See You in September (Not Good)

http://www.cqpolitics.com/2007/08/craig_crawfords_1600_see_you_i.html#more

See You in September
By Craig Crawford | 8:30 PM; Aug. 10, 2007 |


Next month’s showdown with Congress over Iraq looms as George W. Bush’s last corral for maintaining the war agenda that is destined to be his legacy. Despite a lot of shaky nerves in Congress among his fellow Republicans, do not bet against the president once again outwitting a Democratic leadership determined to reverse the administration’s prosecution of the war.

Even though polls show that most Americans dislike Bush’s handling of Iraq, his political allies insist the public will not back anything that smacks of a congressional takeover of the situation. “They are not going to stand for a diminution of the commander in chief’s war powers without a viable alternative,” said Mary Matalin, a former senior White House adviser.

snip//

That argument could be well served by the very event that Democrats had expected to be the turning point toward their anti-war point of view: a progress report from the military man running things in Iraq. Democrats once thought that Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who is widely respected by both parties for his expertise and candor, would come forth in September with a bleak assessment of the situation on the ground and that his pessimism would justify a meltdown of GOP support for Bush’s course in Iraq. But a different story is now emerging from the Petraeus camp, suggesting instead that he will report that the surge is working well enough to keep it going. And he is expected to conclude forcefully that withdrawal would only lead to bigger problems for both the United States and Iraq.

Encouraged by such previews of the Petraeus report, the White House is tapping sympathetic senators, including Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Independent Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, for what amounts to a full-scale political campaign to thwart the next drive against the war in the Senate, where the balance of power in the debate resides.

Even in the House, where a majority is clearly against the war, plenty of Republicans from conservative districts are still willing to go to bat against a withdrawal plan. “There are actually a few Republicans left who can explain and defend the policy — and, as importantly, the consequences of defeat,” Matalin said.

Even those pesky opinion polls, which have bedeviled Bush for so long, are beginning to show signs of better news to come for him. The latest Gallup Poll found that the proportion of those who said the additional troops are “making the situation better” rose 9 percentage points in the past month, to 31 percent; the share of those who said it was “not making much difference” dropped by 10 points, to 41 percent. To counter the positive developments the president will surely spotlight in next month’s debate, Democrats will be in the unenviable position of having to argue that the troops are actually failing. As a consequence, they will once again be portrayed by the White House as defeatists who do not support the troops.

more...

http://www.cqpolitics.com/2007/08/craig_crawfords_1600_see_you_i.html#more

our soldiers are not the ones failing, it is the policy's that seem to be the failing element. One fact that seems to be apparent over and over again, was the lack of any planning to leave. P.S. Bring them home.....

the same media which is telling us right now that Bush will prevail. Crawford may be a bit more balanced than the rest, but he's really just another shill in the pack.

btw, I really hate these cynical articles. They don't deserve to be presented as a rational argument.

he's not just some disaffected, outside observer. He's part of the same machine which has rationalized all of Bush's crimes and abuses, and has presented the arguments against those abuses as partisan - equal ground between Bush's lies and the truth - instead of just reporting and informing of what he KNOWS to be right or wrong.

Why should we enable him by allowing him to frame the debate? He's obviously coming down on the side of Bush, trying to convince us that Bush will prevail because some poll ticked up a few points from the bottom of the scale. And, he thinks Lieberman will dictate the action??

brave. and tell them we will stand behind them. They need to know this.Thom Hartman reminded me of this last week. I think he is right.





.......For Democrats, Victory Through Defeat?

Nothing less than the constitutional calendar dictates that Bush needs to survive only this next test to keep his Iraq policy intact. After September he will just have to run out the clock on Congress for another 15 months — not a tough task for him, considering that he has successfully deflected the growing anti-war forces on Capitol Hill for the past couple of years. Even last year’s midterm election, transferring control of Congress to the Democrats, has so far not deterred this president’s fierce resolve to stay his course.

“The fall may be the only moment Congress is going to have to force President Bush to change directions in Iraq,” said Larry J. Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist. “It’s highly unlikely there will be another confluence of events that can push this president to jump the track he’s been on.”

Still, Democrats are obligated to try, or they risk angering the legions of anti-war voters in their political base. Oddly, the party’s best-case scenario could be failure. If Democrats muster enough votes to override a Bush veto and impose a new policy on him, they’ll hand a rhetorical sword to the president and his GOP allies, who will argue for the rest of their natural lives that the United States could have won the war if Democrats had not succumbed to defeat. There is also a short-term advantage to Democrats in losing the September showdown: They could enter the 2008 campaign arguing that only a vote for a Democrat is a vote for real change in Iraq.

And that is one measure of Bush’s determination to keep control of this unpopular war through the coming debate: To do so, he seems more than ready to sacrifice Republican control of the White House or any hopes for his party to retake Congress next year.

I believe the democrats will believe this BS from Crawford and hand bush more money for the occupation.

about five outrages ago.

we've still lost. Everything this administration told us would happen, hasn't. We're not safer, there aren't fewer terrorists, there were no WMD's, they didn't stand up so we could stand down, we haven't brought democracy to the greater middle east, our civil liberties have vanished, there is a criminal enterprise running our government, the government can spy on everyone without warrants or court oversight but will not submit to oversight themselves, the Attorney General is less than trustworthy, a paid political hack is shaping policy, the Vice President is a rogue administration unto himself, the Army is broken, our infrastructure is crumbling, our houses are losing value by the hour, our money is becoming worthless, but Iraq is being spun as a positive. Somehow this is supposed to make me feel good? I'm not interested in buying your useless war george, I want my country back and you gone.

recall that there is a rise (small but significant) is Bush polls.
Something is happening and it is not good.


.....The latest Gallup Poll found that the proportion of those who said the additional troops are “making the situation better” rose 9 percentage points in the past month, to 31 percent; the share of those who said it was “not making much difference” dropped by 10 points, to 41 percent. To counter the positive developments the president will surely spotlight in next month’s debate, Democrats will be in the unenviable position of having to argue that the troops are actually failing. As a consequence, they will once again be portrayed by the White House as defeatists who do not support the troops.

started when Scooter Libby was Pardoned. From then on there was no thread of any change from the Democrats. And, if there was any doubt the actions of many Dems in voting to give Bush everything he wants, sealed the deal.

Bush's poll numbers will go up. Gonzo will stay and everything will go as they planned it. Without any resistence...people learn just to "get along." After all, they think... Bush must be doing something right if Dems agree with him all the time. :-(

Spinning the Iraq War Death Toll

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/080907.html

Mindful of the political fallout from a rising American death toll in Iraq, the U.S. military has pulled back from widespread use of aggressive tactics on the ground this summer, helping to explain a modest reduction in the number of soldiers killed in July, according to intelligence and military sources.

The number of U.S. military fatalities declined to 80 in July after three months of a death toll in the triple digits (104 in April, 126 in May, and 101 in June). The lower death toll has been cited by some U.S. commanders in Iraq and Bush administration supporters in Washington as a sign that President George W. Bush’s “surge” of U.S. troops is working.

But the sources told me that the lower death toll reflects not some impending victory but just a slowdown in the U.S. ground offensive after the early phases of the surge, which poured more than 20,000 additional troops into Iraq. The sources cited a variety of factors contributing to the decline in U.S. casualties.

One U.S. military source said the American troops have not pushed as far from their forward operating bases as the U.S. news media has been led to believe. When Bush unveiled the surge, a key goal was to get American forces out of their secure bases and into small police outposts in Iraqi neighborhoods.

The exposure of U.S. troops to the additional hazard of such front-line assignments was a factor in the upswing of American deaths in the early months of the surge. This forward positioning also presented risks for U.S. logistical personnel who had to brave roadside bombs and ambushes to supply these isolated units.

on Petraeus giving a gloom-and-doom report? EVERYONE knows that Petraeus is going to give the surge a thumbs-up--everyone. I don't believe it--they may be ineffective teabags, but they're not politically naive. However, the rest of his predictions will probably come true. Dems caved against the FISA/terror issue, and they'll cave again in the face of Petraeus, Goober Graham and Lieberworm. Don't want to be unpatriotic! Sick.

It'll be an A-minus.
:mad: :eyes:

Thanks for posting this!

I think we have reached consensus here that this congress has failed to respect in any way the mandate they were given in november to change the course we are on. It is over until 2009.

the minority of Democrats who've 'caved' have been effective (and a ready tag for those who want to portray the entire party as complicit) because of the narrow majority we hold.

in an analysis of this congress and its role in the neocon agenda: it is enabling that agenda. It is doing so with the complicity of our party's congressional leadership. The fact that the majority of our party's congressional delegation vote against the agenda that is, with the complicity of the leadership, marshalled through congress, might be of some solace to you, it is not to me.

be honest. I don't need solace.

The Dems left their balls in a box and locked the box in a safe and threw the safe into the deepest chasm of the largest ocean they could find.

They're a buncha nutless wonders, and they chopped 'em off all by themselves.

Gotta keep that ol' powder dry!

...this is just a rovian play to rub salt in internacine democratic wounds. Not that the wound isn't self-inflicted, but there's blood in the water now and so the sharks are circling to see if they can make themselves maximally disruptive.

The whole article is basically Crawford speaking for Matalin when he's not quoting her directly. Crawford should be ashamed to act as her mouthpiece.

No, quite the contrary, I FULLY expect the bushies to "outwit" (what a dainty euphonism!) the Democratic leadership. The evidence is overwhelmingly obvious that after 6 years of bush pulling the same crap over and over, the Dems have never mustered even the will -- much less a plan -- to come up with a counter-strategy.

It's gotten too pathetic to even want to watch anymore...

sw

Petraeus has been arming ANTI-GOVERNMENT SUNNI MILITIAS WITH U.S. BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS.

General Petraeus is fomenting a Sunni secession from the sovereign recognized government of Iraq--which is a violation of the U.N. Charter--and he is dragging us into the center of a civil war.

Or, they could roll over like they always do and offer Bush their ass. You'd almost think he would be tired of fucking that ass by now...but there's only 16 more months left in his term. Might as well pound that ass all the way to the finish line.

what matters, most of all to Republicans, is big oil's ability to grab the oil in Iraq. This would allow Republicans to justify the incredible costs of the war. It all hinges on the Iraqi government's acceptance of an oil law that gives 80% of the profits to the foreign oil companies.