Nice anti-War, anti-Bush Edit (Clift/Newsweek)Who’s Fooling Whom?

Who’s Fooling Whom?
The latest Marine deaths are another sign that Bush can’t keep fooling the public about the cost of staying in Iraq.

WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 2:41 p.m. ET Dec. 2, 2005
Dec. 2, 2005 - It’s hard to know which to admire more, the choreography or the chutzpah. White House spinmeisters put up banners that blared PLAN FOR VICTORY in case anybody missed the message in President Bush’s latest iteration of his Iraq policy in a speech on Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Academy.

The photo the following day on the front page of The New York Times showed Bush bathed in the Navy colors of blue and gold and heroically positioned as though standing on the bridge of a battleship. All he needed were some stripes on his sleeve and he’d be ready for the lead in "H.M.S. Pinafore."

No modern president has been as blatant about putting himself before military audiences, a setting meant to convey strength. But the ploy has run its course. What this latest speech before a captive audience of midshipmen conveys is weakness. Bush can’t go out before a more general audience. “The public distrust of him has grown so great, he’s become like Lyndon Johnson trapped in a policy that’s terribly unpopular,” says historian Robert Dallek. “And he’s as dogged as Johnson to staying the course and seeing it through to victory.”

Bush says he won’t rest until there is complete victory and the Iraqis can take care of their own security, which nitpickers might wish to point out Iraqis were able to do under Saddam. The real question is not what we accomplish in Iraq, but at what cost. Is it worth the lives lost and maimed, American and Iraqi, and the billions of dollars that could have been spent here at home? It’s going to take more than a slick advertising campaign to sell that as a victory.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10298373/site/newsweek/

done.
i postponed my shopping trip (groceries) for 5 minutes just to do this. hi 5!

"Bush does not want to go down in history as the president who lost in Iraq. His strategy to the extent he has one is to hang tough and let whoever succeeds him take the fall."

No kidding. I mentioned to Mr. Infomaniac last night over dinner that my feeling on "staying the course" meant staying in Iraq until his second term is over so the blame for "losing the Iraq war" can be put on somebody else.