the debates and a well timed offensive

Timing is everything.

Cameras were rolling when Jessica Lynch was 'rescued' from an Iraq hospital. The operation was carefully planned and executed and it was a total sham.

Initially a hero was created, not just as personified by the rescued soldier, but also in the form of the American GI being all that he can be. The spin worked for a while, until reality sideswiped the fiction of the event. There was no enemy left to rescue Lynch from, aside from the doctors that were treating her, and the military knew it.

ah, well.

Yesterday, as the Pres. and his rival were debating each other, US and Iraqi troops were hammering Samarra, a rebel stronghold to the north of Baghdad. Me thinks this was a calculated move akin to the rescue of Lynch. That the assault has taken place now is no surprise to me.

The cable networks have focused today as much on events in Samarra as on the debates from last evening. A high bodycount works well for the administration (even though the Pentagon doesn't do body counts, or atleast they didn't for most of the war) and further distracts Americans from reality.

If the assault was motivated politically, then a calculation would have been made for success. I would imagine that in that calculation it was understood that the margin for error was small and the chances of success large. In other words, the assault was pretty much guaranteed to be successful in order to show progress, in the form of dead insurgents, and that the administration had a plan to win the war.

I expect another major assault the day of the next debate.
  posted by jmd ¶ Friday, October 01, 2004