If this is the new message, it’s time for the Bush gang to start over

June 20, 2005

It seems the president and his aides have decided it’s time to address the “Iraq problem.” Alas, this does not mean shifting gears in the military aspects of fighting the war; it means crafting a new political and rhetorical strategy to help boost Bush’s poll numbers.

An increasing number of people, on both sides of the aisle, are asking anew why in the world we started this war in the first place, and the White House is struggling to come up with an answer. For example, in Bush’s weekly radio address over the weekend, Americans were told:

“We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens.”

I suppose that’s better than saying we invaded Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities, but only slightly.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried her hand at misdirection yesterday on Fox News. Chris Wallace asked Rice, “Can the Bush administration fairly be criticized for failing to level with the American people about how long and difficult this commitment will be?” Rice responded:

“[T]he administration, I think, has said to the American people that it is a generational commitment to Iraq.”

Now, I pay pretty close attention to the news, and I just don’t recall every being told that our commitment to Iraq is “generational.” As Think Progress noted, we were told a number of different things, such as Dick Cheney saying the war would be “short and affordable,” Donald Rumsfeld saying the war would “go relatively quickly…(in) weeks rather than months,” and former Budget Director Mitch Daniels saying that “Iraq will not require sustained aid.” But “a generational commitment”? Not so much.

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said last week, “The White House is completely disconnected from reality. It’s like they’re just making it up as they go along.” Sounds about right to me.

They sound like people who have decided that the jig is up and the only thing to do now is cover their asses while they run for the nearest exit (2008), when it will all become someone else’s problem.

  • Our soldiers are dying because of Newsweek, because of Sen. Durbin, because of Amnesty International, because of anyone like Richard Clarke who tell the truth. The right wing freeper wackos are now saying that the Downing Street Memos are fakes!! Anything to distract from the real lying fuckers who got us into this insane mess.

    And number one on my list of lying fuckers is the MSM who lay down and let Bush run right over the Constitution, the American people, the Iraqi people, and anyone who stands in their way. And Exhibit 1-A is the New York Times — and most especially the lying whore Judith Miller — who still today refuse to deal with the “new” old news of the lies used to get us into the war and to connect the dots that are all over the fucking place.

    Lying whore bastards…God I hate Mondays after yet another weekend, where so much shit comes out, like Pumpkinhead letting McCain spin more lies about “we made mistakes” without asking “Who made the fucking mistakes?!” and istead letting McCain blame it all on Durbin. Motherfucking liars. DAMNNNNNNNNNN!!!!

  • Bush, in his radio address: “Our troops are fighting these terrorists in Iraq so you will not have to face them here at home.”

    And exactly HOW many Iraqis have been found to be engaged in terrorism here in the US?

    LIAR.

  • Every time one of those evil bastards tells the American public something about the “progress” of the occupation/Crusade, I just add another dot to my graph of US military deaths in the quagmire.

    The most recent was Cheney’s comment that the insurgents were in their “last throes”. The graph line has continued steadily upward since then, actually at a slightly higher rate of death.

    The administration and their media lapdogs (lickspittles, whatever) give the impression that things are either going well, or aren’t worth getting excited about (e.g., Condi’s assurances). The trend line shows a very different story. Maybe they don’t know what a trend line is? You’d think, with all their interest in greed, uh, business, they’d have a minimum grasp of Stat 101.

    I used to think we sent troops over there to sieze the oil. Or to launch the neo-cons’ dream of a New American Empire. Or even just to bolster Cheney/Bush chances of re-election (given that they already stole one and might have trouble pulling the same trick a second time). I’ve concluded, from the Downing Street memoes, that it’s simpler than that, actually very like much of history. We have killed nearly 1800 of our people, permanently damanged another 41,000, and salughtered 111,000 Iraqis because George W. Bush had a personal grudge with Saddam Hussein. Pretty cold comfort for the friends and relatives of the dead, to know they died to avenge Saddam’s attempt on the elder Bush.

  • The Fox interview actually asked some good questions, even though Condoliarza did her usual schtick where she waves her arms and insists that we’re all too stupid to see what’s REALLY going on over there.

    The funny part was when she was asked why she didn’t want to run for President in 2008. She didn’t say it real loud, but I thought I heard her mutter something about Republicans never voting for a black woman. /snark

  • “We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens.”

    This is pap. This is baby-talk. This is grunting from a hog-wallow. Air hissing from a broken valve stem has more meaning and substance than this statement.

    Why the people of this country find this moldy, rotten and repetitive mewling from our “president” to be acceptable, much less fortifying, is beyond me.

  • I think it’s time for Americans to start holding Congress accountable for the White House’s actions, statements, and inconsistencies. Congress is supposed to have oversight responsibilities and they have been negligent in that area among others. Democrats need to hold the Republican Congress’ feet to the fire and that could get some things going.

  • Go back 35 years or so and imagine Dana “In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe.” Millbank being sent out to cover a break in at the Watergate complex, or ‘kneepads’ Miller getting a telephone call from a certain Mr. Ellsberg about some papers.

    I want to scream at all of them, “Liar, liar, your pants are on fire.”

  • Well, if his new ‘Iraq PR initiative’ is even half as successful as his ‘Privatize Social Security PR initiative’, we can expect polls in the next few months to show us that 95% of americans want an immediate withdrawal.

  • Keep in mind that the neo-cons have made attacking Iraq a cornerstone of their global plans since at least the late 1990’s, as witnessed by the ‘New American Century’ website and many of their writings including one or more letters to President Clinton urging him to do just that.

    The psychological reasons for Bush’s personal desire to smack around Saddam Hussein may be legion, but there’s only one real reason why we’re being forced to stay there when it’s becoming increasingly obvious that we may never win. One real reason we’re building fourteen permanent bases there that would have to be abandoned unless there is a stable U.S.-dominated puppet government in place to give us ‘permission’ to stay in perpetuity.

    Yes, friends. It was the oil. It still is the oil. And it will always be the oil. And the ability to project American military power quickly into the rest of the entire region as needed.

    So, ok, two real reasons. Oil and a continuation of the neo-con strategy of world domination. Just like Watergate, all we have to do is ‘follow the money’ and it all becomes amazingly clear. If there wasn’t a whole bunch of cash and power to be gained, the people holding George’s leash would never have let him do it no matter how much he wanted his revenge on Saddam Hussein personally.

  • Donald…it’s still only one reason. The Neocons strategy for world domination is ALL about ensuring that the US gets as much control as possible over the world’s oil supply.

  • I agree with you, Donald. My US Deaths graph points directly to the PNAC as “the real reason Bush started this war”. And everything Bush does is, of course, actually done by knowledgeable (if evil) handlers; he can’t ride a bicycle without falling over or watch TV without bashing his face somehow. Interestingly, though, Tom Paine’s lead item this morning, Why George Went to War, by Russ Baker, went even further into the personal motivation stuff.

    In interviews I conducted last fall, a well-known journalist, biographer and Bush family friend who worked for a time with Bush on a ghostwritten memoir said that an Iraq war was always on Bush’s brain.

    “He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said, ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He went on, ‘If I have a chance to invade…, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.'”

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