Think Progress

Fratto admits White House looked at Iraq through ‘rose-colored glasses.’

During today’s White House press briefing, deputy spokesman Tony Fratto admitted that the White House has, at least up until recently, been looking at Iraq through “rose-colored glasses.” Responding to a question about the rising violence in Iraq, Fratto said, “I think we have thrown out all of the rose-colored glasses in how we look at Iraq and try to look at it through clear lenses as to what is going on in the country.” Fratto later added: “Like I said, we threw out the rose-colored glasses. I think we have a clear-eyed view of what’s happening in Baghdad.” Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2008/04/frattorosecolored.320.240.flv]

A question for Fratto: When exactly did the White House throw away its rose-colored glasses?

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62 Responses to “Fratto admits White House looked at Iraq through ‘rose-colored glasses.’”

  1. raynman says:

    Jeff Gannon must need them for his latest photoshoot….


  2. Buckie Boy says:

    Vodka is clear, so it must be Vodka-colored glasses.


  3. hil_1 says:

    Release the hounds!!!


  4. Leporello says:

    Surge! Surge! Foreward Surge! Is there No end to their innane drivel?!?!??! What next, they’ll actually announce that the war was a Bad Idea??? January 20th Cannot come fast enough! Impeach Cheney and Bush and Save the Constitution!
    Abu Ben Hussein Leporello


  5. stateofthedivision says:

    Those glasses are clearly the smokey mirrored version.


  6. NOLIESPLEASE says:

    Out go the rose colored sunglasses, Hello blinders. I hear nothing, I see nothing , I do nothing words Bush lives by.


  7. Max-1 says:

    .

    NOW the Admin cares about viewing the situation with a clear perspective?

    But they’ve survived for SIX years with such a rosy outlook, why change now?

    .


  8. specialist f says:

    I think those glasses were tinted with $$$ signs and provided by Halliburton.


  9. Krazny says:

    Bush has ducked reality for for over 50 years, why start now?


  10. rastaman says:

    DO THEY MAKE PIN HOLE ROSE COLORED BLINDERS? I WOULD LIKE TO FIND SOME AND SEE WHAT THE WORLD LOOKS LIKE THROUGH THEM AND THE REPUGLICAN’S VIEW


  11. cerberus says:

    They’ll never discard the rose-colored glasses of deception! Lies, all of it and the people cannot believe or trust one word coming from this administration.


  12. DieNowForPeace says:

    Rose colored shades courtesy of KBR.


  13. cerberus says:

    Krazny: His whole life has been one big fabrication. Every business he owned, he tanked into the ground. Now he’s doing precisely the same thing to this country. He’s an abomination and a national embarrassment.


  14. Keith H. says:

    Now that they’ve got a clear view . . . they just need another 6 months to get things going in the right direction,
    while their media tries to sell McLoser.
    cough, hack, spit . .


  15. MCMetal says:

    Fratto said, “I think we have thrown out all of the rose-colored glasses in how we look at Iraq and try to look at it through clear lenses as to what is going on in the country.” Fratto later added: “Like I said, we threw out the rose-colored glasses. I think we have a clear-eyed view of what’s happening in Baghdad.”

    And you’re all counting on McStupid to take up that imbecilic mantle , aren’t ya’ ?

    MISSION ACCOMPLISHED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


  16. tombaker says:

    So now they only have their rose-tinted contacts to rely on?

    Maybe ocular aids had nothing to do with it, and they were batscat-crazy arseholes from the very get-go, huh Tony??

    what a sad f’in joke.


  17. cerberus says:

    raynman: What’s the new from Jeffy Lube these days? Isn’t it time to release the classified visitor logs so the people can see how often this male prostitute visited the white house? From what is known, his name was changed from Jeff Guckert by GWB, for obvious reasons and was given a “press pass” so his comings and goings would not appear suspicious. The logs that are available show him clearly going in for his nocturnal visits when absolutely nothing press-worthy was occurring therein.

    Wonder who he was servicing?


  18. cerberus says:

    Fratto, the Fatso, looks like he knows all about Jeffy Lube.


  19. Uncle Ho says:

    the White House has thrown out the rose-colored glasses.

    NO proof of that whatsoever. Next claim: The US actually WON the Vietnam war.


  20. RUCerious says:

    Tony Fratto admitted that the White House has, at least up until recently, been looking at Iraq through “rose-colored glasses.”

    UP TILL NOW???? Methinks those are rose colored lens implants.
    Not coming off anytime soon.


  21. RUCerious says:

    Yeah, Elton John was looking for those!


  22. paleolib says:

    Replacing the rose colored glasses with a blindfold is not progress.


  23. henry wallace says:

    A term I overheard recently would fit those Republicans afflicked with this kind of mental illness…’pathological optomism’. This term sums up the Republican Party.


  24. robbez_92107 says:

    Does this White House have a “clear-eyed view” of anywhere or anything?

    Besides oil profits?


  25. freedom lover says:

    paleolib Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
    Replacing the rose colored glasses with a blindfold is not progress.

    it would be if the blindfold came with a trial and firing squad.


  26. ralph the wonder llama says:

    robbez_92107 Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
    Does this White House have a “clear-eyed view” of anywhere or anything?

    Besides oil profits?

    The Unitary Executive, maybe.


  27. Uosdwis says:

    Are the families of the 4000+ dead soldiers looking through rose-colored glasses at their funerals?


  28. Tired of being lied to says:

    What about rose-colored contact lenses?

    You know how this administration is – what is not said is more important than what is said.


  29. McWars says:

    When the tip of the iceberg is painfully obvious, take the word of the drunk boat captain, wearing the rose-colored glasses, that it’s only a light chunk of floating ice.

    I only hope President Obama can save this country in time.


  30. misshusseinmolly says:

    I’m convinced that the White House keeps Fratto around just to make Dana Peroxide look cerebral.


  31. BrianFL says:

    He’s right. They have replaced the outdated rose-colored glasses…..with blinders.


  32. Freedom Rebel says:

    This Week: Cokie Roberts Sneers At The Responsible Plan To End The War, Says Most Americans Interested In Winning

    Cokie got the Memo from the White House before this Newscast.

    She is another one that likes to Spoon Feed us what we should think.. Sorry Cokie, you are not selling us that line of crap. We are not buyin it..


  33. MapleStreet says:

    So, wouldn’t that like, you know, like mean, like, the librals were like RIGHT.

    And wouldn’t that mean the Shrub WH was **WRONG**

    And wouldn’t that mean that McCain and the other republicans, in their attempt to beatify Shrub, be WRONG ????


  34. MCMetal says:

    manicare Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
    robbez_92107 Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    What about Big Milk And Big Egg? all those have risen drastically due to increased bio-fuel production. And all the
    Almost all US oil refineries have shown fiscal loses last quarter!

    What about you just shutting the hell up …………


  35. MCMetal says:

    Freedom Rebel Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
    This Week: Cokie Roberts Sneers At The Responsible Plan To End The War, Says Most Americans Interested In Winning

    Cokie got the Memo from the White House before this Newscast.

    She is another one that likes to Spoon Feed us what we should think.. Sorry Cokie, you are not selling us that line of crap. We are not buyin it..

    Dopey Roberts possesses the brilliance of a polished turd …..


  36. specialist f says:

    33 themanwhocaintspel
    Gee,you think it might actually have something to do with diesel being $4+ a gallon???Please go back to pleasuring your sister.


  37. McWars says:

    It is in fact my opinion, manicare, that no food in this country should be converted to energy.

    Almost all US oil refineries have shown fiscal loses last quarter!

    Link, please. And what chapter Bankruptcy will the refineries file? Golly, I sure wish they had billions in rainy day funds.

    The right sure has a very rich definition of the word “plight.”


  38. McWars says:

    Gas prices are at all time highs and ‘manicare’ expects to believe its sob story about the companies’ smallest decrease in profits (if true)?


  39. specialist f says:

    39mispelledcares: your brain is $HIT! You don’t have a clue how BioDiesel is made do you?


  40. tombaker says:

    23 – To call R’s “pathologically optimistic” misses (and forgives) their truly malevolent nature. They understand unwavering optimism as a tool by which people can be manipulated, and they have come to know that by practicing a deep, dark cynicism re: the nature of people. Their cheery and/or high-sounding rhetoric is sincere only in the sense that they hope to “sincerely manipulate” their audience.

    These are the guys with more-or-less impeccable table manners, who whisper the unthinkable amongst themselves when they know no one’s listening (and moreover think it’s ok to push their private agendas on the entire public through deceit). We all behave similarly in some context and to some degree, but “the republican right” has turned it into an aggressively un-civil (see: “fear-and-smear”); anti-democratic (see: gerrymandering, voter caging); and destructive (see: education, economy, environment) institution, all the while insisting it is their opponents who are to blame for any given ill.

    That kind of calculated, cynical, self-serving sophistry is the scummiest kind of human endeavor – Dante rightly reserved the deeper circles of hell for exactly that kind of player.


  41. tombaker says:

    defense-tinted contract lenses”


  42. robbez_92107 says:

    manicare Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    $2 an ear for corn due to ethanol production this summer ought to catch your attention, too, if your mom let you do the shopping.


  43. ralph the wonder llama says:

    manicare Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 3:25 pm

    I’m talking about ethanol made from food products. I’m not talking about the 5 gallons of BioDiesel made in your back yard from used fry oil!

    Oh good. Another incoherent troll.

    Oops — my mistake. Its the same incoherent troll with another new name. How pathetic do you have to be to keep signing up with new email addresses just to hang out where no one likes or respects you?


  44. tombaker says:

    see ralph – ya big’ol hater!! you’re just a meanie!!

    i’m tellin’!!


  45. Shayne says:

    I believe McCain stole those rose colored glasses. Somebody follow the spittle and we’ll find them with the old, drooling, dolt.


  46. ralph the wonder llama says:

    Does anyone else get the feeling that Tony Fratto is the bastard love-child product of the unholy union of Karl Rove and Slugworth from Willy Wonka?


  47. Shayne says:

    manicare Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 3:36 pm

    ralph the wonder llama Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    I find it immensely more pathetic to live in a country you despise more than yourself!

    We don’t hate the country, as soon as we can lock up all you wather carrying fascists under President Obama we’ll absolutel love this country.


  48. Shayne says:

    ralph the wonder llama Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    Does anyone else get the feeling that Tony Fratto is the bastard love-child product of the unholy union of Karl Rove and Slugworth from Willy Wonka?

    Ugh, a union between Rove and anybody makes me nauseous. Even worse than when I think of pasty old McCrazy and the next young, blonde tropy, wife or lobbyist.


  49. ralph the wonder llama says:

    manicare Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 3:36 pm

    I find it immensely more pathetic to live in a country you despise more than yourself!

    I don’t speak gibberish; can anyone translate this for me?

    It sounds like the trollcantspell despises the United States more than he despises himself. Sounds like he says this to make the point that, from this perspective, changing emails constantly in order to hang out among people who don’t like or respect isn’t really that pathetic.


  50. RUCerious says:

    Manic are as Manic does.


  51. Freedom Rebel says:

    MCMetal Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 2:58 pm

    I so agree. I can’t believe they still keep her around.


  52. Freedom Rebel says:

    ralph the wonder llama Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 3:45 pm

    Ralph, I liked it when you were method acting as a troll. It was very entertaining that day that we didn’t have any. I gave you a standing ovation.

    They must have been upset by your performance. The real trolls are no fun.


  53. Marie says:

    So all those pronouncements of things going so well, last throes, succeeding, winning, surging, progress — all those descriptions were through rose-colored glasses? Just how opaque were those lenses?


  54. ralph the wonder llama says:

    Thanks, Freedom Rebel. You know, the reward is in the performance itself. And the real trolls make it so easy.


  55. sacopenapa says:

    Throw away your rosy colored glasses and tell Bush and Chenney to hand themselves in… they should be handcuffed and taken imediatly to an International Court. That goes also for Rice, Gates, Negroponte, Perle, Wolfowitz, Yhoo, Rumsfeld, and all the rest of this bunch of criminals! Never forgeting the fat and ugly Rove!!!


  56. Jericho says:

    I prefer the term “Freedom Goggles”.

    And furthermore, who are we to be pointing fingers.
    Don’t we all romanticize war? WWI and WWII, those were the days….

    Yes, Bush, but it’s pronounced “sarcasm”


  57. Robt says:

    I guess this is Fratto’s McCain moment where McCain finally admits he was “wrong and slow” to coming around to MLK Day and what it meant and represented….


  58. Robt says:

    Now he tells us….!

    You know there isstill 20 to 30 percent still wearing those republican rose colored glasses.


  59. turnerj41 says:

    they’ve moved on to rose colored blinders


  60. EvilPoet says:

    The Watergate Principle: Government corruption is always reported in the past tense. (Source: Murphy’s Law 26th Anniversary Edition)

    “When it looked like we were going in, I called back down to CENTCOM and said, ‘You need to dust off Desert Crossing.’ They said, ‘What’s that? Never heard of it.’” -General Anthony Zinni (ret.), 2004.

    Post-Saddam Iraq: The War Game

    “Desert Crossing” 1999 Assumed 400,000 Troops and Still a Mess

    Washington D.C., November 4, 2006 – In late April 1999, the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), led by Marine General Anthony Zinni (ret.), conducted a series of war games known as Desert Crossing in order to assess potential outcomes of an invasion of Iraq aimed at unseating Saddam Hussein. The documents posted here today covered the initial pre-war game planning phase from April-May 1999 through the detailed after-action reporting of June and July 1999.

    The Desert Crossing war games, which amounted to a feasibility study for part of the main war plan for Iraq — OPLAN 1003-98 — tested “worst case” and “most likely” scenarios of a post-war, post-Saddam, Iraq. The After Action Report presented its recommendations for further planning regarding regime change in Iraq and was an interagency production assisted by the departments of defense and state, as well as the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency, among others.

    The results of Desert Crossing, however, drew pessimistic conclusions regarding the immediate possible outcomes of such action. Some of these conclusions are interestingly similar to the events which actually occurred after Saddam was overthrown.

    Continued here…


  61. nellieh says:

    How many dead soldiers did they miss looking through “rose colored glasses?” It seems each day brings more proof these cretins should be before the Hague. War criminals and war profiteers. Including the puppet generals lying to get contracts and profits for their defense contractor puppet masters. As shameful and pitiful as invading Iraq in the first place. NOW they are using animation to convince the intelligence committees why we are preparing tactics for Iran. If EVER there was an oxymoron. Just like Powell’s cartoons before the United Nations. There is no low low enough for these dispicable people.


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