Of Johnny Rocco, Subprime Delights, and General Psychopathology

The Bush administration has chosen to characterize its extended buildup of troops and extravagant outlays of cash with a typically Orwellian choice of words: "this drawdown."

"It's very important that we handle this drawdown in a way that allows us to end up in a stronger position in Iraq," said Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Congress yesterday.

Not any coming drawdown, not any expected drawdown, not any inexorable drawdown because of troop-level unsustainability.

No, it's "this drawdown," just in case large segments of the Republic are too benumbed to notice that there is no drawdown -- but doesn't it sound nice? -- and even when "this drawdown" does come, it won't be a drawdown, but a resumption of the old.

The administration indeed loves liberty and freedom because they provide it the liberty to be free with language, domestic psyops and reality.

By the way, continued Mr. Gates: "I don't know what that timeline looks like," referring to the non-drawdown drawdown.

Did the digits 2-0-0-9 come to mind? Well, that's so tediously ... realistic. Better to leave that till late 2-0-0-8.

Bob did, however, have a pretty good idea of what "this timeline" -- note that it's "this drawdown," but "that timeline" -- looks like in the language and calculus of cash.

How much is enough for the Johnny Rocco administration, as told to the Senate Appropriations Committee?

[Chairman Bogart] "Tell us, Rocco. You want more. Don't you, Rocco?"

[DefSec Robinson] "That's it, more. That's right, I want more."

[Bogart] "Will you ever get enough? Will you, Rocco?"

[Robinson] "Well, I never have. No, I guess I won't."

We continue to ignore director John Huston's lessons offered in Key Largo, the brilliant and allegorical postwar film about those who sacrifice, and those who take.

The sacrifice is reported daily; the taking receives more of a kind of clip coverage in this neverending feature film.

"Gates asked Congress yesterday to approve an additional $42.3 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.... Yesterday's request ... came on top of the $141.7 billion requested in February and a request earlier this year for $5.3 billion for MRAP vehicles."

Furthermore, "Gates said the additional money is needed to pay for the continuation of the president's troop buildup in Iraq." That buildup would be this drawdown he mentioned.

So, the big picture (show)? The most recent "request" for 2008 alone brings us "to nearly $190 billion -- the largest single-year total for the wars so far," which "boost[s] war spending this year by nearly 15 percent and would bring the total cost of both conflicts to more than $800 billion since Sept. 11, 2001."

Counting long-term and admittedly negligible knickknacks like veterans' health care, one Nobel Prize-winning economist has "placed the total cost of the Iraq war at more than $2.2 trillion, not counting interest."

But it's OK. The administration hasn't had its credit card cancelled yet -- not by USA Credit Inc.'s 535 board of directors, or its 300 million shareholders who are going to get one helluva shock when these subprime inanities come due.

Comments

[Hotrod54235]

I thought I heard the oil revenues would largely pay for our adventures in Paradise. You know, the ones we are hoping the Iraqi's will cede to the oil companies we all know and trust.

[epppie]

What fascinates me the most about this statement:

""It's very important that we handle this drawdown in a way that allows us to end up in a stronger position in Iraq,""

Is that there seems to be not even a queston, not the slightest question, about whether it is any business of ours to have any position in Iraq, much less an even stronger position than the one we have now (and for Christ's sake, what position could be stronger than total military occupation?!).

Orwellian doesn't even begin to describe the surrealness of this stuff. Wasn't it Kissinger who first realized that you really didn't have to make the remotest sense, as long as whatever you said sounded vaguely patriotic and, well, cocky.