Victory in Iraq

It's not that I believe or don't believe that GW's plan will achieve victory in Iraq, I'm just not sure what victory is and I think he likes it like that.

The dictionary describes "victory" as:

Defeat of an enemy or opponent.
Success in a struggle against difficulties or an obstacle.
The state of having triumphed.

In a recent poll, 55 percent said they did not believe Bush has a plan that will achieve victory for the United States in Iraq; 41 percent thought he did. So, I'm standing with the majority once again.

This administration seems to have a hard time with using the actual dictionary terms as we know them. The Bush-speak definitions for victory and noble cause and patriotism are just so darned ambiguous and elusive.

M'thinks this emperor has no clothes. GW seems to think if he tells a story over and over and over again that we will believe him. The good news is, not many are fooled by his rhetoric and he is going to have to change the course rather than stay on his disastrous course. And there are signs that this is happening. While his "Victory in Iraq" speech of last week didn't reveal anything new, he is opening his kimono just a tad, even if it took using the words of a former Duke University political scientist who now works for the National Security Council. Peter Feaver and others presented this premise to the administration that Americans would support a war with mounting casualties on one condition: that they believed it would ultimately succeed.

Howard Dean compared the war in Iraq to Vietnam and said, "The idea that the United States is going to win the war in Iraq is just plain wrong." Those comments drew immediate fire from Republicans. In an interview with WOAI-AM in San Antonio, Dean criticized what he called President Bush's "permanent commitment to a failed strategy" while saying, "We need to be out of there and take the targets off our troops back." Dean recalled that the strategy to stay the course in Vietnam cost thousands more lives to be lost.

"Things did not always go as planned"? Duh! Come on, GW, that might be the understatement of the year. Things didn't go as planned, 2151 Americans dead, 15,000+ injured to say nothing of the unknown number of Iraqi casualties and all you can say is "Things didn't go as planned? Sheesh! It doesn' t sound like you care much at all. You say things didn't go as planned and 2151 families get to spend the rest of our lives with a hole in our hearts. Don't be so casual about it.

GW *is* responsible for this mess he got us into. He said he was responsible, but for what? Responsible for how messed up it is in Iraq? Sorry that he didn't get away with knowingly using false information? He *knew* when he used the intelligence 2 years ago- WHAT TOOK SO LONG TO ADMIT THAT THE INFORMATION WAS FALSE when we knew it all along!

"The American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power" GW said, speaking of Saddam. Ok, let's go with that, Saddam was evil, Saddam was a bad man, but does his being out of power make America a safer place? I don't feel safer and I suspect I stand with the majority on this, too.