1115.org

If someone in the White House doesn’t do something about Dana Perino very soon, she’s going to end up hurting herself physically.

Her latest self-inflicted injury (from yesterday’s press gaggle):

Q Does the President — does the President regret the “mission accomplished” speech?

MS. PERINO: Look, I’ve never heard him describe it that way, absolutely not. Let me just remind everybody, in case you need it, that speech there, I encourage people to read it. The President never said “mission accomplished.” I realize that the banner said “mission accomplished.” That was specific to the mission of that ship. They were supposed to be deployed for six months. They were deployed well beyond that. I think they’d gone to both Iraq and Afghanistan. And that’s what that banner was referring to. But I’m not going to –

Q He did (say), “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

MS. PERINO: We did prevail, in terms of toppling the Iraqi army and Saddam Hussein. And several months later, 12 million Iraqis voted for a new government and a constitution. And things looked very promising. And the President did believe that at the end of 2006, he would be announcing basically what was in the Baker-Hamilton report.

Unfortunately, the sectarian violence had grown to the extent that the President, in the fall of 2006, underwent an extensive review to decide on a new strategy in Iraq, of which he announced on January 10, 2007. And the President believes that helping the Iraqi people now is critical. He disagrees with the idea of a time — a date to tell the enemy exactly when we’re going to leave, because it would leave a vacuum that would only lead to many more deaths of the innocent men, women and children of Iraq, destabilize the region. And that is surely not in the long-term interests of the national security of our country.

Dana, I think they just forgot to tell you, but here’s what Donald Rumsfeld said to Bob Woodward in an interview in July 2006:

SEC. RUMSFELD: I took “mission accomplished” out. I was in Baghdad, and I was given a draft of that thing to look at. And I just died, and I said my God, it’s too conclusive. And I fixed it and sent it back..

MR. WOODWARD: were you on the trip?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I was. And we got it back and they fixed the speech, but not the sign.

So you have zero hope, dear Dana, of getting away with pretending that Mission Accomplished referred to the ship’s mission at sea. Someone should have told you that the first time you tried this particular piece of oxcrap, five days ago.

I believe they’re using you as a diversion, Dana. They turn you loose, and let you say your silly, frilly stuff, and hope that you deflect some attention away from the big scandal of the day. It may even be working. Look at all the liberal bloggers who wasted a finite amount of time writing a post about what you said yesterday.

As for “We did prevail”, try explaining to us — in simple words of three syllables or less, and half-way correct English too, if that’s not too much trouble — what you were hoping to achieve, by trying to tell the country, at this stage of this war, that we have indeed prevailed.

Which brings me to the issue of half-way correct English. I realize that the Garblizer-in-Chief doesn’t exactly set a great example, but you don’t necessarily have to follow his lead, do you?

For example, you can topple a tyrant (except in the U.S., apparently), but how the heck do you topple an army? (Except when you’re playing tin soldiers, that is. And surely even you see the inadvisability of using the language of tin-soldier-playing when describing Bush’s conduct of the Iraq War?)

And “the President, in the fall of 2006, underwent an extensive review”? If he had, dear Dana, the reviewers would have issued a long report listing his main faults, defects and failings. (Ah, but maybe it’s still classified, and were just blabbing out of school?)