Damned Right

What are politicians most afraid of in Washington? That they won’t be on the right side of an issue. And that goes double for political reporters. The problem is the right side isn’t always what’s right. The right side is what The Right People ^tm say it is.

Somehow in August a sea change has taken place. Or a PR war has been won. Or have The Right People ^tm convinced the scribes The Surge ^tm is working.

Everything old is new again. Bush goes retro. Bush goes back, way back. Back to his eternal optimism, back to the wall, past the wall of the Vietnam Memorial with its over fifty thousand dead, back to crash through logic and reality to warn against retreat.

President Bush delivered a rousing defense of his Iraq policy on Wednesday, telling a group of veterans that “a free Iraq” is within reach and warning that if Americans succumb to “the allure of retreat,” they will witness death and suffering of the sort not seen since the Vietnam War.

While Bush may think "a free Iraq” is within reach, the truth runs like sand through his fingers. And power runs through the Shiites. And not just politically. The Sunnis aren’t happy. And blow up now and then.

Armed groups increasingly control the antiquated switching stations that channel electricity around Iraq, the electricity minister said Wednesday.

That is dividing the national grid into fiefs that, he said, often refuse to share electricity generated locally with Baghdad and other power-starved areas in the center of Iraq.

The development adds to existing electricity problems in Baghdad, which has been struggling to provide power for more than a few hours a day because insurgents regularly blow up the towers that carry power lines into the city.

Soon David Petraeus will report that the White House says that he says The Surge ^tm is working, even if the electricity in Iraq is not. Reporters will agree.

And what will we end up with when the scribes finish reporting what The Right People ^tm say? "Democratic institutions are not necessarily the way ahead in the long-term future,” said Brig. Gen. John "Mick" Bednarek, part of Task Force Lightning in Diyala province, one of the war’s major battlegrounds.