This Turning Point is Real For An Obvious Reason
CHICAGO, May 22 — President Bush on Monday hailed the formation of a new Iraqi government as a “turning point” that will allow U.S. forces to take an “increasingly supporting role” against insurgents as Washington and London look for ways to disengage from the war.
Acknowledging the “unease” felt by many Americans, Bush said the war in Iraq has proved “more difficult” than expected and has produced only incremental progress. But he said the first government formed under the new, democratic Iraqi constitution will take on more of the burden.
“We can expect the violence to continue, but something fundamental changed this weekend,” Bush said in a speech to the National Restaurant Association. “The terrorists are now fighting a free and constitutional government. They’re at war with the people of Iraq. And the Iraqi people are determined to defeat this enemy, and so are Iraq’s new leaders, and so is the United States of America.”
And look at how the quality of the reporting has improved, as the same article notes:
Bush has declared turning points and milestones in the war before. He called it “an important milestone” when a temporary governing council was formed in July 2003 and “a turning point” when sovereignty was turned over to the interim government in June 2004. Elections in January 2005, he said, were both “a turning point in the history of Iraq” and “a milestone in the advance of freedom.”
He called it a “milestone” in October when Iraqi voters approved a constitution and “a major milestone” two months later when they elected a parliament — a moment he also termed “a turning point in the history of Iraq, the history of the Middle East and the history of freedom.” The selection of a prime minister last month was “an important milestone toward our victory in Iraq” and, a week later, “a turning point for the Iraqi citizens.”
So let’s have a quick review.
“Well, Iraq’s looking good,” Cheney responded. “It’s hard sometimes, if you look at just the news, to have the good stories burn through. Part of it is that what we’re doing here, obviously, takes time. From our perspective, looking back, as I say, to a year and a half ago, I think it’s remarkable progress. I think we’ve turned the corner, if you will. I think when we look back from 10 years hence, we’ll see that the year ‘05 was in fact a watershed year here in Iraq.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, whose vocal pro-war support for President Bush has rankled fellow Democrats, emerged from a White House meeting Friday saying the president has turned the corner on Iraq in recent weeks.
Lieberman cited the substantial turnout in the Iraq elections this week and Bush’s four major speeches on the war as key reasons for the turnaround.
D. CHENEY: We’ll leave as soon as the task is over with. We haven’t set a deadline or a date. It depends upon conditions. We have to achieve our objectives, complete the mission. And the two main requirements are, the Iraqis in a position to be able to govern themselves, and they’re well on their way to doing that, and the other is able to defend themselves, and they’re well on their way to doing that. They just announced that in the last day or two here, there’ve been stories about a major movement of some 40,000 Iraqi troops into Baghdad to focus specifically on the problem there.
KING: You expect it in your administration?
D. CHENEY: I do.
KING: To be removed. It’s not going to be — it’s not going to be a 10-year event?
D. CHENEY: No. I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time. But I think the level of activity that we see today, from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.
Q Are you saying — to make sure I understand — that the insurgency is where it was in Iraq a year ago?
GEN. MYERS: I think the analysis is that it — yes, it’s about — in terms of number of incidents, it’s right about where it was a year ago. And weeks will differ. We’ll have — and months will differ a little bit. But if you look at the scope of this over time since May of 2003, that’s the conclusion you draw.
Q General, what do you think about –
SEC. RUMSFELD: (Inaudible) — down, and then it goes up for a spike in An Najaf, and then it’s down to a lower level, and then it goes up for Fallujah. And then it spiked up for the elections, and now it’s back down. And it’s up slightly in the last week.
President Bush marked the second anniversary of the fall of Baghdad today, telling thousands of Army troops that the war has turned a corner as Iraqi security guards now outnumber U.S. forces in that war-torn country.
Shortly after the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, Bush hit the campaign trail to express his optimism about the country’s future.
“Turning the corner” or a variation of that was his phrase of choice. At the time, campaign aides had highlighted the phrase as part of Bush’s late summer message.
“When it comes to improving America’s public schools, we are turning the corner, and we are not turning back,” Bush said during a July 30 stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
“When it comes to spreading the peace, we’re turning a corner, and we’re not turning back,” he said the next day in Canton, Ohio.
That refrain was repeated on other campaign stops. But this week, the “turning the corner” line has disappeared from Bush’s speech, as Democrats seized on the words to charge that the president was out of touch.
“The last time we had a president who talked about turning the corner and ran on the slogan of turning the corner was Herbert Hoover,” Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, said during a July 31 stop in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2004 – Coalition forces have “turned the corner” in western Iraq, said Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., 82nd Airborne Division commander, during a Baghdad press conference today.
The general also said the coalition is “on a glide path to success” in the region.
On and on, back through the May 1, 2003 ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech, we’ve been treated to these reassurances. This time, it’s certain that things have changed. In the past eight weeks, Iraq’s government replaced its prime minister to the one Bush considered acceptable. The intense pressure Bush applied to make this switch happen is still being called ‘democracy.’ US polling has dropped Bush’s favorable rating to 29-32% and indicate the American public can’t wait till November, when it plans to toss out the Republican majority.
That would leave Bush vulnerable to being impeached for too many offenses to list.
And that’s the corner to a very dark alley where Bush greatly fears to tread. His only chance to save himself is to begin a troop withdrawal, while declaring we’ve won our way to a gradual exit from Iraq.
National security? The lives of our soldiers? The lives of 40,000 Iraqi civilians? Now, as we turn the corner to a critical election campaign, we’ll see Bush pursue the liberation he’s wanted the most: the freedom of his own ass.
Nothing will be spared in his pursuit of that. Fear mongering, terror alerts, using his Justice Department and Congress to intimidate and prosecute critics, possibly launching an entirely new war. We can only hope that Americans have also turned the corner, that we’ve defeated our ignorance and have wised up completely, and won’t fall for old Bush tricks or new ones, and we’ll vote in a far better government.
If we do that, we’ll finally have turned the corner in our long struggle to teach George Bush how a real democracy works.
May 25th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
We’ve turned so many corners in Iraq that we are now officially running around in circles.