Frank Rich writes about the magic spell that President Bush is invoking in the hope it will protect him from his dementor-ish approval ratings:
It was The Washington Post that first quantified General Petraeus’s remarkable ascension. President Bush, who mentioned his new Iraq commander’s name only six times as the surge rolled out in January, has cited him more than 150 times in public utterances since, including 53 in May alone.
As always with this White House’s propaganda offensives, the message in Mr. Bush’s relentless repetitions never varies. General Petraeus is the “main man.” He is the man who gives “candid advice.” Come September, he will be the man who will give the president and the country their orders about the war. …
This general may well be, as many say, the brightest and bravest we have. But that doesn’t account for why he has been invested by the White House and its last-ditch apologists with such singular power over the war. …
… the Petraeus phenomenon is not about protecting the troops or American interests but about protecting the president. For all Mr. Bush’s claims of seeking “candid” advice, he wants nothing of the kind. He sent that message before the war, with the shunting aside of Eric Shinseki, the general who dared tell Congress the simple truth that hundreds of thousands of American troops would be needed to secure Iraq.
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NPR’s Tom Bowman is a tool — serving this morning as an “implement, instrument or utensil” for the dissemination of GOP talking points. Here’s what he said today about Joint Chiefs nominee Adm. Mike Mullen:
“He will likely bow to Gen. Petraeus, who of course is going to report in September on the progress of the surge, and he will not be calling for, like the Democrats are, for any precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops …”
Ah, yes, “precipitous.” Way to work the talking point in there, Bowman. Tool.
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Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell brings us the strange saga of Basim Ridha, who had a speaking role in David O. Russell’s Three Kings in 1999, and today works as an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, overseeing all official executions. Your life is strange. Basim Ridha’s is stranger.
Mykelti Williamson as Col. Horn in Three Kings in 1999:
What do you want to do? Occupy Iraq and do Vietnam all over again? Is that what you want? Is that your brilliant idea?
B-b-b-but no one could have foreseen …
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It’s been more than three months since we’ve heard from Riverbend. I am worried.
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