[promoted by BooMan]
I’m having difficulty filling the hole Dubyanocchio left in his Iraq speech Monday at George Washington U. The patriotic phraseology that every liberty-loving human being on the planet can’t help but agree with was fulsomely present. The progress-is-being-made, let-me give-you-some-inspiring-anecdotal stuff was accounted for. So was the rancid sales-pitch-as-personal-story angle, this time in the proud words of a loving gold star mother’s desire that the president “complete the mission” so that her son will not have died futilely.
Exactly what one might expect from the keyboard of Abe Lincoln fan William McGurn, the president’s chief speechwriter, culled a year ago from that fortress of pamphleteering, The Wall Street Journal editorial page. Exactly what one might expect if one forgets that Abe told the truth.
But nowhere in those 4700 words did the president ever mention “the desperate insurgents.” I could barely swallow. I searched three times. Gone. Missing altogether. Poof! It was as if the Hare Krishna chanters had started leaving out hare rama.
So has the Administration’s daily dose of desperation been replaced? Has a memo gone out with a new talking point to the desperate dozen below? Because, if not, what are they gonna say?
Desperationistas
Desperateviks
Desperadoes
It’s hard to know for certain who in the Bushco pantheon of officialdumb has most frequently deployed “desperate” or “desperation” to describe Iraqi insurgents. You might be tempted to give Donald Rumsfeld the prize since he spent the summer of 2003 telling the shocked and awed and fatally compliant media not to say “insurgent,” only to say “desperate.”
But rigorous competition emerges when you have Scott McClellan going for multiples, calling the insurgents desperate four times in five minutes at a June 2005 press conference. He, on the other hand, got whipped by an amateur in the good tidings biz. Maj. General Ray Odiemo tagged the insurgents desperate eight times during a press conference in Tikrit in October 2003. For sheer relentlessness, however, Bush can’t be touched, having made at least 35 such references in various venues, an average of one a month since the war began.
Which is what made Monday’s speech such a shocker. It contained all the predictable treacle we’ve come to know and despise. Plus the usual justifying of the unjustifiable. Jingoism disguised as Wilsonian Jeffersonianism. So does the absence of “desperate” signal a policy turn or mere oratorical fatigue? Did Stumbletongue simply misread a line?
All this got started on the second day of the war 36 months ago on March 22, 2003, when Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld told Iraqi soldiers not to blow up oil wells: “See your orders for what they are, the last desperate gasp of a dying regime.”
April 15, 2003 – President Bush: “Centralized power of the dictator has ended – yet, in parts of Iraq, desperate and dangerous elements remain.”
On May 1, 2003, desperately masquerading as a warrior of renown, Bush plops down on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to inform us all: “Mission Accomplished.”
Coalition fatalities to date: 173. Iraqi: Uncounted.
July 1, 2003 – L. Paul Bremer: “So those few remaining individuals who have no desire or ability to fit into this new, free Iraq, not surprisingly, are becoming more and more desperate.”
July 30, 2003 – President Bush: “By taking the offensive against desperate killers, Americans in uniform are assuming great risks for our country.”
August 21, 2003 – Lt. General Tom McInerney (Ret.): “But it was a major error on their part to attack the U.N. It does show they are getting desperate.”
September 2, 2003 – McClellan: “I think what you have seen in the recent attacks is how desperate the remnants of the former regime are and how desperate the foreign terrorists are because we are making some important progress.”
October 4, 2003 – President Bush: We’re on the offensive against the desperate holdouts and Saddam loyalists who oppose progress in Iraq.”
Oct. 26, 2003 – Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz: “We are getting the job done despite the desperate acts of a dying regime of criminals.”
November 17, 2003 – President Bush: “Well, I would call it a desperate attempt by people, who were totally in control of government through tyrannical means, to regain power.”
Feb. 9, 2004 – Brig. General Mark Kimmitt: [Musab al Zarqawi’s recommendation of instigating sectarian violence in Iraq] “is almost a sign of desperation.”
March 2, 2004 – Vice President Dick Cheney: “The closer we get to standing up a democracy in Iraq, the more desperate the terrorists become, and that’s why we’ve seen the attacks we saw today.”
May 20, 2004 – President Bush: “As June 30 approaches, the enemies of freedom grow even more desperate to prevent the rise of democracy in Iraq. That’s what you’re seeing on your TV screens. The desperate tactics of a hateful few.”
June 25, 2004 – Senator John Warner: “Opponents of a free, democratic Iraq are desperate and will become even more desperate likely in the days ahead.”
Coalition fatalities to date: 976. Iraqi: Uncounted.
July 9, 2004 – President Bush: “Because we have taken this fight to the enemy, because freedom is rising in places they claim as their own, the terrorists are increasingly desperate.”
Sept. 9 2004 – Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison: “In Iraq, the brutal Saddam Hussein regime that supported terrorists is no more, though our enemies are making a desperate last stand.”
September 20, 2004 – General Richard B. Myers: [Foreign terrorists and former Saddam supporters] “are pretty desperate to keep elections from happening, because it’ll be that inertia that’s going to propel this country to democracy.”
October 7, 2004 – President Bush: “That’s why the terrorists are fighting with desperate cruelty, because they know their own future is at stake.”
November 12, 2004 – President Bush: “As those elections draw near, the desperation of the killers will grow and the violence could escalate.”
December 22, 2004 – General George W. Casey, Jr.: “Insurgents, who have everything to lose, are desperate to create the perception that elections are not possible.”
January 5, 2005 – Maj. General Peter Chiarelli: “While insurgent activity in Baghdad will likely spike as the Iraqi people approach their elections and the insurgents become more desperate, we will continue to focus on providing an environment in which Iraqis can conduct their elections without insurgent interference.”
Coalition fatalities to date: 1607. Iraqi: Uncounted (but likely more than 100,000 civilians, according to a study published in the British medical journal Lancet.)
February 14, 2005 – John D. Negroponte and General Casey: “This progress is not good news for those who desperately sought to wreck the electoral process.”
April 21, 2005 – Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita: [The insurgents in Iraq are] “increasingly desperate.”
April 25, 2005 – Brig. General John Basilica: [The attacks are] “desperate acts by desperate individuals.”
May 26, 2005 – Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld: “So suicide attacks, whether in Okinawa or in Baghdad today are not a sign of strength. They’re a sign of desperation.”
June 13, 2005 – McClellan: “Well, that’s the desperation you see from terrorists and see from regime elements who know that a free and peaceful Iraq is going to deal them a significant blow, and deal a significant blow to their ambitions.”
July 20, 2005 – Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld “Millions of Iraqis remain determined to continue that mission, and violent extremists are desperate to stop them.”
August 28, 2005 – President Bush: “As democracy in Iraq takes root, the enemies of freedom, the terrorists, will become more desperate, more despicable, and more vicious.”
September 15, 2005 – Maj. General Rick Lynch: “The insurgents had become desperate as Iraqis prepared to vote in an Oct. 15 referendum on a new constitution.”
October 31, 2005 – Brig. General Donald Alston: “A letter from al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, reflects that desperation.”
November 19, 2005 – Senator Elizabeth Dole: “They (terrorists in Iraq) know what is at stake and try desperately to derail our progress.”
December 2005 – Marine spokesman Captain Jeffrey Pool: “This is clearly a sign of how desperate insurgents have become.”
Coalition fatalities to date: 2353 Iraqi: Uncounted
January 6, 2006 – Maj. General Stephen Johnson “This attack shows the desperate, murderous nature of al-Qaeda.”
February 24, 2006 – Lt. General Gene Renaurt: “You can’t base that assessment on a `crisis’ because the more desperate the terrorists become the more they’ll try to make the crisis bigger.”
March 6, 2006 – General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “So desperate that they would destroy one of their own most sacred shrines in an attempt to cause civil war and strife.”
Coalition fatalities to date: 2521. Iraqi: Uncounted.
If Charles Krauthammer were really worth his salt as a pundit psychologist, perhaps he would by now have rung up the White House to discuss “desperate” in relation to a little thing called “projection”.
Genuine desperation comes from the guys who brought about a three-year low in electricity in Iraq and helped spawn an Iraq civil war that may draw in the neighbors, and who still haven’t dealt with The Abu Ghraib Files or found this Ten Most Wanted Fugitive, and who are staring at statistics like Democratic Congressional Lead Among Registered Voters Largest Since ’82 Midterm and Iraq drives Bush’s rating to new low.
As Forrest Gump might say, desperate is as desperate does.
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(A hat tip to Hairy Fish Nuts, the Canadian blogger who has been keeping track of desperate official pronouncements since mid-2004.)