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May 27, 2006
I Shouldn't Do This, But...
Of all the things my weblog is, one of the things it isn't, is political. I decided that long ago, when I started this, that this blog would be dedicated to showing the world my family, and stories of our lives so far. There are countless blogs out there dedicated to the left, the center and the right. This one doesn't do any of that, until now. Why? When our President utters a word that had NEVER BEEN UTTERED BEFORE, EVER, I just couldn't resist. I don't mean to start a fight or cause rifts (Lord knows we have plenty of those) so if this bothers you, accept my apologies, and we'll all move on. Thanks.
Out of Touch on Iraq
By Dan Froomkin 
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, May 24, 2006; 12:51 PM
President Bush's exclusive focus on suicide bombers -- "suiciders," in his parlance -- when asked about violence in Iraq yesterday once again suggests that he lacks a realistic sense of the current state of chaos in that country.
"That's the -- but that's one of the main -- that's the main weapon of the enemy, the capacity to destroy innocent life with a suicider," Bush said yesterday in a brief public appearance with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Suicide bombings in Iraq do sometimes result in dramatic death tolls. And their aftereffects tend to show up more often in television footage than, say, the carnage wrought by secretive death squads.
But they're hardly the main weapon afflicting either U.S. soldiers or civilians in Iraq today.
As anyone who monitors the situation in Iraq knows, a vastly greater threat to the 133,000 U.S. troops currently stationed there is posed by improvised explosive devices left along roadsides and elsewhere -- and, to a lesser degree, by gunfire and mortar fire from armed insurgents trying very much to stay alive.
And as far as Iraqi civilians are concerned, the primary security threat these days comes from paramilitary forces committing widespread sectarian murder, unimpeded by anyone in authority.
Reliable statistics are hard to come by, but ask people with first-hand experience in Iraq, and they'll most likely tell you that Bush's emphasis on suicide bombings is at best way out of date, and at worst an example of his utter cluelessness.
Was Bush being accidentally or intentionally ignorant? It's hard to know for sure.
One possible explanation for his comments is that the current White House narrative, supported by its endlessly repeated talking points, is that the terrorists in Iraq are fighting a battle for American public opinion -- and their horrific acts of violence are intended to " break our will ."
In that context, major suicide attacks may be one of their more effective devices, because they do occasionally show up on the news. The more omnipresent horrors that produce the endless, daily death toll of U.S. soldiers and Iraqis are in fact almost never depicted on television, even though they represent a far greater tragedy.
So if Bush is more focused on the battle for public opinion than the situation on the ground, his comments make a certain amount of sense.
PRESIDENT BUSH: If one were to measure progress on the number of suiciders, if that's your definition of success, I think it gives -- I think it will -- I think it obscures the steady, incremental march toward democracy we're seeing. In other words, it's very difficult -- you can have the most powerful army of the world -- ask the Israelis what it's like to try to stop suiciders -- it is a difficult task to stop suicide bombers. That's the -- but that's one of the main -- that's the main weapon of the enemy, the capacity to destroy innocent life with a suicider.
The White House has monkeyed around with this kind of language before. Remember when former spokesman Ari Fleischer called them something else? And PS, these turns of phrase are never the accident of the moment, they are always cooked up in advance. The question sometimes is -- why?
But make no mistake, the fact that Saddam Hussein has been removed from power does remove one source of instability that paid for suicide homicide bombers to cross into Israel and take innocent lives.
The moral of the story? From Dictionary.com:
No entry found for suiciders.
Posted by Jon at May 27, 2006 07:28 AM