The house has passed Our Beloved President's legislation on interrogation and trials of terror suspects. Though John McCain and others claimed Bush made some concessions on the side of humane treatment of those not officially charged with any crime, those concessions were virtually non-existant. Bush got what he wanted, and he'll run with it.
He does what he wants, anyway, and no one seems interested in stopping him.
Take his press conference Tuesday. Bush declared he would release part of the intelligence agency report suggesting that the invasion of Iraq has been a recruiting tool for terrorist groups. Somehow, Bush claims that this report suggests no such thing. "Read the whole report, you'll see," he said. But of course, he's not releasing the whole report.
At one point , Bush angrily responded to repeated questioning about the document by testily proclaiming, "We're not going to let lies and propaganda by the enemy dictate how we win this war."
Whaaaaa---????
This one sentence prompts at least three questions off the top of my head:
1) Which war are you talking about? The one in Iraq or the "war on terror"? Because they're two different things, you know.
2) What do you mean by "how we win this war"? Democracy is failing to take root in Iraq, but civil unrest sure is, and U.S. troops are pretty much caught in the middle of a shit storm. I'd say we're losing that one. And as for the "war on terror"--read your own government's report, Mr. Decider. Your policies serve only to make the terrorists stronger. As long as you're in office, they've got the strongest recruiting tool imaginable. So, uh, I'd say we're losing that one, too.
3) Okay--"lies and propaganda from the enemy." As near as I can tell, the propaganda here is the intelligence report in question, prepared by agencies of the U.S. government. How is this propaganda from the enemy? Unless he means lefties and others who would dare to suggest that the document means what it says, not what Bush tells us it means. In other words, don't believe what you see, believe what I tell you you're seeing.
So three questions arising from just one sentence uttered by the president. One sentence that suggests, again, that he may be nuts. At least if he really was crazy, he'd have an excuse. As for the people who continue to support him, there's no excuse at all.
