One more time: Don't think of an elephant.

George Lakoff is our friend. Don't think of an elephant.


I shall not mention the elephant. An elephant cannot speak, and has trouble trying. Who do you know that cannot speak well? Who has troubles articulating policy and flubs his words at the most inopportune moments? Who gets us all into trouble by trampling over his intended jokes and anecdotes?

Oh...okay. That elephant in the room? It's George W Bush. And George W Bush wants to spend this last week before the midterms reminding us of what's happened since 2004. Particularly in Iraq.

Please use this diary to list all of the unique accomplishments of George W Bush and his Administration in Iraq.

I'll start with three from this week:


1.  On the order of Al-Maliki, our weak US President allowed US troops to abandon checkpoints around Sadr City and leave one of our soldiers behind.

One more time: Bush left him behind.


2.  The Pentagon did not adequately track 360,000 of the weapons it provided to the Iraqi security forces. It only serialized about 5% of the weapons, and 14,000 have been confirmed missing at a minimum. Now those guns are being used against our boys.

One more time: They didn't track the guns.


3.  The Bush Administration is now trying to empower the formerly Saddam-led Sunnis, which is escalating ethnic tensions and putting our troops in the middle:

"We feel there is an American-Sunni agreement under way ... to give Sunnis more authority," a senior Shi'ite government official said, before Maliki's dramatic order on Tuesday for U.S. troops to end a blockade of a Shi'ite militia stronghold. "This will only escalate the situation."

One more time: Bush is bringing Saddam's gang back.


*

Yes, let's talk about Iraq. That elephant wants us to remember.

•  No, no WMDs under the bed

  Ha, ha. It's so funny how I sent us to war based on a falsehood.

  by atrexler on Wed Nov 01, 2006 at 09:53:17 AM PDT

•  Bush has failed.

  And his failure was enabled by a congress with a solid Republican majority.

  Time to remove Republicans.

  I never think of Republicans as elephants.  I view them as otherwise intelligent men and women who tend to put party before people, and in these last few sessions, party before country.

  by boilerman10 on Wed Nov 01, 2006 at 09:54:45 AM PDT

•  Pentagon covers up "friendly fire" incident.

  The Pentagon deliberately falsified recent incidents where Iraqi police shot and killed our troops.

  One more time: They lied about how our boys died.

  by Maxwell on Wed Nov 01, 2006 at 09:59:53 AM PDT

•  Bush is giving freedom to Iraqis.

  That is, of course, provided that they're pro-Saddam terrorists.

  by Geekesque on Wed Nov 01, 2006 at 10:02:33 AM PDT

•  How about these devestating casualty totals

  ...from October.

  103 US troops killed

  224 Iraqi security forces killed

  1315 civilians killed

  1642 dead.

  by Maxwell on Wed Nov 01, 2006 at 10:13:38 AM PDT