Earning The Big Bucks

It occurs to me that part of the hardest work done by people in the Bush administration is saying things while keeping a a straight face.

This morning, Secretary of State and former National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to talk about Iraq. She included the following in her opening statement:

We know our objectives. We and the Iraqi Government will succeed if together we can:

• Break the back of the insurgency so that Iraqis can finish it off without large-scale military help from the United States.
• Keep Iraq from becoming a safe haven from which Islamic extremists can terrorize the region or the world.
• Demonstrate positive potential for democratic change and free expression in the Arab and Muslim worlds, even under the most difficult conditions.
• And turn the corner financially and economically, so there is a sense of hope and a visible path toward self-reliance.

This is why Condi earns the big bucks.

First, we have to "break the back" of a thing that is decentralized and amorphous. She could have just as sensibly said "break the back of the tarbaby we created when we toppled Saddam without a plan for his replacement."

Second, we have to keep Iraq from becoming something it has already become. Perhaps she means to suggest that, so far, the Islamic extremists there have been sated with the feast of American targets in their own neighborhood, and have yet to strike "the world", unless by "world" you mean to include Madrid and London. (oops.)

Third, we have to "demonstrate positive potential for democratic change." I guess this means we've given up on the goal of actually creating a democratic nation there? Merely demonstrating a potential for change seems like a low bar. And how does one measure a postive potential, as opposed to, I suppose, a negative potential? Does it involve a charge of democracy ions or something?

Finally, we merely have to "turn" the 4,322nd "corner" in Iraq, the one around which financial and economical happiness has been waiting. Sounds good. Though again, the bar is low, since we just have to turn the corner, and find "hope" and a "visible path toward" self-reliance, which given the administrations ability to hope and see things that aren't there, could happen any time now.

Gack.

We have to fix the mess we made, and then we have to, um, make it look nice, with maybe some curtains or something. Right. Got it.