Where Iraq is concerned, two-plus-two equals four, not five like Bush says

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In Baghdad on Thursday, a senior military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, was asked whether he thought (paying Iraqis for positive news stories and planting them as well) undercuts the credibility of either the American military or the new Iraqi news media. Lynch did not answer directly but quoted a senior al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as having told Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the main terrorist leader in Iraq, "Remember, half the battle is the battlefield of the media."

Lynch said Zarqawi lies to the Iraqi people and he said the American military does not.

"We do empower our operational commanders with the ability to inform the Iraqi public, but everything we do is based on fact not based on fiction," Lynch said.


We've lost these folks in Iraq. It wasn't enough that Bush bombed them back to the middle ages, he actually thought he could turn back centuries of history and impose his perverted sense of democracy on a majority Muslim population in Iraq. His military meddling has been a complete and utter failure, rilvaling all of the other meglomaniacs who sought to dominate that region for greed and power. Now, all of his lies have been laid bare, but he continues the charade.

Bush's rout of Saddam may have made him believe he's some sort of warrior king. But in the context of the overwhelming domination of the inept Saddam and the hapless Iraqi army he more resembles Don Quixote. In the classic tale of the ideal vs. the real, Quixote battles windmills that appear to be giants, and sheep that look to him like armies. He believes himself the victor, comes to his senses, only to be trapped by his delusion; forced to play the conquering hero.

The worst of it is that the commanders in the field have to dig up some kind of logic to wrap around Bush's lies. They have to know how deep they are in it in Iraq. But they are forced to find countless ways to explain how two-plus-two equals five there. No matter that everyone, including their own sorry selves, knows that Bush's boasting and posturing just doesn't add up to anything resembling the sad situation on the ground. Yet, the generals continue to prop him up and rationalize our mission. I don't think anyone in or out of this administration believes that Bush's Iraq experiment will end in anything other than total disaster, but they continue to try to convince us that with 2600+ soldiers killed to facilitate a tenuous power-sharing agreement masquerading as a constitution, we should look to claim some sort of victory, or some sort of success.

But, remember, we were taught to think for ourselves. We can believe the administration as they try to cover up their failure, their debacle, or we can believe our own eyes and trust our own minds. One-plus-one equals two, and two-plus-two equals four. Anything else is bullshit.

He picked up the children's history book and looked at the portrait of Big Brother which formed its frontispiece. The hypnotic eyes gazed into his own. It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you -- something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses. In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth's centre. With the feeling that he was speaking to O'Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

-Winston Smith in George Orwell's 1984

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