First we had to be vewy, vewy quiet, until we were vewy, vewy sure....
(sarcasm) And people were willing to believe that the only purpose of Bush's visit to the troops Thanksgiving night was to slip in some homeless man from DC, so he could be planted in Ad Dour for a photo op of soldiers pulling "Saddam" from a "spider hole", then whisk him away where he is held incommunicado.
Double hit. First, Bush apparently gets to do a little personal taunting of a helpless homeless guy, then the apparent capture is timed to burst upon the unsuspecting public, just in time for the height of the Christmas season, to grievously wound the hearts of those persons of tender sensibilities that wish to protect the rights and dignity of widely notorious tyrants.
George W. Bush is just cruel, just too cruel. Has the man no mercy or compassion?(/sarcasm}
Spare us the pity for Iraq's ex-tyrant (some beautiful liberal-slamming from foreign press)***Sometimes enthusiasm for cynicism is farcical, such as in the story of the plastic turkey. The evil moron Bush had shown courage and commitment to the troops in Iraq by flying in to share Thanksgiving dinner with them. The troops cheered and hollered. There was a photo of a beaming Bush holding a platter of golden turkey, surrounded by a sea of appreciative khaki. Here was a story crying out for negative spin.
So the story spread around the globe that Bush was holding a plastic turkey, a fake bird that symbolised his presidency, even though, as the Washington Post reported two weeks ago, the turkey was a real, dressed turkey on display at the front of the mess hall, in accordance with US Army custom.
The Australian's Phillip Adams and the Herald's Alan Ramsey were the most gung-ho local propagators of the myth. Adams devoted an entire column to it: "It was a prop turkey, a pretend turkey ... the President had taken a plastic turkey - one used for gourmet magazine shoots - to the mess hall."
Who cares about facts, as long as you turn a positive for Bush into a negative?
But it's harder to apply negative spin to those jubilant Iraqis, rifles in the air, ululating, dancing for joy, from Auburn to Baghdad, at the news of Saddam's capture.***