On his Friday night chat show on HBO, comedian Bill Maher cracked a joke about President Bush remaining relentlessly upbeat about our war effort in Iraq despite a week of seemingly serious setbacks. Bush, according to Maher, sounds more like "Baghdad Bob" every day.
Baghdad Bob, of course, was Saddam Hussein's minister of information, now immortalized on t-shirts, Web sites and even a DVD for his optimistic, if fanciful, statements about Iraq's triumph over the American infidels, right up to the point we toppled his boss's statue. Baghdad Bob, real name Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, somehow survived and at last report was happily working as an Arab TV commentator, sans trademark beret.
Maher's joke was funny because it got at an essential truth, even as he stretched it. But the next day, I got to thinking, what if that's not such an exaggeration after all?
Consider that in the past week violence flared at unprecedented levels all over Iraq; U.S. deaths there soared past the 1,000 mark with more killed than at any time in recent weeks; a declassified National Intelligence Estimate painted a dire picture of prospects in Iraq; and reports circulated that our military plans to mobilize more troops and launch bloody attacks (post-election) on insurgent strongholds. A leading GOP senator, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, said, "the worst thing we can do is hold ourselves hostage to some grand illusion that we're winning. Right now, we are not winning. Things are getting worse."
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http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000632753This article would have been even better if he would have interspersed W and BB quotes and had us try to guess which is which, but a great read anyway.
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