Feather Ruffling and Saber-Rattling

Uh oh, fellow blogger Trickish Knave was not impressed with my recent post Getting Back to Reality Now.

TK: "I think people are misinterpreting the "Mission Accomplish" [sic] speech that Bush gave on the carrier. It was the crew, of their own free will, that hung the sign. An old student of mine, who helped hang it up, told me this.

Andy: Yes, of course. I forgot that all battleships come with their own Kinko's so they can print up giant propaganda banners whenever they like. Unfortunately, that doesn't square with the results of the media's fact-finding mission after Bush's speech. Damn that liberal press corps!

TK: "If people can get off the media's bashing of this statement and listen to what the President actually said then the context of the statement is clear:

"Iraq is a dangerous place and we've still got hard work to do, there's still more to be done. And we had just come off a very successful military operation. I was there to thank the troops." - George W. Bush, May 1, 2003

Andy: Well, it seems you've come up with a post-speech quote that the President gave to the press to clarify what the hell he was talking about out there and his reasons for being there. Fine, let's all take your suggestion and read what the President actually said that day. It's all right there in black and white on the official White House webpage. Don't forget to notice the banner at the top of the smiling, joyful Iraqis. At least I guess they're Iraqis celebrating our invasion...no way to prove it's not a crowd of Jordanians watching a soccer game. So what did the President say?

• "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." That's from his opening sentence. TK, you've got to be kidding me if you expect us to believe that Bush meant only that the Lincoln's mission was accomplished. His first statement was an absolutely unequivocal declaration of final victory, there's no other way to read that.
• "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on." Unfortunately, as shown by the results of the election, 48% of America fails to see the connection between Iraq and September 11. That might have something to do with the government's own commission reporting that there was no relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.
• "And as of tonight, nearly one-half of al Qaeda's senior operatives have been captured or killed." Over the course of time, Bush would increase this number to 75%, but as I pointed out in my analysis of the final Bush-Kerry debate his context for this assertion is a list of approximately "two dozen" al Qaeda members that the government knew about in September 2001. There's absolutely no reason to think that the vacancies in al Qaeda's management haven't been filled. Oh, and thanks once again for linking Iraq and al Qaeda despite an utter lack of supporting evidence and substantial evidence to the contrary.
• "We've removed an ally of al Qaeda." Or...not.
• "No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. (Applause.) " One might also add, "and because they didn't have any weapons."
• "With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got." Except the President did not actually declare war; first of all, he can't, the Constitution doesn't give him that power. Only the Congress can declare war. They voted to override the Constitution and surrender their own authority to the President, an act of which the constitutionality will be forever debated, I'm sure. Even with this authority, the President chose to go to war without actually declaring war. Hence, in his point of view, the prisoners are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention. Isn't that convenient? (Unfortunately, the G.C. stipulates that its protections must also be extended to any prisoners whose status is in doubt.)
• "Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world -- and will be confronted." Or even if they don't, hey, what's the difference?
• "The war on terror is not over; yet it is not endless." I thought it was only fair to include this acknowledgment on the President's part. Still, Bush clearly defined Iraq as a fait accompli. A year and a half later, we know that is not the case.

TK: It is presumptuous and naive to think that all hostilities would come to an end as soon as Bush made his speech that day. One more thing Bush said that the liberals will take literally so that it could be used against him later on. I guess when Clinton was in office and the literal definition of the word "is" and "sexual relations" came into question it was time to hit Websters.

Andy: Sorry TK, but if anyone's taking President Bush literally, it would be the people who voted for him, not "the liberals." Give me a break. Go back and look at the papers from the months before our invasion began. Columnists, military commanders, diplomats, foreign leaders and the general public are all on record questioning Bush's repeated assertions that this would be a swift victory, that we would be welcomed as liberators, etc. Everyone wanted to know, "What is your plan in case you're wrong?" Many, many people predicted exactly the chaos -- specifically, a drawn-out urban guerrilla war -- that we're seeing now. WE knew this was going to take a long time and wasn't going to be easy. The Bush Administration was saying "cakewalk." How DARE you accuse us of having unrealistic expectations.

By the way, Clinton is no longer president. He didn't run for president this year. Why is it that every time someone criticizes Bush, the conservatives all yell, "But Clinton..."??? Do you really want to compare this current fiasco with Monica-gate? The President had a blowjob (or two) from someone who wasn't his wife. Well, that is tacky, to be sure. And he lied about it. But those lies didn't drag us into a war that has cost more than 1,100 American lives and an unguessable number of Iraqi lives.

The conservatives, who always wail about how the government wastes taxpayers' money, spent $64 million investigating Clinton and came up with bupkus, and yet Bush only managed to find $15 million to fund the 9/11 Commission to figure out how three thousand people died.

TK: Come on people, it was the Lincoln's mission that was accomplished. Those people had been out in the Gulf for a long time and were ready to go home. I would expect hostilities and casualties to increase this week when executing a major offensive against the assholes who have buried themselves in Falujah. This is something that should have been done a year ago.

Andy: If Fallujah "should have been done a year ago," WHOSE FAULT IS THAT? Casualties have been increasing for a far longer period of time than just this week. The handoff of "sovereignty" was in June. During that month, there were 44 US casualties. In July we suffered 61. In August, 71. In September, 83. October was better at 67, but that number is still higher than it was in June and July. Currently we have had 48 casualties for the month of November; that's a rate of 3.69 casualties a day. If that keeps up, we're looking at a November total of 110. (These figures from Globalsecurity.org.)

TK: Contrary to popular opinion and political correctness we should have wiped them out completely and not given the insurgents time to make a stronghold. Incidentally this is something that Bush wanted to do a month ago but was forced to concede to popular opinion instead of listening to his military advisors.

Andy: No, what we should have done is not gone to Iraq in the first place because a lot of reasonably intelligent people were afraid this would happen. You're in the military; how could you not have learned one of the great lessons of Vietnam? Namely, you just can't effectively fight a guerrilla campaign. You'll never be able to wipe them out. Stronghold? It's their home, TK. And what's your source that Bush "conceded to popular opinion"? Also, you just finished saying we should have done Fallujah a "year" ago. It doesn't exactly exculpate Bush to claim he's been wanting to do this for a month. And, are you accusing the President of disregarding expert military advice for fear of losing popular support? Why would he do that? Oh, I forgot, there was a presidential election last week that he won by 3% of the vote.

TK: The success stories just aren't covered in the news. Just the rising death toll, which is surprisingly small, compared to other conflicts we have engaged in, and all the other "failures" attributed to Bush's invasion.

Andy: Are we, as a nation, "surprised" that only 1,100 Americans have died? Are you going to include in your "rising death toll" the estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians killed, which range up to 100,000? Is that "surprisingly small"? You're in the military, you tell me. And I've asked you this before. Please tell us all about the success stories we're not hearing.

The press isn't just covering the death toll. Kidnappings. Beheadings. Pipeline destruction. Abu Ghraib. Al QaQaa. Suicide bombings. Fallujah. Mosul. Samarra. Pardon my French, but there'd better be some pretty fucking good news to overshadow these catastrophes before we start throwing around the word "success."

TK: Unfortunately, Bush can't give 100% focus to the war effort because it isn't in the forefront of everyone's agenda.

Andy: No one is saying the president doesn't have more than one iron in the fire. We're just saying it's a disaster, is all.

TK: As far as monogamous lesbians are concerned, it wasn't Bush who decided to "protect" the U.S. from that lifestyle- it was the millions of voters who voted for the bills on their ballots.

George W. Bush: "And the preservation of marriage rises to this level of national importance. The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honoring -- honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all. Today I call upon the Congress to promptly pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife." (February 24, 2004)

TK: Bin Laden may be off dialysis at the moment but he sure as hell would have been on it sooner had Clinton got off his ass and did something when the WTC was bombed the first time. I guess Clinton was too distracted by his intern's DSL's and the fact he was patting himself on the back for lobbing a few tomahawks when the USS Cole was almost sunk in Yemen. We had some soldiers die on his watch too but I keep forgetting that going to war when a Democrat is president is somehow ok.

Andy: Nice try, but Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were not responsible for the 1993 attack, which was perpetrated by Ramzi Yousef and Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman. They are both now in jail, along with 19 others who were tried and convicted.

Please find for me any reference to a Republican who urged Clinton to take stronger action against Osama bin Laden. Oh yes, I know that story that Oliver North himself tried to warn us, but that myth was officially debunked by the U.S. Senate. By the way, let us not forget that on August 6, 2001, just five weeks before the attacks, Bush received a security briefing entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." And what was his response? He stayed on vacation. No press conference. No increase in airport security. Didn't even notify the intelligence agencies or law enforcement, let alone "lob a few tomahawks."

In fact, as Richard Clarke's testimony proved, the outgoing Clinton administration warned the Bushies repeatedly about bin Laden and al Qaeda. The result? On September 10, 2001, John Ashcroft cut the Justice Department's counterterrorism budget.

And if you think "going to war when a Democrat is president is...ok," then clearly you have forgotten the ruckus the GOP raised about our involvement in the Balkans. At least Clinton never claimed Milosevic was "a grave and gathering threat" to U.S. security or credited him with possessing weapons he didn't have.

I win.