A modest increase in the President's approval rating to 36%. The throwing of red meat (and a defeat sure to keep the money flowing in from Radical Fundamentalists) regarding the Gay Marriage Ban. The reported defeat (aka death) of al-Zarqawi, who mere weeks ago was being touted as having lost influence, inadequate, and lacking in gunsmanship.
Which Dubyaism is best suited to this situation?
Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice… won't get fooled again.
No, I don't think so. More like everyone's favorite quote from the Suskind book regarding the reality based community…
Via Wikipedia:
The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." … "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
One of the very few wars that the Bush Administration is winning, aside from the War on the Constitution, is the War on the Common Sense of the American People. Allow me to explain.
When it served our interest, we had no problem making al-Zarqawi the boogeyman in Iraq, the leader by proxy of Al-Qaeda in absence of Bin Laden, the other 6' 5" Arab connected to a dialysis machine in the mountains on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The WaPo reports:
For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi's role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.
Some senior intelligence officers believe Zarqawi's role may have been overemphasized by the propaganda campaign, which has included leaflets, radio and television broadcasts, Internet postings and at least one leak to an American journalist. Although Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted deadly bombing attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," Col. Derek Harvey, who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq and then was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., last summer.
In a transcript of the meeting, Harvey said, "Our own focus on al-Zawahiri has enlarged his caricature, if you will — made him more important than he really is, in some ways."
Then, we do a complete 180-degree "flip-flop", openly mocking Zarqawi's lack of proficiency with a machine gun, as recorded on an "uncut" Al-Qaeda videotape recently shows.
Via MSNBC:
Al-Zarqawi is “very proud of the fact that he can operate this machine gun, and he proclaims that, and all of his close associates are very proud of what al-Zawahiri does,” Lynch said in a briefing in which he played a snippet from the video posted by militants on April 25.
Gun trouble
But as the previously unseen video was shown, Lynch mocked al-Zawahiri, suggesting his weapon jammed and he was unable to fix it.
“It’s supposed to be automatic fire, he’s shooting single shots. Something is wrong with his machine gun, he looks down, can’t figure out, calls his friend to come unblock the stoppage and get the weapon firing again,” Lynch said.
That very same article goes on to say that "…U.S. operations against al-Zawahiri had dramatically cut the number of suicide attacks in the country from an average of 75 per month to fewer than 25 per month now".
Much like all the other reports of the numerous killings or captures of "Al-Qaeda second lieutenants", we've come to find these self serving reversals as part of the regular noise. Notice that only ONE DAY after the "death" of Zarqawi, his replacement may have already been named. How we know that is uncertain, but I doubt there was a press conference.
Todays headlines, in addition to the chest-puffing and strutting regarding the killing of Zarqawi, again reaffirm how severe a threat Zarqawi is to the democratic process in Iraq. Consider that for a moment.
How can one man simoultaneously be a grevious threat, a skill-less buffoon, irrelavent, and yet again a grevious threat. How can there be three truths?
People like to point enthusiastically that the American people approve with Bush's actions, as indicated by the most recent surveys. I beg to differ. There has been so much bullshit smeared around that the American people don't know what to believe. So they react on the only thing that has a direct impact on thier lives - gas prices.
Whether or not you feel the opposition is doing a good job in this country or not is immaterial, whether you believe that the opposition knows what our challenges are and what to do about them is inconsequential. If you are a Bush supporter, you must ask youself, as a reasonable human being, when the evidence in front of your face doesn't pass the smell test, how long will you be able to stomach that which is being fed to you as the truth?
Update: More from AllSpinZone - turns out Al-Zarawi was demoted a couple weeks ago due to his being a non-Iraqi as well as his not following the Al-Qaeda program by killing civilians as well as denouncing the Shia and Iran. We caught him because they wanted us to catch him. Sploid has more; CNN has plenty of video, and most curiously of all, despite the fact that Zarqawi supposedly had a leg amputated in 2002, it has been reported that the body that was found had both legs.
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