More than a few people have pointed out that the recent hard sell on the Long War is moot; the Bush administration’s war efforts to attack Iran and Pakistan and beyond will simply collapse under the sheer weight of their own incompetence so far.
2008 indeed looks to be a watershed that will be the Waterloo of the GOP. What the Bushies are up to reeks of flop sweat and desperation. Rove is gone, mouthpiece Tony Snow is out soon, and a few more are expected to leave as well.
And why are the rats leaving the ship? Arguably to regroup and attack from a different angle, because the current hard sell is already meeting resistance.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A majority of Americans don’t trust the upcoming report by the Army’s top commander in Iraq on the progress of the war and even if they did, it wouldn’t change their mind, according to a new poll.
President Bush frequently has asked Congress — and the American people — to withhold judgment on his so-called troop surge in Iraq until Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, issue their progress report in September.
But according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Thursday, 53 percent of people polled said they suspect that the military assessment of the situation will try to make it sound better than it actually is. Forty-three percent said they do trust the report.
CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said he doesn’t think the mistrust is directed at Petreaus as much as it is what he represents.
Holland said, “I suspect most people are hearing the words ‘general’ and ‘Iraq’ and that’s what they’re basing their opinion on.”
He added, “It does seem to indicate that anyone associated with the Bush administration may be a less than credible messenger for the message that there is progress being made in Iraq.”
You think? After six years of basically lying as an art form, we have people still openly wondering if Bush has lost all credibility? Incredible. Still, this is pretty significant. “Less than credible” means people are finally calling bullshit on these guys, from the top down. Bush is even toxic to his own generals at this point.
Twenty-six percent of those polled feel that the Iraqi government is making progress, while 69 percent said that it wasn’t.
“We haven’t done a lot of polling about the Iraqi government,” Holland said, “but the numbers we have seem to indicate that people are pretty skeptical of any government official in Iraq.”
The poll indicates that most of America’s mind is made up about the war — 72 percent said the report will have no effect on their view of the war.
These numbers too are very significant. There can be no success in Iraq without a functioning government, and the public is completely soured on that prospect. Likewise, the poll says that the “Petraeus Report” (actually written by the White House) will have virtually no effect on their decisions about how well the surge is going. They’ve already made up their minds.
At this point, the Bushies have to know that their backs are against the wall. The September 15th report was basically their last chance, and the news is that the public is already ignoring it. But this of course means the Bushies will have to take far more drastic measures to ensure the Long War continues.
The question of course is how drastic those measures will be.
