– “Modest Progress”: How’s the surge going? Gen. Petraeus gives a candid appraisal.
BAGHDAD, April 21 — Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said the ongoing increase of nearly 30,000 U.S. troops in the country has achieved “modest progress” but has also met with setbacks such as a rise in devastating suicide bombings and other problems that leave uncertain whether his counterinsurgency strategy will ultimately succeed.
Assessing the first two months of the U.S. and Iraqi plan to pacify the capital, senior American commanders — including Petraeus; Adm. William J. Fallon, head of U.S. forces in the Middle East; Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of military operations in Iraq; and top regional commanders — see mixed results. They said that while an increase in U.S. and Iraqi troops has improved security in Baghdad and Anbar province, attacks have risen sharply elsewhere. Critical now, they said in interviews this week, is for Iraqi leaders to forge the political compromises needed for long-term stability.
The commanders search for signs of success. On Friday night at dusk, Petraeus boarded a helicopter to look for scenes of normalcy and progress from above the maelstrom of the capital.
“On a bad day, I actually fly Baghdad just to reassure myself that life still goes on,” he said, leaning back and propping his legs on the seat in front of him.
The aircraft banked right and Petraeus caught sight of a patch of relative calm. “He’s actually watering the grass!” Petraeus said with a laugh, peering down at a man tending a soccer field, with children playing nearby.
Seconds later, the aircraft pivoted again, exposing boarded-up shops on a deserted, trash-strewn street. A bit farther, along the Tigris River, a hulking pile of twisted steel came into view — the remains of the Sarafiya bridge, blown up April 12 amid a series of spectacular and deadly suicide bombings.
“That’s a setback,” Petraeus said, his voice lower. “That breaks your heart.”
And so it went, all across the city. Directing the pilot to “break left” or “roll out,” he scanned the landscape for even tiny improvements — a pile of picked-up trash, an Iraqi police car out on patrol, a short line at one gas station — as if gathering mental ammunition for the next wave of Baghdad carnage. An amusement park, its rides lit up, merited a full circle.
“We have certainly pulled neighborhoods back from the brink,” Petraeus said, comparing the signs of revitalization now to his initial shock at the stark deterioration of parts of the capital upon his arrival in February.
– Frank Rich: Iraq Is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac
President Bush has skipped the funerals of the troops he sent to Iraq. He took his sweet time to get to Katrina-devastated New Orleans. But last week he raced to Virginia Tech with an alacrity not seen since he hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo’s end-of-life medical care. Mr. Bush assumes the role of mourner in chief on a selective basis, and, as usual with the decider, the decisive factor is politics. Let Walter Reed erupt in scandal, and he’ll take six weeks to show his face — and on a Friday at that, to hide the story in the Saturday papers. The heinous slaughter in Blacksburg, Va., by contrast, was a rare opportunity for him to ostentatiously feel the pain of families whose suffering cannot be blamed on the administration.
But he couldn’t inspire the kind of public acclaim that followed his post-9/11 visit to ground zero or the political comeback that buoyed his predecessor after Oklahoma City. The cancer on the Bush White House, Iraq, is now spreading too fast. The president had barely returned to Washington when the empty hope of the “surge” was hideously mocked by a one-day Baghdad civilian death toll more than five times that of Blacksburg’s. McClatchy Newspapers reported that the death rate for American troops over the past six months was at its all-time high for this war.
At home, the president is also hobbled by the Iraq cancer’s metastasis — the twin implosions of Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz. Technically, both men have been pilloried for sins unrelated to the war. The attorney general has repeatedly been caught changing his story about the extent of his involvement in purging eight federal prosecutors. The Financial Times caught the former deputy secretary of defense turned World Bank president privately dictating the extravagant terms of a State Department sinecure for a crony (a k a romantic partner) that showers her with more take-home pay than Condoleezza Rice.
Yet each man’s latest infractions, however serious, are mere misdemeanors next to their roles in the Iraq war. What’s being lost in the Beltway uproar is the extent to which the lying, cronyism and arrogance showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with the lying, cronyism and arrogance that led to all the military funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, Washington is still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web of deceit is the deliberate product of its amoral culture, not a haphazard potpourri of individual blunders.
Read the rest here.
– Very Little Humor: Rich Little bombed at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner last night.
What would the White House Correspondents Association dinner do for an encore on Saturday night in Washington following last year’s controversial Stephen Colbert routine? President Bush was back, but with impressionist Rich Little replacing the barbed satire of Colbert, and with the usual broad cast of celebrities — from Reggie Bush to Condi Rice.
President Bush said, “We’ve got to learn to laugh in this town,” but then instead of going into the usual jokes, surprised the crowd by saying, “I had looked forward to poking fun tonight but in light of this week’s tragedy at Virginia Tech, I decided not to try to be funny.”
He just said thanks for dinner and introduced Rich Little, “a talented and good man.” Little later told E&P that Bush had informed him earlier that he would not be doing any jokes himself.
Actually, one of the funniest jokes was Karl Rove being seated at a New York Times table.
Rich Little, with shockingly dyed hair, said at the outset that he is “not political” but rather a “nightclub performer who does a lot of dumb, stupid jokes,” then proved that.
He started with a couple of Canada (his native country) jokes and a weak Sen. John McCain, which bombed, as did an impression of.Arnold Schwarzenegger, causing him to look at the crowd askance. “You thought Colbert was bad,” he finally joked.
[…]
Speaking to E&P afterward, probably aware that his routine went over rather poorly, he said, “this is not the easiest audience in the world.” But he said Bush told him when it was over, “absolutely perfect.”
Some in the crowd walked out in the middle of the routine– far more than left during Colbert’s performance last year.
– The Channel Swim: Stealing a headline from Dusty Saunders, the longtime TV critic of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, let’s see what’s new on the tube.
- Logo premieres a new comedy show this week: The Big Gay Sketch Show:
As many times as “The Honeymooners” has been parodied, it’s never been done quite like this. While Alice Kramden tends to her kitchen, her housekeeping duties are interrupted by the entrance of her bus-driving spouse — not a big lummox named Ralph, but her “secret homosexual lifetime commitment partner companion,” a woman named Rhonda. And when Alice pesters Rhonda for “a new black-and-white TV set with rabbit ears,” Rhonda delivers: She gives her wife an African-American transvestite wearing a white satin gown and, yes, rabbit ears.
This is what classic television looks like through the pink prism of “The Big Gay Sketch Show,” a comedy series making its debut Tuesday on Logo, MTV Networks’ gay- and lesbian-themed cable channel. Yes, as the title indicates, it is a traditional half-hour showcase of skits featuring original characters and sendups of popular culture. And by the way, it’s the first show of its kind to put its gay identity front and center.
- And Then There’s Maude: The classic 1970’s sitcom about the world’s most liberated woman is out on DVD.
With her voluptuous adult daughter, Carol, a divorcée played by Adrienne Barbeau, and her precocious grandson sharing her comfortable suburban home, Maude didn’t turn the world on with her smile, as Mary Richards did, but instead with one fatal look could wither her Republican neighbor, Arthur (Conrad Bain). Maude’s oft-repeated deep-voiced warning to her beleaguered fourth husband (Bill Macy), “God’ll get you for that, Walter,” was deadly compared with Ann Marie’s exasperated cry to her milquetoast boyfriend, “Oh, Donald.” Maude was the kind of woman who would threaten to rip even her grandson’s heart out if he disobeyed her.
Running for six seasons — and riotously funny for almost as long — “Maude” unleashed on television the formidable Bea Arthur, a Broadway actress whose boozy Vera Charles in the musical “Mame” is the stuff of theater legend. Ms. Arthur appeared as Edith Bunker’s left-wing cousin Maude on a 1971 episode of Mr. Lear’s first hit, “All in the Family,” and made such an impression with audiences that, as the story goes, the CBS programming executive Fred Silverman suggested a spinoff as fast as the producers could get it on the air.
– Doonesbury: Image is everything.
