My first reaction in looking at the front-page New York Times photo of the president standing above a slogan “Plan For Victory” was, haven’t we seen this before? You all remember how he stood on the aircraft carrier emblazoned with the banner “Mission Accomplished.” The new slogan, clearly a result of some p.r. shop trying to figure out some market-tested message that somehow will sell the majority of the people who are sick of the war. If the slogan didn’t mean that we’re in for many months and, perhaps, years of death and destruction, it would be simply sad and pathetic.

Perhaps the only interesting development out of this speech is that House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who voted for the war and who had distanced herself from Rep. Joe Murtha’s call for an immediate withdrawal, has now said she supports Murtha’s position. I wonder how much of that has to do with the possibility that my colleague Medea Benjamin was being urged to challenge Pelosi in the Democratic primary.

On the same front page, Jeff Gerth and Scott Shane have a piece entitled “U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers” (registration required). If you can’t get people to write in support of your policy, apparently the next best thing is to pay them off (this is the Iraqi Armstrong Williams approach). The Pentagon, it turns out, has paid millions of dollars to the Lincoln Group (a company set up to take “advantage” of the business opportunities in Iraq) to create covert propoganda.