If At First You Don’t Succeed

If At Second You Don’t Succeed…

If At Ninth You Don’t Succeed…

If At Eleventh You Don’t Succeed…

If At Sweet Sixteenth You Don’t Succeed…

If At Twenty First You Don’t Succeed…

If At Twenty Ninth You Don’t Succeed…

If At Thirty Three and a Third You Don’t Succeed…

If At Thirty Ninth You Don’t Succeed…

If At Thirty Ninth but really Fortysomethingth You Don’t Succeed

If At Forty Eighth You Don’t Succeed…

If At Fiddy You Don’t Succeed…

If At Fifty Fifth You Don’t Succeed…

If At Sixtieth…which is the new Fortieth anyway You Don’t Succeed…

If At Sixty Twoest You Don’t Succeed…

If At Sixty Fifth You Aren’t Ready to Retire…

If At Three Score and Tenth You Don’t Succeed…

If At Mission Accomplished You Don’t Succeed…

If At Seventy Second You Don’t Succeed…

If At Seventy ‘Leventh You Don’t Succeed…

If At The Big Eight Oheth You Don’t Succeed…

If At The Bigger Eight Fifth You Don’t Succeed…

If At Four Score and Seventh You Don’t Succeed…

If At Hundredth You Don’t Succeed…

If At Thousandth You Don’t Succeed…

If At Two Thousandth You Don’t Succeed…

If At Three Thousandth You Don’t Succeed…

If At God Damned 3,468th You Don’t Succeed...

..Just keep moving that fucking target until Commander Cuckoo Bananas, can drunk-dive into his own shitkickers


and call it a victory parade.



From the Los Angeles Times (emphasis added)

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ: U.S.-IRAN TALKS; U.S. OBJECTIVES; DEADLY ATTACKS
Iraq likely to miss goals set by U.S.

Military officers doubt top objectives -- sharing of oil revenue, provincial elections and integration of Sunni Arabs -- will be achieved before a September report to Congress.
By Julian E. Barnes
Times Staff Writer

May 29, 2007

WASHINGTON — U.S. military leaders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that most of the broad political goals President Bush laid out early this year in his announcement of a troop buildup will not be met this summer and are seeking ways to redefine success.
…

Again

In September, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, is scheduled to present Congress with an assessment of progress in Iraq. Military officers in Baghdad and outside advisors working with Petraeus doubt that the three major goals set by U.S. officials for the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki will be achieved by then.

Enactment of a new law to share Iraq's oil revenue among Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regions is the only goal they think might be achieved in time, and even that is considered a long shot. The two other key benchmarks are provincial elections and a deal to allow more Sunni Arabs into government jobs.

With overhauls by the central government stalled and with security in Baghdad still a distant goal, Petraeus' advisors hope to focus on smaller achievements that they see as signs of progress, including local deals among Iraq's rival factions to establish areas of peace in some provincial cities.

…

Military officers said they understood that any report that key goals had not been met would add to congressional Democrats' skepticism. But some counterinsurgency advisors to Petraeus have said it was never realistic to expect that Iraqis would reach agreement on some of their most divisive issues after just a few months of the American troop buildup.

Screw the “few months of the American troop buildup.”

What about the two-and-a-half long, bloody, happytalk filled years since the government of Iraq was handed over to the Iraqis?

What about the three long, bloody, happytalk filled years since “Purple Fingers”?

What about the four long, bloody, happytalk filled years since “Mission Accomplished”?

Just ask Lil’ Freddy Kagan, discredited Neocon chickenhawk thinkster, and sibling of Robert “Mr. PNAC” Kagan.

He'll tell you.

...
"I think the political progress will be mostly of this local variety," said Kagan, who recently visited Iraq and met with American commanders.

Over the last six months, military leaders have pointed to the success of Army Col. Sean MacFarland in negotiating with tribal leaders in Ramadi to bring relatives into the local security forces and win their support against Al Qaeda insurgents in Al Anbar province.
…

The push for smaller, local deals represents a significant shift for the Bush administration, which has emphasized that security in Baghdad has to be the top priority to allow the central government to make progress toward national political reconciliation. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have pressured Iraqi political leaders to reach key agreements by the end of summer.

But Gates said last week that U.S. officials may have over-emphasized the importance of Iraq's central government.

"One of the concerns that I've had," Gates said, "was whether we had focused too much on central government construction in both Iraq and Afghanistan and not enough on the cultural and historical, provincial, tribal and other entities that have played an important role in the history of both countries."

The new command has realized that there will be no quick national-level deal on the key issues, said the senior military officer in Baghdad.

"You are talking about Sunnis who had power and Shiites who have power forgetting about what happened over the last 30 years," the officer said. "How easy is that going to be?"

It actually sounds pretty fucking hard to me, but what do I know? I’m no Great Throbbing Neocon Brain Wizard.

But then again, isn’t that exactly the sort of thing you keep all those Great Throbbing Neocon Brain Wizards around to dope out? To have the details shit meticulously and comprehensively calculated to a thousand significant digits before we decapitated Iraq and let the place go from a prosperous, secular country with a brutal dictator to something out of the third reel of “The Road Warrior”?

To at least come up with an exit strategy that wouldn’t make a Ralph Kramden get-rich-quick scheme look like the plans for D-Day by comparison?

I mean any shitwhistle dangling off of a barstool on Air Force One can boldly declare "We are gonna land a man on the friggin Sun!" but isn't the whole reason you keep Great Throbbing Neocon Brain Wizards on tap (other than their legendary taint lavings and mojitos) so they can work out little details like "How do we get anywhere near the Sun without getting incinerated?"

("We will, of course, go at night, Tim," Dick Cheney states confidently on, "Meet the Press", March 2008. "I truly believe we will be greeted as refrigerators.")

Isn’t this why Great Throbbing Neocon Brain Wizards are incessantly rammed down our throats? Because they are Very Serious Experts who talk about Complicated Grown-Up Stuff with Very, Very Serious Pundists?

Because the wisdom Great Throbbing Neocon Brain Wizards shines like the light of a million suns?

Because the old womanish and treasonous warnings and trepidations and cautions and pleas of “Oh for God’s sake,please don’t drive this country off the cliff” of the Dirty Hippies are as dust beneath the chariot wheels of the omniscient brilliance of the Great Throbbing Neocon Brain Wizards?

Great Throbbing Neocon Brain Wizards like Kagan. Or Cheney. Or Feith. Or the smaller, auxilary Kagan. Or Wolfie. Or Perle. Or Kristol.

Oh wait a minute, I forgot that The Great Throbbing Neocon Brain Wizards did figure this all out!

And they deigned to share it with all of us little, stupid non-Great Throbbing Neocon Brain Wizards:

There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's been almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."

~William Kristol,
April 4th, 2003

And in case you need a translation, this

"...The push for smaller, local deals represents a significant shift for the Bush administration, which has emphasized that security in Baghdad has to be the top priority to allow the central government to make progress toward national political reconciliation."

means our newest strategy will be to focus in on mediating the disputes of the Uncle Yusufs and al Aver Wendel Douglases of Iraqi's Hootervilles and Petticoat Junctions, while letting Metropolis burn.