Pattern Recognition: Representing Failure as Success

Mike Lukovich

Currently, I am reading "Legacy of Ashes" by Tim Weiner. Well, I am not really reading it. Instead, I am listening to it on my iPod having downloaded it from Audible.com. I just listened to the following observation:

"The ability to represent failure as success was becoming a CIA tradition."

I know from Chalmers Johnson's review of the book that it occurs on page 58.

The Bush administration has the same tradition. The war in Iraq is an obvious failure that the Bush administration keeps representing as a success. And the mainstream media is still happy to report or least repeat the Bush administration representation. Other countries knew even before the occupation that failure was in the offing. Now the entire world - or at least, the entire world outside of the Beltway, is certain of that failure.

Likewise, the intelligence hyped by the administration about WMD leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a complete failure but represented as a success. And now we know that intelligence about Iran's development of WMD is also a failure as was the policy of saber rattling toward Iran. So the pattern would be that Bush will now represent that failure as a success. And, sure enough he is. And we also know that the mainstream media will report, I mean repeat, that representation.