Hope & Change, Inc.: Obama Denies Libya War Is 'War,' While Escalating It

America's new war is One Week Old, hooray! Did you get it a present? (Yes: You are actually paying for this war, too.) Barack Obama conveniently went into hiding in South America -- ha, we thought  Bush would disappear there first! -- and because South America is a very primitive continent with no Internet or telephones or video or whatever, he was unable to do his usual fifty televised press conferences per day to explain why he started this new war, and what the point of this new war might be, and how long it will last, and how much it will cost, and whether it is or isn't related to the U.N. resolution, and whether or not Washington wants "regime change" or just to "protect one side of the war, until the other side wins or loses." Very confusing! It's good that Obama has kind of "kept out of it," when you think about it, because the guy could never even figure out how to explain why it might be a good idea for working people to have health coverage.

Anyway, we know how the Wonkette Community gets all pissed off whenever we write about thedismal failurethat is Barack Obama and his Administration, so we just want to stop and reconsider. Okay. It turns out Barack Obama's administration is, in fact, ashining success... as long as you've got a couple of million in defense stocks, or have an executive office on Wall Street, or just generally needed to hang onto your tax cuts because it istoughto get by on an income of a quarter-million per year. So tough, in fact, that some of our nation's "middle rich" (below the top 1% but above the bottom 95%) had to raid their dividends to pay for some shit last year! Ouch.

Wired's Danger Room, meaning Spencer Ackerman, has this to say:  

While the president travelled through Latin America, his aides told sympathetic audiences in Washington that Operation Odyssey Dawn “is a limited humanitarian intervention, not war,” in the words of White House Mideast troubleshooter Dennis Ross. A letter to Congress notifying lawmakers that Odyssey Dawn was in effect studiously avoided the word “war,” preferring the more anodyne “military efforts” — which are “discrete” and “limited in their nature, duration, and scope.”

Ross’ remarks are outright deceptive. And it fits a pattern with President Obama: escalating U.S. military commitments while portraying them as essentially finite and limited.

For one thing, the fight is intensifying, not dropping off. On Sunday, the U.S.-led coalition flew 60 sorties over Libya; Monday it flew nearly 80; on Wednesday it flew 175. At this moment, American pilots are bombing and shooting at Gadhafi’s armor and artillery units on the outskirts of Libyan cities. Off the shores of Libya, a bevy of Navy ships and subs have launched over 160 Tomahawk missiles.

B-b-but NATO or somebody will take over soon, right? Once they figure out some stuff like, "is there another country that is the U.S. but is somehow not the U.S., that has thousands of war jets and bombers ready to go?" And as soon as they figure out what the "mission" is, other than "the U.S. spending hundreds of millions of dollars per day dropping bombs in North Africa," NATO is going to "mop up" and we'll always remember this fine little war, the same way we don't remember Granada or Panama or whatever. (This war will never end, though, and will soon morph into the "Greater Libya-Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan Operation Masturbating Eagle Operation." GK-I-A-PoME. Run out of a group of video game trailers on some Pentagon base in Florida.) [ Danger Room ]