GWB: It ain't over 'til I'm singing

The always readable Josh Marshall makes a point we've made before... that there is no real truth in the statement: we only lose when we admit that we've lost. What this is really is just more of the same reality denial from the master practitioners of this form of deceit.

Josh says:

Recently I heard President Bush take a line I believe he said he got from Henry Kissinger to the effect that the only way the United States can be 'defeated' in Iraq is if we ourselves pull up stakes and leave. Thus the whole drama is one of national stamina and nerve.

I've seen little better illustration among the Iraq War advocates of the interrelationship of 'defeat', 'victory' and denial.

A very wealthy man can keep pouring money into a failed business venture forever. So, if he chooses to use his vast wealth to paper over his business failure, he can say pretty much the same thing: The keys to victory are in my hands. The only way this venture can fail is if I lose my nerve and stop investing.

But of course this is only the very questionable advantage of the very rich and the very powerful: the ability to fund or prop up denial indefinitely.

And so it is with the president and whoever is still buying into his arguments. If all reality can be denied, then there really is only one way you can be defeated: when you yourself say you've been defeated.