Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Nancy Pelosi - "Damaged Goods"?

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Nancy Pelosi - "Damaged Goods"?: "There really are few things less reliable and more wrong than the country's predominant pundit class."

How a Real Reporter Reports

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 01/14/2007 | Administration leaving out important details on Iraq

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Limbo, Limbo, Lim-bo

Legal Fiction:

VANITY-INDUCED BONFIRES

__________

I'll have more to say about the "surge" and the constitutionality of Kennedy's bill, etc., later. But for now, I just want to draw everyone's attention to these passages in today's Post, which are just mind-boggling.

In going for more troops, Bush is picking an option that seems to have little favor beyond the White House and a handful of hawks on Capitol Hill and in think tanks who have been promoting the idea almost since the time of the invasion.

. . .

Although the president was publicly polite, few of the key Baker-Hamilton recommendations appealed to the administration, which intensified its own deliberations over a new "way forward" in Iraq. How to look distinctive from the study group became a recurring theme.

As described by participants in the administration review, some staff members on the National Security Council became enamored of the idea of sending more troops to Iraq in part because it was not a key feature of Baker-Hamilton.

Two things. First, Bush is choosing an option that has zero support from anyone except those who have consistently been wrong about pretty much everything relating to Iraq. Military officials, Middle East experts, and foreign officials are all opposed because they don't think it will work. And that makes sense given that the underlying problem today in 2007 is not so much a lack of security, but a sectarian civil war that is ultimately a political problem.

Second, and more inexcusably, if the NSC official is correct, Bush is picking this option out of vanity and spite simply because the Baker Group didn't offer it.

All in all, it sounds like a promising strategy. After all, if history has taught us nothing else, it's that military strategies with no empirical basis adopted out of pride and vanity are usually phenomenally successful.
// posted by publius @ 1/10/2007 11:23:00 AM

The Borowitz Report .com

The Borowitz Report .com: "Bush to Announce Exit Strategy from Reality

Plans Complete Withdrawal from His Senses by Year End

President George W. Bush has been working around the clock to put the finishing touches on a speech to the American people in which he will announce a comprehensive exit strategy from reality, White House aides confirmed today.

When reports emerged that the president was considering deploying an additional “surge” of troops in Iraq against the advice of military experts and overwhelming public sentiment, many in Washington suspected that the move was part of a larger plan to withdraw from reality entirely.

But not until spokesperson Tony Snow addressed reporters today did the White House officially confirm that the president was about to announce an exit strategy from the land of rational thought.

“The president never intended to occupy the world of reality indefinitely,” Mr. Snow told reporters. “He is planning a new way forward, and that way forward is a one-way ticket to fantasyland.”

Moments after Mr. Snow announced Mr. Bush’s plan to unveil an exit strategy from reality, members of the press corps started peppering him with questions about a deadline by which the president will have totally taken leave of his senses.

The White House spokesperson said that the president refused to set a formal timetable for his withdrawal from reality, but added that it was realistic assume that Mr. Bush’s exit from the real world would be complete by year’s end: “It helps that he’s ninety percent of the way there already.”"