The Bush Regime is busy selling the "Surge" and fighting reality

Monday, General Petraeus will make his sales pitch to the American people singing the praises of the "surge". Washington Post pointed out how the White House hired Ed Guilespe to help design the selling points to the American people in preparation for Monday:

Another new arrival in the West Wing set up a rapid-response PR unit hard-wired into Petraeus's shop. Ed Gillespie, the new presidential counselor, organized daily conference calls at 7:45 a.m. and again late in the afternoon between the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the U.S. Embassy and military in Baghdad to
map out ways of selling the surge.

From the start of the Bush plan, the White House communications office had been blitzing an e-mail list of as many as 5,000 journalists, lawmakers, lobbyists, conservative bloggers, military groups and others with talking points or rebuttals of criticism. Between Jan. 10 and last week, the office put out 94 such documents in various categories -- "Myths/Facts" or "Setting the Record Straight" to take issue with negative news articles, and "In Case You Missed It" to distribute positive articles or speeches.

Gillespie arranged several presidential speeches to make strategic arguments, such as comparing Iraq to Vietnam or warning of Iranian interference. When critics assailed Bush for overstating ties between al-Qaeda and the group called al-Qaeda in Iraq, Gillespie organized a Bush speech to make his case.

"The whole idea is to take these things on before they become conventional wisdom," said White House communications director Kevin Sullivan. "We have a very short window."

Instead ofdiscussing political solutions for Iraq, our leadership is busy looking for ways to hoodwink the public once more. They are in full "pre-Iraq war" propaganda mode. Bush actually is planning for a speech later this week based around the Petraeus report. Luckily, the print media has been paying attention to this report. We learned already in July, that the White House is actually writing this report and last week we learned about the G.A.O's negative report on Iraqi benchmark progress before the White House tried to spin it into a positive report.
A.P reported this morning:

In vertical bars of blue, green, gray and red, a briefing chart prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency says what Gen. David Petraeus won't.

Insurgent attacks against Iraqi civilians, their security forces and U.S. troops remain high, according to the document obtained by The Associated Press. It is a conclusion that the well-regarded Army officer who is the top U.S. commander in Iraq is expected to try to counter when he and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, testify before Congress on Monday and Tuesday.

More than four years into a conflict initially thought to be a cakewalk, the war has become a battle of statistics, graphs and conflicting assessments of progress in a country of more than 27 million people.

The defense intelligence chart makes the point, with figures from Petraeus' command in Baghdad, the Multinational Force-Iraq. Congressional auditors used the same numbers to conclude that Iraqis are as unsafe now as they were six months ago; the Bush administration and military officials also using those figures say that finding is flawed.


In other words the Crooker and Petraeus are going to cherry pick the statistics that can benefit their master's theory that the surge is working.

We discussed on our show last week that sectarian violence has doubled since the start of the Bush escalation. The only success story has been the Anbar area where Sunni tribes have been fighting Al Queda. Interestingly enough, Washington Post pointed out (in the same article from above) that this pattern had started in Anbar months before Bush's "way forward".

More striking was the emerging shift in Anbar; al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgents had grown so dominant in the western province that military intelligence had all but given up on the area months earlier. Bush benefited from good timing. As he introduced his new strategy, Marine commanders had already made common cause with local Sunni tribal leaders who had broken with the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, also called AQI.

Why the sheiks turned remains a point of debate, but it seems clear that the tribes resented al-Qaeda's efforts to ban smoking and marry local women to build ties to the region. "Marrying women to strangers, let alone foreigners, is just not done," Australian Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, a Petraeus adviser, wrote in an essay.

The sheik who forged the alliance with the Americans, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, traced the decision to fight al-Qaeda to Sept. 14, 2006, long before the new Bush strategy, but the president's plan dispatched another 4,000 U.S. troops to Anbar to exploit the situation. As security improved, the White House eagerly took credit.

This is an important point to remember when the media begins referencing Anbar over and over again this week, after the Petraeus presentation.

The progress in Anbar was being made before Bush escalated the war.

This is going to be one of the Bush administration's hardest sales pitches of all time. Will the American people believe anything Crooker and Petrarus have to say? Let's hope not.