The P.R. of B.S.

September 04, 2007

Yet once inside and surrounded by those 10,000 well-armed troops, Mr. Bush finally put his guard down and the hogwash up. He deployed a crowd-pleasing political end run, announcing that Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker tell him that “if the kind of success we are now seeing here continues it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces.”

He gave no specifics, of course, nor did he offer any timeline. But one suspects that Iraq’s growing security and the U.S.’ exquisitely planned draw-down will just happen to coincide with the ineluctable troop shortages expected by spring. Miracles do happen.

But the best part of Mr. Bush’s p.r. extravaganza were these three connected lines – a threefold message that summarized what this White House is, and always has been, all about:

“Those decisions will be based on a calm assessment by our military commanders on the conditions on the ground — not a nervous reaction by Washington politicians to poll results in the media. In other words, when we begin to draw down troops from Iraq, it will be from a position of strength and success, not from a position of fear and failure. To do otherwise would embolden our enemies and make it more likely that they would attack us at home.”

And there you have it, gift wrapped and nicely bowed: political attack, naked contradiction and laughable propaganda, all in one pithy paragraph.

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