On Anniversary, Bush and Cheney See Iraq Success

On the third anniversary of a war that they once expected to be over by now, President Bush and senior officials argued Sunday that their strategy was working despite escalating violence in Iraq, even as a former Iraqi prime minister once favored by the White House declared that a civil war had already started.
Displaying a carefully calibrated mix of optimism about eventual victory and caution about how long American troops would be involved, the officials who marked the day — including Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld — sounded much as they had on the first anniversary of the invasion. At that time, the rebuilding effort had just begun, the insurgency was far less fierce, and the American occupation had suppressed, temporarily, the sectarian violence scarring Iraq today.

The picture painted by the administration clashed with that of the former interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, once hailed by Mr. Bush as the kind of fair-minded leader Iraq needed. He declared in an interview with the BBC that the country was nearing a "point of no return."

"It is unfortunate that we are in civil war," said Mr. Allawi, who served as prime minister after the American invasion and now leads a 25-seat secular alliance of representatives in Iraq's 275-seat National Assembly. "We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people through the country, if not more."

"If this is not civil war," he said, "then God knows what civil war is."

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The Planet of Unreality

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, March 21, 2006; A17

This is not good. The people running this country sound convinced that reality is whatever they say it is. And if they've actually strayed into the realm of genuine self-delusion -- if they actually believe the fantasies they're spinning about the bloody mess they've made in Iraq over the past three years -- then things are even worse than I thought.

Here is reality: The Bush administration's handpicked interim Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, told the BBC on Sunday, "We are losing each day an average of 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. Iraq is in the middle of a crisis. Maybe we have not reached the point of no return yet, but we are moving towards this point. . . . We are in a terrible civil conflict now."

Here is self-delusion: Dick Cheney went on "Face the Nation" a few hours later and said he disagreed with Allawi -- who, by the way, is a tad closer to the action than the quail-hunting veep. There's no civil war, Cheney insisted. Move along, nothing to see here, pay no attention to those suicide bombings and death-squad murders. As an aside, Cheney insisted that his earlier forays into the Twilight Zone -- U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators, the insurgency is in its "last throes" -- were "basically accurate and reflect reality."

Maybe on his home planet.

Donald Rumsfeld, meanwhile, was busy on The Post's op-ed page, abusing history. Leaving Iraq now, he wrote, "would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis." The bizarre analogy was immediately disputed by foreign policy sages Henry Kissinger (who noted that there was "no significant resistance movement" in Germany after World War II) and Zbigniew Brzezinski (who just called the comparison "absolutely crazy''). . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/20/AR2006032001417_pf.html

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aps said:

I know. I don't get this. Why not admit that mistakes have been made? Look at Ronald Reagan. After the whole Iran-Contra mishap, he went on national TV, admitted he messed up and asked for forgiveness. People LOVED it! Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are so insecure that they think if they admit a boo boo, they will look weak. If they admit mistakes and people attacked them for making mistakes, I think the attackers would look bad.

When my husband does something that infuriates me, and I call him on it, when he agrees with me, the discussion is over almost immediately. This is human nature.

There's a great editorial in the Washington Post today on this very topic--the fact that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld and their refusal to admit that anything negative about Iraq. Cheney claims that his statement in May 2005 about the insurgency being in its last throes is true. Rumsfeld compared our withdrawing troops in Iraq to being equivalent to "handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis." Even Kissinger admitted that Rumsfeld didn't know what he was talking about (or did not understand history).

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jfuh said:

Bush lied about, Katrina knowledge, ousting of Plame, Iraq Al-Qaeda tie, global warming, Jack abramoff, mission accomplished, WMDs each of which, other families were effected, ruined, killed.

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KCConservative said:

If someone were ever to prove these things, they could have Bush's head on a stick.

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jfuh said:

:shock: OMG you're actually on topic. This is the first time I've ever seen you write something on topic! Some one make a note of this, this is history in the making.

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