this article is a sad commentary on the current state of american politics. it reports that the white house is "gaining confidence" that it now has the upper hand in the iraq debate. it talks about a "tonal shift", "a sense the dynamic has changed", and how "the pendulum appears to be swinging" in the president's direction on iraq.
it's crazy. as i mentioned earlier this week, by any objective measure both parts of the surge strategy haven't worked. the GAO is about to release a report concluding that there has been "little progress" on the benchmarks which were designed to measure the surge's success. only 28 percent of the american public approves of bush's performance in iraq, a result that "has not changed much" since may.
the only difference to explain the pendulum swing is an endless parade of triumphalist pronouncements that the surge is "working", and a bunch of one-to-two day highly choreographed congressional visits to the green zone. apparently that's all it takes to shape the mushy brains of our representatives in congress.
it's really remarkable. the public is overwhelmingly against the war in iraq, with a majority of americans consistently telling pollsters they favor a withdrawal. that's not a blip, it's been like that for at least a year. meanwhile, we're going into an election year where that same public rates iraq as their #1 issue. if you're an elected official you have to be a moron not to see the writing on the wall. and yet, there they are. the depths of unpopularity of this war still hasn't sunk in. so instead they stay in their bubble of pendulum swings and progress, dreaming of an iraq and a public that doesn't actually exist.
