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Unimaginable

By m3047
Sun Jan 14, 2007 at 11:53:43 AM PST
Section: Diary Topic: Rants

I'm one of those people who didn't watch the President's speech announcing his plan to increase troop levels in Iraq. Because of that, I think I'm perhaps more aware of the sound bites from that which we are supposed to see.

One which I've heard several times and which sticks with me is the President declaring that the bloodshed if we don't go this way forward would be "unimaginable".

I did just finish watching a rerun of Condoleeza Rice testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Two gulf wars, the continuing events since Mr. Bush in a flight jacket declared "mission accomplished"; the loss of Iraqi life to not only violence, but disease, the imacts which will continue into the future on children there because of malnutrition, the lack of education and jobs: is this now, was it then, has this been "unimaginable"?

The devolving spiral since "mission accomplished": was this unimaginable?

Something which came up again and again during Ms. Rice's questioning and testimony was the repeated failure to attach consequences to benchmarks, and Rice's insistence that the administration and the military "adapt" as they "learn".

One Senator came close to the mark in my estimation by asking Ms. Rice to enumerate the diplomatic and other efforts which she has participated in over the past two years which have some bearing on the situation.

But nobody asked this:

Ms. Rice: what are the imaginable conseqences for you in six months if benchmarks are not met?

Imagination is often thought of as the ability to work out what the future might look like, whether for strategic purposes in defining the way forward, or tactically in terms of developing mitigations for undesirable contingencies. But there is another important aspect of imagination, and when I said "..has this been 'unimaginable'?" above I was alluding to it.

This aspect is the essence of that sturdy (semiotically speaking) indefensible we often utter after somebody recounts facts as they have transpired to us: I see.

This aspect of imagination is what allows us to assemble what is otherwise an amorphous set of facts into a framework where our intelligence can be brought to bear.

Is the failure to set benchmarks with consequences "unimaginable"? Is it unimaginable because the President truly lacks the vision and insight, or because this administration is still not levelling with the American people? What other explanations are there?

< National Bill Richardson get together day | Jim McDermott's Mini-Town Meeting: Iraq >

Unimaginable | 6 comments (6 topical)

Another stunning remark from Rice

on the same occasion, which might explain the first, and also explain years of previously "unimaginable" tunnel vision and stupidity from a U.S. administration:

"It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails when you're trying to make a plan work."

Words fail me, but not the posters on TPM Cafe'

Is there anyone, anywhere, who would keep their job creating and executing Plans, if convinced that having a Plan B, C, or D is "bad policy"?

by dinazina on Sun Jan 14, 2007 at 01:11:27 PM PST

* 1 none 0 *

The Great Mind Reader Has Spoken

Using the famed long-distance Wyoming mind-meld, Vice President and renowned world psychic, Dick Cheney today revealed the current thinking and mind-set of our most feared foes.

Cheney has indisputably penetrated Al Quaeda's rumored Dome of the Deflection that heretofore has repulsed any incoming lazer-like thought penetrators from the VP's mind-melding process - a process developed one night outside a Casper tavern while Dick was trying to discern the plot of his wife's novel as she described it

Cheney's psychnicitiy foreever sets to rest any questiong but that he and fellow channeler George Armstrong Custer Bush know what they are doing.

Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Vice-President Dick Cheney accused critics of the administration's new strategy in Iraq of playing into the hands of Osama bin Laden and global terrorism.
Cheney said withdrawing forces from Iraq rather than the troop "surge" announced this week by
President George W. Bush would be "the most dangerous blunder" possible.
"That is part and parcel of the underlying fundamental strategy that our adversaries believe afflicts the United States," Cheney said in an interview on Fox news.
"They are convinced that the current debate in the Congress, that the election campaign last fall, all of that is evidence that they're right when they say the United States doesn't have the stomach for the fight in this war against terror," he said.
"Bin Laden doesn't think he can beat us. He believes he can force us to quit," Cheney said, citing US military setbacks in Lebanon and Somalia that led to US withdrawals from those countries.
"He believes after Lebanon and Somalia, the United States doesn't have the stomach for a long war and Iraq is the current central battlefield in that war, and it's essential we win there and we will win there," he said.
"They're convinced that the United States will, in fact, pack it in and go home if they just kill enough of us," he said.

So we no longer need to guess what's going on with OBL and AQ?

Well, now that THAT question has been settled once and for all ...

Arthur
You sure you ain't staking too much on yer theories? Not enough common sense?

by Arthur Ruger on Mon Jan 15, 2007 at 10:15:36 AM PST

* 2 none 0 *

hand puppet bosses (sideshow) by m3047, 01/15/2007 08:42:26 PM PST (none / 0)

Can anyone translate this? by dinazina, 01/16/2007 08:16:16 AM PST (none / 0)

sorry about the florid prose, I'll try by m3047, 01/16/2007 08:44:53 AM PST (none / 0)

Obfuscation Awareness Clinic by noemie maxwell, 01/16/2007 10:50:28 AM PST (none / 0)

Unimaginable | 6 comments (6 topical)

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