Condi stands by her man

Shrub, ignoring the Mandarin’s recent lecture on Confucian “Rectification of Terms,” went on TV last night to tell the nation:

1) “Stay the course” is out and we have a whole new strategy, which basically looks like staying the same course with some modest changes in tactical focus, and... oh, by the way,... 22,500 more troops going in, mostly to try to occupy and hold Baghdad’s Shiite stronghold Sadr City by force. Oh, lovely.

2) Sending 22,500 more troops into Iraq isn’t an “escalation,” it is just a harmless little “surge.” Kind of like when the tachometer needle on your car fluctuates up and down a bit when you are at a stop light instead of pointing at the same number all the time.

3) Despite having promised to give every consideration to the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, he incorporated (almost?) none of them into his “new” so-called “plan,” and is doing the exact opposite of one key ISG recommendation, to get US ground forces out of the business of trying to prevent Baghdad’s ongoing (Fawlty Towers flashback: “Don’t mention the (Civil) War”) factional struggle.

4) We know Shrub has a short memory, but to have forgotten a humiliating drubbing by the voters in the recent elections, and instead of using his speech to try to persuade the American people that they should support his strategy, he merely listed the things he was going to do, whether they (we) like it or not. He’s the decider and he’s decided.

That kind of hubris takes balls. Big ones.

And Condi, who should know, is showing us exactly how big they are in the photo above.


Original photo caption: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 11, 2007. REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES)