1115.org

(1)
Even by Tony Snow’s dubious standards, this is pretty rich:

“The president took pains yesterday not to be partisan, and that was the appropriate thing to do,” insisted White House spokesman Tony Snow. He said it was the Democrats who seized on the September 11 anniversary to talk about Iraq.

What President Bush did was deliver a mish-mash of his new improved stump-speeches, that he’s been pounding (trying to pound?) for a week now. (That’s also been the effect of his speechifying on his poll numbers: weak.)

What President Bush did was perform his standard doesn’t-fool-anyone-anymore trick of conflating the War on Iraq with fighting terrorism and especially Osama bin Laden. Then he spent most of his speech defending the War on Iraq. Which is a distinctly funny way to mourn those who died on September 11, 2001.

What President Bush did was pull his usual stunt of shooting down absurd idiocies that no one is known to have uttered (with the implicit suggestion that it’s the Democrat’s who have said and are saying this nonsense):

Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone. They will not leave us alone. They will follow us.

I repeat: absolutely no one has suggested that we should pull out from Iraq so that the terrorists will leave us alone. On the contrary, most critics of the Iraq war who advocate pulling out are arguing that we should do so in order to focus our energies on fighting terrorists instead of continuing to fritter away our resources and our energies in this vain quest to bring democracy to Iraq.

That’s what President Bush did on September 11 after commandeering the public airwaves to “commemorate” the anniversary of the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks. Same old set of lies – set to brand new rhetoric, though – that they still somehow think will turn Bush’s political fortunes around even though they have failed to do so the last n times in a row (where n is a very large number; in Bush counting-by-numbers parlance, it goes one, two, three, onesome, twosome, threesome, onemany, twomany, threemany, n).

On September 12, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi criticized the President for conflating the War on Iraq with fighting Osama bin Laden:

Reid told reporters Democrats had been so confident … Bush would be nonpartisan that they had not sought equal time on television to offer their party’s response.

“Sadly, it was a missed opportunity for President Bush, who apparently was more consumed by staying the course in Iraq and playing election year politics,” Reid said, accusing Bush of once again trying to “conflate and blur the war in Iraq with the response to 9/11.”

“The American people deserved an opportunity to grieve and come together as a nation last night. Instead President Bush gave them partisan and inaccurate rhetoric,” Pelosi said.

And then Tony Snow comes along and complains that the Democrats seized on the September 11 anniversary to talk about Iraq!

Oh, and you know why President Bush’s speech cannot be called political or partisan, according to Snowy? Because

the President … spent extra time with family members, walking person to person to person in New York and in Pennsylvania and in Washington, D.C.

That would be family members of 9/11 victims. Spend extra time with them, walk person to person (instead of traveling by golf cart?), and you can say whatever you want, and no one’s allowed to call it partisan.

Why is everything that everybody in this administration does either dishonest to the core or criminally stupid?

(2)
The following exchange (if you can call it that) occurred at Tony Snow’s press briefing yesterday:

Q Let me ask you this final point. Can you describe how it’s possible to oppose the President on the war on Iraq without emboldening the terrorists?

MR. SNOW: Yes. Yes, absolutely. There are ways to do it. But also, if you say we need to leave right now, without preconditions — and I’m not sure anybody says that, but I’ll give you a hypothetical — that would embolden the terrorists. If the end result was that we left Iraq and we did not have an Iraq that was able to sustain itself, govern itself and defend itself, that would embolden the terrorists.

If the terrorists have the ability, if the terrorists draw the conclusion that they can use political means — because they can’t defeat us militarily, so it has to be a political battle — if they can use political means to drive us from Iraq and make Iraq a place from which — like Afghanistan before — that could mount terrorist attacks and set up their own headquarters, and this time have, in addition, oil as a weapon — then that, in fact, is the kind of situation that we can’t let stand.

But there are ways of — you can disagree over a lot of things. If you share the objective of having an Iraq — and this is what’s kind of interesting about the debate last night, because if you look at the President’s speech, he talks about an Iraq that’s going to be able to be democratic — I don’t know that that’s controversial with anybody — an Iraq where Iraqi forces are going to be able to defend Iraqi ground. I don’t know that that’s controversial. I think those are the things — to answer your question, and I’ll let you get back to this, to answer your question, it is possible to disagree. But on the other hand, if you are proposing a position that says to bin Laden, in effect, Iraq is yours, then that is not the kind of thing that I think is going to lead to victory.

That Tony! What a wicked sense of humor. He can absolutely describe how it’s possible to oppose the President on the war on Iraq without emboldening the terrorists. But that doesn’t mean he will, ha ha.

Just for fun, let’s run a straw poll. Do you think that was dishonest to the core or criminally stupid?

(3)
There’s no question which category this one falls into:

General Zellmer, who outranks the Colonel…

(4)
Now here’s an absolutely brilliant theater-of-the-absurd moment:

Q But he said the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out the terrorists would leave us alone. Has someone suggested that they feel the terrorists would leave us alone if we left Iraq?

MR. SNOW: No, what he’s trying to do is to repeat to you exactly what the terrorists think. That sentence is not an attempt — look, I have a feeling that some people may feel pain because they think it’s pointing to them. It’s not pointing to them, it’s pointing at the terrorists. It’s pointing at the terrorists who, again, want to engage in the fantasy — they’ve learned the hard way once, and let’s pray they don’t learn the hard way twice — they don’t realize that we love our liberty and we love our country. And if they strike, we’re going to strike back. That’s what that’s all about. That’s as much a warning to terrorists as anything else. It’s not a desire to start pointing fingers at members of Congress.

We probably need a Cliff’s Notes commentary on this one, but till it comes out we’ll have to muddle though on our own. Is this how you scored it too:
It’s the terrorists who think that if we pull out of Iraq the terrorists will leave us alone, but the terrorists have got it wrong, because the terrorists don’t know what the terrorists think, we think the terrorists won’t leave us alone, we think the terrorists will follow us here.

See, the terrorists think they know what the terrorists think, but the terrorists are so crafty and cunning they have the terrorists totally fooled.

But President Bush is not fooled. By repeating to us exactly what the terrorists think, he has sent a stern warning to the terrorists. Clearly, this must be why he’s lately been repeating to us so much of what Osama has said. It’s to scare Osama silly.

(5)

it would be great if both political parties right now would start realizing that the national interest is to win the war on terror and to present a united front.

So Tony Snow thinks the Democrats don’t realize that the national interest is to win the war on terror? Tony Snow thinks the Democrats think the national interest is to lose the war on terror?

(6)

The strategy both in … Afghanistan and Iraq is to get more troops on the ground — more Afghan troops and more Iraqi troops.

Where are these Afghan and Iraqi troops right now? Hiding in trees? Still a gleam in a parent’s eye?

(7)
I have a question for whoever wants to field it (Cheney, Bush, Tony Snow, any other administration truth-teller):
If having a debate about withdrawing troops from Iraq emboldens the terrorists, why isn’t the Republican leadership initiating a debate about increasing our troop strength in Iraq? Isn’t that what would demoralize the terrorists, and help us to achieve a major victory in the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century?

Or are we just looking to continue the struggle as long as possible, instead of looking for victory?

(8)
How confusing is it when a certified state sponsor of terrorism fights off a terrorist attempt to bomb our embassy? When a Syrian guard gives up his life in the process.

One attacker survived the attack, and is “presumably now being interrogated for information within the limits of Syrian law”, according to Keith Olbermann.

Maybe they should make an extraordinary gesture, and render him to us, and let us do it properly?