Ever since Mister Bush cut and ran from "stay the course," the Administration’s brainiac consultants seem to have lost their touch in the catch-phrase department. Gone is the pizzazz of "Wanted: Dead or Alive," "shock and awe," "Mission Accomplished," "Bring ‘em on," "Fight them there so we don't have to fight them here at home," "last throes," and my personal favorite, "desperate," first employed by Donald Rumsfeld – remember him? – on March 22, 2003, when he told Iraqi soldiers not to blow up oil wells: "See your orders for what they are, the last desperate gasp of a dying regime."
It's hard to know for certain who in Mister Bush’s pantheon of officialdumb most frequently chose "desperate" or "desperation" to describe the emotional state of Iraqi insurgents. You might be tempted to give Donald Rumsfeld the prize since he spent the summer of 2003 telling the shocked and awed and fatally compliant media not to say "insurgent," only to say "desperate."
But rigorous competition arises when you have Scott McClellan – remember him? – going for multiples, calling the insurgents "desperate" four times in five minutes at a June 2005 press conference. He, on the other hand, got whipped by an amateur in the good tidings biz. Maj. General Ray Odierno tagged the insurgents desperate eight times during a press conference in Tikrit in October 2003. For relentlessness, however, Mister Bush is untouched, having made at least 35 such "desperate" references in various venues, an average of one a month since the war began up until he suddenly gave it up cold turkey in March 2006.
Too bad. It had that euphony so beloved by propagandists eager to hammer hoi polloi until they practically sing the preferred expression like a television commercial jingle.
Now we’re stuck with "Return on Success." Ye gods!
The Democrats stole a march on the Administration tonight.
Former Senator John Edwards said: No Timelines, No Funding. No Excuses.
Senator Jack Reed said: An endless and unlimited military presence in Iraq is not an option.
For the Cheney-Bush Administration, it’s been all downhill from the heady days of "as they stand up, we'll stand down," "a few dead-enders," "central front in the war on terror," "making good progress," and "global struggle against violent extremism." The punctured "Operation Together Forward" was retreaded just eight months ago into the "New Way Forward," and now we’ve got this even flatter "Return on Success."
How I miss that halcyon time when the still fresh-faced sloganeers even seemed to have a sense of humor. As when (assuming Ari Fleischer – remember him? – didn’t misspeak), they initially named their plan to march flower-covered into Baghdad as Operation Iraqi Liberation, but decided that one needed a little retooling. Ah! Those were the days.
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