One Medal of Freedom coming up!
It was Rove. Someone asked him about the reading contest, and he said Rove was winning because Bush had worked harder on the campaign. (I got the impression that he was implying they would have done better if Rove had worked harder.) Then he backed off and said Rove read faster.
The implication he gave was that it was perfectly okay to freeze the Democrats out for the past 4 years. Now he’s stuck cooperating. He sounded angry and frustrated to me also - I was listening on the radio.
Rove had the math, we had the votes. Gloat! Chuckle! Snicker!
Bush’s idea of “bipartisan” is that he gets to be partisan and the Democrats get to be bi.
Must be that “fuzzy math” I’ve heard so much about.
Maybe looks like the fuzzy dice hanging on Nancy Pelosi’s car rear view mirror. Oh, wait, those are fuzzy pink testicles. All shriveled up, like velour raisins. Republicans! The New White Meat!
Easy now! It’s your turn in the spotlight, with all the talk y’all have been doin’ lately this had better not end up being ‘business as usual’. Monkey business doesn’t count.
Understandable. They’re both bespectacled scowlers.
I shouldn’t have been surprised in the least, but I was still stunned when Bush went from “I welcome our new Democratic overseers and hope to work with them in a bipartisan way” to “The terrorists should not interpret the Democrats’ victory as any sort of weakness on our part” inside of ten minutes. :smack:
Interesting. Well, if you think the terrorists SHOULD interpret the Dem’s victory as weakness on our part, its a bit of a surprise…but whatever floats your boat I guess. 
-XT
Anyone know where I can find a video of the speech? I looked at whitehouse.org, but they want me to install realplayer to see it- I want to see Bush eat crow as much as the next disaffected American, but not so much that I’ll install realplayer.
Missed the conference but have read the transcript linked by rjung (thanks).
Broadly speaking, I think it was a creditable but not deft performance. Plainly, his main agenda is to box the Dems out of pulling out of Iraq. We can’t leave till we have victory, the Dems believe in security, etc. Out of curiosity, I try to follow this, but nothing is coming to mind. Do any Dems have a plausible pull-out strategy on the table? For that matter, does anyone on the world stage have a proposal. It’s easy to say it was a mistake (I’m one of those who thought so at the time) and that it’s not going well (obvious). But, what to do? If the Dems don’t have an answer to that question, Dubya wins this battle.
The one thing I found puzzling was his insistence that he didn’t see the handwriting on the wall, while his exploratory talks about switching out Rummie with Gates all-but-prove he did. That the final decision hadn’t yet been made is just legalistic fiddle-faddle. Rather, it says that he (and his team?) didn’t see which way the wind was blowing until too late to make the change without strengthening the Dems’ position. Now that the election is over, they safely retire a lightening rod for criticism and investigation. An astute move, IMHO.
As plenty of people have said, just leave. Oh, others have called for a timetable, but a timetable for what ? Staying there gets more Americans killed, and accomplishes nothing. So . . . just leave. That’s a perfectly plausible, doable strategy, and I don’t believe that the Democrat’s will propose it for a minute. They are far too scared of looking “weak”.
Could you name a few credible people who have said this would be a good policy? How about anyone who actually matters who has said something along the line of ‘just leave’ as a good policy?
For withdrawl? I mean, even if we decided to go tomorrow, we’d need a withdrawl timetable…unless you are using magic Der Trihs methods to get our troops and equipment out of Iraq and (safely) back home of course.
It accomplishes keeping Iraq from completely flying apart and degenerating into complete and total civil war. Now, maybe thats where they are eventually headed anyway…but they aren’t there NOW. So…it doesn’t accomplish nothing. It buys some time for the Iraqi’s to theoretically get their shit together. Unless you have a magic time machine and you KNOW that the Iraqi’s have zero chance of doing this, then its in the US’s best interest (and the regions, not to mention the worlds) to NOT have Iraq go completely tits up if it can be helped.
Not being complete morons or completely out of touch with the citizens of the US, I don’t believe the Dems will either. I don’t think its because they REALLY think its a swell idea, but they are scared…I think they realize that ‘just leave’ isn’t a sane strategy at all. YMMV though Der…it often does.
-XT
The Democrats will probably pursue something along the lines of the Baker plan to split Iraq into three parts. I believe that’s the only way to avoid a civil war. Bush’s fantasy of a western-style, human rights-based democracy is never going to happen. “Victory” in Iraq as Bush defines it is an impossibility. The best we can do is avoid a civil war. There’s nothing there to “win,” It’s all about minimizing the failure at this point.
While I don’t personally think thats a good idea/plan (and I wonder what the Iraqi’s will have to say about something like that), its better than ‘just leave’…no doubt.
-XT
Of course not; the “people who matter” are fools and scum. That’s how we got into this situation in the first place.
No, I’m using the method known as “assuming the people I’m talking to aren’t playing word games”. Of course you’d need a timetable to organize the departure; I’m talking about the people who want a timetable either to accomplish some ( impossible ) goal, leave by a certain date ( why not earlier ? What does staying longer do ? ), or for no defined reason.
Which will happen whenever we leave, and probably before. All we do is inflict more casualites, adding our own killings on top of everyone else’s. Also, we endanger our soldiers, if you care about that ( I don’t ).
That assumes we are a positive influence, and not a further provocation in the violence and chaos. Sooner or later, civil war or not Iraq has to be rebuilt, and that will never happen with our corrupt claws on them.
Ah…I see.
So…you don’t have a problem with some (not impossible goal)…or you are just assuming all goals in Iraq are impossible.
Why not leave earlier? Because if we do Iraq will probably come completely unglued?
Who wants to stay for no defined reason at all?
Which MIGHT happen whenever we leave…but WILL happen if we bolt right this minute. Do you understand the difference? Quite obviously you don’t.
I know you don’t care about our soldiers…you’ve made it painfully obvious. You don’t care about the US either…you’ve made that equally obvious as well.
You realize, both could be true…don’t you? We could be holding things from flying apart (a ‘positive influence’ I suppose), and ALSO provoking more violence and ‘chaos’ as well.
YOU on the other hand are assuming that the ONLY path is total civil war in Iraq. I just wonder, with your constant bitching and moaning about the current levels of slaughter, terror and torture, if you really realize what it will mean for Iraq and the region if that situation goes completely tits up. I’m guessing you don’t have a fucking clue what you are wishing for there. My suggestion would be…look up what happened in Afghanistan after the Soviet pullout for a good indication of how things can actually get worse in these kinds of situations…
-XT
I don’t see an alternative. It’s either that or civil war. We don’t have the resources to send enough troops into Iraq to really squelch the insurgency, and the division between the Sunni and the Shia is pretty much unhealable (IMO). The death squads are operating as we speak. I think we have to recognize that we can’t kill our way out of the mess in Iraq.
So, the first guy to ask what is the plan wins?
Does anyone, including the Decider in Chief, have an articulable plan for achieving “victory”? The goal is to leave a democratic Iraq with a government that can maintain order so that the infrastructure can be repaired and people can go about their daily business.
The plan for getting there, so far, is to get the Iraqi army and police forces trained and equipped. However, it seems the police are so fractionated by tribal rivalries that they prey on the population more than they protect them. If that condition isn’t corrected, training and equipping them will merely result in leaving behind a well trained and equipped bunch of outlaws. The army doesn’t have control of its own forces. When the US requested several thousand troops (4000 or so as I recall) about 400 showed up, and I haven’t heard that the number has increased.
If there is any ongoing effort to ameliorate the religious and ethnic differences that are behind the tumult in Iraq it’s being kept awfully quiet.
So what is the administrations plan B to correct deficiencies like these in the plan A?
It seems to me to be the height of the ridiculous to get the US into such a corner and then demand that someone else correct the mistake immediately.