Plusgood doublethink duckspeaker, ungood suitpicker
There's a nasty strain of flu going around, and now that Yr Doktor Zoom is on the mostly better side of it, we can offer you one very important bit of advice should you get the blasted thing: Do not watch White House press briefings while you're still stricken, or you'll think you're in the grip of some horrific fever-induced hallucination. Not that Sean Spicer makes any more sense when your brain isn't slightly broiled, but we had to go back to bed Wednesday after Spicer's latest bizarre spin on the raid in Yemen that resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL and an 8-year-old American citizen, as well as multiple injuries among the American attackers, an unknown number of civilian deaths, and a total loss on a $70 million war machine. Asked if he still considered the raid a "success," given all the details that have come out about the many things that went wrong in the operation, Spicer played the Last Refuge of a Scoundrel Card:
Wow. Spicer: Anyone, including John McCain, who says Yemen raid wasn't a success does disservice to slain Navy SEAL's life & owes an apology pic.twitter.com/baPCRc88wT
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 8, 2017
Currently-alive troops should be paying very close attention. You now might become "successful mission" "success stories" earning your own "single occupant relaxation space" complete with a "personalized inscribed granite success plaque" (#SpicerFacts) because the CIC Clown Cabinet obviously won't learn any of the right lessons from their mistakes, and bother to demand more rigorous planning for the next success-bound mission.
What do Pickett's Charge and this recent raid in Yemen have in common?
Answer: they are both failures and they both inflicted unnecessary casualties.
The casualties we mourn because they couldn't avoid it. The commanders of the mission get our calumney because they fucked up. There is a difference.