Bush's Success Vertex

After Bush's speech; over at FireDogLake, Jane Hamsher's reaction was:

So if freedom isn’t free, is it just another word for nothing left to lose?
I sure am glad the country is being guided by the wisdom of cocktail napkins.

But I wondered; If "Freedom isn't Free" then does that mean "succeeding isn't success"?

It's almost impossible to miss that the Whitehouse is attempting to repackage failure. No one who retains the power of critical thinking can possibly miss that the goal posts has moved, again.

On the Nation's TVs, A Familiar Picture
By Tom Shales - Friday, September 14, 2007; Page C01

In what NBC's Brian Williams said was George W. Bush's eighth speech on the Iraq war since he began it, the president finally talked about reducing American troop strength in that country. In a 24-minute address from the Oval Office that aired live last night on all the major networks, Bush said a total of 5,700 troops should be home by Christmas and, watching this on television, one could almost hear a nation shout hurray.

Katie Couric of CBS News called the speech a "state-of-the-war report," but Chris Matthews, looking more dignified than usual on MSNBC, compared Bush to Lucy in the "Peanuts" comic strip as drawn by the late Charles Schulz. Every autumn Lucy swore to Charlie Brown that she wouldn't pull the football away when he tried to kick it, and every year Charlie Brown fell for it and landed on his posterior. Matthews said Bush had been dealing in "false promises and false arguments again and again and again." ...

The Whitehouse is still a 'fact free zone'. Will their new slogan be "successing the course"?

Bush redefines 'victory'

In speeches, the president now stresses a more ambiguous goal for the U.S. in Iraq: 'success.'
By Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 14, 2007

WASHINGTON -- -- For more than four years since the invasion of Iraq,
President Bush most often has defined his objective there with a single, stirring word: "Victory.""Victory in Iraq is vital for the United States of America," he told cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in May.

"Victory in this struggle will require more patience, more courage and more sacrifice," he warned National Guardsmen in West Virginia in July.

But this week, the word "victory" disappeared from the president's lexicon. It was replaced by a slightly more ambiguous goal: "Success." ...

So the stubborn blundering continues. I thought it was cute, the way Bush invited Congress to cooperate by doing it his way. Bush will be "staying the course" but he'll no longer be saying "stay the course".