Richard Reeves: No one can admit truth about Iraq

[Barrett808]

No one can admit truth about Iraq
Richard Reeves
Columnist
8/3/04

NEW YORK - They said, up in Boston, that John Kerry wrote his own acceptance speech. I believe that. The speech was excellent without being exceptional. I also believe he will be the 44th president - and the election may not be all that close.

The 43rd president, George W. Bush, is turning out to be one of the worst in American history. He had his opportunity to be a great one after Sept. 11, 2001, and he blew it. In three years, he has, almost willfully, marched us into disaster. The nation was united behind him; most of the world was united behind us. Now the nation is divided, poorer in many ways, and much of the world hates us.

Democrats were smart enough to nominate the best they had. Whatever his oratorical limits, Kerry is an admirable man who has succeeded at almost everything he has done in life and will almost certainly succeed as president. But he is a calibrated man, ever calculating his approach to the world and people around him. And his speech was calibrated carefully and maddeningly for these times.

Part of that actually is Bush's doing. The man in the White House so screwed up the war on terrorism by invading Iraq that few Americans, certainly not John Kerry, have the courage to speak truth to power: We are going to have to cut and run without appearing to cut and run. We have to execute the most difficult of military maneuvers, retreating under fire, without admitting it, as Richard Nixon did in Vietnam. Certainly Kerry could not admit that last Thursday night; few of us can. The almost criminal incompetence of the occupation cripples us all. But Kerry has to fudge that. For now, on Iraq, he has to mimic Bush.

We all do. The final futility is just Vietnamization all over again, turning the country back to the locals, keeping Americans out of harm's way and getting out of there as fast as we can - or repairing to bases where bullet-proof-vested soldiers, watching videos and eating ice cream, will occasionally venture forth like Romans on punitive missions. But Kerry would be dead politically if he admitted that. So would Bush.

(more)

http://www.joplinglobe.com/story.php?story_id=124119&c=96

[LosinIt]

1. As my Grandfather's cousin, Senator George Aiken (R-VT), said:

"Declare victory and get out!"

[starroute]

2. How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? (n/t)

[A_Possum]

3. Condescending

Man, it must be so easy to sit at the keyboard and type about somebody who's out there on the front lines trying to save our hides from the neo-con apocolypse, and diss him for being "unoriginal."

Gimme a break, Reeves. Kerry's way ahead of minds like yours. Way ahead. In fact he's doing it all so well that it's terrifying to watch, like a really good acrobat on a high-wire--you just stare up there at him casually moving along and waving, and wonder how he doesn't fall.

Kerry's unoriginal like a fox. (And I don't mean cable TV.)

[Larkspur]

4. Why does he think Kerry wants to get us out of Iraq?

After all Kerry has said that he'd send in more troops into Iraq and he's said nothing about halting the building of the 14 permanent bases Bush and the Neocons are constructing there.

And like Bush, Kerry would want to "pacify" Iraq to be a vassal state to Israel. Iraq has oil and water that Israel needs and Iraq would be a good launching pad to attach Iran and Syria. Kerry, like most Dem Establishment leaders, is indentured to AIPAC, the 4th most powerful lobby in Washington DC and our #1 cheerleader for the 2002 Iraq War, so why would Kerry want to get us out of Iraq quickly?