[BigV]

A second front on the war. Here are some interesting new disconnects...

Bush and his aides have delivered a positive, if carefully calibrated, message. The war is not yet won, they acknowledge, but steady progress is being made. "We can expect more tough fighting in the weeks and months ahead," the president said in his weekly radio address Saturday. "Yet I am confident in the outcome."

Is this another way of saying that "there will be no change for the forseeable future" and "I know what the outcome will be but let's have no discussion on the ideas of how much it will cost, if it's a good idea, when will it end, etc. Just stay the hell on topic, be afraid and keep agreeing with me that I know best, blah blah blah.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHH!!

I find Cheney's departure baffling, however.

But last month, Vice President Dick Cheney broke from the administration's "message discipline" and declared that the insurgency was in its "last throes." The White House has been paying a price ever since.

But there's more... So do others.

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who supported the decision to go to war in Iraq, complained that the White House was "completely disconnected from reality." Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), another supporter of the war, charged that Bush had opened not just a credibility gap, but a "credibility chasm."

I wish.

Even Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld distanced himself from the vice president's words. "I didn't use them, and I might not use them," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. Rumsfeld said the insurgency could conceivably "go on for four, eight, 10, 12, 15 years, whatever…. We don't know. It is going to be a problem for the people of Iraq."

See, no end in sight.

Historian Robert Dallek, a biographer of President Lyndon B. Johnson and an outspoken critic of Bush, said: "Analogies are imperfect, and I hate to press this one, but this is so much like Vietnam. It has echoes of the Vietnam experience when senators like [Arkansas Democrat J. William] Fulbright began to hammer Johnson on our aims and goals and credibility….

"It's a cumulative process. It takes time. We're not at the full-blown stage on this yet. But it's heading in that direction."

Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt said the vice president thought the controversy was mostly partisan politics. "He understands that it's natural for political opponents to seize on a statement and try to make political hay of it," Schmidt said.

Waaaah.

But other administration officials and Republican elders, who spoke anonymously because they feared retribution from the White House, said the vice president had blundered.

This is interesting. I hope they're outed. Wait. Then they'll be executed. No, it's...it's "extraordinay rendition". Or maybe they'll just go back to work for the military-industrial complex ala P Cooney.

"This is like the aircraft carrier," said former Ronald Reagan aide Michael K. Deaver, referring to Bush's announcement of victory in Iraq from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln in 2003. "It simply has given an extended talking point to those people who are opposed to the war and want to make the administration look bad…. I don't think it's a big problem. It's a problem."

This is something you don't hear everyday. One part of this quote says "republican" and the other says "realist". Weird.