Only this president, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even messianic certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq, by offering an entrance strategy for Iran.
Only this president could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say, “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me” - only to follow that by proposing to repeat the identical mistake … in Iran.
Only this president could extol the “thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group,” and then take its most far-sighted recommendation - “engage Syria and Iran” - and transform it into “threaten Syria and Iran” - when al-Qaida would like nothing better than for us to threaten Syria, and when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us.
This is diplomacy by skimming; it is internationalism by drawing pictures of Superman in the margins of the text books; it is a presidency of Cliff Notes.
And to Iran and Syria - and, yes, also to the insurgents in Iraq - we must look like a country run by the equivalent of the drunken pest who gets battered to the floor of the saloon by one punch, then staggers to his feet, and shouts at the other guy’s friends, “Ok, which one of you is next?”
Mr. Bush, the question is no longer “What are you thinking?” but rather “Are you thinking at all?”
That’s how Olbermann started his commentary, there’s lots more good stuff, all of it worth listening to, including a really good summary of why people simply do not believe Bush when he opens his mouth anymore
In fact, when you briefed news correspondents off-the-record before the speech, they were told, once again, “if you knew what we knew … if you saw what we saw … ”
“If you knew what we knew” was how we got into this morass in Iraq in the first place.
The problem arose when it turned out that the question wasn’t whether we knew what you knew, but whether you knew what you knew.
You, sir, have become the president who cried wolf.
All that you say about Iraq now could be gospel.
All that you say about Iran and Syria now could be prescient and essential.
We no longer have a clue, sir.
We have heard too many stories.
Many of us are as inclined to believe you just shuffled the director of national intelligence over to the State Department because he thought you were wrong about Iran.
Many of us are as inclined to believe you just put a pilot in charge of ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because he would be truly useful in an air war next door in Iran.
Your assurances, sir, and your demands that we trust you, have lost all shape and texture.
They are now merely fertilizer for conspiracy theories.
They are now fertilizer, indeed.
That pre-speech briefing part had another element in it besides the “if you knew what we knew…..”
At a not-for-quotation pre-speech briefing on Jan. 10, George W. Bush and his top national security aides unnerved network anchors and other senior news executives with suggestions that a major confrontation with Iran is looming.
Time is running out for America, the longer Bush is allowed to hold office, the worse the consequences.
OTA Sunday: Conservative Culture | Conservative Cat | Imagine Kitty Magazine | Leaning Straight Up | Stuck on Stupid | 123beta | The Uncooperative Blogger
Holy COW. I wasn’t aware that editorialists of the mainstream TV networks in the US were allowed to have such passionate opinions against Bush. That was really quite amazing; Olbermann is P*SSED.
Some interesting writing, too. He had me right up until the 1984 reference… I mean, I did have a spooky feeling at the start of the Iraq war when none of the networks seemed to question or even, you know, attempt to explain the sudden Iraq==9/11 spin that came shooting straight out of the clear blue sky, and since then have railed numerous times at individual reporters simply not asking ANY difficult, or even elementary, questions. I began to feel that perhaps all the question asking journalists had been fired or told to shut up. Yes, that did seem 1984: but, the Daily Show and Air America were allowed to exist, as were blogs, so I did not sink into utter despair. Non-traditional media were there if people wished to seek them out. The stories were being told: Al Franken was never “disappeared”.
This clip represents a mainstream editorialist ripping strips off Bush with which to tile his roof. Wow. But watching him made me celebrate that 1984 did not, in fact, happen.