I watched Bush's address this morning as a citizen. I had to shush my wife a couple of times from outrage; she was supposed to be downstairs working. After his address, MSNBC had on a general and the question he was asked was if President Bush was correct about America being safer. The general's polite response was that we can't yet make that assertion.
In other words, President Bush is asserting another falsehood as true and out of respect to the Office of the President, because guests would like to be invited back as experts and eventually get gigs, or because it isn't protocol to do so, no one simply says President Bush's statement is false. Not true. I'm not saying call the man a liar. But this thing gets mushier and mushier. That's why McCain can get up there and say any flipping thing and they call it a gaffe.
From today's address:
Our men and women in uniform are performing with characteristic honor and valor. The surge is working. And as a return on our success in Iraq, we've begun bringing some of our troops home.
As a return on our success? Really?
Flipping
We knew before the escalation of troops the length of time we could sustain the escalation. We knew as a function of logistics when we would have to begin returning troops because we could not sustain the escalation. Come on MSNBC. Come on CNN. Come on CBS, NBC, ABC. Come on NPR. Come on C-SPAN.
That one statement shows how disingenuous this President is. If violence in Baghdad had increased tenfold, we would still be drawing down escalated troops.
Of course, Juan Cole calls him as he sees and he sees 'em as lies. In Five Years of Iraq Lies, Cole assails the prevailing mantras of the administration right up to today. The subtitle alone is worth skipping over and reading the article at Salon right now.
How President Bush and his advisors have spent each year of the war peddling mendacious tales about a mission accomplished.
Today's address contained the usual litany of retreads, crap the President repeats over and again without being called on it by those whose responsibility is the facts.
The battle in Iraq has been longer and harder and more costly than we anticipated...
Who is we? Only a handful of neocon jackasses believed that the war was gonna cost some pocket change and coupons, greeted as liberators, flowers in the street, kiss the girl, hunky dory. Every time he says we, the voice of James Earl Jones should rain from above and say "the 26% still drinking the kool-aid."
The terrorists who murder the innocent in the streets of Baghdad want to murder the innocent in the streets of America. Defeating this enemy in Iraq will make it less likely that we'll face the enemy here at home.
So he's just gonna keep saying that and y'all gonna keep letting him. As if we don't kill all the insurgents in Iraq, that we will have a protracted fight here in the United States and good ole boys and boyz in tha hood will have to ban together like 'Red Dawn'to fight the Al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorists on Peachtree or Broadway.
And their strategy of using violence in Iraq to cause divisions in America was working -- as pressures built here in Washington for withdrawal before the job was done.
Divisions in America? That's right. Neighbor turned on neighbor. My wife took the cover and slept on her side of the bed only. My best friend stopped talking to me and I shunned those co-workers who believed that there was no military solution, that our presence precipitated violence, that the Iraqi government was not doing all they could in the government or to foster the environment for Iraqi troops to take responsibility. I shunned them. In D.C., all of a sudden, Republicans who had been saying 'stay the course' and voting the way of the party on every bill were now pressing the President to withdraw troops. His coalition was faltering.
But then, the President called together his advisors, set upon a bold new course, "The Surge" and the day was saved. Democracy, just around the corner. McCain will see it through; I just knighted him 'Future Lord of the Iraq War' last week. You saw me tap dancing.
The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around -- it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror. For the terrorists, Iraq was supposed to be the place where al Qaeda rallied Arab masses to drive America out.
Says who? Did he get the Al-Qaeda Agenda and Notes, 2008?
At this point, ready to bring it on home, he pulled the 9-11 card. No major address covering his ass would be complete without it, boxcutters and all.
To allow this to happen would be to ignore the lessons of September the 11th and make it more likely that America would suffer another attack like the one we experienced that day -- a day in which 19 armed men with box cutters killed nearly 3,000 people in our -- on our soil; a day after which in the following of that attack more than one million Americans lost work, lost their jobs.
Bravado, bravado, bravado. The transformative power of liberty is the one weapon we have over their suicide bombers. Tell a personal military story. We must prevail. Victory, victory, God bless.
[Update: retitled]