GOP Surge Fantasists = Animal House's “Chip Diller”

“Remain calm!” BOOOOOOM! KA-BOOOOOM! “All Is well!”

In the following post, I slip off my deep blue, Group News Blog—Chief, National Affairs Desk blazer with the gold embroidered “GNB” logo on the breast pocket, and ease into one of Hubris Sonic's spare khaki safari jackets with all the pockets, (Swear to God, I won't get hummus stains on it), for a clutch of stories from Iraq that fit together like pieces in the much bigger, and mucho duplicitious puzzle that is the sad, and all-too easily debunked right-wing attempts at Iraq surge spin here stateside.

STORY ONE:
You will recall President Bush's shady, last-minute duck into Iraq about three weeks ago—like the ass-crazed neighborhood lothario sneakin' in and out the back door of a MILF's home—before hubby gets home from the slaughterhouse. While there, he stopped off in Anbar Province, the vaunted wee ur doinz it touchstone for the pro-surge right. (while it is actually more of a short-sighted bit of deal-cutting with local warlords so U.S. forces could cut their losses and get out.)

Seems Little Lord Clusterfuck visited with a fella—Sunni tribal leader Abdul Sattar Abu Risha—and even did a photo op with the guy during the stealth “through-the-doggie-door” visit. Here's a snapshot of that glorious moment:


The pictured meeting was trumpeted as a sign that everything was now, after umpteen, touted Friedman Units™ going by, gettin' all hunky-dory-easy-peasy in Iraq—not Baghdad, where “the surge is working”. And working so verrrrrry well that this photo is probably the last image you'll ever see of Abu Risha actually drawing breath. You see, the man got himself Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok-ed to bits about ten days after this pic was snapped, when his heavily armored car hit an IED just down the road apiece from his house. It happened to be mere hours before Bush went on TV to crow about surge progress and “The Anbar Miracle” as wingnuts have taken to breathlessly calling it. Which allowed the term “Anbar Miracle” to then be re-defined as when a local Iraqi warlord who cooperates with U.S. forces doesn't get blown to smithereens.

STORY TWO:
The wonderful Vader-masked mercenaries foreign contractors from the U.S.'s Blackwater USA apparently went batshit, firing willy-nilly in a circle in droop-lipped Rambo-style, after a State Department motorcade came under attack.

Aaaaaaaannnnnd, they sorta wound up snuffing nine nearby civilians in the process. “Yawn!” and “Whoops!” from the usual suspects. The Iraqi Interior Ministry then “rescinded the license” for Blackwater to operate in country because of the shell-spitting wig-out—which in the end doesn't mean much, because Blackwater has effectively been immunized from any punishment by the U.S. government, regardless of how badly they screw up.

Now, Blackwater isn't going anywhere. What with troops extended to several notches beyond the maximum, and the failure of the Webb amendment to get them more rest, every finger on a trigger in Mesopotamia is needed. What is striking is what went down.

In the heart of “Surge-is-working-dad”, you still have State Department vehicles being fired on as casually as old, rotating, wooden ducks at a Coney Island shooting gallery.

By all means...show us the increased security and drop in attacks mo-naaaaaaaay!

Or not.

AND FINALLY, STORY THREE:
In the wake of Blackwater's lame re-enactment of the Matrix “Lobby” scene, the U.S. suspended all foot and vehicle travel by people other than U.S. military—namely diplomats and civilians—beyond the lead, garlic and adamantium-lined Green Zone in Baghdad.

It's an open-ended suspension of land travel, as....well, they don't quite seem to know just when it'll be safe again to send feckless politicos, straw-grasping freeper bloggers, and lacquer-haired Fox News bots into the Potemkin marketplaces and sniper guarded playgrounds where smiling Iraqi kids can grin and shake packs of just-given M & Ms for the camera—before relaying the route the U.S. vehicles took there to Uncle IED-maker.

NO. LAND. TRAVEL. IN. BAGHDAD. UNLESS. YOU'RE. WEARING. DOG. TAGS. AND. PACKING. STEEL.

Now, why are these three stories linked? What does their combination add up to, or indicate in the bigger picture? It's fairly evident.

When you hear the likes of the onetime “maverick”, and onetime “sensible” (albeit a brief time) American hero like John McCain go off the rails and into the Kool Aid-filled ditch like he did this past weekend on “Meet The Press”, screaming “The surge is working! The surge is working!...And keep yer ding-dang soccer ball off my lawn, it damages the grass!”, or when you see clowns continuing to defend the spin-clogged words of our own Baghdad Bob—“Beltway Dave” Petraeus, while obfuscating the reality on the ground by screeching about “What about the man's honor? Your words damage our delicate, olive-drab, medal-clad flower of virtue!”—take all of that shit with a grain of salt. And raise yourself a unicorn and a magic pony to boot...

...Because those three events I cited—all of 'em happening within the last seven days— on their face tell you everything you need to know about what's really going on in the thick part of the soup that is Iraq. It is just the steady, continuing clusterfuckery, post Beltway Dave's Irwin Corey-esque presentation of a pyramid scheme in front of congress. And once you hear the volume, and distortion rise in the screeching of “The surge is working! The surge is working!”—as it clearly is not, understand who these screechers have become.

Animal House's Chip Diller, as portrayed by Kevin Bacon—who stood there waving his hands furiously as utter bedlam broke out around him. A sea of marbles flooring the marching band, a smoke-spouting “Deathmobile” terrorizing the streets, and Bluto Blutarsky taking on an army, swinging from banners and scooping up hapless, bee-hived hostages.

Animal House's Chip Diller, standing there amidst Ragnarok, yelling “Remain calm! All Is well! All is well!” Where he eventually found himself mowed down by the crazed madness around him.

“Remain calm! All Is well! All is well!” = “The surge is working! The surge is working!”

And in thinking about Animal House for a minute, another classic line came to mind.

OTTER: (To a disconsolate, FLOUNDER, after cavalierly wrecking his brother's brand-new Lincoln Continental)
“Hey, you fucked up. You trusted us.”

We didn't trust Bush and his war-mongering pals to get this right—but too many folks did.

And now...“sigh!”

With that, I doff the pocketed khaki vest. Back into the blue, GNB stateside blazer. And back to you, Hubris!