Posted on 12/14/2003 4:56:29 PM PST by Pokey78
For George W Bush, the timing could not have been better. Snow was falling all over the East Coast yesterday. Thoughts of Americans were turning to Christmas as the news broke that the White House at last had its trophy. For the next fortnight, with Congress in recess, there will be little else to discuss. Then the American media will move into top gear for coverage of next year's presidential race. All in all, it makes Mr Bush hard to beat.
Administration officials were careful yesterday to avoid appearing hubristic. In the past six months, the White House has been haunted by the prematurely triumphalist tone of Mr Bush's "victory" landing on an aircraft carrier against the backdrop of a banner saying "Mission Accomplished". Yesterday's deadly bomb attack on an Iraqi police station was a stark reminder that the insurgency is not yet over.
But privately Mr Bush's aides were cock-a-hoop. This is the moment that he and his supporters have been dreaming of since the first day of the war, in late March, when a CIA tip-off led to a failed attempt to "decapitate" the regime by bombing a suspected hideaway of Saddam. It is a chance for a fresh start in Iraq. It is a fantastic way to go into an election year. And it is also the moment the Democrats were dreading - or at least privately, inasmuch as the most committed party hack would not dare argue that Saddam's capture was anything but wonderful news.
Just a month ago, with the economy showing signs of recovery, Iraq was deemed the "battleground" for next November's election. Now, overnight, one of the Democrats' core arguments, the lack of a substantive sign of progress in Iraq, has evaporated.
Osama bin Laden and proof that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction may still elude Washington's grasp. But Mr Bush can now point to the capture of Saddam after an eight-month hunt as a sign of America's determination and proof that they will eventually track down bin Laden.
Barring a major setback in Iraq, he will campaign for re-election as a successful "war president". And Democrats know to their cost that it is a mantle that suits him. His post-Afghan glow led the Republicans to a rout of the Democrats in the mid-term elections for Congress last year. Much can change in the next 11 months - as the Democrats keep saying, more jobs have been lost under Mr Bush than under any president since Herbert Hoover in the early 1930s - but few will be betting large sums against a similar result next year.
For the White House, yesterday's breakthrough is an uplifting reminder of that old political adage about the difference 24 hours can make. In the difficult months of the summer and autumn, Pentagon officials remained confident they would find their man. But there was increasing frustration in the White House, and the political pressures have been mounting.
Last week provided a typical pot-pourri of negative headlines. The Administration was attacked at home and abroad over the stark wording of a Pentagon memo barring the main "anti-war" nations, France, Russia and Germany, from a share in reconstruction contracts. Then it emerged that recruits to the new Iraqi army were deserting in droves. Finally, a Pentagon audit found that Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, had overcharged by up to $61 million for the delivery of petrol to Iraq.
In time, such issues will return to the political agenda. Yesterday's lack of triumphalism was not mere play-acting. Administration officials have come to recognise - rather belatedly, many would say - that as Donald Rumsfeld said in a memo recently, the war on terror is a "long hard slog". But after eight months on the "backfoot", America clearly now feels emboldened once again in touting its policies for Iraq and the world.
The hope in the White House is that Saddam's capture will wipe the slate clean, and that the "difficulties" of the past eight months will fade in the eyes of voters and in the minds of the international critics. There was much talk in Washington yesterday of a new beginning. The only question is how America will pursue its goal.
The first sign of the "new era" will come when James Baker leaves today as Mr Bush's envoy to urge France, Russia and Germany to forgive Iraq's debt. Only on Saturday, it was predicted that he faced a nightmarish mission after last week's rows. Now he is in a far stronger position.
Coalition leaders will be crossing their fingers that he remains the pragmatic Baker of yesteryear, when he was Mr Bush's father's secretary of state, and has not been primed to adopt the confrontational style of the hawkish neo-conservatives which has made so many enemies abroad, most recently with last week's Pentagon memo about the contracts.
The signs were yesterday that the White House intended to be a "graceful winner" and not to gloat - although gloating they no doubt were over the headlines of yesterday's Washington Post, which trailed a speech by Howard Dean, the front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The former governor of the tiny state of Vermont has shot to prominence with his outspoken anti-war message. He was due today to deliver his first substantive foreign policy speech, supposedly presenting a viable alternative to Mr Bush's approach to the "war on terror" . For Dr Dean, the timing could not have been worse.
Leni
A great day, the press is to the point of promoting Presidentual "gloat issues".
Dubya' is sitting pretty politically.
Osama is also in a hole...a hole made by a daisy cutter. There has been no real proof he is alive since we hit tora bora with daisy cutters. Even the "film" of him slogging around the mountains showed a younger man during a different time of year...suggesting it was a remade film. Ditto for the "Tapes" which anyone with a simple computer could fake...
I laughed when I saw that term in the article. So I looked it up in my dictionary. It means "Being in a state of boastful elation or exultation." I think that describes my state of being perfectly.
The term comes from the phrase "to set cock on hoop," meaning to drink festively. That I haven't been doing, but the night is still young.
As far as I can figure it out, a cock is a faucet or value by which the flow of a liquid can be regulated. A hoop is the metal or wood ring around a barrel that keeps the staves in place. To set cock on hoop must mean to tap a keg and start the party.
I'd settle for him telling where to find the body.
Usama proven dead and Saddam transformed into a trained monkey...
What more could you ask for?
I think I'll use cock-a-hoop from now on as it's easier to spell than "schadenfreud". Plus I'm boycotting all German words for the duration.
Danke shoen to all of you.
Leni
This comment: In the past six months, the White House has been haunted by the prematurely triumphalist tone of Mr Bush's "victory" landing on an aircraft carrier against the backdrop of a banner saying "Mission Accomplished"... illustrates to me that Russell doesn't really know what he's talking about.
Prairie
For America, the timing could not have been better!
For all the issues I have with our Presidents domestic agenda, he is the right man, at the right time, for the right job. Most especially when looking at who else is available.
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