On May 2, 2003, President George W. Bush was flown onto an aircraft carrier which was moved further out to sea to make for better pictures and
said:
[M]y fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. . . . And tonight, I have a special word for Secretary Rumsfeld, for General Franks and for all the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States: America is grateful for a job well done.
. . . With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war, yet it is a great advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent.
. . . We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons, and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated.
. . . The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001 and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men, the shock troops of a hateful ideology, gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the beginning of the end of America. By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve and force our retreat from the world.
They have failed.
America and our coalition will finish what we have begun.
From Pakistan to the Philippines to the Horn of Africa, we are hunting down Al Qaida killers.
Nineteen months ago I pledged that the terrorists would not escape the patient justice of the United States. And as of tonight nearly one half of Al Qaida's senior operatives have been captured or killed.
The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of Al Qaida and cut off a source of terrorist funding.
And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.
In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th, the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States, and war is what they got.
Our war against terror is proceeding according to the principles that I have made clear to all.
Any person involved in committing or planning terrorist attacks against the American people becomes an enemy of this country and a target of American justice.
Any person, organization or government that supports, protects or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and equally guilty of terrorist crimes. Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world and will be confronted.
. . . The use of force has been and remains our last resort. Yet all can know, friend and foe alike, that our nation has a mission: We will answer threats to our security, and we will defend the peace.
Our mission continues. Al Qaida is wounded, not destroyed. The scattered cells of the terrorist network still operate in many nations and we know from daily intelligence that they continue to plot against free people. The proliferation of deadly weapons remains a serious danger.
Count the falsehoods. 31 months later, 160,000 American soldiers remain in Iraq and President Bush today will unveil a "victory strategy" for a "mission accomplished."
I'll consider the "victory strategy" on the flip.
Update [2005-11-30 9:4:17 by Armando]: Via
Steve Clemons, the "Victory Strategy" itself.
President Bush today is putting forward for the first time a public version of what the White House calls a comprehensive strategy for victory in Iraq. In a 35-page document released by the White House this morning, the administration produced what it called its National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, which it said articulates "the broad strategy the president set forth in 2003 and provides an update on our progress as well as the challenges remaining."
Later this morning, the president is expected to elaborate on the document in a speech at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. In a related effort to begin extricating American forces Mr. Bush continued to emphasize that American forces cannot withdraw before their job is done. "I want our troops to come home, but I don't want them to come home without having achieved victory," he said on Tuesday in brief comments to reporters in El Paso during a visit to the Mexican border. "And we've got a strategy for victory."
. . . Taken together, the activities amount to a carefully calibrated effort to answer critics, including Democratic leaders in Congress who have argued that Mr. Bush has no plausible plan for bringing home the nearly 160,000 troops engaged in a war against the insurgency.
. . . The White House said that the strategy to be outlined Wednesday was not new, but that it had never been assembled into a single unclassified document. As the booklet was described by administration officials, much of it sounded like a list of goals for Iraq's military, political and economic development rather than new prescriptions on how to accomplish the job.
The Pentagon now spends $6 billion a month to sustain the American military presence in Iraq. A senior administration official said Mr. Bush's ultimate goal, to which he assigned no schedule, is to move to a "smaller, more lethal" American force that "can be just as successful."
It is unclear how much of that vision Mr. Bush will explicitly describe Wednesday, in the first of four speeches about the Iraqi transition that he plans to give before the election of a long-term Iraqi government on Dec. 15.
Aides said Mr. Bush would argue that although he is determined to stay his course and that to withdraw precipitously would invite disaster, American tactics have already been refashioned to confront the insurgency more effectively. Since landmark elections this year, the attacks have continued to inflict death and injury on Iraqis and Americans alike.
"He is going to talk about victory in Iraq in the short term, the medium term and the long term," said an official familiar with the speech, which was redrafted on Tuesday. The president will describe the short-term objective as "defeating terrorists, building institutions, meeting political milestones and standing up security forces," the official said. Without claiming that the victory he seeks is already at hand, the president will argue that Iraq is already moving into a new phase, providing its own security and establishing a permanent government. "The long-term vision is a peaceful, democratic, united nation that is well integrated and a full partner in the war on terror," the official said.
Despite the new emphasis, Pentagon officials and senior commanders in Iraq no longer talk in terms of outright military victory in the sense of eliminating all resistance. Rather they discuss what Mr. Rumsfeld said at the Pentagon on Tuesday was a "coalition strategy to help the Iraqi people increasingly take control of their country."
. . . Mr. Bush is expected to define his other goals in a concise triptych, as well. One is for the reconstruction, which is badly behind schedule and short of money, to be an effort to "restore, reform and build." The political effort, he is expected to declare, is an effort to "isolate terrorists, engage and build institutions."
"This clearly is not the level of specificity some people are going to want to see in a plan," another administration official said. "But it is a lot more than has been said before."
My take? More of the same blather. They have no clue what to do. We're effed with Bush and the Republicans in control.