Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Pick your reality

From The Washington Post tomorrow.
Faced with substantial opposition both in Congress and among the American public to their Iraq plans, President Bush and Vice President Cheney vowed yesterday to forge ahead with the deployment of more than 21,000 additional troops.
And McClatchy's Washington bureau today.
President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq.
This sort of thing was called "the credibility gap" during the Vietnam War.

If anything, the credibility gap may be greater today, although the level of social strife is not even remotely comparable to the 1960's. But the Johnson administration was at least composed of very talented, smart people who were thoroughly wrong. (Thus the title of David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest.") Eventually someone like Clark Clifford came along and told the truth, late in the day though it was.

The current administration, at the top levels, could be the most dense group of people ever put in charge of our government. There isn't a first rate thinker in the whole lot. Name any of the figures responsible for this mess: Cheney, the now resigned Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz or Bush himself, and you come up with a group of people who should be running an insurance office in Dubuque. (Apologies to those in the insurance business and Iowans.)

They can't explain why another division or two would do any good, and there is no fundamental change in strategy, just some vague tactical proposals that may even do more harm than good. Throw in some loose talk about Iran and a lot of Americans are getting extremely concerned.

Someone on Air America suggested that it's going to take some GOP Senators going to the White House and laying down the law. Frankly, I'm not certain that would do it. But we should all hope some of them have the patriotism and guts to try. This is madness.

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