Odierno Spins the Morning Talk Shows
The full spin on the alleged U.S “pullout” of Iraqi cities was on full display a few moments ago when Gen. Ray “head like a bullet” Odierno lumbered through a very brief interview with FOX News Sunday, the first, I am sure, of many such interchanges with military officials leading up to the June 30 deadline.
While FOX showed clips of fire, twisted metal and terrified Iraqi faces from Wednesday, Monday — all last week — Odierno claimed that the more than 250 civilian lives lost in multiple car bombings over a week and a half amounted to “a couple extremist attacks.”
“Overall stability in Iraq remains good,” he added. Really, by whose yardstick? He deftly talked about May seeing “the lowest levels of violence” since the beginning of the war, but ignored that April and June were the worst since September 2008, clocking in at 367 and 331 civilian deaths respectively.
Worse, he’s not grilled about the widely reported fact that despite this symbolic pullout of U.S forces by June 30, Americans will be stationed instead right outside the borders, and in some cases, like Mosul and Basra, too, troops will continue to operate within city limits. Lots of smoke and mirrors. A few clicks of mouse will tell you that, but the they must think we are all too distracted and fatigued with Iraq to care anymore. When will it register that leaving US 130,000 troops and 36,000 American contractors in-country does not equate to a massive “withdrawal?”
As I wrote earlier this week, officials will ignore what is right in front of their faces in order to protect the fiction that the Surge was successful and that we are pulling up stakes. The Obama Administration is as guilty as his predecessor in this regard, attempting to gloss over the gross corruption and authoritarian impulses of the Maliki government, the betrayal of the much exalted “Sunni Awakening” and the sad state of every other human metric on the ground: employment, healthcare, reconstruction, etc., in order to wash his hands of this mess once and for all.
June 30 will be spun as a benchmark, if not a “victory,” for us, and for the Iraqis. It will come and go Tuesday as some sort of assurance to the American audience that this war, at least, is receding into history. Don’t bet on it.
The media are so far into the tank for Obama now that he could give a speech about this in front of a banner that said “Mission Accomplished” and he wouldn’t even be ridiculed for it.
How delicious. The conventional wisdom, among con artists, is that you can’t con an honest person.
Look for another 3 long years of righteous indignation, from the committed rank-and-file liberals, and, the uber-intelligentsia of the conservative movement.
The joke is, not *all* of the dishonesty is on the part of the politicians. And the delicious truth is that dishonest people are the easiest to fool.
Repeat after me: Bush attempted to create the *illusion* of torture, and we disagree with his definitions and his methods. Can’t say it, can you?
Repeat after me: The science of climate change is real, but what part of it that people control is only partially understood. What part of human effect is under US control is only partially understood. What portion of US effect will be changed by current legislation is a huge question mark. Can’t say it, can you?
Repeat after me: We had a war, not of our choosing, brought to us. The “criminal” model was not working, but, we think that Bush went too far. Further complicated by the “hate america firsters, and the liberals”, when they added some bleeding-heart nation-building agenda to our war effort. Do the math – nation-building has accounted for 90% of the war’s causalties. A gradual reduction of an effort that had some legitimate foundations, will be slow and painful to all sides.
Not *all* the people we would denigrate with the term “neocon” agree with everything Bush did. But they *can* discuss the good things that were done.
Still can’t say it, can you? Going to be a delicious next 3 years.
This is another example of military exceptionalism used as leverage to justify the disastrous political decisions to invade and then subdue Iraq. Military leadership has been elevated to the wisest sages by the American geo-political ruling class. When a dubious military-centric argument has to be made, the standard administration (Bush and Obama) tactic is to trot out co-dependent generals and admirals to legitimize the permanent war to nowhere. We now have politicians hiding behind coat tails of flag officers who should only be implementing policy, not making it, or even explaining it.
Iraq is evolving into the archetypal authoritarian Egypt that would have resulted had the United States merely left after Sadaam was overthrown. The U.S. could have tactically tossed brides to the various factions inside of Iraq to shape a relationship amenable to American interests, saving thousands of lives and a trillion dollars by doing so.
This bipartisan delusion really stinks. I don’t get it.
The war machine has covered it’s tracks. It didn’t have to do much. Just appeal to the internalized party propaganda.
It makes sense to me now what the US has done, removing the Sunnis from power, buying them off so they could sell them down the river, protecting the majority rule for stability purposes. What I still don’t understand is why the US allied with the Shiites when it desires war with Iran. Could it be that it desires to consolidate it’s power under Shiite governments? I wonder if Shiites would be least resistant to the US using their soil to bomb Sunnis from across the Middle East.
I am curious what the US and Iraqi government is going to do about Sunnis from across the Middle East living under what it calls moderate (Sunni) Arab states that are willing to come and fight the Iraqi Shiites and American troops. They aren’t going to know where they live.
[...] areas in Iraq. However, roughly 130,000 troops will remain until next September. Kelley Vlahos is scornful of the decision and claims that leaving this many troops does not constitute a [...]
I am kind of an “anti-TAC”, philosophically. They tolerate me (sometimes), probably because I make a good example of a rabid neocon.
Speaking of which, I understood you to say that Johnny Walker Lindh was a victim of the “Bush/Cheney conspiracy”, and that he could get his real story out, but they won’t let him. He served in a religious organization, but was not a terrorist, and worked for people who he says urged him to become a suicide bomber, but you inform us that they were also not terrorists.
Newsflash: Bush/Cheney are out of office. Also, the administrative restrictions on Mr Lindh were supposed to be lifted 3 months ago.
How about an update? Can we discuss that, without ruining any “book deal” that may be in the works? Maybe Mr Lindh, himself, could snailmail you, and give TAC an exclusive, in his own words. Can’t promise to be sympathetic, but I would read whatever he has to say.
But if it boils down to “Mr Lindh cannot speak in his own behalf, because this may prejudice the courts, or jepardize his safety.” and, “However, many of us have a private but possibly uninformed opinion on what was wrong with the US and Bush and Cheney…” …then, oh yawn. Don’t bother.