GWB flipflops too soon - says he never said "Stay the Course"

[whiskeytown]

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Guys, BluffThis! is clearly off on this.

The Bush White House deployed "stay the course" and "cut and run" in order to taint any discussion of a withdrawal from Iraq. "Cut and run" works better rhetorically than "stay the course", but they had to trot that out there as the catchy alternative to cut and run.

Now, staying the course is so unpopular that the Bush administration has had to squirm out from under it to define another 'cut&run) alternative (or two, as leaked with the Baker report).

It's not that stay the course never meant changes, it's that the WH can no longer afford to be identified with a slogan of its own creation.

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like father like son -

1990's "Read My Lips"
2000's "Stay the Course"

it'll be the catch phrase people remember when they think of the decline of Bush Jr. and how he brought down what we stood for.

rb

[BluffTHIS!]

Personal attack deleted

[bruceypants]

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Personal attack deleted

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Finally, a sensible post by BluffThis!

I'm not going to try to parse through any of your other verbal misdirection in this thread, but the first person to refer to "stay the course" as either a goal or a tactic or an objective was the President and his gang.

Every other person in America knows that that phrase is nothing more than political propaganda wrappend in a slogan. It's beyond ridiculous to think that any member of the American public ever even tried to figure out whether "stay the course" was a strategery or a tactic. That phrase has never been nothing more than a slogan and everyone in America knows it.

The President has had two stated goals for Iraq that I know of and he has failed at both of them:
1) Disarm Iraq of its WMDS (Bush failed, Iraq never had any WMDs. Plus, while mucking around in Iraq, North Korea was able to develop WMDs)
2) Bring democracy to Iraq (Bush failed, If there is anything left of Iraq when we leave, it will likely end up as a religious theocracy or a dictatorship)

[BluffTHIS!]

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Personal attack deleted

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Yeah,

Just let the usual suspects whose posting consists in the main of just a bunch of rhetoric with no argumentation backing same up continue on as usual and delete the posts of posters who point out such things instead.

[Mickey Brausch]

It is natural for the American administration to start intentionally confusing goals (=objectives) with tactics, at this point in time, what with even former fanatical pro-war rats abandoning ship. It's a typical method for saving face.

But here is the flaw :

An objective certainly can have many ways to achieve it. But this can only go so far. If I wanna reach New York starting from Los Angeles, I can take many routes. For example, if I want to truly take my leisurely time, I can go Seattle-Chicago-Miami-N. York. I'm still legitimately headed to New York. Call this route A.

Can I claim I'm headed to New York when I go from Los Angeles to Katmandu and then on to Mogadishu and Riyadh? Or I go to Antartica and then head for the Cape of Good Hope? I can, of course, claim this, in theory, but it is much more probable that I could be lying about my true destination (=goal) or I could be lost as to where I'ma truly going. The reason is that such convoluted routing now opens so many possibilities of destinations that my originally claimed destination is less pronounced comparatively. It gets lost in the chaos. Call this route B.

If routes similar to A are repeatedly undertaken, they would be converging towards New York with a much, much bigger probability than the convergence of routes similar to B. In fact, it would be a good bet that B ends up anywhere but New York.

Let's recap on Iraq:

The correct decision is to ignore the sunk-cost bias and stop pushing good money after bad, here. I'll leave BluffTHIS! and other card experts to elaborate.

Mickey Brausch

[niss]

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Personal attack deleted

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Yeah,

Just let the usual suspects whose posting consists in the main of just a bunch of rhetoric with no argumentation backing same up continue on as usual and delete the posts of posters who point out such things instead.

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I agree with Bluff that attacking the practice of posting rhetoric for the primary purpose of inflaming is an acceptable part of debate. Such statements are not properly considered to be considered "personal attacks" and should not be stifled here.

[andyfox]

The Bush administration wanted to go to war with Iraq well before 9/11. Its key members signed the open letter to President Clinton calling for regime change in Iraq and were members of the Project for a New American Century which called for a realignment of American power in the world, the linchpin of which was regime change in Iraq. On 9/12, Wolfowitz made a presentation at Camp David calling for an attack on Iraq irrespective of who was responsible for 9/11. The administration then conducted a long propaganda campaign, culminating in Colin Powell's briefecase full of lies presented to the UN. Bush himself instructed Richard Clarke to find evidence of Hussein's involvement. Very few Americans thought Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 after it happened; by the eve of the invasion, a sizable majority did. How did that happen?

Both Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice told us that Saddam Hussein was prostrate militarily and not a threat to us shortly before 9/11. Yet the president told us, when he was determined to proceed with the invasion, that we might face a Husseini mushroom cloud. It is evident that 9/11 provided the excuse, not the reason, for the invasion.

Bush is now claiming, and Bluff defending the claim, that "stay the course" never referred to tactics, but rather to the overall strategy of not pulling out prematurely. It is evident, however, to anyone who speaks English that the phrase was meant to refer to the overall plan, both strategy and tactics to implement that strategy. The "course" can mean the advance or progression in a particular direction as well as the mode of conduct or behavior in pursuing that direction.

In any event, one ought not to take the president's words as they regard Iraq, or those of others in the administration, too seriously. They have no meaning in the ordinary sense of the term. When the president says, as he has, that no consideration was given to casualties in planning the invasions and occupation, and the vice president can say, as he did, that the insurgency was in its last throes, and then later say he meant that in terms of a number of years, their words can not be taken serious representations of truth or reality.

[PokerBob]

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I don't think I have any choice - I have to put Bluffthis on ignore -

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imo this would be a mistake. as horrifying and borderline insane as most of his views/posts are, the fact is that he is not alone. people who hold these radical views tend to be very active in politics. know thy enemy.

[PokerBob]

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We did in fact seek to find WMDs though unsuccessfully obviously, so that goal was never deleted but rather completed. You didn't read my entire post as adding goals to the overall set isn't a flip flop, only deleting uncompleted ones.

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absurd. so by your twisted logic, if the goal would have been to SEEK unicorns in Iraq the mission would have been a succces, even if they didn't find any.

[Brainwalter]

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We did in fact seek to find WMDs though unsuccessfully obviously, so that goal was never deleted but rather completed. You didn't read my entire post as adding goals to the overall set isn't a flip flop, only deleting uncompleted ones.

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absurd. so by your twisted logic, if the goal would have been to SEEK unicorns in Iraq the mission would have been a succces, even if they didn't find any.

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No, by his logic it would be complete, not successful. He even says, in the section you quoted, that the "search for WMD's" goal was unsuccessful.