And the Mainstream Media is still complicit in reinforcing his lies and evasions.
However, some online news organizations are actually starting to drift a bit towards actually reporting the news, including, surprisingly, ABC News, in reporting the complete hopelessness of this Administration.
More below the fold.
But first, a word from our sponsor:
In a separate interview recently, Vice President Dick Cheney expressed increasing pique.
"I think it's far too soon for the talking heads on television to conclude that it's impossible to do, it's not going to work, it can't possibly succeed," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer of the president's revamped plan for Iraq.
Pressed again, he targeted the media, saying, "Well, Wolf, if the history books were written by people who have, are so eager to write off this effort, to declare it a failure, including many of our friends in the media, the situation obviously would have been over a long time ago."
Who would have thought, back in 2004, that Cheney would be reduced to complaining about the media? That he would be forced to resort to the old conservative intimidation tactics that ultimately played a role in rendering the mass media fully subservient to the Republican agenda? (Along with promiscuous corporate consolidation and the outlawing of the Fairness Doctrine by Reagan, I mean.)
Although Cheney looks and sounds like the toughest, nastiest plutocrat in town, the words coming out of his mouth give the lie. He must hate it when people start thinking and acting independently. After all, independent thought emboldens the enemy.
Hey, Mark Halperin, isn't it time to start firing some people?
But it gets better, and this is a telling item:
White House insiders, speaking on condition of anonymity, say an intense sense of war fatigue has set in.
Some cite a sense of regret and self-recrimination among White House officials who have evolved from a sense of being unjustly persecuted to a sense that the administration itself made critical mistakes in the conduct of the war that have contributed to the media and public lament.
Gee, ya think? I guess even Zombies can feel fear:
My take on this is quite harsh--if it's taken this long for these jackasses populating the Bush Administration to start getting it, it's far too late. What these people have done is irredeemable and has discredited the Republican Party and, particularly, conservatism for all time.
After all, as I've noted elsewhere, conservatism resembles nothing else so much as Communism in its unique ability to combine superficially attractive ideological constructs (at least to some people) with a ruthless predilection towards repression and gangsterism. In Russia, Lenin, Stalin and the rest may have killed as many as 30 million of their fellow Russians during the life of the USSR (based on Solzhenisyn's estimates) apart from any wars. In China, Mao's homegrown variant killed between 20 and 40 million in a few brief years.
In America, the Republicans, in the thrall of an absolutist conservative creed, had six short years to govern in effective control of all three branches of government, and sure enough, immediately resorted to techniques of political repression and economic gangsterism. I will not enumerate all the permutations of their policies, as they are more than adequately explicated elsewhere on this site. It is very clear, at least to me, however, that Conservatism is a dying creed in this country.
But I digress.
President Bush, on a collision course with Congress over Iraq, said Friday "I'm the decision-maker" about sending more troops to the war. He challenged skeptical lawmakers not to prematurely condemn his buildup.
"I've picked the plan that I think is most likely to succeed," Bush said in an Oval Office meeting with senior military advisers.
The president had strong words for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who are lining up to support resolutions opposing his decision to send 21,500 troops to Iraq. He challenged them to put up their own ideas.
"I know there is skepticism and pessimism and that some are condemning a plan before it's even had a chance to work," the president said. "They have an obligation and a serious responsibility therefore to put up their own plan as to what would work."
No sir.
We have no obligation whatsoever to offer you an alternative. In fact, we have many times over, if you were willing to do more than pretend to listen. But Bush's 'alternatives' entail strictly tactical suggestions to help him pull his chestnuts out of the fire. Things that are explicitly in the nation's interest, however, are as the very wind: here, and gone in a moment, without heed paid.
This President is fatally flawed and his poll numbers are in Nixon territory. and his Administration is peopled with criminals, ideological monsters, scam artists and thugs in Armani suits.
The great peace march approaches. God, I wish I could be there.