Thomas Friedman wrote a scalding column in today's
New York Times. It's so hard hitting that I can
almost forgive him for backing the Iraq invasion in 2003. (no I can't) If you are a Times select member, you can read the entire column,
Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you're stupid. Yes, they do.
They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry -- a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service -- and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.
Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, "They must think I'm stupid." Because they surely do.
Anyone that wanted to genuinely understand what Kerry meant knew what he meant but the Bushies aren't interested in understand, they're only interested in capitalizing on it. Winning is paramount. The truth doesn't even matter.
They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team's real and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry's mangled gibe at the president.
What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to the U.S. military than...
- sending them off to war without the proper equipment, so that some soldiers in the field were left to buy their own body armor and to retrofit their own jeeps with scrap metal so that roadside bombs in Iraq would only maim them for life and not kill them? And what could be more injurious and insulting than Don Rumsfeld's response to criticism that he sent our troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you go to war with the army you've got -- get over it.
...
- [than] to send them off to war in Iraq without any coherent postwar plan ... This administration never had a plan for the morning after, and we've been making it up -- and paying the price -- ever since.
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- [than] to send them off to war and then go out and finance the very people they're fighting against with our gluttonous consumption of oil? Sure, George Bush told us we're addicted to oil, but he has not done one single significant thing ... to end that addiction...
Let's also add cutting funds for the VA hospitals which tens of thousands of soldiers now depend upon thanks to the Bush war.
Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal for the 21st century -- to bring out the best in us. His "genius" is taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country.
...
Let Karl know that you're not stupid. Let him know that you know that the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an administration that has -- through sheer incompetence -- brought us to a point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable.
... if the Bush team can behave with the level of deadly incompetence it has exhibited in Iraq -- and then get away with it by holding on to the House and the Senate ... it means we're as stupid as Karl thinks we are.