September 4, 2007- Strength And Success

   Over the past holiday weekend here  in America, we had all the usual fireworks shows, barbecues, concerts, and everything else that generaly comes with Labor Day in America. We  also had something a bit unusual as President Bush decided to forego all of these great American traditions here at home and instead decided to get a head start on his upcoming business trip to Australia  to amek  a Labor day visit to the trops in Iraq. As always, this trip was kept a closely guarded secret, as you would think any Presidential visit to an active war zone would be, and even the press corps were kept in the dark over this. The troops did not know that Bush was coming either, save for the highest ranking ones among them, because they had to know, as the ordinary soldiers did not. Howewver, they did not have to get ready for an extended visit by Bush or anything, because he was on his way to Australia to start with, and these surprise visits by him to the war zones are generally kept pretty short so that the enemies do not have sufficient time to try  anything meaningful while Bush is there. However, these visits are good for one thing, and that is propaganda, that is the entire purpose of them, to make some great propaganda for the Administration in pictures and words. Bush does not go there unprepared  in terms of propaganda, he has speechwriters cranking out shit for him to say at every stop over there, and he did not disappoint Monday. He went on about the troop surge and  said that if the levels of success that the military was having now are able to be sustained, then he might think about bringing some of the troops home, because if the success continues, Iraq will be able to be governed without a smany American troops around there. As always, he is not talking numbers or a timetable, so there was no clarification as to how many troops might come home or when that might happen, but Bush was making it seem as if he had been thinking about this for a while, contrary to his public persona of inflexibility. However, he put a lot of strings on this or any possible troop swithdrawl, saying that it was going to be his decision only and that it was not going to be dictated by politics, or any anti-war sentiment in America, or any of that, this issue was only going to be decided by results in Iraq and nothing else. The way that he put it in his major propaganda speech of the visit, the only way that American troops were going to be coming home from Iraq was if America was in a position of "strength and success" rather than "fear and failure." This is not a great departure from what he has always said about the issue since it started, he just put a couple new phrases on it. he means that he will not bring any troops home unless he truly feels that America has the upper hand in Iraq and not because political pressure is being put on him in a election year, that stance has not changed. What he said had changed was the fact that America was not in such dire straits in Iraq anymore, that he felt that the troop surge was working and that things could become somewhat reasonable in Iraq before he leaves office. He has always said that he cannot bring th etroops hoime because th esituation in Iraq was too dire, and now he says that maybe there's some light at the end of that tunnel, but it all hinges on that strength and success shit. However, that is not exactly a concrete term, it is open to an awful lot of interpretation, and exactly what Bush meant by that is unknown which was the point, he wanted to confuse everyone by teasing them with what they wanted to hear and then coupling it with some vague bullshit stuff.

   He did so because he knows that in just a few weeks, or even days, that long awaited report on the progress of the war in Iraq is due to come out, and that it is not exactly going to say that America is achieving that strength and success that Bush wants, in fact, everyone seems to think that it is going to say the opposite, that America is not achieveing much of anything in Iraq, surge or no surge. That is going to create somer serious heat on the Administration, but Bush will probably answer it by saying that it is an example of that "fear and failure", a political document that has an agenda in mind, that agenda being withdrawing the troops no matter what they are doing. However, that is going to be a hard sell to the American people, because far too many of them are sick and tired of tghe fucking war anyway, and they have wanted it stopped for the longest time now, and are going to use this report as proof that this should be the way to go. they do not see any strenght or success, just dead bodies and tax dollars piling up to the sky, and they have had enough, even if Bush has not. That was why his Administration took a proactive stance on this and sent him over to Iraq this past weekend, so that he could start the formidable White House propaganda machine in on this issue, because a head start was imperative for them here. They want to be able to say that they went to Iraq themselves and talked to the Generals and such that are on the frontlines of the war and got an honest and open assessment of the actual state of the war.  They'll say that there was no other way that it could be because no one knew that Bush was going to go over there until hours before he showed up and that meant that the generals could not start cooking the books and coming up with shit that they knew that Bush wanted to hear because they had no idea that he was coming, so when he showed up and asked them to open said books and show him exactly what was up, they had to do that and could not skewer the results any. This would be in contrast to the report, which was something that was worked on for months, and something that everyone knew was coming, so if they had the opportunity to contribute to it, they could put whatever they wanted to in there and  make it say exactly what they wanted it to. According to the Administration, that will be the reason why we see two so very different assessments of the  war coming out so close together and if you are a good America, you'll believe theirs. The opening salvo of that particular propaganda war was started the other day with Bush's speech in Iraq, and now everyone gets to kick around these ideas of strength and success and fear and failure.  One side will say that everything has been acomplished and the other said will say no fucking way. In the middle will be the tens of thousands of American troops that have no idea when, if ever, they'll finally be able to go home and try and live some tiny semblance of a normal life, as they have to do exactly as they are told. Bush looked like he was on their sidce all the way last weekend, but whether he is or not is open to debate, as those lofty goals that he set on that trip were every bit as vague and  transparent as al the others that he has set in this scene, and no one realy knows whether he means it or if that was just another fancy talking speech designed to but him and his war more time, until January 20, 2009 to be exact. Looking at the war itself, it seems hard to think that what Bush said was anything other than that.

   The statement that America is in a position of strength and success anywhere in Iraq except for Al-Anbar province is questionable at best. That onc eprovince out of something like 16 or 17 provinces in Iraq is the only one where America  can actualy say that they have the upper hand, and that means  that they only have control over a fraction of Iraq. The only other place that America is even reasonably secure is in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, the fortress part of town that America built. That is essentially a self-contained American enclave, not connected to the rest of Iraq except in name only, so the insurgents and such do not even live there, the entire population of that part of town in American now. So the only place in al of Iraq that American actualy controls is the fortreess that they built for themselves, the control they have in Al-Anbar is tenuous at best and could slip away at most any  time, so to say that there is any strength or success in Iraq is simnply not true. The country is in every bit as much a state of anarchy and chaos as ever, that Civil War that has been long promised is still just a heartbeat away, and there is absolutely no stability  in Iraq at all.  Only the Bush Administration is daffy enough to even consider Iraq a country that is functional in  any  way at all, the rest of the world considers it a war zone that is good for nothing right now, many countries around the world do not even consider it a sovereign nation right at this time. The generals told and showed dbush all of this when he visited too, they had no choice, they had no time to sugar coat it, but Bush did not seem to care what the Generals told him in reality, he already had a nice speech written for him tucked away in a suitcoat pocket somewhere and was going to use it no matter what the Generals said, they could have told him that the insurgents were about to take over  the country entirely, and he would have ignored them, as that was his intent all along. Bush also knew exactly what he was going to be told over there as well, and  still chose to ignore it and make that speech anyway. Shit like this is why so many people say that Bush is an unqualified ignoramus that has no business being President of a lemonade stand, let alone America,  because they say the man chooses to believe what he wishes to believe, and that no facts of any kind are ever  going to change that, so trying is useless. The way that he went about things this weekend sure looks that  way, because everyone knows that the man has access to the finest and most precise information available,  and seemingly chose to ignore all that to say that bullshit teasing everyone about troop withdrawls, showing his ignorance and arrogance. The thing is, that no one, not even a scion or wealth and power like George W. Bush can be a complete ignoramus and get elected President, there are way to many people that are desperate for that job that would ace someone like that right out of the game, so Bush could not really be that way, even with the old man and the connections that he has, there just has to be more to this whole thing than that, and there is. George W. Bush says that he is a man of convictions, and truly believed everything that he says, no matter what it may be, and that is the truth, one of the few times you'll hear the truth out of him. He meant exactly what he  said this weekend about that strenght and success shit, and he was correct for doing so too, just the reasons he was are not the reasons you might suspect.

   Bush was mighty pleased when the Generals told him the real situation in Iraq, that America was not in any position of strenght or success, because that was exactly what he wanted to hear, because that was exactrly the way this was all planned. The whole war is and always has been about money, and Bush knows that keeoping it alive until january 20, 2009 is all that he has to do, and he went to Iraq last weekend to see if that was still the way that things are going, and he found  out that it was. That is the position of "strength and success" that he wants, the war to be dragging on until he leaves. His definition of "fear and failure" is stopping his little tea party before that magic date, and that is the only thing left that the man has to do between now and then, ensure that this does not happen. All that he wants is for America to have these little successes that he  can blow up massively in the propaganda machine, like the successes in Al-Anbar province. That was a place that was a hotbed of anti-Saddam activity before America came, and was never a place that was friendly to the insurgents eithger, so the reason that America has had success there is simply because their enemies are not there much. However, the average America does not know that, and when he hears that America controls that province, he thinks that it is the progress and success that Bush speaks of ,when it is really nothing of the sort. However, to Bush, that is success, because it is something that he can blow way out of proportion and try and fool the people with, and the dude does a damn good job at shit like that. He also knows that there will never be enough real success in Iraq to ever bring any of the troops home,  but that he can use shit like the Al-Anbar situation to tease and trick everyone into thinking that he actually consders such things when he does not at all. Bush knows exactly why he was groomed to be what he is today, to do favors for those that got him there, and for his entire term, he has delivered in excelsior. He has zero intentions of stopping now, and knows exactly what maneuvers he has to perform to get that job completed successfully. Strength and success to Bush means that the war i sdragging on and on an on endelssly, and that he can run out the clock to that magic day in 2009 and then ride off into the sunset with his shares of the loot he helped everyone heist. Anything short of that is failure, and it does not look like Bush is about to fail at this mission at all. He is the only one that he has any concern about ending up in a position of strength and success, everyone else can go fuck off. The troops serve at his whim and do what he says, so if they never attain that position of strength and success, so what, he will, and that is all that matters. This is why the man can speak with so much conviction about these things, even when everything seems to be pointing in the opposite direction, because his interests are himself and those that put him where he is, not America , not anything or anyone other than these cronies and himself. Those are his criteria for strength and success, not anything done on the battlefield. These criteria are what has ruled every decision he has made abiout the war thus far, and those criteria will be the only things that make any difference in the way that he handles the war from now until he leaves office either. His definitions of strength and success are as skewered as his definitions of most everything else in life and the results they get are equally as skewered, and that is always going to be the legacy of this Administration, and a sorry one it is at that.

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