Automatic Manipulation

The report that the Bush Administration is preparing to go back into their typical bag of trick, resorting to terror management theory emotional manipulation by having Saint General David Petreaus testify and deliver the White House written report of the great and glorious successful Surge on September 11th is not a surprise. Simple politics and gross emotional manipulation is about all they have.

I don't think it will work, for as my buddy Kyle Moore at Comments from Left Field writes, the facts and more importantly the perception of these facts on the ground as held by the American public are hard to spin:

The point of this is extremely simple; while there may arguably be some short term improvements in the military scenario in Iraq, the political situation over there is a mess. Just recently we learned that not long after one of the largest Sunni blocs quit the Iraqi government, a new powerhouse alliance was formed within the federal parliament, one that omitted both Sunni’s and Sadrist Shiites.

In other words, a template for the subjugation of considerable portions of the Iraqi people has already been set, effectively eliminating not only one of the most violent and volatile Shia sects, but also just about the entire Sunni population of Iraq. It is hard to imagine any hope for peace under these conditions.

But this apparently does not seem to be significant in the eyes of the administration to consider. Instead, what is apparently the game plan is to politically keep the Iraq War efforts on life support as long as possible until, A) Iraq magically fixes itself, or B) the new administration takes over in January of 2009.

That is not a plan; it is a failed punt.

So the 9/11 anniversary date will again by cynically used to attempt to sell the American public on a failed war that they do not want. Not a surprise there either; that is about all that date has become to the Bush Administration; a deux ex machina to allow them to do whatever they want due to a compliant Republican Party and a factional fraction of Democrats scared of their own shadows.