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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: Attention, comrades: Things are much better than our sorryass reality would indicate The swindle continues, reports the New York Times. "With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has" -- don't tell me, let me guess -- "lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections." Oh, shoot. Three-card monte is no fun when you spoil it like that. The press could very nearly start reporting on the Iraq debacle with a journalistic transparency that exposes the honestly absurd, to wit: "Today, the Bush administration breathlessly announced another goalpost moved, another diplomatic sleight of hand, another p.r.-propaganda razzle-dazzle that transmutes yet another stunning failure into another smashing success." Why not? Since the Bush administration is determined to debauch the American soul and corrupt every last strain of American decency with a gleeful intractability not seen since the German victory at Stalingrad, journalism might as well have a little fun, too. We're all in Bush's Orwellian sewer together, so we might as well concede defeat ... ah, impending victory. Which is precisely, of course, what the administration is doing -- again. Its taking three, surefire and certain developments on Iraqi ground and reframing them as the daring-do of proven progress: The short-term American targets include passage of a $48 billion Iraqi budget, something the Iraqis say they are on their way to doing anyway; renewing the United Nations mandate that authorizes an American presence in the country, which the Iraqis have done repeatedly before; and passing legislation to allow thousands of Baath Party members from Saddam Hussein’s era to rejoin the government..., largely symbolic since rehirings have been quietly taking place already. Remember the absolute need for political "reconciliation" in Iraq -- the reconciliation that only a U.S. escalation would bring, guaranteed? Well, forget that. What Iraqis really need, says the administration now, is "accommodation," even though, oddly enough, Iraqi officials themselves insist, "We need a grand bargain among all the groups." No you don't. You're doing swimmingly well, since doing better is impossible. And achieving the swimmingly good is so dazzling, especially when it's in the bag. The homespun swindle has even the Iraqis puzzled. The administration says with tortured angst it simply must assist them in passing a budget, to which a prime ministerial adviser said: "Every state needs a budget. It’s impossible to function without a budget. It does not need any push from anyone." One can almost see him swatting at Ryan Crocker, like a perfectly healthy grandmother who needs no assistance crossing the street. Yet the much bigger puzzler is right here at home. "The changing situation" in Iraq -- achieving the already achieved, that is, reports the NYT in a related piece -- "suggests for the first time that the politics of the war could shift in the general election next year, particularly if the gains continue. While the Democratic candidates are continuing to assail the war -- a popular position with many of the party’s primary voters -- they run the risk that Republicans will use those critiques to attack the party’s nominee in the election as defeatist and lacking faith in the American military." Run the risk? Is there is one American soul alive who does not know with a certainty approaching a passed Iraqi budget that, no matter what happens there, "the party's nominee" here will be blistered by the GOP attack machine as "defeatist and lacking faith in the American military"? And is there one American soul alive who doesn't know with equal certainty that the Democratic nominee will cower and equivocate in the face of that blistering fire; that the nominee will retreat from declaring with unOrwellian clarity that the noble admission of a failed and wrongheaded policy isn't synonymous with "defeatism" -- and that another year or two of this kind of success will leave no American military to have any faith in? Yeah, that's what I thought. It's in the imperial genes -- every world power watches itself go over that cliff just up ahead, singing along the way with Orwellian self-assurance: "Things are much better than our sorryass reality would indicate."
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