Frank Rich, The New York Times, June 24, 2007
By this late date we should know the fix is in when the White House’s top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam’s aluminum tubes. “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq — the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America — had officially begun.
America wasn’t paying close enough attention then. We can’t afford to repeat that blunder now. Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we’d be wise to heed.
The first was a confirmation of recent White House hints that the long-promised September pivot point for judging the success of the “surge” was inoperative. That deadline had been asserted as recently as April 24 by President Bush, who told Charlie Rose that September was when we’d have “a pretty good feel” whether his policy “made sense.” On Sunday General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker each downgraded September to merely a “snapshot” of progress in Iraq. “Snapshot,” of course, means “Never mind!”
The second message was more encoded and more ominous. Again using similar language, the two men said that in September they would explain what Mr. Crocker called “the consequences” and General Petraeus “the implications” of any alternative “courses of action” to their own course in Iraq. What this means in English is that when the September “snapshot” of the surge shows little change in the overall picture, the White House will say that “the consequences” of winding down the war would be even more disastrous: surrender, defeat, apocalypse now. So we must stay the surge. Like the war’s rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/11 and a high-stakes Congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill).
General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker wouldn’t be sounding like the Bobbsey Twins and laying out this coordinated rhetorical groundwork were they not already anticipating the surge’s failure. Both spoke on Sunday of how (in General Petraeus’s variation on the theme) they had to “show that the Baghdad clock can indeed move a bit faster, so that you can put a bit of time back on the Washington clock.” The very premise is nonsense. Yes, there is a Washington clock, tied to Republicans’ desire to avoid another Democratic surge on Election Day 2008. But there is no Baghdad clock. It was blown up long ago and is being no more successfully reconstructed than anything else in Iraq.
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Frank Rich: They’ll Break the Bad News on 9/11
Frank Rich, The New York Times, June 24, 2007
By this late date we should know the fix is in when the White House’s top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam’s aluminum tubes. “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq — the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America — had officially begun.
America wasn’t paying close enough attention then. We can’t afford to repeat that blunder now. Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we’d be wise to heed.
The first was a confirmation of recent White House hints that the long-promised September pivot point for judging the success of the “surge” was inoperative. That deadline had been asserted as recently as April 24 by President Bush, who told Charlie Rose that September was when we’d have “a pretty good feel” whether his policy “made sense.” On Sunday General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker each downgraded September to merely a “snapshot” of progress in Iraq. “Snapshot,” of course, means “Never mind!”
The second message was more encoded and more ominous. Again using similar language, the two men said that in September they would explain what Mr. Crocker called “the consequences” and General Petraeus “the implications” of any alternative “courses of action” to their own course in Iraq. What this means in English is that when the September “snapshot” of the surge shows little change in the overall picture, the White House will say that “the consequences” of winding down the war would be even more disastrous: surrender, defeat, apocalypse now. So we must stay the surge. Like the war’s rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/11 and a high-stakes Congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill).
General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker wouldn’t be sounding like the Bobbsey Twins and laying out this coordinated rhetorical groundwork were they not already anticipating the surge’s failure. Both spoke on Sunday of how (in General Petraeus’s variation on the theme) they had to “show that the Baghdad clock can indeed move a bit faster, so that you can put a bit of time back on the Washington clock.” The very premise is nonsense. Yes, there is a Washington clock, tied to Republicans’ desire to avoid another Democratic surge on Election Day 2008. But there is no Baghdad clock. It was blown up long ago and is being no more successfully reconstructed than anything else in Iraq.
Read More Here