Does Bush believe that ‘victory,’ which to him is apparently an Iraq with a western-style democracy, forced upon it against the will of the people, has been achieved? That is too much of a stretch even for the intellectually-challenged Mr. Bush to believe. But using Hitler’s ‘Big Lie’ theory, perhaps he hopes that U.S. citizens will buy it.
The ‘Big Lie’ theory comes from Mein Kampf, Hitler’s autobiography, and is this: "in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation… more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” So if Mr. Bush would have us believe that a new democratic Iraq is dawning, he is telling ‘the big lie.’
But perhaps neither of these explains the president’s apparent willingness to accept a troop withdrawal timeline (he calls it a time ‘horizon,’ apparently believing that the U.S. citizenry is too stupid to know he means timeline). The youthful, dynamic Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is ahead in the polls; his Republican opponent, the awkward, elderly and decrepit John McCain, has not been able to spark any excitement on the campaign trail. McCain is a stalwart supporter of war, any war it seems, and foresees the U.S. occupation in Iraq lasting for generations. Perhaps it has finally dawned on Bush that this is not what the American people want; perhaps someone has finally gotten through to him; perhaps someone has penetrated his inner circle of yes-men and women, and has made him realize that a campaign platform of more of the same death, blood and destruction, is not selling too well even in middle America. [More]