He reads. He bikes. He naps. Noshes a little. Chats with his old pal Barney. Strolls with the wife. Watches ballgames. Goes to bed at 9. Wait a second...are we talking about our president here or my Grandpa Max? Seems like the president is living the good life down in Crawford while much of the world is in a state of unrest. And the comic irony of it all is that, truly, he doesn't seem to give a rat's ass. "I'm kind of hangin' loose, as they say," said the ersatz leader of the free world this week. How cute...just a boy and his bike. And not only has his pace been slowing a lot lately during his yet-again mega-vacation down at the ranch, but so has his capacity to understand and accept reality. In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Utah yesterday he declared that the hot-off-the-press draft of Iraq's new Constitution "honors women's rights, the rights of minorities." Yeah, and there's a ton of new all-you-can-eat buffets springing up throughout Niger and Darfur too. Also during the speech Bush once again changed the justification for war and outlined the overall mission. In the absence of WMD, 911 connections, a credible Constitution and a U.S-style Democracy, Bush now declares that we must stay in Iraq out of obligation to the soldiers already killed. "We owe them something. We will finish the task that they gave their lives for." That makes perfect sense. Let's send more kids to die in battle simply because others have died. I'm not sure what's more incredulous, this statement or that fact that he actually made it. In any event, it's clear he's on his own very special wavelength. He continues to highlight the progress in Iraq despite the fact that (a) the country is torn apart, with land grabs by the Kurds in the North, Shiites in the South and Sunnis stuck in the bloody middle; (b) the violence and deaths have escalated to record levels; (c) the insurgents have obtained bigger, more lethal weapons; (d) the Constitution achieves little if any of America's real goals for a true Democracy; (e) Islam will likely be the rule of law; (f) essential services are still woefully inadequate; and (g) there's no exit-strategy in place or in sight. Sound like progress to you? Yet Bush keeps pounding the drum. Perhaps this is exactly the Bushies' strategy. Think about it. They lied to us about Iraq, lied about Saddam, lied about WMD, lied about bin Laden, lied about 9-11 and now they're lying about progress. I've said repeatedly that the administration, led by Turd Blossom Rove, has brilliantly and masterfully recognized what no other administration has ever discovered: that you can outright lie to Americans and they will never know the difference. It's how they won two elections. So now Bush will relentlessly point to progress and simply say the mission is a success, and therefore it will be. He'll do it as effortlessly as he made Iraq responsible for 9-11, and morphed bin Laden into Saddam. And once the Bushies have lied to Americans about this success, then a full or partial pullout is likely, perhaps even before the mid-term elections next year. How convenient for Republican incumbents on the Hill. And then the rest of us, the ones who truly care, the ones who actually take the time to read and seek out the truth, will sit back, as we did after Vietnam, and wonder what the hell it was all about and why so many had to die for nothing. Andy
1 comment:
"you can outright lie to Americans and they will never know the difference. It's how they won two elections."
That he won 2 elections is perhaps their most successful lie. The facts have long been available for public consumption that if the Supreme Court hadn't stopped the recount, Gore would've won Florida and the Presidency in 2000 - but the lie continues that Bush won, and everyone accepts it. And there is such a preponderance of credible evidence that the 2004 election was compromised that some very smart people are making a compelling case that Bush stole that one too. But the lie that Bush won is obviously still winning the day.
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