"A long, hard slog"

The words that Ubermensch Rumsfeld used to describe America's occupation of Iraq apply equally to the task that lies ahead to defeat Bush's reelection. He's got the money, the media (see below) and the ability to control events, such as his cutesy Thanksgiving sojourn to Iraq and, as I noted in an earlier post, the likely announcement of some major development about Iraq--probably our "handing over of power"--just before the election.

I happened to watch NBC's Nightly News report of Bush's Thanksgiving fiasco last night. (I don't have a TV and so rarely see television news, and haven't seen a major-network telecast for months.) I was astounded by the coverage. Bush's visit--video of him chowing down with the troops, ladling out gravy in the cafeteria line and so forth--was the lead story, of course. This was followed by a separate piece about how dangerous the trip was and how secret, likening it to Ike's trip to Korea and Johnson's trips to Viet Nam (neither of which was secret; and not mentioning Clinton's trip to Kosovo, which seems more relevant), and how morale-boosting his arrival was for the troops.
The NBC coverage was slatheringly sweet--an advertisement, not a report--and baldly obeisant. Not a critical word: Nothing about how different this security-fraught visit was from what we'd been led to expect about our success in Iraq, nor a whisper about its obvious political purpose.
And that's not all. The Nightly News closed its half-hour "newscast" with yet a third piece about the trip, this with snippets of Bush's speech to the troops, which BTW was greeted with only mild applause, even though Bush waited often for cheers that didn't come.
On top of this, of course, is Google News listings of press accounts of the trip, in the thousands!

So, how can the opposition defeat such a juggernaut? I have ideas, that I will share in later posts. But all of them require a long, hard slog.

(Not all accounts of the trip were uncritical and naive. For reports from newspapers in the Middle East, go here. Tickler: Islam Online labels the trip a "PR stunt.")