Groping In The Dark (Latest WH spin on Iraq - Newsweek)

http://www.msnbc.com/news/956618.asp?0cv=KB10

Excerpt:

Iraq may be spinning out of control, but in the Bush administration, the spin was strictly controlled. From Baghdad to the White House, administration spokesmen went to elaborate lengths to argue that the presence of terrorists in Iraq was somehow a positive development. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, adopted a tone of “we’ve got ‘em right where we want ‘em.” Bremer said: “Better to fight it here than to fight it somewhere else, like the United States.” At a White House briefing, a senior administration official echoed, “I would rather fight them in Baghdad than in New York.” If Al Qaeda has popped up in Baghdad, the Bushies defiantly proclaimed, it only goes to show that the administration was right all along to label Iraq as a terrorist haven. “Those who said there was no link between Iraq and the war on terror were dead wrong,” said the White House official. (Writing in The New York Times, Harvard lecturer and former Clinton national-security official Jessica Stern caustically observed, “America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it into one.”)

<snip>

Never mind that the Jerusalem bombing and inevitable Israeli retaliation (a rocket attack on a Hamas leader) threatened to demolish the rickety Middle East peace process. There is a certain doggedness, if not willful denial, in —President George W. Bush’s public avowals about the war on terror. “Our will cannot be shaken. We will persevere through every hardship,” Bush ritually intoned last week. Taking the president’s lead, top administration officials mocked the hand-wringing of the TV talking heads and the “liberal” press, as well as what they regard as the timidity of America’s allies. Politically, Bush has not yet suffered much: the new NEWSWEEK Poll shows his approval rating dipping only slightly to 53 percent. His negatives are creeping up, however, and one deadly bombing of a U.S. barracks could cause popular support to plunge.

Reminds me of Custer's last dispatch:

"The tide has turned. The enemy is taking terrible losses."

Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, adopted a tone of “we’ve got ‘em right where we want ‘em.” Bremer said: “Better to fight it here than to fight it somewhere else, like the United States.”

I overheard this "theory" on right wing talk radio (why I was listening is another story) that the fact that terrorists are attacking troops in Iraq is a good thing because that's where our troops are and they can wipe them out. This is what Bremer is saying too.

The problem with this theory is it assumes a small core of terrorists who are fixed in number and all that need be done is kill that group and that will be it.

But because of bush* and his hairbrained aggression in Iraq (coupled with his support of Israel's aggression against the Palestinians), the number of "terrorists", i.e. people who are willing to commit violence so as to deter (and, in their mind, ultimately defeat) bush* is increasing (perhaps dramatically) every day. Iraqi sons, daughters, children, fathers, uncles. So many have died at the hands of the U.S. And surely many in Iraq continue to die of illness, disease, as well as bullets (though this does not seems to be reported anywhere).

What a theory. Plopping yourself down in the middle of Iraq and shooting at everybody who shoots at you, and thinking that is going to reduce the total number of "terrorists" in Iraq or the world.

This administration and those Americans who blindly support these policies are clueless morons.

By our own actions, we are creating more terrorists every day.

Ah-nold during a blackout.

Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, adopted a tone of “we’ve got ‘em right where we want ‘em.” Bremer said: “Better to fight it here than to fight it somewhere else, like the United States.”

Unbelieveable.....do they honestly except people to believe this bull....:puke: