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Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Tonight we find out that we're living in a dictatorship
Posted by Jill | 6:18 AM
So tonight is the night that the Madman-in-Chief gives his big speech, in which he tells the nearly two-thirds of Americans who do not support a buildup of his little Iraq adventure to go fuck themselves, he is the decider and he decides what's what.

Oh, we'll hear it all again -- the multiple references to 9/11, the "we're fighting them so we don't have to fight them here" bromides; he might even mention the Iraqi elections and "spreading democracy"; though that would take a fair amount of chutzpah, since he's made it clear that he is not interested in what democracy told him right here at home last November.

Here is what the people think, according to the latest USA Today/Gallup poll:



  • Nearly half of those surveyed say the United States can't achieve its goals in Iraq regardless of how many troops it sends. One in four say U.S. goals can be achieved only with an increase in troop numbers.
  • Eight in 10 say the war has gone worse than the Bush administration expected. Of those people, 53% say Bush deserves "a great deal" of blame; 41% place a great deal of blame on Iraqi political leaders.
  • By 72%-25%, Americans say Bush doesn't have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq. Congressional Democrats fare only a little better: 66%-25%.



Meanwhile, Tony Snow thinks that two-thirds of Americans are unpatriotic idiots incapable of understanding the complexities driving his genius of a boss' decisions:

"I think the public opinion and public support is a very important part of this, and it is not static," he said. "You know, this is going to be fairly complex, and it's going to take people a little bit of time to think through, and we will spend a lot of time talking about it because it's important to do so."


Snow also reiterated the chestnut that Iraq is the central front of the so-called "war on terror", conveniently not mentioning that it is George W. Bush who destabilized it and made it so.

And this, from yesterday's press gaggle, is just priceless:

MR. SNOW: Well, look, Democrats are going to have to make a choice here and they're going to have to decide where they stand in terms of two issues: Number one, do you want Iraq to succeed, and, if so, what does that mean? And, number two, do you believe in supporting the troops as you say, and how do you express that support? Those are questions that will be answered in the process of public debate and also -- and a lot of other considerations. So we'll just have to see how it plays out.

As you've seen, Bret, there is disagreement within both parties about how to proceed. But I think one of the unifying elements can be, when the President does lay out the way forward, it offers an opportunity for everybody to have a full and thoughtful debate about this. Right now many of the debates continue to be conducted in a vacuum -- anticipation that the President is going to say something. And it makes more sense to wait until the President lays out not only military, but also diplomatic, economic, and other actions that he intends to take, and to put them in the broader context of the war on terror and also the context of the security of Americans right here on our own soil.

Q Last one for me. Yesterday you hinted that the President is going to essentially lay out specifics of why Iraq is important to the U.S. as far as our safety. Is that accurate?

MR. SNOW: Well, specifics -- no, we've often described what happens if you have a failed state in Iraq, and we'll continue to make the point, which is, if you've got a failed state in Iraq -- let's draw the image for the American people again -- got Iraq; on one side to its east is Iran, to the west is Syria, two primary terror states who have made it clear that they're going to go after democracies throughout the region. That would include Lebanon, that would include the Palestinian areas. They're trying to send a message that democracy cannot succeed in that part of the world. They're trying to intimidate their neighbors.

If you have an Iraq, with the world's second largest oil reserves, capable of generating incredible amounts of revenue that terrorists can use both to blackmail the West and also to purchase weapons that can be used against anybody else, that creates a situation that's a direct threat to us. So that's really what I was talking about. There is not going to be sort of a roster of specifics, but it is worth reminding the American people of what the stakes are and how they do fit in to the larger war on terror.


Is there a better example of the Republican playbook than these two paragraphs? If you don't believe in throwing more money and more soldiers at a situation that's completely FUBAR exclusively and completely through the policies of this failed president, you "don't want Iraq to succeed." If you don't want to throw more money and more American kids into this meatgrinder, you're not "supporting the troops", and the only way to "express your support" is NOT to want them to come home alive, but empty platitudes about "completing a mission" that has changed over time to the point that not even the president knows what it is anymore, other than the mission of salvaging his legacy.

Then Snow talks about the dire prospect of "a failed state in Iraq." Well, guess what, Snowjob -- it already IS a failed state, and YOUR BOSS made it so. And then he gets into the oil -- not that it's important to Bush family friends, because he can't come out and say that, but it's about not allowing the oil reserves to generate money that can fall into the hands of terrorists. Well, Snowjob, I hate to tell you this, but your boss should have thought of this before he decided he could make his penis bigger than his father's by starting this war.

None of the dire consequences that Snow talks about can be avoided with 20,000 more troops. They are inevitable, and they are here now, and U.S. policy should now be about how to deal with this failed state that George W. Bush built without sacrificing an entire generation of American kids. And if this escalation is going to take place, it's time not to combine it with more tax cuts for the wealthy, but with rescinding all the tax cuts to pay for it, reinstating a draft so that the burden is shared more widely, and asking Americans to actually sacrifice something. If this president is so sure that this is the right thing to do, then let him take the heat that comes with the consequences of his actions.

And don't tell me that's Congress' job, to introduce such legislation. This is a president who rules by signing statement and executive order. This is a president who doesn't believe he needs to go to Capitol Hill for anything. He wants his escalation? Let him do what's necessary to pay for it -- and take the heat accordingly. It was one thing when his fuckups meant that his father's friends lost money. Now his fuckups mean Americans lose their lives. It's time for us to stop enabling this man.
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