Bush Evokes Ford: ‘Taliban No Longer in Existence’

Evoking Gerald Ford’s 1976 comment “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” George Bush said yesterday that the “Taliban is no longer in existence,” underscoring the point that he isn’t being straight with the American people about his wrong choices in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“That’s why I said to the Taliban in Afghanistan: Get rid of al Qaeda; see, you’re harboring al Qaeda. Remember this is a place where they trained — al Qaeda trained thousands of people in Afghanistan. And the Taliban, I guess, just didn’t believe me. And as a result of the United States military, Taliban no longer is in existence.” (Bush, 9/27/04)

Really now, is that a fact? Mr. Google News Alert - “Taliban” seems to have a different opinion, he sends me news article upon news article every day that talks about the trouble they are still causing in Afghanistan. Why just a few minutes ago he delivered me this

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Militants ambushed an Afghan military patrol in a Taliban stronghold Tuesday, sparking a three-hour gunbattle that left four troops and two rebels dead, an Afghan official said.

How can an organization that doesn’t exist have a stronghold that was able to muster 20 men in an attack on 30 Militia soldiers? And why would the deputy police chief Khan say

“It was a Taliban ambush,”

One of two things is happening here… either the people on the ground in Afghanistan are making up stories - or Bush is. How does he expect to get away with this stuff with the obvious truth staring him, and everybody else with an Internet connection, in the face?

Stageleft standing offer: Don’t take my word for it, if anyone south of the border reading this is unable to set up a Google News Alert for something like this please send your email address to stageleft @ stageleft.info. I’ll set it up for you and all you’ll have to do is click on the confirmation link that Google sends you - spread the word!!

(The content of this post was cut ‘n pasted from the text file containing what was recovered from our previous system after our previous host mangled the database - comments, if any, were not recovered)