Lost In Translation

I don’t usually blog about the war in Iraq, mostly because I’m so goddamned sick of hearing about it. But I have to relay to you my glee at the desperation over the war being felt by the Bush Administration. One of President Bush’s favorite sound bytes is, “As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” Well, now the Iraqi government has told us to get the f*#@ out of Dodge (and by Dodge, I mean Baghdad).

So that means we should leave, right? Not according to the Cowboy-in-Chief, we leave when we think we should and the Iraqis will just have to deal with it. So the Bush Administration needed to fire up the ol’ Spin Machine to deal with the Iraqi prime minister’s interview with the German magazine, Der Spiegel (why do German words sound so dirty?). During that interview, he endorsed Senator Obama’s timetable for withdrawal.

The Bush spin tactic? The prime minister was mistranslated. Wow. That’s the best you can do? The credibility of your entire foreign policy comes down to a mistranslation? Even OJ had a better excuse than that one.

Actually, on second thought, maybe this claim has some truth to it. Maybe Der Spiegel was also responsible for this botched German translation…