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Victory down

Posted by Fred on January 10, 2005

In Reply to: Victory down posted by Word Camel on January 09, 2005

: : BANQUO'S GHOST -- "The president prides himself on being a pig-headed guy. He is determined to win in Iraq even if he is not winning in Iraq. So get ready for a Mohammedan mountain of spin defining victory down.Mr. (Paul) Wolfowitz, who devised the debacle in Iraq, is kept on, while Brent Scowcroft, Poppy Bush's lieutenant who warned Junior not to go into Iraq, is pushed out as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. That's the backward nature of this beast: Deceive, you're golden; tell the truth, you're gone.

: : Mr. Scowcroft was not deterred. Like Banquo's ghost, he clanked around last week, disputing the president's absurdly sunny forecasts for Iraq, and noting dryly that this administration had turned the word 'realist' into a 'pejorative.'." From "Defining Victory Down" by Maureen Dowd, January 9, 2005 Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times,

: : Shadow.
: : A ghost. Macbeth says to the ghost of Banquo - 1
: : "Hence, horrible shadow! unreal mockery, hence!"
: : Shakespeare: Macbeth, iii. 4.

: : From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

: : My question is: what's "victory down"?

: I think it's like "dumbing down" defining victory down is actually redifining victory as something somewhat less than victorious. That'd be my guess.

I agree with WC. Dowd says that Bush is playing games with the meaning of 'win' in the way he accused Clinton of playing games with the meaning of 'is'. (Recall Clinton's line when talking about the Lewinsky matter: "It depends upon what the meaning of 'is' is.")

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