Saturday, March 11, 2006

Bush To Try To Polish The Proverbial Turd

President Bush is heading back out on the road to attempt to sell the American public on a concept that is questionable at best, and ludicrous in actuality.

He wants people to think that the U.S. is succeeding in Iraq.

The president hopes to give "better depth, understanding and context for how the strategy in Iraq is unfolding," a senior White House official said of the planned speeches. Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other Cabinet members will be making speeches on Iraq in advance of the anniversary of the U.S. invasion...

The initiative is modeled on a similar effort the White House rolled out in November and December, when Bush gave four speeches, acknowledging setbacks, pointing out how the military had adapted its strategy and highlighting the administration's plans for victory...


Bush's planned speeches on Iraq come as that nation's fledgling democracy is struggling to put together a unity government against a backdrop of intense sectarian violence...


"There are some who are trying to, obviously, sow the seeds of sectarian strife," Bush said, during remarks to a group of community newspaper publishers yesterday. "They fear the advancement of a democracy. They blow up shrines in order to cause this Iraqi democracy that is emerging to go backwards, to not emerge."


Bush praised Iraqis for so far not escalating the ongoing crisis into a full-fledged civil war. "As I said earlier, there was -- no question there was violence and killing, the society took a step back from the abyss," Bush said. "And people took a sober reflection about what a civil war would mean."


Bush is trying to polish a turd, or put lipstick on the pig, or whatever aphorism one prefers to describe a futile attempt to make a bad situation seem less loathsome.

It is also insulting to the people he is trying to con.

As he did during his last round of speeches, Bush will attempt to focus on specific elements of his Iraq strategy in hopes of rallying public support for the war. His speech Monday will focus on the efforts being made by Iraqi security forces to tamp down the ongoing violence. Another address will focus on the military's evolving strategy for detecting and defusing roadside bombs. A third address is likely to be a case study of an Iraqi city or town, which the White House hopes will illustrate its plans for clearing insurgents from parts of Iraq, installing Iraqi security forces then rebuilding.

The idea is to bring the view "from 30,000 feet down to eye level," the senior White House official said.

A risky strategy at best.

It is easier to see bullshit from "eye level" than from the comfortable distance of 30,000 feet.

2 Comments:

Blogger DrewL said...

Easier to smell it, too. No doubt, the stench will be suffocating. Good luck with that.

The more Bush tries to explain his case and "polish the turd", as you say, the more it seems that he's trying just a bit to hard to get his point across. Nonetheless, people just aren't buying it.

3/11/2006 10:30 PM  
Blogger Effwit said...

DrewL:

Bush does appear to believe that the American people are dumber than they really are. Why else would he go out to try to convince them of the absurd?

These "sell the war" tours will probably remain a fixture every few months on the president's schedule.

Unless, of course, the tours morph into a "sell the IRAN war" program.

Then we will be seeing even more of him.

3/12/2006 10:32 AM  

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