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.