The surge isn't a success, but the spin that "the surge is a success" is.

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,174817,00.html

All of young Mr. Bush's wars have been exercises in information maneuver. The administration sold its fuzzy case for the invasion of Iraq though tacit cooperation of so-called liberal media outlets like the New York Times. To this day, ubiquitous unnamed military and administration "officials" continue to broadcast war propaganda in the guise of objective truth through the compliant news media that allow them to speak anonymously due to the sensitivity of the fact that they are proxies for or are themselves Dick Cheney.

It is understandable to a point that an administration possessing more power in one political pail than the world has ever witnessed would believe that it creates reality. Perception and reality are indeed connected to the extent that ideas prompt actions, and actions can alter the physical universe to a lesser or greater extent depending on the amount and type of force exerted. When a regime begins to act as though it can make something true simply by saying it is so, it begins to get us in trouble. So it is that five years and change after the staging of a statue being toppled in Baghdad and a "mission accomplished" ceremony on a warship and countless corners turned and last throes thrown, we're now told that we can't leave Iraq because we're so close to winning—depending, of course, on what your definition of "winning" is.

Winning in Iraq, for the Bush mill neocons, was always about establishing a permanent robust military presence in the center of the oil rich Middle East from which America—or rather America's neocon oligarchy—could throw its weight around the region. Now Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki says we have to leave. Administration bull feather merchants have tried to deny he really means that—Maliki was misinterpreted, or drunk, or he was trying to impress some hooker he met online, or what have you—but Maliki keeps saying it, so it sounds like he really, really does mean it, and his Shiite rival Muqtada al Sadr really means it too, as does Grand Ayatolla Ali al Sistani. The Sunnis, well, if they don't like it, they can go fish in a sand dune. Whether the administration can talk its way out of this crack remains to be seen.

With The Candidate out there saying the surge succeeded beyond our wildest dreams, it's kind of a lost argument


:-(