Death by PowerPoint.

Neurotics build castles in the sky.

Psychotics live in them.

And Neocons use zoomy, authoritative-looking PowerPoint presentations to scam dolts into buying time-shares in “Sky Castle Acres”.

Now it is nowhere in my nature to give away free column inches to purely commerciocorporate interests that already A) net more profit in a minute than I will see in a year, and B) will accrue no benefit to me whatsoever. However consider this 30 second sample of the ad man’s craft by OfficeMax (wherein a skeptical, suburban Mom and Dad are persuaded to turn their daughter out to a pimp based on the strength of his glossy presentation)



before meditating on the following story from the BBC...

Iraq invasion plan 'delusional'

The US invasion plan for Iraq envisaged that only 5,000 US troops would remain in Iraq by December 2006, declassified Central Command documents show.
The material also shows that the US military projected a stable, pro-US and democratic Iraq by that time.

The August 2002 material was obtained by the National Security Archive (NSA). Its officials said the plans were based on delusional assumptions.

The US currently has some 132,000 troops in the violence-torn state.

'Completely unrealistic'

The documents - in the form of PowerPoint slides - were prepared by the now-retired Gen Tommy Franks and other top commanders at the time.

The documents were presented at a briefing in August 2002 - less than a year before the US invasion of Iraq in April 2003.

The commanders predicted that after the fighting was over there would be a two- to three-month "stabilisation" phase, followed by an 18- to 24-month "recovery" stage.
They projected that the US forces would be almost completely "re-deployed" out of Iraq at the end of the "transition" phase - within 45 months of invasion.

"Completely unrealistic assumptions about a post-Saddam Iraq permeate these war plans," NSA executive director Thomas Blanton said in a statement posted on the organisation's website.

"First, they assumed that a provisional government would be in place by 'D-Day', then that the Iraqis would stay in their garrisons and be reliable partners, and finally that the post-hostilities phase would be a matter of mere months'," Mr Blanton said.

"All of these were delusions," he added.
…

Here, the NYT fleshes out the lunacy a little more

February 15, 2007

A Prewar Slide Show Cast Iraq in Rosy Hues
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — When Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his top officers gathered in August 2002 to review an invasion plan for Iraq, it reflected a decidedly upbeat vision of what the country would look like four years after Saddam Hussein was ousted from power.

A broadly representative Iraqi government would be in place. The Iraqi Army would be working to keep the peace. And the United States would have as few as 5,000 troops in the country.

Military planning slides obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act outline the command’s video projection of the stable, pro-American and democratic Iraq that was to be.

…
The tumultuous upheaval that would follow the toppling of the Hussein government was known antiseptically in planning sessions as “Phase IV.” As is clear from the slides, it was the least defined part of the strategy.
…

Now, those projections seem startlingly unrealistic given the current troop buildup, in which the United States currently has about 132,000 troops in Iraq and is adding about 20,000 more. But the projections, former military planners say, were intended to send the message to civilian policy makers that the invasion of Iraq would be a multiyear proposition, not an easy in-and-out war.

As it turned out, the assumptions on Iraqi and American forces were quickly overturned, partly as a result of new American policy decisions. Instead of staying in garrisons, many of the Iraqi soldiers fled after the war began. Senior American commanders hoped to quickly recall the Iraqi troops to duty anyway, but that option vanished in May 2003 when L. Paul Bremer III, Mr. Garner’s successor, issued an edict formally disbanding the Iraqi Army.

The message that the United States should gird itself for a substantial multiyear occupation seemed to be superseded when General Franks issued new guidance to his commanders a week after the fall of Baghdad on April 9 that they should be prepared to reduce the American troops in Iraq to a little more than a division by September 2003 — some 30,000 troops.

A series of ad hoc decisions and strategy changes followed as the insurgency grew and security deteriorated. A new military plan is now being put into effect, which the White House asserts may yet salvage a positive outcome. Almost four years after the invasion, however, the “stable democratic Iraqi government” the United States once hoped for seems to exist only in the command’s old planning slides.

I have, in my time, taught various software application classes in a variety of venues, from educational back-alleys to one-on-one hand-holding (No. See. You don’t just stop when you get to the edge of your mouse pad like you’re going to fall off a cliff…) for the phobic or cranky.

And one of the very first things I teach my students is that the dazzle of an Excel presentation has no relationship (or often an inverse relationship) to how honest the numbers are, and that PowerPoint has become cognitive cancer.

Tossing up a few bullet points and a coupla pictures on the wall to prompt the speaker and spark discussion and debate is not a bad thing. Helpful even, for those of us who feel much more comfortable in front of a room when we have a few props to cling to like a Dumbo feather.

But beyond that boundary there be monsters. And liars.

So consider that from its inception in the wormy skulls of the PNAC vulcans to its execution as Operation Endless Clusterfuck, the Iraqi Debacle was never soberly discussed. The pros and cons and consequences never, ever seriously debated.

From the beginning – when former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was making comments like "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." – it was clear this Administration was paying little or no attention to the actuall military campaign, and was instead doing what Conservatives do best: holding marathon neocon circle jerks to work out every nuance of the ad campaign. The residuals. The color-schemes.

The action figures, theme music, the destruction/reconstruction no-bid contract bundles.

The fucking packaging.

And it was sold to us like Herbalife. Like Scientology. Like they were clearing out last year’s Ford Fiestas to make room for this year’s model.

Did you excite all five of the customer’s senses?

Did you make them want to get behind the wheel?

Did you present the numbers “strong”?

Did you make the trade-in work for you?

Never were the costs in bloody, treasure, reputation and lost opportunities ever calculated or presented with a scintilla of honestly.

Instead we got…

“So what’ll it take to put you into this sleek, cake-walking War today? Links to 9/11? Al Quaeda? Yellow cake?

Because you know when you roll down the street in this little number you’re gonna be greeted as one helluva sexy, powerful and well-hung liberator.

Just sit in is for a minute and enjoy that New War smell!”

And unlike pushing tin the traditional way, the White House actually used “Buy it or your Children May Die” as one of its marketing motifs. Man, not even WalMart sinks that low when it flogs its cheap job-lot crap and loathsome ideology.

So with a catchy audio of a loud and constant drumbeat of fear, as Anatole France once explained,

“A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures on armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.”

Like Bobo’s pink tie, damp eyes and put-upon tone, or Bill Kristol’s perma-rictus smirk, dismissively declarative sentences and permanent chair on Fox News, these are nothing but the wigs and falsies of ersatz credibility.

Accouterments designed to lend false authority, piety and fidelity to hollow men with depraved purposes.

Well you can bury it under a positive hail of persuasively tinted arrows, laser text effects and all the gun-camera animations in the world, then drop the whole load into commanding Copperplate Gothic font and gird it on all sides with the crispest beveled borders evah…but a steaming pile of wingnut horseshit is still a steaming pile of wingnut horseshit.

And now that it has turned out to be the disaster so many not-crazy, Koolaid people America-haters tried warned about, since Dubya, Cheney and the Party of God are not – can not – make the they case they acted in good faith, they fall back on the last defense of the last refuge of the con man: flensed of its ruffles and flourishes, the Administration is now reduced to insisting, basically, since voters were actually stupid enough fall for their deceptions and outright lies, fuck ‘em.

And so an Administration that lied us into a tragic war with a PowerPoint mentality will now hide behind the “we must stay forever because I say so” Fine Print to elongate it’s 2003 Debacle into yet another year of pointless slaughter.

But a smart Conservative like you doesn’t need to worry about little things like that, right?

After all it’s all happening a million miles away. And those troops were fool enough to volunteer, so whatever we do to them is their own fault and really not your problem.

Right?

And, after all, 9/11/9/11/9/11/9/11/9/11.

And, say, while you’re here, maybe I could interest a smart Conservative like you in taking our All New “2008 Iran” out for test drive?

Terms are crazy-good! No money down, first payment not due until your kids are draft age, and we’ll throw in a free tax cut, but only if you Buy!Right!Now!

Be the envy of your regional neighbors. Let the ladies see who a real man invades. And isn’t risking a global, nuclear conflagration worthy it to piss off those filthy, America-hating Hippies?

C’mon, buddy! What’ll it take to put you behind the wheel of this sleek, new 2008 Muslimocide today?

After all, nobody comes onto the lot unless they’re looking to buy.