“PROCESS” IS THE WORD YOU HEAR WHEN THERE IS NO PROGRESS No matter how much George Bush tries to catapult the propaganda, STANDING FIRM means people are losing faith in a president who increasingly looks like he has lost his grip on reality. There will be NO PARADES.
AS THE REALITY OF STANDSTILL in Iraq becomes evident, as the adoption of a constitution there suffers yet another delay, and women’s rights there sink into the sand, process will be mentioned again and again. But there is something we can look forward to in the coming days. We can expect to September Eleventh changed everything. September Eleventh gave George Bush a halo that with sinking polls now is a noose around his neck. We are in the process of realizing we have made no progress at all. Freedom, if it is on the march, is marching backward.
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[FRANK RICH] And what exactly is our task? Mr. Bush's current definition - "as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" - could not be a better formula for quagmire. Twenty-eight months after the fall of Saddam, only "a small number" of Iraqi troops are capable of fighting without American assistance, according to the Pentagon - a figure that Joseph Biden puts at "fewer than 3,000." At this rate, our 138,000 troops will be replaced by self-sufficient locals in roughly 100 years.[TOM DISPATCH] No one has been publicly less spontaneous or more -- effectively -- repetitious than our President; but sometimes, as he says, you "keep repeating things over and over and over again" and what sinks in really is the truth rather than the propaganda. Sometimes, just that extra bit of repetition under less than perfect circumstances, and words that once struck fear or offered hope, that once explained well enough for most the nature of the world they faced, suddenly sound hollow. They begin to sound... well, repetitious, and so, false. Your message, which worked like a dream for so long, goes off-message, and then what do you do?
This is, I suspect, exactly what growing numbers of Americans are experiencing in relation to our President. It's a mysterious process really -- like leaving a dream world or perhaps deprogramming from a cult. Once you step outside the bubble, statements that only yesterday seemed heartfelt or powerful or fearful or resolute truths suddenly look like themselves, threadbare and impoverished.
[COLBERT KING] Consider the Iraq now unfolding on the ground.
What's the value of Americans giving their lives so that cleric-dominated Shiites and northern Kurds can get their hands on political power and oil revenue?
Why are American women and men sacrificing lives and limbs in a country where women may have to settle for less?
Stay the course. What course? So religious-based militia can divvy up the northern and southern portions of the country? So Islam can be enshrined as a principal source of new Iraqi legislation?
Are any of those things worth dying for? Do any of those likely outcomes represent an American victory? They certainly aren't why Bush said we went over there.[POLITICAL ANIMAL] As you know, I've been arguing for the past couple of months that we need a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. Details aside, this is fundamentally based on my belief that unless you have well understood goals and objectives that you can hold people to, you'll never get anything done. We need firm targets and timelines in Iraq to have any chance of success there.
Been out of the loop for a few days -- check in @ the Heretik and it's just strength after strength. You ever decide to go on a blog vacaction, make sure to give us all advance notice first so we can get mentally and emotionally prepared.
Posted by: ThomH | August 29, 2005 at 09:08 AM