BACKGROUND ON REBRANDING - Sometime ago the City of Ramsey where I live cooked up a land development deal with dealings being with certain landowners and The Met Council, negotiations by Ramsey managed by a city administrator who's since left under a cloud. It was half done and hit some shoals, as reported by Minnesota daily news outlets and by Crabgrass posting.
Bottom line, consultants were employed, and first thing, "Ramsey Town Center" which had the splat was rebranded as "the COR" for "Center Of Ramsey." Same thing, different name.
Given time, a recovery from the Bush II 2008 real estate disaster has since happened. The project is fleshing out. Taking years. (That hitting the shoals was when many home mortgage amounts exceeded owner equity in the properties and foreclosures ruled the day. When Wall Street was bailed out by Obama and Main Street was allowed to cesspool. Bless Obama's judgment.)
That Ramsey Town Center thing was a rebranding for a failure, a prelude to today's rebranding story, one about rebranding by scoundrels, (Trump and Rubio and the team.)
Because of the 60 day limit of the War Powers Act, and not wanting to face withering Congressional scrutiny, our pair of scoundrels moved on by shutting down one "Operation" name, to rebrand the same Iran war a different "Operation" Same adventure. New name.
The rebranding shell game is best documented by two MSN items, a day apart:
and
So excuse me. It was not - Operation/rebrand/Operation, but Operation/rebrand/Project. Big difference.
After the next rebrand it will be "Program" instead of Project or Operation. Retread = Rebrand.
Who's fooled?
Same war, two names, more to come. Perhaps it will be ended with some form of eve-of-election October surprise. Perhaps not.
Remember - The US oil barons who bought the election for Trump are making out like bandits per today's pump prices, and that may be a hint of a drawn out duration.
The second MSN item linked above has an embedded video.
Our Friend and GOP blogger Gary Gross also embedded a video with neither video mentioning the War Powers Act squeeze. The administration magically figured a way to deal with reality without acknowledging the War Powers Act being the true instigator of rebrand/rename/retread smoke-and-mirrors mischief. Not a convincing way, but a way. And there's another way =
Bypass WPA constraints via the TACO story, tweaked then repackaged.
I'm certain that Ed Morrissey speaks for me [Gary G.] when Ed said
"Perhaps we can call this A Tale of Two Trumps. One Donald Trump
appeared to grasp the necessity of staring down an Iranian regime that
has never honored an agreement. The other Donald Trump announced late
yesterday that he had ordered the suspension of Project Freedom, a
purely defensive effort to reopen an international waterway, [...]."
The difference between me and Ed is that I won't be as diplomatic as Ed was. [...] Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth
had just rolled out Project Freedom yesterday morning. Hegseth and Joint
Chiefs chair Gen. Dan Caine had emphasized repeatedly that the US Navy
was limited to just reopening an international waterway that shouldn't
have been shut in the first place. [...]
I'll
be more blunt than Ed. Each time President Trump jumps between doing
what's needed (finishing off the IRGC) and negotiating, President Trump
loses credibility. President Trump's red lines appear pink, not red. Why
fear a president that's indecisive?
[...] Right
now, we need President Reagan's decisiveness, not President Trump's
indecisiveness. President Trump, you've given them more time than they
needed. It's time to obliterate the regime. [...]
Yup. The Gipper would not have wavered (But did the Gip have a War Powers Act situation when Iran Contra was an under-a-Persian-rug secret; problems only arising when the cat got out of the bag and Ollie North put on his Big Marine Uniform and obfuscated his way around Congress. A Congress which was all too willing to buy into the obfuscation and let perps off the hook).
Both Gary and this Morrissey chap ignore that the attempted escorting of ships through the Strait was not working. And you can web search over how effectively this boycott thing also is/was working. There's been 60 days and over a thousand sorties and the IRGC is still in the saddle. If not done already, how exactly do you shoot them out of the saddle? Not a pundits' problem, but rather a real one.
So - Good try to obfuscate around the WPA squeeze as the generating rebranding cause, by calling Trump indecisive. But that's just too, too easy a call. Demented, okay. "Indecisive" goes with dementia, as well as with evasiveness. Very convenient. Blame the errant King. For mistake, not for lying. Question his judgment, not his honesty.
What if the Trumpian idea is not to eliminate Iran power, but to redirect it as tediously long as that might take, while US fossil fuel minions salivate and profit. Misdirect by saying "four weeks" at the start.
In the current situation, evasion is at play, assisted by dementia/indecisiveness. Netanyahu sold them a bag of make believe. They bought. Now - buyer's remorse. Or that's one story. The other is never really wanting a decisive quick ending vs an extended bleeding. Of populations, not of oil sales and profits.
Who knows?
