Politics

Here’s Fred Kaplan’s take over at Slate Magazine:Bush’s appalling Iraq speech

That about says it.

Is Bush a liar or just delusional?

What a choice.

The Associated Press did this quick fact check on Bush’s more egregious lies last night: A look at the facts behind Bush’s speech I came across the list at Talking Points memo this morning.

Is there no one who can shut this fool up? Does he honestly think we care any more about what he says? He has lived in a world of spin since he launched, totally unprovoked, his war on Iraq. His personal crusade. His dangerous lunacy just astounds me. His total lack of honesty, courage, mental capacity … anything at all. He is a shambolic mess and he’s so indifferent to his country that he simply doesn’t care anymore about what we all think. He just wants to hang in there and get out of the White House without having to admit that not one of his [by then] eight years in office has produced even one wit of substance.

He is vapid.

He is venal.

He is a danger to America.

And he continues to lie. The most amusing lie is about the 35 coalition members who are “standing by America”. I suppose that includes the one officer from Iceland who is reportedly going home soon. Or the one from Canada. Or the one from New Zealand. Oh, and does it include that mighty army of Spain’s who’s contribution is actually to train Iraqis in Spain … all twenty-five of them? OK so maybe if you do the contorted Bushie math you can come up with about 30 countries. But no one seems to be able to list them all. And does that guy from Iceland really make such a diffrence we should wax lyrical about his contribution to the occupation?

Didn’t think so.

No wonder no one takes Bush seriously. He should just go back to his bunker and hope no one finds him. He deserves … well you figure it out!

Bush is hitting new lows in his venal, spineless and blatant attempt to avoid taking responsibility for the destruction he has wrought. The weak reports this week by Crocker and Petraeus were the best the Bush regime can offer as it slinks sulkily into history. Sidney Blumenthal hits the nail on the head with this Salon piece: How Bush is trying to save face in Iraq

Pathetic. Bush continues to astound me with his weakness and lack of candor. He simply cannot face reality. His history of lies and misdirections has begun to unravel in the public’s mind – his popularity is so low, and his relevance has never been less – but apparently he still clings, childlike, to them. As he famously told the Australians on his visit there just last week: “We’re kicking ass in Iraq”. Yea. Right.

Somewhere in his juvenile mind Bush seems to think that his role is to be a cheerleader: someone who keeps the smile on and talks up the situation so as to boost the flagging spirits of those around him. He likes to think of himself as a Churchillain war leader. Instead he’s a parody of a spoilt child who brattily can’t understand why people don’t like him after he’s beaten them up on the school playground. He’s used to being bailed out, not having his buddies like Rove and Gonzales, bail out.

And he couldn’t be less Churchillian if he tried: Churchill relished a fight, he went off to war in his youth to experience it. He didn’t duck national service like Bush and Cheney did, he sought it out. When he rose to power he told the story straight: this is tough and will demand sacrifice on the part of everyone not just the army. He walked the bombed out streets and refused to leave London even as it was being bombed daily. Bush has done the exact opposite: he is furtive, weak, afraid to ask for sacrifice, afraid to stand in the danger zone, afraid to deliver a rallying cry, afraid to muster the necessary resources, and now afraid to tell the truth.

Liars like Bush are generally afraid to face up to reality themselves. Usually that’s a personal problem not a national disaster. Maybe it was inevitable that the Bush family’s pandering to its spoiled brat son should have become a national curse: so much of their fortune is tied up in the Middle East and Bush senior’s only great achievement was the Gulf War victory. Whatever the curious dynamics of the aristocratic Bush family were they produced a weak liar in this president. And he’s now bent on ruining us all further so as to “save face”.

If he weren’t trashing the country Bush would be merely a pathetic rich boy, a family embarrassment, and a footnote in a a series of failed projects. As it is he’s president: still a pathetic rich boy, but a national embarrassment, and a blot on national history.

Well at long last we’ve had the Petraeus report that Bush has been telling us all along will determine his policy for the next year. My conclusion? It was a total waste of time. Newsweek has a good angle on it here: Hirsh: Rating Petraeus’s Report to the Hill

The real problem is that the general and Bush both want the same thing: delay. The general’s reputation is on the line and apparently he doesn’t mind playing politics to keep his head. I am sure he remembers what happened to all the other generals who stood up to Bush: they’re all fired. No one wants to tell the truth. They cook up numbers to try to make things look better when we can all see quite plainly that things are nowhere near settled.

The whole [point of the “surge” was not to produce good looking numbers of deaths [although that surely would be nice] because death counts are more a result of local tactical conditions rather than overall strategic conditions. The point was to stabilize the place so a government could take root. It hasn’t. So the surge failed.

The notion that there will be some troop reductions next year because of the surge’s “success” is also nonsense. The reductions are coming anyway: the army simply has run out of gas and needs to rotate troops home, whether we’re winning or not. No amount of spin alters that fact.

This whole war was an abomination: it was an evil and unnecessary enterprise foisted on an gullible public by a warmongering cabal of neo-conservative ideologues, none of whom have ever served in the military [don’t forget that Bush ducked national service]. It has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands; it has cost a fortune; it has produced a fertile base for terrorists; and has enhanced to power of Iran. On any strategic assessment it is an unmitigated failure.

Moreover the American public has been totally separated from the pain of war: there has been no tax to finance it; no emergency draft to stock the army with manpower; no cutbacks at home to provide materiel for war; no factories diverted to wartime production; no sacrifice at all. The whole thing has been a national disgrace.

And what did we get?

Nothing.

Except more terrorists; casualties [that Bush doesn’t even have the guts to acknowledge]; debt; lost reputation and world influence; and bitter division at home.

Bush likes to style himself a “wartime” president. What a joke. All he wants to do with this Petraeus report is to punt. His policies have all failed. And rather than stand up and say so, he ducks like the utter coward he has always been. Bush wants to shove this mess onto the next president. He’ll probably succeed.

What an incredible way to run a country. What a mess.

Courtesy of the Talking Points Memo website, here is the GAO report on progress in Iraq. Basically there is none. Read it so you can be informed as we head into the storm of spin that the Bush regime will throw at us over the next few week:The TPM DOCUMENT COLLECTION – GAO Report on Iraqi Benchmarks

So. There has been no appreciable progress in the US major aim of establishing enough stability for an Iraqi government to take hold. Case closed.

But wait: Bush and Cheney are already ginning up reasons to bomb Iran so they can obfuscate us on Iraq … which, in turn, helped hide the situation in Afghanistan.

Here’s a simple thought: if Iraq is such a success why did Bush have to fly in without warning, to a top secret remote desert base to get his latest photo op? This is four year on from “mission accomplished”. So where are the flower strewn streets and the victory parades? Where are the outpourings of gratitude? The stable democracy? The vibrant pro-western economy?

Nowhere. Bush had to slink in under cover and slide out before the locals knew he was there. Some victory! Some success!

The constant re-writing and spinning of the Bush regime is astounding. They don’t seem to be able to keep up with the disaster they created.

Every one of America’s erstwhile opponents in the world wide game of diplomacy is loving the quagmire that is Iraq. China, Russia, and Iran are all much stronger players on the world stage as a result of Bush’s folly. The vaunted American war machine is bogged down and tired. It is spread so thin that even petty dictators can feel strong enough to poke at us. American money is pouring into a black hole for no reason other than Bush’s childish ego.

And he is having to throw even his most loyal followers overboard: first Rove and then Gonzales. Who’s next? The whole Bush monstrosity has been built around fear: making Americans cower so they’ll give up their own freedom and allow the administration to do whatever it wants.

The problem with being all powerful is that there is no one left to blame when things go wrong. Bush, like the petulant child that he is, is now learning that and is lashing out at all around him.

The GAO report says quite clearly that Bush has failed in Iraq … by his own benchmarks.

Now comes the spin. Now comes more lying.

When will it end?