President Bush campaigning to counter rising criticism about Iraq, is praising postwar developments there as he thanks military reservists straining under long overseas deployments.
The reluctance of U.S. allies to send more troops to Iraq has caused greater pressure on members of the National Guard and reserve units. Pentagon officials say they may have to activate thousands more reserve troops in coming weeks to augment troops in Iraq.
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Wisdom From A Dead Horse (Cat Lewis, Table Talk #562 George W. Bush thread)
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says: "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."
However, in the Bush administration more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:
1.. Buying a stronger whip. 2.. Changing riders. 3.. Appointing a committee to study the horse. 4.. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses. 5.. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included. 6.. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired. 7.. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse. 8.. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed. 9.. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horses performance. 10.. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance. 11.. Declaring that since the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly and carries lower overhead. Therefore, it contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses. 12.. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
This is already starting to remind me of the marketing campaign for the New Coke®.
UPDATE: Boy, Bush sure did pick a bad day to tell us everything is peachy in Iraq. Phew! That's a relief. Because I thought that in the last 24 hours we had lost 8 Iraqi policemen with another 45 injured, one Spanish military attache, 3 American soldiers dead and at least five others wounded.
But thanks to our dear leader I feel warm and comforted. And now that Condi is in charge (quick, someone let Rummy know), things are bound to get even better!
(Though if things are going so great, why put her in charge?)
