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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 10K a day who wrote (95521)	1/14/2007 11:43:41 PM
From: SiouxPal	Respond to of 361708

The Educator in Grief Sherman Yellen 01.14.2007 There they were in their open collared blue shirts, George W. and Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes, sitting on some dinky looking colonial style dining chairs, schmoozing about the war and the need for victory. All that was missing was a corncob pipe, a cracker barrel and the truth. The Emperor Bush declared that his mission tonight was as the educator of his American subjects on the great issues involved in this war he was about to escalate. He was there to help the soft-hearted dim-witted American public that has turned against him and the war to understand his new policies. Once again he cautioned that the risks of losing in Iraq and retreating from that ravaged country would bring the whole Middle East into this war and create a greater conflict there and at home. Burning cities and screaming citizens were hiding behind his words. Our fate if we left Iraq to its own devices was somewhere between the Rapture and Armageddon. He smiled uneasily and often inappropriately before addressing serious matters, reminding one of some old foreign movie actor whose lips were out of synch with the English dubbing. At first I worried about Pelley who used the expression Democrat critics twice, as opposed to Democratic, parroting that truncated phrase which the Repubs used derisively against the minority party in their heyday. But Pelley soon proved his mettle by challenging the President directly, asking if it was not the President's own past policies that had brought us to this critical time; was it not those very policies that had opened us up to all the potential horrors of defeat in Iraq that the president now painted in such dire terms? He further challenged our Chief on the rationale for the war, and as usual the President declared that everyone was deceived about the WMD, that querulous excuse that Condi gives as well, one that couldn't pass muster with your average grade school teacher. "Teacher, Timmy did it too!" now passes for an explanation of our past foreign policy. Sorry to say I wasn't fooled by the WMD claims nor were many ordinary Americans who smelled a bad excuse that was trying to pass itself off as a good reason. Bush did not say as usual that "mistakes were made." Instead, he declared that there were "mistakes" as if these mistakes were something that floated above him like escaped party balloons, untied to his acts or those of his administration. As he kept stressing the need for a victory, what came through clearer than ever was that there can be no victory in Iraq, no way to subdue this civil war by military means, no amount of troops who could prop up a government whose main support is a fanatic militia that shoots to kill our men and women, a militia represented in the Iraqi government, one that would turn on the Iraqi leadership should any attempt be made to suppress it. What everyone but the President seems to understand is that the Iraqi people do not want us in their holy places, they do not want us near their oil fields, they regard our efforts to help them as acts of imperial hubris, and they will never accept our presence in their country no matter how many new troops are sent in to quiet this civil war. Even in the most unlikely case of a military victory we would face defeat in Iraq. A victory would mean the permanent occupation of the country - an occupation guaranteed to offend the pride of the Iraqis and provoke more and more killing of American occupiers, provoking more reprisals, and more acts of terrorism throughout the world. If ever there was a time to pull back and pull out our troops this is it. But the President proposes a new act of stupidity and arrogance that is now supposed to cure the old acts of stupidity and arrogance. What struck me as most telling in this interview was Bush's claim that he was unable to sit through the execution of Saddam as seen on that notorious videotape. Perhaps this explains why he has been unable to visit our many wounded, burned, and maimed soldiers in the military hospitals. Our Educator in Grief is a sensitive, soft hearted man who does not like to look upon unpleasant sights to which we can now add capital punishment, particularly when dispatched in Iraq without the precision tooled efficiency that they practiced in Texas when he was Governor. Thus he will not look at the body bags of soldiers returning from this escalation because it would cause him too much pain. As Bush comes apart each level of that human onion that tries to pass for a leader is exposed. And sadly it can only bring more tears to America. huffingtonpost.com