Apparently, we are no longer staying the course:
On CBS this morning, White House Counselor Dan Bartlett claimed that the administration has “never” had “a stay-the-course strategy.”
President Bush made the same claim over the weekend. It’s not true. For years, the White House has repeatedly described their Iraq policy as “stay the course.”
Sullivan has the John Stewart clip that clears things all up.
This reminds me of the time that, after years of using the phrase “the War on Terror,” some genius decided the name should be changed to the “Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism.” In case this should worry the propagandists who pose as conservatives inthe right-wing blogosphere, I will make it simple: ‘Stay the course” is no longer viable, and you should hold off until our market research gives us a new ctach phrase (hopefully our guys will come up with something better than GSAVE). However, you can continue to state that anyone who deviates from the administration line is going to ‘cut and run.’ That piece of propaganda is still operative.
In other words, the administration that you have shown blind obeisance to has once again cut your legs out from under you, and your recitation of “stay the course for 4 years” now means nothing. Don’t worry- they know you will vote for them anyway, if for no other reason than the ‘sexual McCarthyism’ of the left.
srv
You dunderheads. You see, there’s always been a secret strategy. Stay the course was just a cover for the vastly different adaptation strategy. But we couldn’t tell the enemy we were adapting.
Now that we are within a Friedman Unit of victory, the president can tell us the truth.
For something interesting, here’s the guy behind the Maliki coup story. Interview with Baathist Expat
wilfred
I always preferred The War Against Terrorism since the resulting acronym was a handy way to remember the war’s architects and their brainless strategy.
The Other Steve
The strategy is no longer “Stay the Course”.
Nor is it “Don’t change horses mid-stream”
It’s now… “A Single Pattern Methodology for Uniformality”
Market research has shown nobody has a fucking clue what that means, and that’s good for the President.
Pb
Well, it was never really a strategy per se, more of a bumper-sticker catch-phrase.
I don’t know what that means, but it sure *sounds* dirty! Although it’d be nice if they could get it down to one word, like ‘Scaifeism’ or “Starrishness’.
RSA
I think Mehlman and Bush should have taken a different approach in catapulting the propaganda: They hadn’t been saying, “Stay the course”; they’d been misquoted. The strategy has actually been “Stay, of course.” Much more in line with what’s going on in Iraq.
jg
It reminds me of Animal Farm. Dan Bartlett is just the latest guy playing the role of Squealer.
Andrei
I won’t know what to believe with regards to the GOP strategy until Darrell pipes up and confirms what the true next party line is supposed to be. (Darrell listens and reads all the rightwing propaganda so we don’t have to.)
Party before country, right Darrell?
docg
I did not have sexual relations with that invasion.
BarneyG2000
According to Tony Snow, at today’s press briefing, “Stay the Course”, left the wrong impression. So for the last 3 ½ years the President was just flat out wrong!
Ryan S.
The ‘Decider’ has decided that history will no longer reflect actual real events, but rather those most suited to winning whe war on terror.
Next on the redefinition list is:
Civil War, Previously defined as “a war between political factions or regions within the same country. ” http://www.dictionary.com
Changed to “a war between political factions or regions within the same country, which does not take place in Iraq.”
Stay tuned for further redefinitions.
The Other Steve
But Darrell will only support it if he thinks it is good politically. Once it starts being bad, then he says that is the Democrats position.
Lee
Where’s Darrell when we need him LOL
chopper
we’ve always been at war with eastasia. seriously.
how dumb do these people think we are?
neil
chopper: As dumb as John Hinderaker, who will transition effortlessly into bashing Dems for their insane committment to a failed policy.
jg
Its not a civil war unless one side is wearing blue and the other is wearing gray.
Zifnab
The very idea that the President would suggest we doggedly “Stay the Course” when he, Cheney, and Melman have repeatedly claimed their strategy is to “Adapt and Win” as was suggested by all the Generals they’ve been listening to, is the height of Democratic pandering to the Islamo-liberal far left elements of the Commu-Faci-crats within their party.
Seriously, though, I’ll say this about the White House reading list. JG’s got it right on. It clearly must have included alot of Orwell to get this near to the mark of the political distopian peak.
Richard 23
“Stay the course” is shorthand for “complete the task while adapting strategy and tactics to win.” Duh. Therefore ‘stay the course’ isn’t the same as “stay the course.” Understood?
It doesn’t really mean literally “stay the course.” It’s not the Bush Administration’s fault that they’ve been misunderstood. Frankly they only just realized and were shocked by the fact that the media didn’t get it this whole time.
The media seemed to get the WMD and 9/11 Saddam linkage confused too. It’s not the Admin’s fault. They don’t pay attention to the media anyway. They’re too busy doing their good works.
I think this is the turd in the punchbowl that’s being floated. More doublethink training for the true believers.
Lesson: words have no meaning (other than what we say they mean, subject to future retroactive revision).
DoubtingThomas
He’ll be as soon as he receives the email with the new Rove approved talking points on Iraq…
Should be working
This is obviously a conspiracy by the far left Google to boost the viewership of their newly acquired YouTube.
Newport 9
No, you’re all missing the point. What Bush was trying to say in his charmingly inarticulate way was “Stay [on] the [golf] course.” It was, you see, a clarification of his earlier “Now watch this drive” comment.
Trust the biased liberal media to misinterpret a simple reference to the President’s golf game.
jg
Just an FYI:
You guys will be getting a two and a half week vacation from me trying to tie every word and act of the republicans back to an Orwell book I just read. I leave tomorrow for 16 days in southern europe including a 7 day cruise in the med. Maybe its not teh best idea to schedule a vacation in Eurasia when the People’s democratic Republic of Oceania is heading toward an important election but when you’re air tickets are free you go when they tell you. Don’t go screwing this country up while I’m gone.
The Asshole Formerly Known as GOP4Me
Have a safe trip.
And don’t worry, we’ve always been at war with Eastasia. The Eurasians are our allies, you should be quite safe.
Davebo
There have been similar misunderstandings regarding Bush’s statements on our strategy in Iraq.
For instance, it was never “as the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down” but really “as the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand around
Pb
We’ve obviously misunderestimated his electrocution once again.
Davebo
Seven days? Big deal! I did a 106 day cruise of the Med in 1984. (106 days straight at sea that is).
Hopefully Bush won’t sell the Iranians any missiles while you’re out there.
Cyrus
I’ve always liked Operation: Infinite Justice. Well, by “always” I mean “as soon as it stopped being the official name for an actual military operation. Were they fucking kidding?”
Another great thing about it is that it fits any and all of the major theories about what the biggest problem with the administration is. Theocracy? Carelessness? Bloody-minded stupidity? Jingoistic bullshit? You name it. Fortunately, they limited it to the Afghanistan invasion and quickly reconsidered even that.
Proud Liberal
John I’m really enjoying your posts lately. Just the right touch. Ridicule. Nothing quite works like ridicule. This administration and their little sychophants are have brought it upon themselves. They are increasingly seen as the fools that they are. And now they are going to be fools without power. Couldn’t have happened to a better bunch of creeps.
JWeidner
OT, but amusing enough that I wanted to post it.
Via Eric Alterman
RSA
I’m sorry to say I missed this one. Was it put out by DC or Marvel? How long a run did it have?
craigie
Say, wasn’t McCarthy gay?
Punchy
Just more Republicans taking responibility for their fuckups
Here’s the money shot:
Oh, wait, you say. That bastard DID the right thing…fired his staffer…ya know, the rogue who did this without his knowledge? Not so much:
the link is here
scarshapedstar
Sullivan has the John Stewart clip that clears things all up.
OMG, he’s a comedian!!!!11!1!!1! Who cares!1!!1!111!1!
Has anyone ever understood this right-wing criticism of Stewart?
Paddy O'Shea
I think what the president is saying here is “stay for the main course.”
Apparently they’ve cooked up something everyone is going to think is absolutely fabulous.
Pb
Wait, that sounds familiar. That’s got to be a DC thing–or maybe a D.C. thing. Close enough, anyhow.
Face
we’ll stand down when Iraqis stand up, then get shot down, at which time we’ll stand back up, until we’re blown up, at which moment we’ll rain down, all assorted eyes and flesh and legs and stuff, until the Iraqis back up, prop up, and set up Saddam into power, at which time we will stay the course.
LLeo
No just an unmarried crossdresser that spent alot of time in hotel rooms with his “assistant”.
cd6
The course has been stayed, motherfuckers
GET ER DONE
RSA
Lacking a GOP punching bag on this blog to defend the current not-staying-the-course strategy, I’ll observe that Bush has been pushing back on this phrase for some time:
Cutting through Bush’s usual incoherence, I gather this means, “Our strategy has all of the good parts of staying the course, but none of the bad parts. Also, only we can use the phrase, and when we do, it means whatever we say it means.”
DougJ
Believe it or not, I thought that was a good idea. It’s a more accurate description of what our efforts should be.
LLeo
Oops sorry I was thinking of Hoover. My bad.
Salty Party Snax
If we were actually winning these wars we really wouldn’t be having this conversation now, would we…
Odd that we should spend so much time discussing liguistic marketing techniquess and spin rather than the harsh fact that we are getting blown away in 2 distinctly different Asian land wars.
Maybe it’s the lack of suitably gruesome pictures that has caused us to drift into such vapid irrelevancies.
Pb
How about Operation Crusading to Radicalize, Undermine, and Destabilize the Earth–Other than Israel–Liberation!
Should be working
I can’t wait for Bush to declair “War Against the North Korean Evil Regime…”
yet another jeff
We are heading into Outer Limits territory here, aren’t we? Maybe at least into a Treehouse of Horror homage to Outer Limits… “How to Cook Humans” “How to Cook For Humans” How to Cook Forty Humans”
Punchy
I believe, as Bush is a golfer, the expression is “spray the course”. Every two-bit weekend hack can relate.
Or maybe it’s “slay the Gores”, which would explain their Swiftboating of poor Al and his NWA-lovin’ old lady
Or maybe it’s “shave the cores”, some Texas thing they do to apples when they’re done eating them
Aaron
I second Pb’s “O-Crude-Oil”
and yes, eastasia has always been at war with Paneurope…
Aaron
And look, the fact that this is occuring so close to the election means it must be some kind of fiendish Democrat trick! enabled by their wholley owned ally, the so called main stream media.
Its fiendish I tell ya, and further proof that all democrats are minions of soleless evil who must be defeated!
Pooh
A) not that there’s anything wrong with that (implied in your question, I’m sure…)
B) You’re more likely thinking of his #1 bobo Roy Cohn, who was by all accounts, a piece of work…
ThymeZone
Justin Raimondo today, as always, kicking ass and taking names.
ThymeZone
It’s the Official Sex Police, calling for a constitutional amendment to “Spay the whores” to prevent them from reproducing and threatening one-man-one-sex-object marriage, which as we all know, is the basis for civilization.
Civilization, which in turn is threatened by cut-and-run Democrats. Or something like that.
Sirkowski
That was G. Edgar Hoover.
Tsulagi
Typical Bush and admin pod bullshit.
So now they want to criticize their critics saying they were wrong all along, it was never “stay the course” they heard from Bush repeated over and over. Really, It was always “adapt to win,” or whatever brain-dead lie works best for you. Get the discussion centered on the slogan, not the result.
Whether the “strategy” was Stay the Course, Adapt to Win or whatever slogan the retards think is catchy, their monumentally incompetent result in Iraq and national security as a whole is complete FUBAR. But that’s not what matters, it’s the slogan that’s all important. Focus on that.
Even though current Pubs have proven to be less than worthless, you can count on the parrot troopers to be scared a Dem might be worse in their frightening nightmares. They’ll shit their pants like Instapundit to stay the course they’ve been told to stay.
So Republican patriots, show your loyalty. Time to get your asses up in the air again to receive important new slogans at this critical juncture in the GSADE, Global Struggle Against Democrat Extremism. That’s the true war. As always, now is not the time to think; Turd Blossom is counting on you to parrot the right slogan.
craigie
1. Of course not!
2. I actually knew that. I was just practicing this new “fact-free”
salad dressingslander I got in the GOP aisle.Pooh
Don’t you need a degree for that?
Otto Man
Thank God we didn’t elect that flip-flopper Kerry.
Zifnab
I think that’s what we can really pull away from all this. The Republicans are all talk. Puffy political slogan gets swapped for puffy political slogan. Another 12 people take an IED to the humvee. Another unknown number of “terrorists” get dragged off to secret prisons. Another set of Sunnis/Shias massacres a bunch of Shias/Sunnis for crossing the street at the wrong time of day. Another Halliburton paycheck. Business as usual.
leefranke
Come ON Darrell!!
We’re waiting!
Zifnab
Nancy Pelosi for President.
Darrell? Darrell?
Ok, fine. How about we just set you up with some pie? You do like pie?
Pb
Results 1 – 10 of about 177 from whitehouse.gov for “stay the course“
Your search – site:whitehouse.gov “adapt to win“ – did not match any documents.
Punchy
Lindsey “habeus corpus my ass” Graham finally gets it:
Ooooh, snap. Blaming all the generals. Good idea, Lindsey. Just what your party wants–the very group, who–if actually honest and forthcoming with the REAL conditions in Iraq–would absolutely devestate your party’s Fantasy Iraq War.
Pissing on the generals. They’re going to LOVE hearing this. Leaked memos, new allegations of incompetence, and calls for redeployment by “senior military officials” in 3…2…1…
srv
Lou Dobbs asked why they haven’t delivered victory yet. What’s their problem? The President has given the generals everything they asked of him. And Rummy can’t be wrong, because he’s inspired by God.
The only explanation is that too many of these generals are closet Clintonites. They don’t want to win.
craigie
Yes, they don’t want to win. It’s time to take off the gloves, and kill the other 20 million Iraqis we missed in the first Five Year Plan.
Then they’ll like us, you bet.
Sstarr
I think that the White House strategy for success by adapting in Iraq could be summed up as:
Or something like that.
tBone
This is just another example of how the drive-by media gets thing wrong. Why are they taking what the President says at face value?
If these so-called “journalists” would actually do their job and probe a little deeper, they’d discover that when the Commander in Chief says “stay the course,” he actually means “adapt and win.”
Instead, the secular press ignores the deeper truth and just reports the President’s actual words. Typical liberal dishonesty.
r€nato
tBone, do you write for Colbert? That could have come straight from his mouth!
r€nato
Lou Dobbs asked why they haven’t delivered victory yet. What’s their problem?
Yeah, I caught that on Real Time.
Lou is sometimes correct and sometimes… he should just shut his fool mouth. That was one of the times. Hello, Lou? They were given an impossible task. Rummy actually forbade anyone to talk about a Plan B in case things went wrong after the overthrow of Saddam.
Blaming the generals seems kind of, well, kind of like hating the military.
SeesThroughIt
BART: Military school? You lied to me!
HOMER: Well, I’m sorry if you heard “Disneyland,” but I distinctly said “military school!”
Tsulagi
Naw, Lindsey is just being mavericky. It’s fashionable these days for Republicans and “libertarians” as they go ass up for Bush.
He wants to blame the generals? Yeah. CENTCOM commander Abizaid and other field commanders have been telling Congress for over two years there isn’t a purely military solution to Iraq. But they really have to stop being subtle. They’re talking to the people who yawn when they see intelligence assessments titled BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN U.S. and take fantasy WMD tales from someone code named Curveball as gospel. The retards are in charge.
So Lindsey, though your guys called for congressional investigative hearings less than 24 hours after a nipple was flashed, how many oversight hearings have you called for on Iraq? None? Oh, that’s right, you’re just being a maverick. Carry on.
Perry Como
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. These guys govern like the MBAs at Boo.com managed their company back in the dotcom days. Instead of realizing that their ideas are fundamentally flawed, they slap some more marketing on it and just blow through money (and bodies in the case of the Iraq war).
SeesThroughIt
Or the geniuses who ran incite magazine into the ground in less than a year by promising all sorts of ridiculous, unrealistic things (not that I was an incite hire who fell victim to this horrible mismanagement…not, not at all. Fuckin’ Torsten. What a jaggov). Incite‘s “we will sell 500,000 copies per title per month–everybody will worship our keen business acumen!” sure sounds a lot like “we will be greeted as liberators.”
Sam Hutcheson
Thank God we didn’t elect that flip-flopper Kerry.
In the short term your smarm is well-noted. In the long term, I’m generally happy the propaganda wing of the party didn’t have President Kerry to pin the failure of Bush’s foreign policy clusterfuck on.
Salty Party Snax
This leaves little room for doubt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZE20lzZZF0
KC
For all the flack the President is getting here, I think we need to realize what is really scary: that there are people, lots of ’em, who are going to say to themselves, “Gee, the President’s right. Only Liberals and Communists would say ‘Stay the course.'”
CaseyL
That Bush said something that warp speeds right past “dishonest” and into “barking mad” terrority gives me some hope that his sublime confidence in the GOP’s not losing even the House next month is based on his complete detachment from reality and not on his complete confidence in vote fraud.
t. jasper parnell
So, sure they aren’t staying the course visa visa the GWOT TWAT but they stay the course visa visa visas. Joe Papp and his wife are separated by the current hatred of all things Cuban. So GWOT and TWAT require changing horses in midstream while keeping the same dolt who forced the unwilling beast into water to deep for its four legs, but now the Great War on Marriages betwixt Americans and undesirables takes a turn for the crap. Lurvely.
Randy
This is a tricky one. Is it time to cut and run? No. Should we keep doing what we’re doing? Probably not.
I think the war was probably a mistake, but I think that the long terms ramifications can’t be judged just yet. Ask again in January and we’ll know if “stay the course” was a better idea than “cut and run.” It’s still awfully early. Remember: this war could last a generation, it could last a century, it could last a millennium.
Perry Como
I think this will be the defining war of this eon. 500 million years from now historians will look back and say, “Ni estas certaj ĝoj Prezidanto George W. Bush decidis ten la kurson en Irako.”
Until then I don’t think it is fair to judge the President’s legacy.
craigie
Won’t we have been through the Rapture by then?
t. jasper parnell
Kevin Tillman, brother of Pat, weighs in on staying courses and justifying. He seems a tad upset, but who knows, maybe I kant red.
t. jasper parnell
After the watching of which I weep and buy a plane ticket for somewhere else.
jg
No one has said anything about cut and run. You’re giving yourself a false choice to make. The only time you hear ‘cut and run’ is when some right wing blowhard is misrepresenting the left to help you with your false choice.
Randy
You don’t like the expression “cut and run”. Then what would you call leaving before the mission is accomplished? Leaving and greiving maybe?
Andrew J. Lazarus
Hey, Randy, which mission? That 2003 pipe dream of the democratic pro-American secular pro-Israel Iraq? Might as well hang around until you are trisecting an angle with straightedge and compass.
ThymeZone
What? The mission was accomplished in May 2003.
Try to keep up.
Dustbin Of History
The mission to keep the Democrats out of power, of course.
Randy
How about an Iraq that isn’t on the verge of civil war? Is that not a worthy mission?
If we leave now, there is little doubt that Iraq will descend into civil war. It could even become a haven for as many as three different terrorist groups: Sunnis in the west, Kurds in the north, Shiiites in the east. We simply cannot allow that to happen.
Maybe we shouldn’t have gone in. But that doesn’t mean we should leave now. A does not imply B.
Randy
How about an Iraq that isn’t on the verge of civil war? Is that not a worthy mission?
If we leave now, there is little doubt that Iraq will descend into civil war. It could even become a haven for as many as three different terrorist groups: Sunnis in the west, Kurds in the north, Shiiites in the east. We simply cannot allow that to happen.
Maybe we shouldn’t have gone in. But that doesn’t mean we should leave now. A does not imply B.
tBone
Is Randy a spoof? Yes. Do we know who he really is? Nope. Does Rumsfeldian rhetoric still amuse me? You bet. Am I easily amused? Maybe.
radish
Ha! Simply direct your attention to a map of the Middle East, and in particular the terrain in between the two land wars in Asia, and you will soon realize that this is all part of the neocons’ clever pincer-like strategy, and that Rummy has the situation well under control. As the two fronts draw closer together, the situation will doubtless improve, as it always does when you set your pincer up properly. What could possibly go wrong?
ThymeZone
Pince me, I must be dreaming.
Ryan S.
In case you missed it.
civil war
n.
A war between factions or regions of the same country.
Sorry to inform you that we passed that milestone a long time ago. Right now, our ‘strategy’ is amounting to exactly ‘jack shit’. You have about two options right now get the hell out, or increase drasticly the amount of boots on the ground and try to get the groups that are killing each other to cool down and talk. Using this administrations dirty word ‘diplomacy’.
ThymeZone
In that case, you are done. You don’t have enough boots to put on that ground to make a difference, and even if you did, the American people would not support it. Doing so would prolong the inevetible and jack up the killing.
It’s over, quit being an ass or a spoof or whatever you are.
The country has correctly deduced that the war is a huge mistake and a lost cause. Move on.
Ted
At a certain point, you make the choice to leave the exploding building you’re in. Does it suck to have Iraq turn into a truly disgusting state? Sure. Can we do a goddamn thing about it with 140,000 troops that we haven’t been able to do in the last 2.5 years? No. At some point you make an exit, and study what happened and learn your lessons for future mistaken, bungled wars of choice.
Concerned Dilettante Vacillator
This is quality spoof, here. Much better than what he was putting out a while ago. Complaints have brought improvements, BJ shoppers!
I, for one, propose a multi-generational deployment to Iraq, as is fitting for the multi-generational GWOT/GSAVE/WWIII. Someday, our childrens’ children will look back on March 2003, and decide that, while maybe their grandparents shouldn’t have been sent to take out Saddam, they’re not going to cut and run and leave the job incomplete for their childrens’ children. (We have to make military service an inherited obligation, did I mention that? Think of it as a “bedroom window” draft, if you will.)
It’s difficult to “stay the course” when one intends to fight for decades, if not centuries, if not millenia. But the more Iraqis we kill, the fewer Iraqi grandchildren our grandchildren will have to worry about killing. It’s a rocky, bumpy course, and you certainly can’t think of staying it as the eagle flies; but if you think of it as going from Point A to Point B, you’re still techically staying the course even if you have to detour through Points C-Z to get there. So right now, if we’re on Point F, or its offshoot Point FUBAR, hey, at least we’re on the right general route. Mission accomplished, we’ve made it to Point F. Only about 18-37 more corners to turn, and we’ve got hundreds of years to get there, so no sweat.
Ultimately, the only people residing within Iraq will be the descendents of American soldiers sent there in the first wave. Then the nation will be Christian and at peace, and we can consider withdrawing our forces and/or admitting Iraq to the Union.
We’re in good shape in Iraq, people. Keep fighting the good fight! Don’t let the Defeatocrats and terrorists keep you down. Better to beat them here, on the blogosphere, than to have to fight them in the streets of Baghdad or Boston.
Pb
I’ve got a plan to win in Iraq, with more troops, and overwhelming force. You see, Cheney and Rumsfeld had the right idea when they started outsourcing our military to Halliburton and Blackwater, but their problem is, for whatever reason, they don’t know how to do anything on the cheap. What we really need to do is outsource our military to Mexico, India, and China.
First, we can offer citizenship to immigrants within our borders in exchange for, say, national guard service. Then, before they know it, we’ve rebuilt our military, baby! We’ll probably need to promote most of the Americans in the service to officers to keep up. Then, if we need more mercs or a bigger supply chain, that’s where China and India can come in.
Or, we could redeploy our troops, let the Iraqis sort it out, and talk to the UN in the meantime. But neither one of these plans is nearly as good as my original plan: don’t go in there!
Concerned Dilettante Vacillator
Don’t forget Poland! Romania, too. Those guys are real cheap.
Yep. Ask any man on the street in India or China or anywhere, and there’s nothing they’d rather do than die in Iraq. It’s a proven fact, and if the Bush Administration has made one key error in the fight against terror in Iraq thus far, it’s not harnessing this international willingness to fight there.
We could also take captured POWs in Gitmo, and maybe US convicts, and offer them freedom if they’ll fight for us in Iraq. That way, we solve prison overpopulation AND terrorism in one fell swoop. (Please, no one Google the word “Dirlewanger.” Godwin will strike you down!)
Like that t-shirt of Bush’s father saying, “I Should Have Pulled Out.” But hey, at least GHW Bush had a PLAN to produce the worst President in history. What Democrat had a plan to impregnate Barbara Bush?
Pb
Oh, we’d pay them, of course. What would be the equivalent salary for a Chinese merc, adjusted for cost of living? I’m betting, way less than that of a Blackwater employee.
Maybe some convicts, but Gitmo detainees? Forget it, we don’t need to be training taxi drivers…
If there ever was such a plan, I’m just glad that it stayed secret.
chriskoz
Actually, this statement would seem to be correct. A “stay-the-course strategy” would, by definition, require a “strategy” in Iraq. And since there appears to be no strategy… there can be no “stay-the-course strategy”.
Now if the left wing media would just allow this “truth” to get out, we could finally win in Iraq.
Concerned Dilettante Vacillator
If they get too pricey, we can always use Congolese or Indonesians or whomever.
We could use them as suicide bombers against the insurgents/civilians. Fight terrorism with terrorism, I always say…
Don’t ask, don’t tell.
There are two sides to every debate: the correct side, and the Democrat side.
We ARE staying the course, by adapting and winning. “Adapt and win” takes us from point A to point B via the realistic route of points C-whatever. Only a soaring eagle can fly from point A to point B directly, and when you’re constructing a road to victory you have to take terrain and other variables into consideration. Which is where adapting and winning comes in, which is what stay the course was really all about all along.
Only a Democrat simpleton would take a phrase like “stay the course” literally. This war is a road construction project, not a nautical excursion. Leave the windsurfing to your vacation time, Senator Kerry- keep it out of Congress and keep it well away from WWIII.
Pb
Globalization, baby! We already have mercs there, now we’re just haggling about the price.
That actually is the GOP strategy, according to Keith Olbermann…
Concerned Dilettante Vacillator
I bet we could get some Liberians to take over Iraq security duties for real cheap. Why don’t we use Liberian 16-year-olds to pacify Baghdad? Can anyone give me a good reason why we shouldn’t?
According to the Onion, too.
Pb
At least we’d be paying them this time; that’s progress!
Concerned Dilettante Vacillator
Of course, they’d probably subcontract the work to Iraqi 10-year-olds they kidnapped and impressed into their armies. Subcontracting labor and maximizing profits- proof that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the Third World.
Mind you, if cutting costs is more important than encouraging capitalism, we could always eliminate the Liberian middleboys and start kidnapping, arming, and training Iraqi children ourselves. They speak the language, and as long as we catch them young enough to convert them to Christianity and baseball, I’m sure they’ll happily kill for us.
Child military slave labor: It worked for the Ottomans and the Liberians, it can work for us. I bet the Defeatocrats would rather cut and run, though. They don’t have a single plan to harness the security potential of Third World child soldiers, do they? Typical.
Richard 23
This is precious:
Like a manager telling workmen “you work, men,” and then going home for the day, Bush’s job is to tell the generals to adjust. Well, that was hard work. Time to go cut me some brush!
Apparently in the same interview he said something about liking “the Google” for the maps. But I haven’t found that bit yet.
Or as some nutcase said recently you need to play the entire golf course with every club in your bag. Why would you use only one club or putter in Iraq? Or whatever.
God help us.
Richard 23
Aha!
I’d appreciate it if he’d retire to the ranch very soon.
The Other Steve
Sniff, I missed arguing with Randy.
Acknowledging reality?
And this is my problem, because why exactly?
The French said the same thing in 1783.
Isn’t that already the case?
Why?
Thank you for your patronistic attitude, but I have a suspicion that the people who live in the land that brought the world written law, can somehow figure out how to govern themselves without our intervention.
The only reason you don’t want to leave is because your afraid of admitting you were wrong.
The Other Steve
I suspect this Bush strategery may cost them 10 points on election day as the base stays home.
So was it a good idea?
Zifnab
Maybe we’re just working with different logically systems.
Lee
We all know Darrell is really a coward at his core.
Looks like he just comfirmed it.
Everyone save this thread, next time he decides to jump in and screw up another discussion (of adults ;) let’s point him in this direction.
chopper
this of course raises the interesting question as to what the USs real interests were in iraq. if it was indeed to democratize the middle east domino-style, starting with iraq, then the complete lack of post-war planning leads me to question how wolfie and his pals managed to graduate the third grade.
either that or there are other interests at hand. muscling OPEC one party at a time, i could imagine.
Punchy
Just wait until that Papp guy gets smeared….