It depends on what you mean by ‘target’

March 14, 2006

According to a front-page article in the Washington Post, Bush has suddenly embraced many of the ideas about Iraq’s future that he’s been rejecting. I read the speech — and I’m not all sure the Post is right.

President Bush vowed for the first time yesterday to turn over most of Iraq to newly trained Iraqi troops by the end of this year, setting a specific benchmark as he kicked off a fresh drive to reassure Americans alarmed by the recent burst of sectarian violence.

Bush, who until now has resisted concrete timelines as the Iraq war dragged on longer than he expected, outlined the target in the first of a series of speeches intended to lay out his strategy for victory.

It sounds like something of a breakthrough, right? Benchmarks and target dates have been a Bush anathema for years now. Did the president suddenly join the cut-and-run caucus? Reviewing the president’s remarks, it doesn’t seem like it.

“As more capable Iraqi police and soldiers come on line, they will assume responsibility for more territory — with the goal of having the Iraqis control more territory than the coalition by the end of 2006. And as Iraqis take over more territory, this frees American and Coalition forces to concentrate on training and on hunting down high-value targets like the terrorist Zarqawi and his associates. As Iraqis stand up, America and our coalition will stand down.”

This is boilerplate war rhetoric, except for maybe the reference to the end of this calendar year. But even that isn’t quite what the WaPo suggests. The New York Times explains why (via Eric Umansky).

Mr. Bush set a loose goal of training enough Iraqi police and soldiers to control a majority of Iraq’s territory by the end of this year. The target could be misleading, however, because the sectarian violence is concentrated in small but strategically crucial parts of the country.

Alas, yesterday was not a front-page breakthrough. Same old Bush.

“in small but strategically crucial parts of the country.”

= newspaperspeak meaning, “the places in the country where the people are”

  • Thank you Swan.

    That is a good point. But it is Administration spin that you are demystifying, not the MSM.

  • Today: “As more capable Iraqi police and soldiers come on line, they will assume responsibility for more territory..”

    Yesterday: “As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.”

  • Tomorrow: ” Mission Accomplished, Democracy is on the march and we now leave the New Iraqi Government to work out their own conflicts, but we still must maintain security over the oil.

  • Iraq is growing into the “monster that ate the modern American conservative movement–and conservatives are now beginning to realize it. With prominent conservatives (Paul Craig Robert, Bruce Bartlett, William Buckley, and others) deserting Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld ship of state, the opportunity is on the horizon for the American people to damn the scuppers and sink the class-elite society that denies health care to millions of citizens. We can only hope for change.

    Truly, the Iraq war is becoming the meat-grinder that the Vietnam was; a meat-grinder that has been feed the flesh and bone of young Americans and “spiced” with billions of wasted taxpayer dollars, presenting an inedible, bitter sausage on the plate before the American people. God help us.

  • “Same old Bush” is still good enough for WaPo and NYT front pages though. And every other corporate news outlet in this country.

    In contrast, Feingold’s excellent call for censure (text here), drew only tepid stories, usually headlined “Feingold draws little support”, “Feingold again stands alone”, etc.

    There is such a disconnect between what is actually going on – in the world, before Congress – and what the public learns through its “media”. I can’t think of a better description of national insanity.

  • “Strategize? What’s that? Oh yeah, that’s what we do to win elections.”

  • Election year politics, is all. Bush had to declare
    victory this year. Haven’t we been waiting for this?
    Of course, it’s a somewhat watered down version
    of triumph, not exactly the second coming of
    “Mission Accomplished,” because of those pesky
    insurgents over there, but good enough to make the
    MSM and the press get behind him, and help
    persuade those rascals, the American people
    out there, that things are really going very, very
    well in Iraq.

  • The distinction between statements that can be attributed to the administration and those that can’t is an important one, Lance. Please be a little more careful.

  • It’s clear from Bush’s statement that he has no intention of leaving Iraq. The phrase he used was “standing down” leaving me to conclude that the whole point of the invasion was to put US bases in Iraq close to the oil and they could care less what happens to the Iraqi people.

  • The NYT inflates matters also, saying “…..control a majority of Iraq’s territory “. The prez said “…more territory than the coalition”. There is a big dif. It also falsely asserts that the US has control of most of the Iraqi territory.

  • Hey, by the time three more years have elapsed, the Islamic nutjobs are going to figure out how to blow up something nice and big over here, and we’re gonna have a lot of folks walking around wearing flag pins and calling for heads on pikes.

    Probably including some of y’all… Do you think they’ll target New York, Chicago, LA, Boston, or Washington?

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