Maureen Dowd: Farewell, Dense Prince

[Briar]

Farewell, Dense Prince

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

James Baker ran after W. with a butterfly net for a while, but it is now clear that the inmates are still running the asylum.

The Defiant Ones came striding from the Pentagon yesterday, the troika of wayward warriors marching abreast in their dark suits and power ties. W., Rummy and Dick Cheney were so full of quick-draw confidence that they might have been sauntering down the main drag of Deadwood.

Far from being run out of town, the defense czar who rivals Robert McNamara for deadly incompetence has been on a victory lap in Baghdad, Mosul and Washington. Yesterday’s tribute had full military honors, a color guard, a 19-gun salute, an Old Guard performance with marching musicians — including piccolo players — in Revolutionary War costumes, John Philip Sousa music and the chuckleheaded neocons and ex-Rummy deputies who helped screw up the occupation, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, cheering in the audience.

It was surreal: the septuagenarian who arrogantly dismissed initial advice to send more troops to secure Iraq, being praised as “the finest secretary of defense this nation has ever had” by his pal, the vice president, even as a desperate White House drafted ways to reinvade Iraq by sending more troops in a grasping-at-straws effort to reverse the chaos caused by Rummy’s mistakes.

...

http://wealthyfrenchman.blogspot.com/

[cassiepriam]

1. What is the "double down" reference everyone keeps mentioning??

[Demit]

2. More troops, not fewer. But see this from Talking Points Memo—

Josh Marshall's post—
More troops to Iraq? The idea is gaining favor, reports the Los Angeles Times:

"As President Bush weighs new policy options for Iraq, strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to "double down" in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite leader impeding development of the Iraqi government."

But as TPM Reader AH remarks, "double down" is the wrong phrase:

AH's post—
Since the Pentagon has decided to discuss its new strategy in gambling parlance, it should at least use the proper terminology. Today's LA Times article says that a Pentagon official has referred to the option of sending more troops in to Iraq as a "double down" strategy. The reference is to a bet in blackjack when, based on the cards that have been dealt, the player seeks to maximize a payoff that is more likely to occur in that hand, given the probabilities. The double down is a calculated bet, made from a position of strength when the odds are favorable to the bettor.
In Iraq, we are certainly not in a situation where the odds are favorable to winning. Our bet is not a double down. Let's call it what it is: double or nothing. This is is more like the gambler who has been on a bad losing streak deciding to empty the savings account and put all of his chips on red, hoping that the roulette wheel will spin his way and bring him back close to even. Double or nothing is a desperation play. It is an ill-advised way to gamble, with chips or human lives, and such a strategy inevitably leads to another appropriate gambling term. Gambler's ruin: winding up completely broke.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_12_10.php#011543


It's yet another example of how this administration gets things exactly, oppositely wrong. Gah!

(Edited to remove an extra preposition.)

[Recursion]

16. A horrible metaphor from blackjack

In blackjack, if you have a good opening deal (10 or 11) you "double down": double your initial bet and take exactly one more card. In a fair house you have a pretty good chance of winning in that situation (particularly if the house is showing weak). The analogy is we should increase our initial investment and exposure in Iraq on one final shot at making it a stable country. The problem, as many insurgencies should have tought us by now, is that "one final shot" has a tendency to stretch on for decades and tens of thousands of lives. The other problem is, we don't have a 10 or 11, we're sitting on 6. And the house is showing an ace. As my uncle, who taught me gambling, said, "If you're not man enough to fold you're not man enough to sit at the table."

[cassiepriam]

18. Thanks

Yes it seems the wrong metaphor, we are coming from a position
of weakness not strength...

[izzie]

3. And we have 2 more years of this to put up with.

All the second rate 'rulers' will now have their last hurrahs. I guess it make the 'King' happy. It is like having some thing named after Reagan in every state. It is hard on people who think the President should be like Washington.

[GCP]

4. Dowd has become a national treasure

She lost it when she went after Gore and his 'earth-tones', but now she nails it every time when she discusses the Chimp-in-Chief and his Flying Monkeys.

[DavidDvorkin]

13. His earth tones, his bald spot, and anything else she could think of

Wait till the next election. She'll lose it again.

[stevenleser]

19. Gosh I hope not. But history... she did the same with Kerry...

... for some reason, she likes to pick apart Democratic Presidential candidates. I wrote to her last time saying, look, whatever you think about the Democratic candidate, do you really want to use your ability to reach people to tear that candidate down for the benefit of Bush and the GOP? Particularly when the comments are about such superficial things like looks, etc. We all know that in the minds of some people that matters, but do we have to encourage that?

[Joe Bacon]

20. Dowd a national treasure?

Maybe if a treasury was filled with Confederate money.

Whoreen Dowd is a god-damned liar. Everything that PRE$$TITUTE writes is a lie, including the "and's" and "buts". We wouldn't be in the situation we're in if that liar hadn't rim jobbed Bush over and over again in 2000 like her other pals at the SCREW YORK TIMES like Frank Rich and Nagourney and those other liars.

Time and time again she openly lied about Gore. She still lies any lie about Hillary and she's lied about Clark and Obama. SHe tears down any Democrat and gives pass after pass to every Republican.

I live for the day she finds herself outsourced by the Screw York TImes and finds herself unemployable.

[Morgana LaFey]

14. I wouldn't go that far

When she's right, she can be brilliant. But there are still too many WILD misses to count her as some sort of "national treasure." She's also a bit young for my taste for that type of honor. (See: Helen Thomaas, who is not only not too young, but never wrong, and I mean never.)

[Divernan]

5. Bush: My presidency is "a joyful experience".

Actually, Bush's presidency is a "No Joy" experience.
Aero Terms: "No Joy"
Opposite to the term Tally ho but not used in foxhunting. Used when pilot does not have visual contact on his target. Can also be used when pilot is unable to establish communication.

(More from OP's link follows)
"Even Joyce Rumsfeld got a Distinguished Public Service Award ribbon placed around her neck. The grandiose ceremony featured everything but the gold-plated matching set of pistols Tommy Franks, another failed warrior, and his wife, Cathy, recently received from a weapons manufacturer. (His had four stars and diamonds; hers, rubies and their marriage date.)

W. never seems as alarmed about the devastation in Iraq as he should be. He told People magazine “I must tell you, I’m sleeping a lot better than people would assume,” and he told Brit Hume that his presidency was “A JOYFUL EXPERIENCE(emphasis added).”

He slacked off on his slacker effort to form a new Iraq plan. (Can’t these guys ever order pizzas and pull some all-nighters?) Mr. Bush was busy this week hosting Christmas parties for a press corps he disdains; convening a malaria conference at the National Geographic with Dr. Burke of “Grey’s Anatomy” Isaiah Washington; and presiding over a hero’s departure for the defense secretary he actually dumped, not because of incompetence but for political expediency."

[chelsea0011]

6. The Bush crowd didn't get how silly this all looked yesterday

Do they think the country wasn't laughing their asses off watching that stuff yesterday? Is it this bad? You betcha!

[Divernan]

7. This incident will be given high camp treatment when a movie is made

depicting Bush's arrogant presidency.

[LonelyLRLiberal]

8. I can't wait for this disaster to be over.

The depiction of this presidency will be more like a horror show than a campy frolic.

[Briar]

9. I was struck by a certain similarity to the

also somewhat Ruritanian ceremonies enacted at Sandhurst yesterday and apparently screened round the world, though goodness knows how that qualified as "news". Or indeed to the "military honours" accorded to that wicked old murderer Pinochet, presided over by Catholic priests in their own full panoply. If one looks closely, one can see legitimacy and moral authority draining from the political institutions of the entire western world.

[rodeodance]

10. ...The Democrats thought that when they won the election,

I am having a disconnect with all this talk of a surge.

Friday, December 15, 2006
Farewell, Dense Prince

By MAUREEN DOWD


.........The Democrats thought that when they won the election, they won the debate on the war and they had W. cornered. But the president is leaning toward surging over the Democrats, voters, Baker and the Bush 41 crowd, and some of his own commanders.

W. seems gratified by the idea that rather than having his ears boxed by his father’s best friend, he’s going to go down swinging, or double down, in the metaphor du jour, on his macho bet in Iraq. He’s reading about Harry Truman and casting himself as a feisty Truman, but he’s heading toward late L.B.J. The White House budget office is studying how much it will cost to finance The Surge, an infusion of 20,000 to 50,000 troops into Baghdad to make one last try at “victory.” The policy would devolve from “We stand down as they stand up” to “We stand up more and maybe someday they will, too.”

Some serving commanders are not in favor of The Surge because they fret that it will infantilize Iraqis even more about assuming responsibility for their own security. They also fear that the insurgents, who have nowhere to go, will outwait our troops.

But W. would rather take a risk in Iraq than risk being a wimp. So he continued to wrap himself in muscular delusions, asserting that on Rummy’s watch, “the United States military helped the Iraqi people establish a constitutional democracy in the heart of the Middle East, a watershed event in the story of freedom.”

Dick Cheney offered this praise to his friend: “On the professional side, I would not be where I am today but for the confidence that Don first placed in me those many years ago.”

Alas, we wouldn’t be where we are today, either.

[rodeodance]

11. We stand up more and maybe someday they will, too.”

[ninkasi]

17. Yet one more reason

to despise Rumsfeld...being responsible for inflicting Dick Cheney on our country.

[rodeodance]

12. "But W. would rather take a risk in Iraq than risk being a wimp"---she is

right on target

[Morgana LaFey]

15. You know, it really was surreal

and now that I've read several cogent posts in this thread, it certainly strikes me in retrospect as a celebration worthy of Nazis.

[grasswire]

21. I was in Washington at the end of the Gulf War...

...and attended the celebration and parade on the Mall. The parade was chilling. Most of the route was lined with bleachers for officials and guests of the Bush I administration, leaving little room for citizens. It was a militaristic parade, similar to those one used to see in totalitarian states. Tanks, brass, marching troops, flyover by stealth aircraft, a huge "shock and awe" fireworks show. Scary stuff.

[Morgana LaFey]

23. Scary indeed. It's amazing what these people will give away about

themselves in the symbols and trappings they choose to surround themselves with, isn't it? Thanks for that report.

[Cha]

22. This should tell anyone who can

:think: think what kind of world the bushitistas live in. An Incompetent nest of vipers who can't make an intelligent decision to save their jobs.