The wonder years
GW Bush, Post-invasion iraq - - Posted on August, 22 at 1:34 pm by Tim
Does it matter that the President of the United States often can’t form a coherent sentence?:
BUSH:…You know, I’ve heard this theory about, you know, everything was just fine until we arrived and, you know, kind of — the “stir up the hornet’s nest” theory. It just doesn’t hold water as far as I’m concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East. They were –
Q: What did Iraq have to do with that?
BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?
Q: The attack on the World Trade Center.
BUSH: Nothing, except for it’s part of — and nobody’s ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — Iraq — the lesson of September the 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken.
Still, he’s right. Iraq was a — Iraq.
And does it matter that President codpiece now acknowledges that the mission isn’t accomplished?:
Now, if you say, are you going to change your strategic objective, it means you’re leaving before the mission is complete, and we’re not going to leave before the mission is complete.
And have you ever wondered what it takes to “defeat these people”?
Q: You — you keep — you keep saying that you don’t want to leave, but is your strategy to win working, even if you don’t want to leave? You’ve gone into Baghdad before. These things have happened before.
BUSH: If I didn’t think it would work, I would change the — our commanders would recommend changing the strategy.
They believe it’ll work. It takes time to defeat these people.
Yep, it takes time. And so have you ever wondered what “time” means in historical terms?:
The war in Iraq has lasted three days longer than US involvement in World War II.
Germany declared war on the US on December, 11, 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor. The US announced victory in Europe on May 8, 1945. That’s one thousand, two hundred and forty-four days.
We’ve been in Iraq one thousand, two hundred and forty-seven days—and still the Administration has no exit strategy, no plan for victory and no clue what it is doing. In case you’d forgotten, George W. Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” aboard an aircraft carrier over three years ago.
And do you think any of that has anything to do with this?:
Makes you wonder why so many Americans hate America and are on the side of the terrorists.
Posted in GW Bush, Post-invasion iraq |
August 22nd, 2006 at 2:27 pm
I’m reminded of the story tht I once heard concerning, I think, Eisenhower (I’m too lazy to fact check), who complained of frequently being misquoted by the press.
Legend has it that the press, by way of reprisal, started to quote him verbatim, whereupon it became clear that most of what he said was gibberish.
True or not, careful examination of interview transcripts has provided me with much harmless amusement at the incoherence of many of the pompous and arrogant.
August 22nd, 2006 at 2:59 pm
“Does it matter that the President of the United States often can’t form a coherent sentence?”
Not really.
What matters is conviction, good management, policy-think capacities and plenty of political capital to see things though.
If a political leader had a stammer (stutter) would that discount them from political office? Or what if they were mute?
August 22nd, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Another commentator, who is less than impressed with Bush’s intellectual prowess, poses the question - Is Bush an Idiot?
August 22nd, 2006 at 3:12 pm
What matters is conviction, good management, policy-think capacities and plenty of political capital to see things though.
Okay, so does it matter that George Bush doesn’t have “good management, policy-think capacities and plenty of political capital to see things though”? (I’ll grant he has conviction).
If a political leader had a stammer (stutter) would that discount them from political office? Or what if they were mute?
If you don’t mind me saying, that’s a ridiculous comparison. Not being able to utter a coherent sentence was obviously meant in the sense of not being very smart, an aspect of Bush’s rule that even conservatives are starting to acknowledge. It has nothing to be with physical capabilities.
And while we’re on it, here’s another quote from Scarborough:
Of course it matters.
August 22nd, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Great minds, Peter G - snap!
August 22nd, 2006 at 3:21 pm
If a political leader had a stammer (stutter) would that discount them from political office? Or what if they were mute?
actually it does matter. One of the essential task of being a democratically elected leader is to communicate effectively with the people who elect you. see the following video to decide:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115614653425017512
August 22nd, 2006 at 3:36 pm
You are dead wrong. The President has often been heard to form a coherent sentence. There’s even one in the material you quote:
That’s a coherent sentence. An elite might try to discount it as half idiom and half cliche, but, even so, it is a sentence and it is coherent.
How can anybody trust anything you say, after this glaring error?
August 22nd, 2006 at 4:43 pm
Tim asks “Does it matter that the President of the United States often can’t form a coherent sentence?”
Another question which is probably more concerning to Bush (as well as various people in his Administration) is now being asked - Does it matter that the president could be guilty of no fewer than 30 felonies in office concerning the warrantless domestic surveillance program.
If anyone is interested, there is some more reading at Rules of polite Washington discourse.
August 22nd, 2006 at 6:05 pm
The freedom Agenda! THE FREEDOM AGENDA!
Oh how you lie, Mr Bush. Ironically, Conviction, on its lonesome, is hollow.
August 22nd, 2006 at 6:31 pm
I’m no botanist, but I think I could have told Mr. Bush that a hornet’s nest wasn’t going to hold water. Gotta love those mixed metphors!
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:23 pm
The preznit keeps a bronze bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval office.
Churchill was this rooly famous bloke who won the war. He spoke good an’ that.
Holy cow! Do you believe these pathetic apologists who ceaselessly jump to the Crawford Cretins defence? My goodness! Have they no shame?
WAKE UP! Apart from a statictically significant bunch of American voters and a relative handful of right-wing bed-wetters outside the US, the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants think that Dumbya is a dangerous, incurious, self-absorbed fool!
August 22nd, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Got it in one. But wait, there’s more…
Except for? Except for it’s part of something … but Saddam wasn’t part of whatever it was … *whirr* *rewind* *clunk*
Oh jeez, the semi-conscious mental rummaging for the plumb soundbyte is palpable. Translation: “C’mon, folks, you know what I mean, don’tcha? You’re not gonna call me on this are ya? It’s … you know … that dohickey Rummy was saying about the pre-emptied war doctorin’ thing…”
August 23rd, 2006 at 1:34 am
I recently borrowed from the library, Peter Singer’s ‘The President of Good & Evil’…an in-depth examination of GW’s statements, policies, actions, belief systems, behavioural patterns & inconsistencies over the years…Singer comes to the conclusion that GW is generally a moral pygmy…”In the president of the most powerful nation on earth,” writes Singer, “self-righteousness and hypocrisy are dangerous vices.”
(quote taken from:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/30/1083224569232.html)
There is certainly a great deal of BS & con-man behind the ‘charming idiot’ persona so often resorted to when Bush & the admin. are in deep political dung…or on the campaign road…but he miserably fails to hide the lack of vision, imagination & curiousity required by someone w/ his kind of responsibilty.
Merely a ‘puppet on a chain’…’a good ole boy’ for the myopic, hard-assed, xenophobic, gung-ho, supernatural awed ignoramuses that litter the USA like weeds in a vege garden.
The Greatest Nation on the Planet!…yea right.
August 23rd, 2006 at 10:20 am
Isaiah Berlin once said that there were two types of person, the fox and the hedgehog. The fox knows a lot of things, but the hedgehog relentlessly pursues just one big idea. He compiled lists of those leaders who were one or the other.
I think we need to come up with another animal analogue for Mr Bush, who knows virtually nothing and doesn’t appear to value the morsels that do exist, at least not for long (now watch this drive).
Any ideas? I have in mind some nightmare cross between a lemming and a piranha, though it does seem a shame to leave cockroaches and vultures out.
August 23rd, 2006 at 10:39 am
The American presidents are nothing but talking heads anyway, all they need to be is electable. While Bush makes a poor talking head, he has a marketable family name, Red-state charm and takes a hand up the clacker well. Then the Neo-cons can say one day soon, ‘it was that idiot Bush who led us to ruin’. At least while he is there, the American Dream is exposed.
So then we suffer another Democrat term or two where they **** us slowly rather than quickly (Mrs. Clinton’s kinda sexy), diverting the Mob from reaching the Manor with their torches and pitchforks. To have Big Arnie, or another witless wonder, do this dance all over again.
They don’t call it revolution for nothing; round and round we go, where it stops, nobody knows.
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:03 am
Great Minds think alike Dept:
just had a look at Billmon who has posted on the Bush fox-hedgehog conundrum. He says hedgehog.
http://billmon.org/archives/002703.html
Earthrise, I am begining to wonder whether Bush’s eminently blame-able qualities (or perhaps lack of blameless ones) wasn’t his prime qualification for being chosen as the figurehead for what Billmon calls the Cheney Administration. He gives them deniability; the more idiotic Bush appears, the more deniability they have. Which is to say, a lot.
August 23rd, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Ah, the old ‘Bush is stupid’ myth:
A stupid President is one who risks his office for a blowjob and then bombs some civilians in Sudan to divert people’s attention.
August 23rd, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Earthrise is spot-on. Whether Bush is as stupid as he appears is irrelevant-he serves his purpose, which is to give those in charge an escape clause.
Shorter CL: There’s always someone on the ‘other side’ who’s more stupid/immoral/evil/ugly/mad which somehow excuses the particular lunatic that I’m defending this time.
It gets tedious but it’s good to know some things never change.
August 23rd, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Indeed, the BS political merry-go-round is spun by the Corporate Masters & dynasties (some refer to them as Illuminati…i tend to see them as ‘greedy f**kers)…frustratingly, little does change…look at the ‘Peace Movement’ of the late 60s…it mutated into civil right’s movements for women, gays & blacks that broke down quite a few walls…but the Nixon impeachment was more to do w/ internal feuds & looking for a scapegoat to hide the atrocities of the armaments & energy groups during the Vietnam War & coups against bona-fide elected Governments w/ Marxist leanings.
Adrian, Glenn & Earthrise can see this w/ the GW Bush episode…he’s the fall guy…the excuse…the eventual ‘reputation’ scapegoat who will somehow, like Reagan, be hidden from Public harassment…pensioned out…given a golden watch & signed picture of Saddam’s falling monument.
The giveaway & precedent is the immediate, post-Nixon era…military maniacs like Westmoreland were turned into heroes (lived to 92…sigh)…
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Westmoreland)
“Somehow in order to save Vietnam we had to destroy it. Civilian casualties from U.S. actions ran from 100,000 in 1965 up to 300,000 in 1968, just from bombing and artillery. In addition, millions upon millions of gallons of herbicides were sprayed over 6 million acres of land. We bombed hospitals to save orphans, we sprayed Agent Orange and destroyed the land in order to save crops, and we burned hamlets to save villages and turned Vietnam into a huge whorehouse in order to save Vietnam from Communism”
…&…
“The U.S. tried everything to win. We dropped more than three times the total tonnage of bombs dropped by both sides in World War II. We conducted “Operation Phoenix” during which the CIA and the Saigon government killed up to 40,000 suspected members of the Viet Cong. We defoliated 10% of the land, much of it permanently. We bombed, bribed, shot, killed and burned for more than 10 years at a cost of $170 billion (and a future cost which is continuing to rise). Despite all this, we still lost”
(quoted from the Vietnam Veteran’s against the War site:
http://www.vvaw.org/about/warhistory.php)
Then Ford comes across as Mr. nice guy, softly, softly touch…whilst Cheney & Rumsfeld take over the White House & plan for grander things…like setting up the economic/social pre-conditions to screw over the eventual Democratic Carter admin…& designing plans for the eventual election of ‘dob-in yer movie mates in the 50s’, Reagan…who ramps up the armament thing again to record levels. Almost reaches a point of blowin’ this planet sky high…but films like ‘The Day After’ freak out some of his family…& some Corporations decide they’ve made enuff bucks…& to save his butt in 86/87 over the Iran/Contra Affair pressure is put on to play the decent side of Reagan…the Evangelicals have been backed away from…so, lo & behold…Reagan goes to Reykjavik to meet Gorbachev…& is transformed into a celebrated ‘anti-nuke/peace advocate’. Finishes in early 89 as a Moderate Republican w/ a tough edge who saved the world from Communism & nuclear destruction…& then is disappeared into retirement due to a serious illness…that lasts for 15 years. The freakin’ irony & BS of it all.
This is why the Progressive Blogs in the USA are attempting to bring down the likes of (Wal-Mart, pro-War)Liebermann & other incumbents…in an attempt to truly bring some Justice to the Global scene…break the Corporate stranglehold…enhance ‘People Power’…& that’s why Alaska Senator Stevens (Bridge to Nowhere) et al are trying to pass a bill to F*ck the blogs & transform control to the likes of Murdoch/News Corp, Viacom, AT&T, Warner’s etc…
which is good reason to trust nothing you see on mainstream TV…cause it ain’t in the interest of these Corporations to screw themselves.
Imho, if you want change, fight for the independence of Blogs & the Right to Free Speech via the internet…& vote out the ’sleepers’ & corporate lackeys like ‘New City Labor’…demand more…think wide…& tell your friends…pass on articles…bring Earthrise’s dream to fruition!!!!
NP on random: Latest Sonic Youth, Radio Birdman, Bluebottle Kiss, M. Ward & Pink Mountaintops (outstanding!)
August 23rd, 2006 at 2:42 pm
and get a load of this:
http://www.infowars.com/articles/terror/only_20_percent_believe_blair_on_terror_claims.htm
Mebbe Bush can’t rely on the BS from Blair anymore to overcome his ‘feigned’ idiocy & gain traction in the polls
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Crooks and Liars says that they
There is nobody on the planet who can do that. And yes, I’ve checked.
August 23rd, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Some Americans can be soooo anti-American…
President on Another Planet
By Eugene Robinson
The Washington Post
Tuesday 22 August 2006
For a moment there, I was almost encouraged. George W. Bush, the most resolutely incurious and inflexible of presidents, was reported last week to have been surprised at seeing Iraqi citizens - who ought to be grateful beneficiaries of the American occupation, I mean “liberation” - demonstrating in support of Hezbollah and against Israel.
Surprise would be a start, since it would mean the Decider was admitting novel facts to his settled base of knowledge and reacting to them. Alas, it seems the door to the presidential mind is still locked tight. “I don’t remember being surprised,” he said at his news conference yesterday. “I’m not sure what they mean by that.”
I’m guessing “they” might mean that when you try to impose your simplistic, black-and-white template on a kaleidoscopic world, and you end up setting the Middle East on fire, either you’re surprised or you’re not paying attention. But that’s just me.
As for George Bush, what on earth is on his mind?
Even conservatives have begun openly assessing the president’s intellect, especially its impermeability to new information. Cable television pundit Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, devoted a segment of his MSNBC show to “George Bush’s mental weakness,” with a legend at the bottom of the screen that impertinently asked: “IS BUSH AN ‘IDIOT’?”
It’s tempting to go there, but I’m not sure we’d get very far. While we have the president on the couch, I’m more interested in trying to understand his emotional response - or lack of response - to the chaos he has spawned.
According to the Iraqi government, 3,438 civilians were killed in July, making it the bloodiest month since the invasion. The president was asked yesterday whether the failure of the U.S.-backed “unity” government to stem the orgy of sectarian carnage disappoints him, and he said that no, it didn’t. How, I wonder, is that possible? Does he beli?ve it would be a sign of weakness to admit that the flowering of democracy in Iraq isn’t going exactly as planned? Does he believe saying everything’s just fine will make it so? Is he in denial? Or do 3,438 deaths really just roll off his back after he’s had his workout and a nice bike ride?
“I hear a lot of talk about civil war” in Iraq, he allowed - much of it apparently from his own generals, who have been increasingly bold in using the once-forbidden phrase - but all that talk doesn’t seem to penetrate very far. To the president, is all the bad news from Iraq just “talk” without objective reality?
Here’s another line from the president’s news conference: “What’s very interesting about the violence in Lebanon and the violence in Iraq and the violence in Gaza is this: These are all groups of terrorists who are trying to stop the advance of democracy.”
Now, whatever you think about George Bush’s intellect, he knows full well that the Hamas government in Gaza was democratically elected. He also knows full well that Hezbollah participates in the democratically elected government of Lebanon, or what’s left of Lebanon. And so he has to know full well that U.S.-backed Israeli assaults on Gaza and Lebanon - even if you believe they were justified - had the impact of crippling, if not crushing, two nascent democracies of the kind the Bush administration wants to cultivate throughout the Middle East.
He also knows that the Iraqi government has real sovereignty over only the Green Zone in Baghdad - a fortress made secure by the presence of U.S. troops - and assorted other enclaves where American and British troops enforce the peace. He has heard the leader of that nominal government praise Hezbollah and denounce Israel.
So when the president lauds democracy as the magic elixir that will cure the scourge of terrorism, is he really putting faith in his favorite mantra rather than his lying eyes? Is his view of the world so unchangeable that he dismisses actual events the way he dismisses mere “talk”?
Or is he just trying to hold on until January 2009, when all this will become somebody else’s problem?
In his news conference, the Decider did make a couple of nods to objective reality. He admitted in plain language that Iraq had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks and possessed no weapons of mass destruction - in other words, that his rationale for this elective, preemptive war had no substance. And he acknowledged a certain occasional exasperation.
“Frustrated? Sometimes I’m frustrated. Rarely surprised,” the president said. “Sometimes I’m happy. This is - but war is not a time of joy. These aren’t joyous times.”
No, they’re not.
August 23rd, 2006 at 9:43 pm
While Bush… …and takes a hand up the clacker well.
LMAO! Nice one.
(Still laughing at that image ten minutes later.)
August 23rd, 2006 at 10:22 pm
…when she converted Mr. Bush’s SAT score to an IQ, “I derived an IQ of 125, which is the 95th percentile.”
Let’s assume that Bush sat for his SATs in his late teens. Thereafter, as we all know, he became an alcoholic. The effect of long-term alcohol abuse on the brain is…what? Come on, CL, I want to see everyone’s hand up.
In more recent years, as we all know, Bush the SAT ace has been much less evident than Bush the guy who waved hello at Stevie Wonder and almost accidently offed himself whilst eating a pretzel. And the disassociative thought process that he often exhibits in press conferences is a classic hallmark of the effects of alcohol abuse.
(And your point about Al Gore proves nothing - the astounding way in which he contrived to lose the 2000 election proves that he’s no Mensa candidate either.)
On a more serious note, I don’t believe that Bush is an especially dumb guy. I think his intelligence is probably around average, perhaps slightly above. Which would be fine, if he had an undemanding job like baseball team manager or governor of Texas. But shouldn’t we hope, or even expect, that the leader of the free world - the first among equals - be a really, really bright guy, with a wide frame of reference and superb rhetorical skills? Is it unreasonable to demand some minimum standards for this office? The Presidency is one job that should not be an equal opportunity employer.
August 24th, 2006 at 12:16 am
Richard Feynman, undoubtedly one of the greatest physicists and original thinkers of the 20 century, scored something like 115 on his IQ test when at the height of his powers.
He also had an unprecedented perfect record in the science subjects in his undergraduate degree (at MIT), and his subsequent work in science is as solid, brilliant, original and worthy, as the ‘work’ of Bush in politics (or anywhere else) is flimsy, incompetent, pedestrian, and contemptible.
The obvious point being that SAT/IQ tests are not exactly reliable predictors of long-term real-world outcomes, and the debate about their validity rages on. Even the inventor of the original IQ test, Alfred Binet, famously said that IQ tests only measure what IQ tests measure. Meaning that there is a large element of circular reasoning in IQ tests, and they are not in themselves an especially reliable basis to determine someone’s overall cognitive potential.
Is anyone seriously trying to argue that Bush is actually smarter than someone like Feynman, simply on the basis of a freakin SAT/IQ score?
August 24th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
‘Is anyone seriously trying to argue that Bush is actually smarter than someone like Feynman, simply on the basis of a freakin SAT/IQ score?’
The real difference between Bush and Feynman is encapsulated in a series of lectures Feynman gave in the 50s, the subject of which was the critical importance of doubt for scientific progress and by extension, progress in general.
‘The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darned sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize the ignorance and leave room for doubt.’
Whereas doubt, even the possibility of it, is anathema to cocksure George and his legionnaires (local chapter not excluded). Doubt requires humility, curiosity, a capacity to remove your feelings from your thoughts. In the same way that much of ‘the left’ at that time was so doctrinaire as to preclude any of the above, so ‘the right’ is today (though this conformity has begun to crack).
Feynman says ‘Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world would agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true’
Doubt provides the possibility of escape from problems, an ‘open channel’. Certainty on the other hand provides a tunnel.
Ironically Feynman finished by stating that the US government was, compared with it’s European counterparts, ‘new, modern and scientific’. He evinced no doubt about this but doubtless he’d change his tune if he was with us, in the tunnel, today.
August 24th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
“…the lesson of September the 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken.”
Invoking Machiavelli’s semi-realist argument justifying universal imperialism on the grounds self defense. That it is better to attack threats when they are small and remote, and to attack when the threat does not immediately endanger us.
Its comment aimed at a particular political lobby, nothing more. Unfortunatly, he can’t remember the line properly so he ruins the rhetorical effect.
August 24th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
Well said, GC. And thanks for the Feynman quotes, I didn’t have time to dig them up.
August 24th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
“…because imagine a world in which you had a Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life…”
To “KILL” innocent life????
Seriously though, THAT’S why these tossers keep getting away with it. They play on people’s deepest fears. “Sure interest rates have gone up, but imagine an Australia in which Labor controlled the economy etc”
Most people here have noticed Gottfredson’s angle on the preznit’s intelligence seems to go against all the evidence. The deluded dope just isn’t that deep!
What’s also interesting are the comments disputing Gottfredson’s message as opposed to attacking the messenger. I doubt the wingnut would have been so clinical. Attacking the messenger is almost always their first (and only) form of rebuttal. It’s nasty.
For example, one could “swiftboat” CL’s comment by mentioning that Steve Sailer (in the linked article) cites University of Delaware “IQ expert” Linda Gottfredson, herself a controversial figure whose research has received financial support from the Pioneer Fund, an organization designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for its support over the years of the work of white supremacists, eugenicists, and others dedicated to proving the existence of genetic differences between races. Sailer has written in defense of both Gottfredson and the Pioneer Fund.
Along with providing a grant to Linda Gottfredson, the Pioneer Fund has also provided financial support to the oh-so charming Jared Taylor and assorted right-wing loons.
Thanks goodness most of us on this forum are above such tacky stunts.
August 25th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
The preznit isn’t alone when it comes to dribble.
Consider this Perle of wisdom:
“And a year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush…”
August 27th, 2006 at 1:51 am
False
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/bush.asp