Leap Frogging

I heard a long discussion on CNN about who the Bush administration will be putting in charge of the three areas they plan to designate within the “Iraq federation.” The names, where they will be stationed and how they plan to “administer” the various areas until elections can be held were all discussed in some detail.

Apparently, the war is over. Hip, hip hooray.

The Better Rhettor deconstructs the latest Bush rhetorical ploy — “Leap-Frogging” — and finds that it’s a tried and true Karl Rove special.

It’s a bait and switch. Rather than continuing to argue for the merits of their position—an argument they have concluded they cannot win—they now want to shift the terms of the debate. They don’t want to talk anymore, in other words, about whether we should invade Iraq. We are supposed to accept the fiction that this has been already settled, and we are now in the “next phase” of discussing what to do in post-war Iraq. That way they can shift the discussion, aided by our feckless media, away from their losing hand and onto another topic—one that presumes the Bushies won the original debate.

Read on. You’ll learn that as with everything else with these guys, it always comes back to Florida.