Yesterday, on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos asked George Bush about the Baker Commission’s recommendation to find an alternative to the two strategies on the table for Iraq–“cut and run” or that of the administration’s long-time coveted tagline “stay the course.” Earlier this month, I wrote about the Baker Commission reporting that splitting Iraq into three sections was the only other alternative. The president told Stephanopolous that the administration has never had a “stay the course” mentality.
We’ve never been ‘stay the course,’ George. We have been — we will complete the mission, we will do our job, and help achieve the goal, but we’re constantly adjusting to tactics. Constantly.
(Read the full transcript here.)
Hmmm…Really? Think Progress provides a great rundown of the many times Bush has drilled “stay the course” jargon into the minds of the American people. Although, no surprise, at other times this has certainly been a chameleon administration, at least when it comes to marketing the war on terror, which has changed names at least 7 times from the “war on terror” to “GWOT” to the “global struggle against the enemies of freedom” to its latest incarnation “the struggle for civilization.”
