General Petraeus’s report on the “progress” in Iraq isn’t even completed yet and already the spinning has begun. This highly anticipated report, due next month from the top U.S commander in Iraq General David Petraeus, is expected to have a large impact on public opinion and future Iraq policy. The spinning was subtle at first, like when the Bush administration kept asking lawmakers and the public “to withhold judgment on the troop surge” until the report was released, and when Defense Secretary Gates announced that he would wait until the report was released before he would discuss a troop drawdown.
But lately the White House has ramped it up a bit with President Bush publicly supporting Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki (even while the intelligence community doubts his ability to lead), and with GWB’s recent comparison of the Iraq civil war to the Vietnam experience.
While most academics and Vietnam veterans consider the comparison tenuous at best, the “parallels” regarding the perils of troop reduction is being made in several speeches by GWB as an “effort to "provide broader context" for the debate over the upcoming Iraq progress report.” And it has just been reported that a multi-million dollar advertising campaign to support Bush's position is about to be unleashed.
With almost two-thirds of Americans now opposed to this war, the White House and Congressional republicans are getting mighty nervous about this report.
And so the stage is being set.
4 comments:
Is this the same report that the Los Angeles Times has reported is being "revised" by Cheney's office before release?
And hasn't the White House ordered General Petraeus not to speak in public so no one can ask him questions about his findings?
I've read the comparisons, seems to me to be yet another attempt to scare us into the status quo.
Big Guy,
Yes this is the same report although I can't remember the source, I'll take your word that it was the LA Times.
I know that it has been reported that Gen. Petraeus and his co-author, The US Ambassador in Iraq, have been barred from public speaking, but the WH denies this.
14 Points of fascism:
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