Bush's Hail-Mary Pass -- George F. Will

. . . The president is probably wrong in thinking that 17,500 more U.S. troops can clear Baghdad until Iraqi forces can hold it. And he probably is wrong in thinking that economic pump-priming and jobs programs, which are usually disappointing when tried in America, can succeed amid Iraq's anarchy. Besides, Shiites are not torturing Sunnis with electric drills and Sunnis are not beheading Shiites because both sides are suffering the ennui of the unemployed. For Iraqis, ennui is a utopian aspiration.
^
Both the president's speech, and the Democrats' response to it, delivered by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, contained passages that bordered on the bizarre. The president said, "If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people." But that support was long since forfeited. Durbin called upon Iraq's government to "disband" the militias and death squads. Not destroy, but "disband." How is that supposed to happen? By asking them nicely? . . . The great question is whether Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will cooperate with crushing the Mahdi Army, which is the instrument of his patron, Moqtada al-Sadr.
See here for the complete text.
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There is another bizare statement here, as well, and George Will made it:
Every source I've consulted save this one has flat-out stated, 'al-Maliki will not go against al-Sadr.'
Come on, Mr. Will, allow history to speak. Has he done anything remotely resembling standing up to al-Sadr in three years?
You might as well ask Bush to stand up to Cheney.

Lurching Toward Armageddon

I’m waking up to one terrifying conclusion — well, one in a series, actually:
Having a fundamentalist Christian in the White House can be a very risky business.
What if his plan is to goad the Middle East into going up in flames in order to hasten the Second Coming of Christ?
Many fundamentalists seem to believe that the Almighty needs their help in order to get the world to Armageddon. And this one has the means to put such a belief into action.
Could THAT be what this whole war in Iraq, now moving toward Iran and, likely, into Syria is all about?
If so, God help us all.
Somehow, I don’t think I’ll see the humor in the situation when, after the Middle East has been destroyed and World War III has begun, the Second Coming doesn’t happen after all.
Here is Olberman's take on the lurch toward Iran.

Baghdad Families Imprisoned, Divided by Fear -- By Claudia Parsons

BAGHDAD, (Reuters) -
For Abu Mina, a ceramic artist and professor, Baghdad is one big jail -- too dangerous for him to live with his wife and daughters, too dangerous for him to meet his students openly, too dangerous to work in his studio.

He and his son, a 21-year-old medical student, recently left the family home for fear of sectarian attacks, dividing his family as the city itself has become increasingly divided.

It is just this sort of private tragedy that U.S. President George W. Bush must help end with his new strategy for securing Baghdad with more troops.

"They kill just boys and men," Abu Mina said of sectarian gunmen. "They leave girls and women. Yesterday my wife gave me a call and she told me my neighbour, a dentist, they took him.

"That means in two days they will find him outside Baghdad without life. They kill everybody. So I left my wife and my two girls and I brought with me just my son," said Abu Mina, who studied in the United States.

His family is now divided by the Tigris River, increasingly a sectarian barrier that slices Baghdad into mainly Sunni west and mostly Shi'ite Muslim east, and he rarely sees his wife and daughters, though they managed a brief holiday chat last week.

"Can you imagine how horrible, my wife and my kids can't come and see me," he said. "At Eid, they came by taxi to a market and they gave me a call and I went to the market and we met. We hugged and kissed and then we cried. It was terrible."
See here for complete text.
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As much as possible we need to put a human face on the tragedies. Numbers can't possibly tell the toll of suffering going on.

Rice, a Uniter of the Divided -- Dana Milbank

Bush and Rice have managed to unite this Congress. Given its recent history, that's pretty amazing:
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"I think that we don't have an option to fail in Iraq," said Rice in a hearing on Thursday.
When 'Murkowski pleaded with Rice for assurances "that this is going to yield us a better result, a different result than what we have seen in the past."
Rice could offer none. "Senator," she said, "there aren't any guarantees."'

. . . Rice's answers had the salutary effect of breaking down party divisions. Democrat Chris Dodd (Conn.). . . gave a hug to Republican Hagel. Democrat Nelson praised Republican Norm Coleman (Minn.). Republican Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) concurred with Democrat Boxer. And Democrat Russ Feingold (Wis.) had only the warmest words for Hagel.
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None spared any warmth for Bush and Rice. Heat, yes. Warmth, no.
See here for the entire text.

Nothing New--Of Course

Bush Becoming Isolated More Than Ever on Iraq--AP WASHINGTON
President Bush once said he was determined to stick with the Iraq war even if his wife and his dog were the only ones left at his side.
It’s moving in that direction.

People in the United States already were angry about the war before Bush said he would try to bring unrelentingly violent Iraq back from the brink by adding 21,500 more U.S. troops to the 132,000 there now
Polls show the U.S. public overwhelmingly does not like the idea. Democrats always in opposition were joined very publicly by some Republicans in dissent. Even Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had to be persuaded to go along with a larger U.S. presence in Baghdad.

“He is as isolated as a president can be,” said Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Boston University.
See here for the complete text.
***
Meanwhile, something bloggers have been noting for months or years and the MSM has begun to pay attention to recently was notably absent from this article:
Q: What's the difference between a Democratic Republic and a Dictatorship?
A: A Dictator doesn't know or care what the people people he is governing want or need.
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Falling Flat -- By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer

Well, I'm bleary-eyed from searching, but I haven't found anyone who thinks that George W. Bush delivered a great speech Wednesday night.

There are certainly pundits who back the president's plan to send 20,000 more troops to Iraq. But the consensus is that Bush looked weary, subdued and almost pained as he spoke from the White House library. The verve and cockiness were gone. Few went as far as Howard Fineman, who said Bush spoke with the confidence of a perp in a police lineup, but for a major speech at a critical time for a faltering war, the president's demeanor was surprising.
One reason the theatrics mattered so much, I think, is that the White House had leaked every single detail in advance.
^
Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it's all about results at this late date. . . .
^
After the president finally acknowledged mistakes, I guess the window for plain talk slammed shut. Condi Rice, on the Hill, refused to acknowledge that 20,000 more troops is an escalation. It was, she insisted, an "augmentation."
See here for the complete text.
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Whether by accident or by design, our Boy in the Bubble has been as isolated as a president can be for some time now. He has never tried to get a sense of what the people he's supposed to be governing want or need. So, is it any surprise it has come to this?
And as for Condi, well, what can I say? She seems to have as much acquaintance with truth as her boss does.

Is There Hope After All?

'The Real America,' Redefined -- By E. J. Dionne Jr.
When a nation alters its philosophical direction and changes its assumptions, there is no press release to announce the shift, no news conference where The People declare that they have decided to move down a different path.
***
May Mr. Dionne be a voice and light in the darkness.

Scientists Demote Bush Presidency to Dwarf Status

This from the Borowitz Report:
White House Joins Pluto in New Classification

An international group of scientists who demoted the planet Pluto to dwarf status several months ago met in Oslo, Norway today and reclassified the Bush White House as a dwarf presidency.

In the aftermath of the midterm elections, in which the president's party lost control of both the House and the Senate, the scientists called an emergency meeting in Oslo to determine if the Bush administration in fact still qualified as a presidency.

But with the president's approval rating in a free fall, it became clear even before the scientists convened that some sort of reclassification along the lines of the Pluto demotion was in order.

"When the president's approval rating fell below Kevin Federline's, that was the last nail in the coffin," said Dr. Hiroshi Kyosuke of the University of Tokyo.

According to Dr. Kyosuke, one of the seventy scientists who gathered in Oslo to reassess the Bush presidency, dwarf status means that Mr. Bush is "less than a president, but more than a mayor."

In another troubling sign that Mr. Bush may be a has-been, White House spokesman Tony Snow revealed today that the president had signed on to make an appearance on the ABC series "Dancing with the Stars."

ABC spokesperson Carol Foyler confirmed that the president was slated to appear, but added that Mr. Bush was far from the network's first choice.

"We wanted Nancy Pelosi, but she said she was too busy," Ms. Foyler said.

Elsewhere, after a new study showed that the human body produces a painkiller several times more potent than morphine, supermodel Kate Moss attempted to inhale herself.

They Beg to Become Cannon Fodder

After Bush’s speech this week, the new ads came out. You know those ads: a young man of some color other than white implores his mom or dad to let him join the military.

I saw a new one this morning: A Black kid looks directly at the camera [his father] trying to convince him to let him join up. As he pleads the camera pans down the block to the corner where local gang members are hanging out. The not-so-subliminal message? The only alternative to going to Iraq and putting himself into the path of bullets and mines is to stay here, fall in with a gang, move into a pattern of drug abuse and, eventually, die in the street—a victim of a drug war.

The ad shows us a good kid—a young man who has, by his late teens, avoided joining a gang, has stayed away from illegal drugs and who has strong moral underpinnings. But now, suddenly, he’s at risk of changing his entire perspective if he doesn’t go to Iraq. Uh huh.

If history is any guide, the irony is that these great kids who have managed to steer clear of the risks of poor urban life, are at much higher risk if they go to war. After seeing what they would, inevitably see there, undergoing the dangers and finally waking up to how they were brainwashed and how little Uncle Sam values their lives, they are more likely to come home [assuming they survive the perpetual war Bush wants us to wage] more cynical, more distrustful and contemptuous of American ‘values’ than they were when they left home. From that perspective they are more likely to use drugs, drift into homelessness and despair than if they stayed home in the first place.

But, shhhhhhhh! We’re not supposed to notice that!

Former Reagan Aide Compares Bush to Hitler

Reagan never was my flavor-of-the-month. I never did see what the media apparently did in the 'Great Communicator.' One of my bedtime-reading books back then, in fact, was, 'Ronald Reagan's Reign of Error.'

All that said, however, when one of Reagan's former aides comes out with a similar anyalysis to the one I made last week concerning G.W. Bush, I do sit up and take notice.
See here for the article in The Raw Story.

Torture vs. Pay Hikes

So, here we sit in the middle of a true Constitutional crisis involving such things as a President who obeys the law, or not, as it suits him, who orders torture, who denies asylum to people who face torture and death if they return home, who infringes on the rights and privacy of US citizens, who even infringes on the rights of citizens of allied countries who have the temerity to attempt to visit our country.
And what does Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. choose to focus on? A pay raise for Federal Judges. He even goes so far as to call it a ‘Constitutional crisis’.
I know my heart bleeds for those judges. I don’t know how they manage to go on—seeing as how they make a paltry $165,200 a year. [Roberts's salary is $212,000].
***
During my undergraduate days, we protested against an illegal and unjust war. We protested against the denial of civil rights to US citizens.
After I graduated, I attended protests about the rights being denied to women. And the plight of homeless Vietnam veterans as well as those who had been exposed to Agent Orange. And violence toward AIDS victims.
Some years later, I went back to school and ran smack into a bunch of protesters braving the cold--blowing on their hands and stomping their feet to get warm--holding up placards and shouting, 'We demand adequate parking NOW!'

Forgive me, Justice Roberts, if I don't take your parking-space issue too seriously.
See here for the article.