Rou

Condi Rice was up on Capital Hill yesterday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. For the most part, she was presenting and defending El Presidente's plan for Iraq. Part of the Shrub's plan is to send twenty thousand more troops into Iraq to try to gain control of the situation. This thread isn't about the plan. It doesn't matter if it's the worst idea ever or the salvation of the world.

What drives me up the wall is the presentation of the plan.

You see, after giving her opening remarks, Rice had to field questions from the committee. One question in particular from Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) really struck a nerve. He asked if the additional troops would be seen as a further escalation of the conflict.

Rice tried to tap dance away from the question and call it an 'augmentation'. Let's call a spade a spade here. Increasing the troop commitment by over 10% is not tweaking the force. It's not a small change. Twenty thousand troops isn't a boy scout troop. It's a significant increase in force, required due to mounting casualties and violence in the region. You see, the other side stepped up it's game, and now we're trying to counter it. That is almost the very definition of an escalating conflict.

Don't cover it up, Madam Secretary. Don't distort the truth. Don't spin this shit. It's an escalation. Good or bad, that is what it is. Dancing around the semantics and trying to pass it off as an augmentation is disingenuous. Quite frankly, that is exactly why the voters (and the rest of the world) don't believe this administration when it talks anymore. Too much tap dancing. I'm sorry if the word conjures images of Vietnam to the American public, but escalation is a proper term for what the plan calls for.

Stand up and say what you fucking mean. Hagel was right to call you out on it. He was right when he mocked you on C-SPAN. You deserved it. It's reprehensible when leaders try to hide the truth of their actions with pretty words.