The Big O: WAR MINUS ZERO

The Politics of Hope as played by the message-challenged Democrats has morphed by media-blitz (the subtext pleadingly yearns 'Save Us from..... Hillary!!!') into a one word hysterical elixir......Obama!!.....-- Attempting to win congress back this fall, by default really, from an imploding scandalized Republican party not averse to a little hysteria of its own-- Polls inside the campaigns must suggest voters prefer a timeline or deadline for troop re-deployment from Iraq at the very least a position the weak-kneed also scandalized Demies half-heartedly embrace with its trepidatious finger always to the wind these days-- The demies inability to strenuously argue for a troop pullout of Iraq reflects its 'good liberal' hubris the likes of which Mr. Clinton sent into Somalia where not only did the mission fail to sort out the food distribution jumbo-mess at the expense of downed Black Hawks and extinguished lives of our underarmored soldiers but the potential millions so ordained by liberal hubric for a destiny of starvation saved themselves without our heavy handed expertise-- The Demies don't believe the Iraqis are capable of sorting out and establishing an history of their own--We have destroyed an entire country, both a government and its economy that was once built by the very Iraqis whose competence our imperial hubris blinds us from comprehending-- That there will be more bloodspill if we leave is true-- There will be continued bloodspill if we stay-- Pretending it can be avoided is political cowardice-- Does either party's paradigm reflect the real world??---

So we have a clearly beleaguered White House sending out one of its spokesmen named Mr. Bartlett to blatheringly attempt to outflank the flimsical minority party with its own media frenzy outlining the change of course coming in Iraq that's not really a change of course because stay-the-course somehow in spinspeak never really was our course and at any rate the demies are still 'cut-and-run', of course.....-- Hearing this confusing or confounding disemblage and the half dozen or so deadlines or at the very least timelines strewn across political battlefields by the likes of Senators Warner and Clinton poor old one-foot-in-the-grave al-Malicki has probably been bidding on E-bay for an escape hatch and a parachute-- Apparantly though in a Bush initiated telephone call Malicki was reassured by the president that the US was not in the process of pulling the rug out from under him-- Would a US condoned coup of al-Malicki strengthen the American hand in Iraq and the wider Middle East??-- If Bush' statements to him reflect the reality of the US position then all this timeline jive is simply election year posturing in which the president uses this opportunity to portray himself with a new-found charade of 'in-charge' flexibility cynically responding to the critics call for ever changing needs and new tactics on the ground-- Tony Snow says then that there is no change of plans for Iraq--The strategery of course Mr. Bush refuses to alter--

The contradictory rhetorical obfuscation being spewed from the White house is so desperately pervasive many questions arise 'Is anyone here in Charge?' and 'How can we all arrive at the same page??'-- If the dismally savage facts on the ground now are so unambiguously and inarguably stark (When General Caldwell called the US attempt to stem the tide of sectarian slaughter in Baghdad a 'disheartening' failure no public challenge or rebuke so much as peeped from the White House or the DOD) so as to preclude plausible deniability on the part of the administration and that those facts denote an immediacy too intense to delay until after the election and in fact portend end-game probabilities the expertise of both Henry Kissinger and James Baker come into play though both are also conspicuously expert at the vagaries of electioneering-- Kissinger disengenuously announced 'Peace is at hand' on the October eve of the 1972 election hoping anti war sentiment would mute long enough that Mr. Nixon could secure a second term-- Worked like a charm although Nixon's victory insured down the line an ignoble end to his White House occupancy-- Mr. Bush owes his first presidency at least to Baker's germane work in the Florida recount debacle-- Exit-strategy in Iraq commingling with midterm election skullduggery may be counterproductive in the end but Baker has so far publicly expressed a willingness to engage Syria and Iran as potential aides in hammering out a solution to quagmiring-on ad infinitum which certainly spells out serious intent-- Publicly airing, or was it leaked deliberately, this 'speak-to-your-enemies' tenet likely did not go over very well with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert, who speaking of the bedfellowed politically strange, attempted to solidify his decrepit position in the polls by adding a right wing adjutant to his team known mostly for championing dis-enfranchisement for all non-jews living in Israel and for demanding execution for any Israeli political leader who speaks with a member of Hamas-- Olmert spent last week yammering at Vladamir Putin on the need for intimidating Iran into some form of nuclear issues' surrender-- Is Israel seeking a coaliton of the willing to endorse an intense Israeli air campaign against Iran??-- This would be an October/November surprise threatening civilization magnitudinously beyond even Kissingerian proportions but politicians down on their war luck have not always been the most rational of creatures in such extremis--