Lies, Damned Lies, or Do U Prefer Statistics?

When the White House briefing officer tells the press that the souring of public opinion on ten years in Aghanistan doesn't matter, what does that really mean? Possible translations: (Whistling in the dark.)  OR As long as the public pretends to believe that the POTUS announced a rapid drawdown, we're good. OR Obama, Petraeus, Panetta, Gates and Bush, all work for the same bosses. And it doesn't much matter  which celebrity spokesmen (or women, Madame Secretary Clinton) are at the podium, because it doesn't change our full spectrum dominance master plan a bit.  OR The POTUS will not listen to public opinion, he will give a campaign speech (one wag titled it "War More Years") that enables manufactured consent, generating headlines like this from the McClatchy "news" service, used on most front page I've seen so far: Obama signals rapid drawdown from Afghanistan.

A friend from Pakistan had an interesting take on the connection of public opinion to what's really going on:

Souring of public opinion does not play a role? Which idiot is going to buy that? I would say we are just a short while away from invasion to Iran via Pakistan, and souring public opinion is key to this strategy. An unstable Pakistan is needed before they can take over the country, citing instability, to launch attacks on Iran. How do you get an unstable Pakistan? By droning the public into a perpetual state of sourdom!  Mission accomplished.

This reminded me of Mayor Kitty Piercy's interview on Democracy Now! this week about why it is the business of mayors to advise federal foreign policy.

In parsing Obama's claims of success in the decade-long war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that has killed thousands of civilians, Piercy said, "if I were the President, I would be very careful about letting the words 'mission accomplished' come out of my mouth."

If I were the President, I'd be listening to the words coming out of mouths in every direction these days:

Congresswoman Donna Edwards & CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans on International Women's Day .