[Mb-civic] Nipping and Tucking on Both Coasts By MAUREEN DOWD

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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March 8, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Nipping and Tucking on Both Coasts
By MAUREEN DOWD

There is a crash of ideologies between the country's two most self-regarding
and fantasy-spinning power centers. The Bush crowd cringes away from gay
cowboys spooning, gay authors flouncing, transgender babes exploring and
George the Dashing Clooneying in movies about the glories of free speech and
the dangers of oilmen influencing policy.

But as I looked around Vanity Fair's slinky Oscar party on Sunday night, it
struck me that the bellicose Bushies do share a presentation aesthetic with
Tinseltown's trompe l'oeil beauties: you see no furrowed brows, no regretful
winces, no unflattering wrinkles, no admissions of imperfection, no qualms
about puffing up what you really have, no visible signs of hard lessons
learned, and no desire to confront reality in the mirror.

Who ever thought Dick Cheney and Mamie Van Doren would have so much in
common?

The White House is constantly trying to do laser resurfacing on its Iraq
policy, to sandblast away the damage from its own mistakes. But its veneer
may be beyond repair.

In Hollywood terms, we've reached an Indiana Jones crisis moment in our
parlous protectorate. The cave is collapsing, the snakes are encroaching,
the vehicles are exploding, the crushing ball is rolling down on us. The
public has stopped buying the administration's sugary spin. The Washington
Post reported yesterday that 80 percent of Americans ‹ cutting across party
lines ‹ say sectarian violence makes civil war in Iraq likely. More than a
third call it "very likely." Half also think the U.S. should begin
withdrawing troops from Iraq, the poll found, and two-thirds say the
president has no clear plan for Iraq.

The widespread resistance to the Dubai ports deal, even among newly
fractious Republicans, indicates that Americans have lost faith in the
president's competence ‹ a faith shredded by the White House's obtuseness
and lies on Katrina.

As Hollywood often does, the administration scorns introspection and
originality. It sticks with the same worn themes: Stay the course. Victory's
around the corner. Anyone who expresses skepticism is a defeatist, a softie
on terrorism.

On "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, said Iraq was "going very, very well, from everything you look
at." And at a Pentagon briefing yesterday, Rummy, who should have resigned
in shame long ago, tried to blame the press, echoing Gen. George Casey in
saying: "Much of the reporting in the U.S. and abroad has exaggerated the
situation."

He added, "The steady stream of errors all seem to be of a nature to inflame
the situation and to give heart to the terrorists."

After all the horrible mistakes in judgment the defense secretary has made ‹
mistakes that have left our troops without proper backup and armor, created
an inept and corrupt occupation, and confused soldiers into thinking torture
was O.K. ‹ it takes humongous gall to suggest that the problem is really the
reporters.

Many experts say we're close to a civil war ‹ or already in one. Even the
U.S. envoy, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, told The Los Angeles Times on
Monday that the invasion of Iraq had opened a "Pandora's box" of tribal and
religious fissures that could devour the region. His words evoked a
harrowing image of the bad spirits swarming up the mountain in Disney's
"Fantasia" as Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain" played.

He said that if there's another incident like the Shiite shrine's being
blown up, Iraq is "really vulnerable."

The Pentagon says it'll look once more at the death by friendly fire of the
football player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, because the
first three inquiries had problems ‹ one more sad illustration of the
administration's cynical attempt not to let anything get in the way of its
heroic, and dermatologically plumped up, story line for America.

Correction

My column of Feb. 18 said that Scooter Libby testified that "superiors" had
authorized him to leak classified information about Valerie Plame. Rather,
Mr. Libby testified that "superiors" had authorized him to leak classified
information from an intelligence report to rebut critics and justify the
Iraq war, not information about Valerie Plame.

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