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Four Color Politics

Mainly the Quotes of the Morning, with occasional Other Crap.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Quotes of the Morning: Getting Polled

“Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday told US troops in Iraq that he knows they're suffering hardships from extended deployments but the longer stays are ‘vital to the mission.’
His words were greeted with restrained applause at a rally on a US military base near Saddam Hussein's former hometown of Tikrit. On his second day in Iraq, Cheney also held classified meetings with US military leaders and emerged repeating the words of the top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, that ‘we can expect more violence’ ahead.”
-Associated Press, May 11, 2007

‘Vice-Leader Dick bravely spent the night in a war zone! I think that puts him one night past the number of that Fearless Leader has ever spent in a war zone, but I’m not certain. He was there to look over the strategy and to talk to the troops. Let’s hear what he had to say..”
-Skippy

"’From our perspective, we don't see much as far as gains,’ said Marine Cpl. Bradley Warren, the first to question Cheney in a round-table discussion with about 30 military members. ‘We're looking at small-picture stuff, not many gains. I was wondering what it looks like from the big side of the mountain - how Iraq's looking.’
Cheney replied that remarkable progress has been made in the last year and a half.
‘I think when we look back from 10 years hence, we'll see that the year '05 was in fact a watershed year here in Iraq,’ the vice president said. ‘We're getting the job done. It's hard to tell that from watching the news. But I guess we don't pay that much attention to the news.’"
-Associated Press, December 18, 2005

“’05? Oops.. That was from the last trip that Vice-Leader Dick made to Iraq a year and a half ago. My bad. Still, this somehow sounds familiar. What the heck, let’s just look at what he said..”
-SKippy

“They've had three elections this year; each one has gotten better and stronger and more effective. I do think it's serving to undermine the legitimacy of the insurgency. I think it will make it increasingly difficult for the insurgents to be effective.
[…]
And while the level of violence has continued, I do believe that when we look back on this period of time, 2005 will have been the turning point when, in fact, we made sufficient progress both on the political front and the security front so that we'll see that as the watershed year.“
-Vice-Leader “Dick” Cheney, December 18, 2005

“And we had that election in January -- first free election in Iraq in decades -- and that we will be able to look back from the perspective of time, and see that 2005 was the turning point, was the watershed year, and that establishment of a legitimate government in Iraq, which is what that whole political process is about, means the end of the insurgency, ultimately.
[…]
That's my point, that, in fact, the political process did proceed successfully, and that they have made every single milestone represents ultimately the end of the insurgency because there will be legitimate democratic government in Iraq. And I don't think the insurgents will be able to stand up to it.“
-Vice-Leader “Dick” Cheney, December 18, 2005

“Ah yes.. The ‘watershed’ year of 2005, when we apparently first saw the beginnings of our great triumph in Iraq and the death of the insurgency. It was going great then, and it is apparently going even better now.”
-Skippy

“I can say that based on the conversations I've had today, and most of those conversations were with Iraqis and Iraqi leaders - some of them in the government, some of them not - that they believe the situation has gotten better. They cite specifically the statistics on sectarian violence, Sunni-on-Shia and Shia-on-Sunni violence that they think is down fairly dramatically.”
-Vice-Leader “Dick” Cheney, May 9, 2007

“See? The situation has become much better than it was back in 2005, and back then it was a ‘watershed’ turning point, so it must be practically perfect there now. Sectarian violence is down!”
-Skippy

“The United States military on Wednesday denied reports that a helicopter gunship fired on a primary school north of Baghdad but confirmed at least two children were killed in an attack on insurgent bombers.
A statement from US headquarters in Baghdad said attack helicopters went into action on Tuesday near Mandali, a small town in Diyala province, when pilots spotted militants planting a bomb near an illegal checkpoint.
Following the air strike, US forces dispatched to the area were told by Iraqi civilians that the two bombers were killed along with five bystanders, two of them children, the statement said.”
-AFP, May 9, 2007

“Of course blowing up children seems to be up. Well, as they always say, you can’t make an omelet without fragging some children. Those kids were probably going to grow up to be terrorists anyhow. It just proves that we are taking out the root causes of terrorists, children, and finally taking this war seriously. It’s game time, and apparently this war is a full-contact sport.”
-Skippy

“Q One last thing about -- in connection with the Vice President's trip. On board Air Force Two yesterday, senior administration officials said of the trip, and the message, ‘We've got to get this work done. It's game time.’ -- what does that suggest about the first four years of the war? Is it that the administration is just now saying that that was a scrimmage and now it's game time? What does that mean?
MR. SNOW: I think that's simply -- it gets back to what the President is saying. In some ways, there may be perceptions of two different clocks, Baghdad and Washington. The President said, you've got to speed up the clock. It is a matter of realizing that there have been a lot of efforts now. We've been working on this joint way forward in Iraq. You are getting results in a number of areas. We have been talking and working with the Iraqis on political, economic, and other reform.”
-Press Gaggle with White House Spokesman Tony Snow, May 10, 2007

“See? Our strategy is changing in order to get to our inevitable victory. Fearless Leader is calling the shots, so that some day he can march his troops back to the gates of Rome in triumph and take over the Senate.. Um, sorry, I was thinking of Julius Caesar. No, Fearless Leader changed his strategy because he hated getting polled.”
-Skippy

“I remind people -- I reminded them that last fall, late fall -- I had been one of these people that get endlessly polled -- you know, these surveys and the pollsters calling people all the time, it looks like -- and if they had asked my opinion, I'd have said, I disapprove of what was going on in Iraq. You could have put me down as part of the disapproval process -- and, therefore, had put a plan in place that would more likely cause me to approve of what's going on in Iraq. That's why I made the decision I made. “
-George ‘Dubya’ Bush, May 10, 2007

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