Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Tonight we will be treated to yet another Bu$h speech meant to drum up support for his ill-gotten war in Iraq.

Here are some of the lies we're expected to hear -

1. That the surge has been a success.


2. That he's going to follow General Petraeus' recommendation that some troops be drawn down.


3. That as many as 30,000 troops will be drawn down by next summer provided the surge continues to be a success.


4. That because of this Petraeus plan, 2200 Marines are coming out of Iraq as he speaks and will not be replaced.


5. That Iran is forcing us to move in a direction that might include invading them.

Now let's talk about the truth.

1. The surge has not been a success. The Pentagon has been cherry-picking the numbers of casualties.
   

   Senior U.S. officers in Baghdad disputed the accuracy and conclusions of the largely negative GAO report, which they said had adopted a flawed counting methodology used by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Many of those conclusions were also reflected in last month's pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.
   
   The intelligence community has its own problems with military calculations. Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."
   
   "Depending on which numbers you pick," he said, "you get a different outcome." Analysts found "trend lines . . . going in different directions" compared with previous years, when numbers in different categories varied widely but trended in the same direction. "It began to look like spaghetti."
   



2. The White House wrote the talking points for Petraeus. This is not his plan at all.


3. There may be 30,000 troops that will be home by next summer but it's not some big new plan. This will only bring troops back down to the level before the surge began. This is where the administration's slight of hand gets really good. You see, they're trying to make us feel wonderful about the fact that 30,000 troops may get to come home so that we forget that THE GOAL OF THE SURGE WAS TO END THE WAR NOT END THE SURGE. These troops have to come home anyway because they are going to be at the end of their 15 month deployment limit.


4. Those 2200 Marines were scheduled to come home anyway and had nothing to do with this so-called new plan.


5. It's the same song, second verse. Halliburton must be running low on funds and needing another country to reconstruct.

I know that Rachel Maddow just announced her new Bu$h speech drinking game for tonight but I won't be watching. I just can't bring myself to do it. Plus E won't let me. He's afraid I might break one of the TVs when I get mad and throw something at it..