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Will Stinky Cut The Big One?
by Sheila Samples | Dec 25 2006 - 12:49am
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
--McBeth, Act V, Scene V
It's almost painful to watch the disintegration of George W. Bush and what's left of his murderous administration. Those who haven't fled are racing blindly through the halls of power, lurching into one another in a desperate attempt to distance themselves from Bush and to escape reaping what they have sown.
Even cutting a bit of slack, it's still inconceivable that any thinking person could spend more than five minutes in the presence of Bush without the shock of recognizing what a total idiot this country has as its president. Other than breaking stuff, killing anything in his path, refusing to admit mistakes, and making an obscene mess of anything he touches, apparently the only thing Bush can do with any success is break wind --pass gas -- fart.
First Fart Boy
In his Aug. 20 U.S. New & World Report "Washington Whispers" under the heading "Animal House in the West Wing," Paul Bedard wrote that Bush not only loves to cuss, but "... the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes...can't get enough of fart jokes. He's also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides..."
Bedard also told the Boston Herald's Margery Eagan that he’s heard about Bush’s full-salute “Austin Greeting” when new aides arrive. "He likes to gas a couple, and then bring the aide in and see what the kid’s face looks like.” Eagan, who admitted she was grossed out, commented, "Naturally, the aide can’t accuse the President or grimace or hold his nose. This dilemma apparently drives the presidential funny bone wild."
Most of us stopped laughing at Bush's coarse antics long ago. The boastful sound and fury of hot air blasting from both ends of this crude, immature thug as he rips one windy flatulent speech after another while saying absolutely nothing is not only vulgar, but is indescribably evil. The stench of Bush's lies mingles with, and hovers over the growing mounds of mangled and broken bodies of innocent men, women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan -- swirls around coffins laden with American service members sneaked back in-country with no fanfare.
CNN -- The Most Twisted Name in News
Each day, more and more soldiers and marines are blown to bits. Each morning the streets of Iraq's cities are strewn with hundreds of shackled, tortured, beheaded Sunni and Shiite civilians. Yet, for the past year, the hypocritical Congress, corporate media and crusty retired military "experts" sat around gleefully playing politics and fiercely debating whether the Iraqi quagmire was a civil war. It was a rabid debate -- with all participants forced by Bush and Cheney's claims of success to argue but one side with no pretense of delving into the reality of Bush's mad adventure.
Until Nov. 26 when Michael Ware, CNN's Baghdad correspondent, startled the world and brought the civil-war debate to a screeching halt. Kitty Pilgrim, sitting in for Lou Dobbs, asked Ware, "The Iraqi government and the U.S. military in Baghdad keep saying it's not a civil war -- what are you seeing?"
Ware, a seasoned war correspondent who is no stranger to civil wars and has covered the war in Iraq for both Time Magazine and CNN since it began, responded intensely, "Well, it's easier to deny it's a civil war when you live in the most heavily fortified place in the country -- the Green Zone -- and that's where the prime minister, the national security advisor and the top military commanders live. However," Ware continued, "as for the people living on the streets, or Iraqis in their homes -- if this is not a civil war, then they do not want to see what one looks like."
Ware went on to describe the stark inhumanity of neighbor against neighbor, family on family, ethnic cleansing, "institutionalized" Shiia death squads in legal police uniforms who roam the streets, dragging Sunni families from their homes never to be seen again -- Sunnis plunging car bombs into marketplaces...Ware said the recent surge in violence was a result of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr boycotting the Nouri al-Maliki puppet government and parliament as a result of Maliki meeting with "the criminal Bush."
A national dead silence followed Ware's outburst of truth. The next evening, Wolf Blitzer gave Ware a second chance to join the "best political team in journalism" by reigniting the debate. After sternly warning Ware that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Iraq was "almost -- almost" in a civil war, and that the White House, Bush administration and PM Maliki flatly deny it, Blitzer asked, "Is it a civil war?"
Again, without hesitation, Ware reiterated that the horrors exploding around him were nothing if not a civil war. He said, "the debate about whether there is a civil war is fueled either by the luxury of distance -- those who aren't here on the ground -- or by the spin of those with a political agenda to deny its existance."
A week later, Annan set Blitzer straight. He not only said Iraq was indeed in a civil war, but that Iraqis were "better off when a brutal dictator ruled their land."
Michael Ware is no longer in Iraq.
Decisions...Decisions...
The Iraq Study Group (ISG) report was a swat across Bush's rump, and a confirmation that this nation's foreign policy is run by corporate committee. Some thought Poppy Bush and Uncle Jim (James Baker, III) were stepping in yet again to pull Stinky's cajones out of the fire by helping him to save face for the mess he had made. However, those familiar with the Group's Iran-Contra power-brokers know why they stepped out of the shadows now, after three years of bloody violence. The report basically said -- You screwed up again, Junior -- big time. Iraq is so broke, you can't own it, you can't fix it and you can't leave it. You're stuck there, which is fine, because you can't leave until you get the oil, which is why we put you in office and sent you over there in the first place. Get that oil law finalized so we can get the oil contracts before China, India and Russia get there.
Bush is overtaken with strategies and plans from those who sense his confusion and assume he is weakening. Anyone who thinks Bush will admit his mistakes and support the troops by rescinding their death sentences doesn't know Jack about George. During the nine-month gestation period (Mar-Nov) of the ISG Report, 633 coalition troops were blown to bits -- 592 of them Americans. In the month since the ISG strategy died aborning, 80 troops have been slaughtered -- all of them Americans -- three of them today as I write this on Christmas Eve. Tonight, 12 families will kneel and pray for their childrens' lives, unaware that they are already dead.
And so we wait while Bush struts and frets on the world stage and rips one brain fart after another, all signifying nothing. He's gonna weigh the options -- listen to the voices...take the generals' advice...surge up briefly before pulling out...double-punch 'em with a double down and keep on truckin' -- before he announces his decision to stay the course, or achieve the objective or accomplish the mission -- whatever.
The Big One
Bush reminds us often that he's The Decider. Nobody has the right to question his decisions -- not even him -- because history has called him to action, and he is delivering God's gift of freedom to every individual on earth whether they want it or not.
Who can forget the profound deliberation that preceeded Bush's decision to invade Iraq? On 9-11, he announced, "I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass." And, in March 2002, a full year before invading Iraq, his decision was, "**** Saddam. We're taking him out!"
When asked during a press conference last week if he questioned his own decisions, Bush replied confidently, "No, I haven't questioned whether or not it was right to take Saddam Hussein out, nor have I questioned the necessity for the American people -- I mean, I've questioned it; I've come to the conclusion it's the right decision. But I also know it's the right decision for America to stay engaged, and to take the lead, and to deal with these radicals and extremists, and to help support young democracies. It's the calling of our time .... And I firmly believe it is necessary."
We're losing in Iraq, but Bush says that doesn't bother him -- it just means we're going to win if we expand the armed forces, put more and more troops on the streets of Baghdad, and stay the course.
Bush is a brutal, pathological liar -- arguably a homicidal maniac. After losing two wars against helpless, unarmed nations, he's bored. The Decider is moving on to greater things, and those who know how to listen to him know the decision to nuke Iran has already been made. Before he leaves office, Bush plans to spread the same freedoms throughout Iran that Iraq is presently enjoying, only this time he has decided to attack a huge, oil-rich, armed-to-the-teeth nation which has the capacity not only to defend itself, but to wreak death and destruction upon its attackers.
Will Stinky cut the big one on his way out? Or is he just whistling past the graveyard -- yodeling past the skull orchard -- as he goes mano-a-mano with Poppy?
Where's Michael Ware when you need him?
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites.
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__________________
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." --Voltaire
Well, a deadly cycle of violence continues in Iraq today. Violent rampages in reaction to yesterday's slaughter of over 200 Shiites in the Sadr City section of Baghdad.
Michael Ware reports from the Iraqi capital tonight.
And Michael, the Iraqi government and the U.S. military in Baghdad keep saying this is not a civil war. What are you seeing?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, firstly, let me say, perhaps it's easier to deny that this is a civil war, when essentially you live in the most heavily fortified place in the country within the Green Zone, which is true of both the prime minister, the national security adviser for Iraq and, of course, the top U.S. military commanders. However, for the people living on the streets, for Iraqis in their homes, if this is not civil war, or a form of it, then they do not want to see what one really looks like.
This is what we're talking about. We're talking about Sunni neighborhoods shelling Shia neighborhoods, and Shia neighborhoods shelling back.
We're having Sunni communities dig fighting positions to protect their streets. We're seeing Sunni extremists plunging car bombs into heavily-populated Shia marketplaces. We're seeing institutionalized Shia death squads in legitimate police and national police commando uniforms going in, systematically, to Sunni homes in the middle of the night and dragging them out, never to be seen again.
I mean, if this is not civil war, where there is, on average, 40 to 50 tortured, mutilated, executed bodies showing up on the capital streets each morning, where we have thousands of unaccounted for dead bodies mounting up every month, and where the list of those who have simply disappeared for the sake of the fact that they have the wrong name, a name that is either Sunni or Shia, so much so that we have people getting dual identity cards, where parents cannot send their children to school, because they have to cross a sectarian line, then, goodness, me, I don't want to see what a civil war looks like either if this isn't one.
PILGRIM: That is the starkest description I have yet heard, Michael.
The political overlays are deteriorating rapidly. We have Muqtada al-Sadr threatening to boycott the meeting, boycott the government of al-Maliki if he meets with President Bush.
What do you -- how do you assess the political situation right now?
WARE: Well, you have to look at Muqtada's move here politically as a very, very savvy twisting of the knife. I mean, he lays claim to Prime Minister Maliki just as much, if not more so, than the U.S. military.
Maliki has no popular base. He lacks the currency of political power in this country, which is an armed militia. So he's had to beg and borrow for political capital.
He found that the U.S. military desperate to put any kind of reasonable face on this apparition that they call the Iraqi government. And meanwhile, in real political terms, he's had to draw on Muqtada's militia and its political faction to actually put him into place.
So this is a man in a terrible predicament, who is unable to deliver. And yet, we have Muqtada in this time of crisis just turning that screw.
He has threatened to withdraw -- well, his people have threatened to withdraw participation in the parliament and the government if he meets with what they call the criminal Bush. Nonetheless, he is so acute, his political advisers and Muqtada himself. This was a statement made by his leading parliamentarian. It didn't come from his mouth himself. So he can use this as very convenient leverage this week in the leadup to the Maliki-Bush meeting, and at the last minute, he can pull away from it. And nonetheless, he still wins.
PILGRIM: That's desperately deteriorating in your description, and it seems in reality, too.
I really like Michael Ware -- he was a very intelligent reporter for Anderson Cooper during the Israel-Lebanon War, and one of the first to openly say Hizbullah managed the news, and threatened and controlled what reporters saw and said -- then he sneakily showed shots of broad, clean, untouched Beirut boulevards and carefully implied that contrary to news reports, most of Beirut was untouched by Israel. Next thing you know, he wasn't reporting from Lebanon, which I assumed was for his own safety.
I saw one of his first discussions on CNN about Iraq being in civil war, and his frustration was obvious. His comments about military and political leaders with their heads in the sand (or some other dark place) had grown increasingly unvarnished, acid, and angry.
__________________
oderint dum metuant (Latin for 'let them hate, so long as they fear').
Well, in truth I'm actually not a total hawk, but I'm not a dove either -- I'm more like an angry pigeon flying over the political arena after a really big meal. -Abba Gav
It sounds like Bush is going to approve, after he is done pressuring everyone in his Administration to support it, including the generals, a troop "surge" of up to 30,000 troops in the Bagdad area. What do you guys think the effect of this move will be on the situation that Ware is describing? Will this keep the Shias from killing the Sunnis and vice versa?
Nothing will keep the Shias from killing the Sunnis and vice versa.
__________________
oderint dum metuant (Latin for 'let them hate, so long as they fear').
Well, in truth I'm actually not a total hawk, but I'm not a dove either -- I'm more like an angry pigeon flying over the political arena after a really big meal. -Abba Gav
It sounds like Bush is going to approve, after he is done pressuring everyone in his Administration to support it, including the generals, a troop "surge" of up to 30,000 troops in the Bagdad area. What do you guys think the effect of this move will be on the situation that Ware is describing? Will this keep the Shias from killing the Sunnis and vice versa?
No.
Quote:
Published on Sunday, December 24, 2006 by the Boston Globe Troop 'surge' in Iraq Would Be Another Mistake
by W. Patrick Lang and Ray McGovern
Robert Gates' report to the White House on his discussions in Iraq this past week is likely to provide the missing ingredient for the troop ''surge'' into Iraq favored by the ''decider'' team of Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush.
When the understandable misgivings voiced by top U.S. military officials made it obvious that the surge cart had been put before the mission-objective horse, the president was forced to concede, as he did at his press conference on Wednesday, ``There's got to be a specific mission that can be accomplished with the addition of more troops, before I agree on that strategy.''
The president had led off the press conference by heightening expectations for the Gates visit to Iraq, noting that ''Secretary Gates is going to be an important voice in the Iraq strategy review that's under way.'' No doubt Gates was given the job of hammering out a ''specific mission'' with U.S. generals and Iraqi leaders, and he is past master at sensing and delivering on his bosses' wishes.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's aides have given Western reporters an outline of what the ''specific mission'' may look like. It is likely to be cast as implementation of Maliki's ''new vision,'' under which U.S. troops would target primarily Sunni insurgents in outer Baghdad neighborhoods, while Iraqi forces would battle for control of inner Baghdad. A prescription for bloodbath, it has the advantage, from the White House perspective, of preventing the Iraqi capital from total disintegration until Bush and Cheney are out of office.
Well before Tuesday, when Gates flew off to Iraq, it was clear that Cheney and Bush remained determined to stay the course (without using those words) for the next two years. And the president's Washington Post interview on Tuesday, as well has his press conference Wednesday strengthened that impression. In his prepared statement for the Post, Bush cast the conflict in Iraq as an enduring ''ideological struggle,'' the context in which he disclosed that he is now ``inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops, the Army and Marines.''
Inconsistent message
Lest the Post reporters miss the point, the president added, ''I'm going to keep repeating this over and over again, that I believe we're in an ideological struggle . . . that our country will be dealing with for a long time.'' In the same interview, he described ''sectarian violence'' in Iraq as ``obviously the real problem we face.''
At his press conference the next day, the president repeated the same dual, inconsistent message, which went unchallenged by the White House press corps. Pick your poison: Do you prefer ''sectarian violence'' as the real problem? Or is it ''ideological struggle?'' The White House seems to be depending on a credulous press and Christmas-party eggnog to get by on this.
Incoming Senate majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said last Sunday that he could ''go along'' with the widely predicted surge in U.S. troops in Iraq, but for only two or three months. Is it conceivable that Reid doesn't know that this is about the next two years -- not months? Egged on by ''full-speed-ahead'' Cheney, Bush is determined that the war not be lost while he is president. And he is commander-in-chief. Events, however, are fast overtaking White House preferences and are moving toward denouement well before two more years are up.
`Get with the program'
Virtually everyone concedes that the war cannot be won militarily. And yet the so-called ''neoconservatives'' whom Bush has listened to in the past are arguing strongly for a surge in troop strength. A generation from now, our grandchildren will have difficulty writing history papers on the oxymoronic debate now raging on how to surge/withdraw our troops into/from the quagmire in Iraq.
The generals in Iraq may have already been ordered by the White House to ''get with the program'' on surging. Just as they ''never asked for more troops'' at earlier stages of the war, they are likely to be instant devotees of a surge, once they smell the breezes from Washington. As for Gates, it is a safe bet that whatever personal input he may dare to offer will be dwarfed by Cheney's. Taking issue with ''deciders'' has never been Gates' strong suit.
Whether Gates realizes it or not, the U.S. military is about to commit hara-kiri by ''surge.'' The generals should know that, once an ''all or nothing'' offensive like the ''surge'' apparently contemplated has begun, there is no turning back.
It will be ''victory'' over the insurgents and the Shiite militias or palpable defeat, recognizable by all in Iraq and across the world. Any conceivable ''surge'' would not turn the tide -- would not even stem it. We saw that last summer when the dispatch of 7,000 U.S. troops to reinforce Baghdad brought a fierce counter-surge -- the highest level of violence since the Pentagon began issuing quarterly reports in 2005.
A major buildup would commit the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to decisive combat in which there would be no more strategic reserves to be sent to the front. As Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway pointed out Monday, ``If you commit your reserve for something other than a decisive win, or to stave off defeat, then you have essentially shot your bolt.''
It will be a matter of win or die in the attempt. In that situation, everyone in uniform on the ground will commit every ounce of their being to ''victory,'' and few measures will be shrunk from.
Analogies come to mind: Stalingrad, the Bulge, Dien Bien Phu, the Battle of Algiers.
It will be total war with the likelihood of all the excesses and mass casualties that come with total war. To force such a strategy on our armed forces would be nothing short of immoral, in view of predictable troop losses and the huge number of Iraqis who would meet violent injury and death. If adopted, the ''surge'' strategy will turn out to be something we will spend a generation living down.
Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., spoke for many of us on Sunday when George Stephanopoulos asked him to explain why Smith had said on the Senate floor that U.S. policy on Iraq may be ``criminal:''
``You can use any adjective you want, George. But I have long believed in a military context, when you do the same thing over and over again, without a clear strategy for victory, at the expense of your young people in arms, that is dereliction. That is deeply immoral.''
W. Patrick Lang, a retired Army colonel, served with Special Forces in Vietnam, as a professor at West Point and as defense intelligence officer for the Middle East. Ray McGovern was also an Army infantry/intelligence officer before his 27-year career as a CIA analyst. Both are with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Hat's off to Senator Gordon Smith (R) from Oregon for finally coming around by the way.
Does anyone else find it inconsistent that for years in this debacle, Bush has said he was going to listen to the advice of the generals on the ground. Now, the generals have said this "surge" plan is bad. Bush isn't listening to them. Instead, it appears that he is twisting their arms and coercing them to go along with it.
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