I love the Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial board. Their Bush Administration editorials can be nearly as good as Keith Olberman's Special Comments.
Today's editorial is just as good.
Editorial: Bush talks nonsense about situation in Iraq
His pronouncements now bear no resemblance to reality.
When President Bush pronounced Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki "the right guy for Iraq" Thursday, it recalled Bush's infamous "heck of a job" comment about FEMA Director Michael Brown's incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina. Both comments say more about Bush than Brown or Al-Maliki: On Iraq, as on Katrina, Bush has completely slipped the moorings of reality.
More below.
For those who aren't aware, the the Bush statement quoted above came a day after a memo by Stephen Hadley questioned al-Maliki's competency to accomplish Bush's goals.
Bush showed the clear unreality of his views during a stop in Latvia earlier in the week. He refused to acknowledge the civil war that is plain to see; pronounced, incredibly, that Al-Qaida is the major threat in Iraq, and pledged, again, that he would "not pull American troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."
What mission is that? To get rid of WMD that didn't exist? To get rid of Saddam Hussein? To give Iraq free and democratic elections?
Right now our troops seem to have no real mission other than trying to kill and/or arrest people who share the same skin color as the guys who committed the 9/11 attacks.
The editorial sums this up in a way that is sure to make assrocket and the other right-wing nutjobs reaffirm their views that the Strib is just a "liberal rag."
If the troops still have an actual mission in Iraq, it should be to hunker down and stay safe until someone figures out how to get them home.
Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other regardless of whether Al Qaeda is in Iraq. I haven't heard anything about the Kurds in the north being involved in the sectarian violence, but they have enough to worry about with Turkey.
There's one line, however, in this editorial that speaks volumes, and lays the truth out so simply even Bush could understand it.
Whatever happens now in Iraq will have little to do with what the United States wants to happen.
It's true, Messers Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. Whether we stay or leave, the situation in Iraq will get worse and we can't bring anything to the table to make it better.