Rose Colored Glasses By: Mark W Adams

Rose still doesn't have her new talking point source streaming into her brain yet -- must be the vicodin withdrawal. With no more Karl Rove to point her in the right direction, she highlights this headline from the German magazine, Der Spiegel:

"The US Military Is More Successful in Iraq Than the World Wants to Believe."

How has Karl Rove managed to get the German Press to do a 180°? He's more powerful than I thought! Spiegel has been, like the rest of the world's Press, calling Iraq a disaster and a quagmire for YEARS. Now, they completely flipped.

Geez, $1.6 Billion spent on US propaganda, and they can't send the Esmays a fax? Funny she should use the "Q" word. There must be some crossed wires somewhere emanating from her new talking point source.

Q. "Do you think the U.S. or U.N. forces should have moved into Baghdad?"
A. "No. If we would have gone into Baghdad, we would have been all alone. It would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq."

Conventional wisdom from a former Secretary of Defense.

"Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government of Iraq, you can easily end up seeing parts of Iraq fly off."

Wise, almost prescient.

"It's a quagmire. If you go that far, and try to take over Iraq."

True then, in 1994, just as true now.

"The other thing is casualties."

Gulf War One, 146 U.S. Casualties. Losing more to get Saddam was not worth it.

"The question for the president in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam was how many additional dead Americans was Saddam worth, and our judgment was not very many. And I think we got it right."

Now, this very same man, Richard Cheney, Vice President of the United States and primary talking point provider to our dear Rosemary, has no trouble at all justifying this position with the current 3,690 dead American service members, another thousand dead military contractors, thousands upon thousands of civilians killed, and millions displaced to do what he thought wasn't worth the 147th life 13 years ago.

All is Okie Dokie because the German version of Life Magazine agrees with his change of heart.

Opps, make that 3,695 American military deaths to catch a guy we already hung. One from a sniper, and his four buddies from an IUD ambush. And since Petreaus is cracking down in Baghdad and Anbar, the carnage has moved north, making villages look like Hiroshima. This is "progress?" 200 civilians being blasted in one shot. We're doing a heckuvajob.

Yikes, add another 5 to the total. I missed today's helicopter crash in Anbar.

What's the one thing we hear that nobody has a serious disagreement with? That we need a political solution, right? So explain how naming Iran's 125,000 man Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization (so we can impose sanctions against them) helps us at the negotiation table.

[Hint: If you come out with some Giuliani-esque tripe about negotiating from strength, you will have to attend mandatory Foreign Policy for Dummies Class.]

Seriously, that would be like them naming the entire Marine Corp a terrorist organization. Naturally, since the QUD forces and Rev Guard will be named terrorists, and Iran harbors them, we must invade, right?

And this is helping diplomatic/political efforts we all know needs to create a political solution?

This is fucking madness, no matter what any so-called "journalists" have been spoon-fed to regurgitate. Again Rose, I refer you to "some guy named Digby" who is actually a woman. Don't start your day with KOS. Read more Digby!