Did Gen. David Petreaus Utter the Forbidden Word?

(The following is satire -- I hope)

Forget Ford Hood and investigating the so-called "terror" connections of Nidal Hasan.

Yours truly has come across something the current crowd running our government might see as even more sinister. The Obama administration, the FBI, the Justice Department, and, most importantly, the White House's speech police simply have to get on this right away.

You see, General David Petraeus visited the Air Force Academy last week and may have uttered a word once thought to have been stricken from all speeches and discussions relating to military matters.

The word is .... v-v-v-v-vi .... well, I'd better let Tom Roeder of the Colorado Springs Gazette take it from here (bold is mine) in his November 5 report on Petraeus's appearance:

Petraeus tells cadets military will follow Obama's commands

Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Forces throughout the Middle East, said he’s continuing talks with the White House about strategy in Afghanistan, but in the end will do whatever he’s told.

Petraeus spoke to hundreds of cadets at the Air Force Academy on Thursday, telling them his secrets to leadership. He addressed Afghanistan when one cadet asked him how he would handle a disagreement with President Barack Obama on strategy there.

“We will support the decision that is made by the president,” said Petraeus, who heads U.S. Central Command.

The general signaled that any change is more about how troops are used rather than how many are sent to battle. He addressed his strategy in Iraq during the 2007 “surge” that sent troops into cities to enforce security, clearing out insurgents ahead of rebuilding work.

“The surge was more than 30,000 extra troops,” he said. “It was a surge of ideas.”

He cited the Iraq changes, including pushing soldiers into neighborhoods, as a key to victory in Iraq. That’s starting to happen in Afghanistan, as soldiers pull out of remote areas to concentrate on securing cities and towns.

I realize that the word "victory" in Roeder's last excerpted paragraph is not in a direct quote. If it was, there would be no need for an investigation. Petraeus would be taken directly to the woodshed and told in no uncertain terms that no one in the government, civilian or military, can ever again utter that despicable seven-letter word in connection with military matters again.

But since that terrible word is not in quotes, the administration needs to find the transcript, seize all audio, video and other evidence, interrogate the General and Mr. Roeder, and get to the bottom of this right now.

If General Petraeus lapsed into pre-Obama language, he must be disciplined, and be told in no uncertain terms to improve on his own personal discipline. After all, the President visited the Faw Palace at Camp Victory in Iraq back on April 7. The transcript of that speech reveals that he was able to avoid uttering that awful word. We would expect no less from the General.

That same day, administration spokesman Robert Gibbs, at the end of the Press Gaggle at the Faw Palace, accidentally mentioned "Camp Victory." His rear end is still red over that slip-up.

If the administration learns that Roeder used the term on his own, the matter will be turned over the American Society of Professional Journalists for further action relating to what would be self-evident Code of Ethics violations.

(end satire)

Victory Davis Hanson at FrontPage comments on the administration's aversion to the word that describes what has really taken place in Iraq:

.... (This administration's) moral equivalence is little concerned with any redress of pathologies that in fact led to 9/11: Western appeasement of, or indifference to, radical Islam, whose extremism was the natural dividend of a region torn by enormous oil wealth, and age old statism, tribalism, gender intolerance, and dictatorship. In the era of Obama, radical Islam and the West merely have different narratives, rather than a fascistic creed trying to destroy the notion of Western freedom and tolerance.

Abroad as both sides refocus on the Afghanistan theater, somehow Obama is more demoralized by our victory in Iraq than the Islamists are by their defeat; and we have forgotten in the Bush ‘reset’ button rhetoric that support for bin Laden and suicide bombing–given the terrible dividends they earned–had plummeted in polls in the Middle East. In addition, in the “Bush did it” Obama narrative there was no mention of the arrest of Dr. Khan, the Syrian exit from Lebanon, the surrender of the Libyan WMD stockpiles, or the absence of another 9/11.

The result is that many in the radical Islamic world–especially after Obama’s serial trashing of the Bush-era security protocols like retaps, intercepts, and Guantanamo– may well be emboldened to think that either America questions its successful efforts at thwarting another attack since 9/11, or in some strange way sympathizes with some of the writs against itself.

The Obama administration apparently doesn't need to worry about whether its establishment media apparatchiks will slip and use the dreaded word -- at least without qualifiers, sarcasm, or derision. In a Google News Archive search on [military "victory in Iraq"] (typed as indicated between brackets) returning 188 items, I didn't see a single establishment media result that actually declared the situation in Iraq as what it is and has been for a year -- a military victory.

Despite media avoidance and administration reluctance, to paraphrase Reagan before he and others toppled the Soviet Union: We won; they lost.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.