The new idea coming out of the Bush administration appears to be this; we have no plan for the war, but we are sick of taking heat for our own incompetence, so we are going to start slamming the media. And it's coming out of every Republican orifice. The Fox News channel, instead of actually going to Iraq to get this supposed good news, is spending it's time slamming on the other news networks for showing the bombings and killings. Even though Fox News itself shows images of death and destruction in Iraq.
The whole notion that the administration can't get the word out about the good things is insane. They have Scott McClellan and his whole media system which gives him lots of time in front of cameras. And they have the White House web site. You would think that they would at least post some positive news articles there so that the President during his stumping could point them to his site. But no, there are only talking points and vague strategy positions. And they have the whole Republican email and web sytem to get the message out. And they have Fox News, which is even more than usual lately, a clear extension of the Republican media machine.
Back to Occam's Razor one more time. The simple answer to all this is that there is very little good news to go around. This war has been a mess from the get-go and it's only gotten worse over time. Our troops are staying inside their bases. The reconstruction money has all been pulled. There is a sectarian civil war in progress and a political solution from the Iraqis appears to be far off.
This attacking the media thing didn't work for Nixon. I'm not sure why Bush thinks it will work for him. In fact, this whole attacking the media thing worries me because it means that this is what Bush has. He doesn't have a clue about how to fix it, so now it's just trying to get people to shut up and take it. And we can't win that way.
BTW, I'm reading Cobra II at the moment. That's the book that talks about what really happened in the prelude to the war and during the invasion. Some amazing stuff in that book. This war was a complete clusterf**k and Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Gingrich (yep) and Franks are all seriously at fault. Rumsfeld and Franks in particular were completely incompetent.
Posted by jherr at March 23, 2006 03:45 PMThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
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