[A] good name for the increasing body count in Iraq is the “Reid surge,”
says Mackubin Thomas Owens, a dean at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., citing historical precedent from Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s reading Northern newspapers to check on public sentiment about the war to the Tet Offensive in the Viet Nam War, a U.S. victory portrayed as defeat by U.S. media with resultant encouragement of our enemies,
He refers to bomb attacks in Iraq that caused “such carnage in recent days,” identifying them as
the expected consequences of the Democrats’ efforts to undercut the president’s new team and the changed strategy represented by the so-called “surge.”
Blithe Spirit 