We're seeing nothing more than the same 'fingers crossed, six more months' horseshit so the problem can be passed onto a new president.
But y'know, as long as we keep digging, we'll eventually complete that tunnel to China ...
The Political Junkie @ 15:
Indeed. If the press were honest they would write something along the lines of: "The visit to Iraq, which was unannounced due to the precarious security conditions in the country..."
Referring to it as a "surprise" visit makes it sound like Bush just dropped in to catch everybody off guard and then go out an have a nice hearty laugh and a beer together.
::: pictures Bush doing a Homer Simpson :::
"Oooooh. Beeeeeeer."
E Ryno @ 13:
He has been dangling out this carrot for far too long. I know a lie when I see one.
Bush sez:
ya see... when yer speculatin'... that means yer thinkin about sumpin'...
and a hypotheticals... well that's just sumpin' that ain't gonna happen...
so i wuz just thinkin about sumpin that ain't gonna happen...
heh heh...
Sorry, somehow I got my block quotes wrong on my post @20.
My comment starts at "And who's fault is that?"
GWB - "[My commanders on the ground] tell me that if the kind of success we are now seeing here continues it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces.”
No shoot Sherlock (no offense intended Mr. Conan Doyle)! If by success, you mean no success, then of course we could maintain a lack of success with fewer or even NO troops. Possibly, although I personally do not subscribe to this theory in the short run, we could achieve more success. I do believe that we could achieve more success if our troops were replaced by Iraq's neighboring countries, over the course of the long run.
Here's the deal...
A token withdrawal of a small number of troops within the next two or three months. If chaos doesn't increase substantially, Bush declares his war a complete and total victory. If chaos increases, we won't hear about it because it either won't be reported or it will be buried in page 10.
Dem prez gets in and reports the situation honestly and accurately: Iraq is a disaster. Therefore, it's the Dem's fault that Iraq is a mess.
I want this to be only my paranoid fantasy. Trouble is most of my paranoid fantasies have been coming true with this adminstration.
Carmikl @ 23:
That's okay. We've hired local contractors! That is, members of the local tribes who will be more than happy to turn the shiny new weapons we've given them against us the moment the equities of power change again.
It would be nice to see him in prison and wait for him to ask for food and water so you could give him the same kind of answers as to when, how much, and how soon he might get them.
Anything is 'possible'. Probable is something totally different.
Um, sure, I believe you. You wouldn't lie, ever.
Hey I wonder if that would work with bill collectors? LOL!
Shadowgm @ 26:
Those aren't contractors, they're Iraqi Police. You see, that's how we get away with saying that we aren't arming Sunni Militias. First we hand them a police uniform, then we hand them an AK 47.
The terms and conditions of a withdrawal will involve the 2012 Presidential candidates. We're not getting out of Iraq until we have an independent President and that's not happening until after the Democrats have their chance to fuck things up even more.
the MSM is doing what they have done for the boy kings full reign, they give him huge amounts of credit and coverage for something he says as if it is reality and has actually taken place. bush co. uses this trickery every chance they can get. yet another example of an "ALL THE SIZZLE WITHOUT THE STEAK" P.R. campaign by bush co.
E in MD @ 31:
It's not ever happening until corporate lobbyists are removed from the equation.
The Preznit it so out of touch with reality in this country(and Iraq) that he actually believed he could keep this war going without any backlash from the people here in this country...This doesn't mean he has seen reality though......doing the same thing over and over.....and expecting a different result..
Peter Hollman @ 22:
This is funny....LOL....heh heh
Did anyone else notice that the Marines didn't seem to know when to cheer? They had a hurrah leader in the audience to tell them when to cheer. What was really strange was that the hurrah leader actually said hurrah when a real Marine would pronounce it "Who Rah".
"call now and you'll get this free Brazilian power crystal"-Bushie in full infomercial mode
Diane @ 16:
Your right don't believe what he says. Son was suppose to leave 3 weeks ago, they pushed back deployment date to wait for new blood to come in so they can do one big deployment. Sundays the day and they will be gone for 451 days.
Must be the same guy who hung the 'Mission Accomplished' banner. The White House wouldn't admit to doing it, and the Captain said he didn't know who did it - hate to be the crewmember who did something like that without the Captain's go-ahead.
And who'd have thunk this president would stoop to cheap photo ops and cheerleading? I'm shocked!
"I have looked into the eyes of the Iraqi people, and I know that they are grateful for our occupat-- assistance."
Kaorimoch @ 21:
While he was dangling his carrot out, was he fondling it too?
smirk heh, heh .
Shadowgm @ 39:
"I'm shocked". me too ;)
The press and the beltway insiders are all in on the 'game'.
I would not call any true journalist an 'elite media', EVER! Wolfie, Chrissie and russertpotatoe are 'elite media' and they have no credibility, whatsophukkkingever!
I won't believe that the politicians 'see through this completely' until they vote against this damned war and impeach the international criminal cartel in the WH.
OT
Major naval drills kick off in the Indian Ocean
I thought one of these carrier groups was headed home. The Straits of Hormuz are not very far away.
Seven of Six @ 44:
It's a show of force for russia/china
At most, we're gonna see Warner's plan (a Repugnant) to bring home 5,000 troops by Christmas enacted.
This is 1/6 of the "Surge" troops, and they would be coming home by March anyway. So by next March, we'll still be where we were before the Surge started, and Bush can claim "victory" (or at least progress) and the GOP can brag that THEY started bringing the troops home.
Kabuki, Hokey-Pokey, Dog & Pony, call it what you like, it's still bullshit.
"... and yet everyone pretends they don't". It is as if the mainstream media has fallen down the rabbit hole and entered the realm of Alice in Wonderland. Perhaps the media are fearful that if they report the facts that the Queen [as played by Bush] will yell "Off with their head! Off with their head!"
Erroll @ 47:
Lewis Carroll meets Franz Kafka as directed by Stanley Kubrick.
The Surreality-based community
The Political Junkie @ 15:
And it has always been that way. Lyndon Johnson accidentally tipped off one of his surprise visits to Vietnam by wearing brown shoes with a dark suit at some kind of event just before he left. The press knew that he wouldn't make that kind of fashion mistake so they just assumed he would be changing into a kaki suit later in the day. I wonder if the press corps would be that observant today?
“Bush, in Iraq, Says Troop Reduction Is Possible.”
Is boosh saying our troops are fat? Why does he hate the troops so?
I think the ploy is to get Dems to say the surge is working; If the surge is working, then SOME troops come home. If it isn't, then all troops have to stay there. So now Dems back off and agree with Bush on the surge because if they don't agree then it's their fault for not bringing the troops home (not really, but that'll be the spin).
Bush will declare victory as a few troops leave, even though the majority of soldiers are still deployed.
I think McCain had it right when he said Iraq was like "whack-a-mole". We've whacked a few moles in Anbar, so Bush used it as the location for his photo-op. Essentially, Bush has been saying what he has said all along - "stay the course".
I hear the plan is, should the quagmire continue, to persuade Prime Minister al-Maliki to resign. Then, we'll need another 6 months or so for the replacement Iraq government to straighten things out. Bush will keep this occupation going through the end of his term, I think.
The Dems - I don't think they want to share ownership of this war, so we'll hear a lot of bellyaching and no substance, such as a cut-off of funding for the war. They know, Iraq or no Iraq, that they're the lesser of two evils, and they're willing to settle for that.
How big a withdrawal is possible? Big enough to get a repoublican president elected next year. Then its fours years of back to the same.
did bush
think he was going to get
a big media
bump out of this
O O O
O O
O
What Bush wouldn’t say…
Antidisestablishmentarianism.
shit-for-brains can't complete a sentence, why would he answer any questions that he will have to stand behind. oops!! he is standing behind every one of us just waiting to catch us off guard so he can bend us over for more of his special appeal.
Q. What's the difference between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War?
A. GWB had a plan to get out of the Vietnam War.
"and yet everyone pretends they don’t."
Except me (and others here, no doubt). I know it was one big (perhaps last-ditch) photo-op. Did anyone think he'd have bad news, like, "We're getting womped and it was all a big mistake" (and I am fucked in the head after all)?
I saw (somewhere) a figure of 5,000 troops. So they'll bring back 5,000 and send over 10,000 more, but the latter won't be reported on. Net increase, 5,000.
Chris @ 53:
They won't replace the "Surge" troops next spring because they don't have anyone to replace them. Even though the reduction is inevitable, Republican's will call that a 30,000 troop reduction just before the election. Of course, the media will follow the Republican talking points and a lotta folks will believe them.
How big a withdrawal is possible?
Too late...George Senior should have had a withdrawal years ago...but instead.......ewwwwwww
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