"We will fight with the full force of the U.S. military."
-- Except it’s never been at full force, there’s never been enough body armor or vehicle armor or bullets or water...All that money to Halliburton, and our troops didn’t have enough water for years. Maybe the next time they invade a country, they should pick one with a fucking lake.
"We should be able to decrease our troops levels by what the Generals say, not the politicians in Washington."
--First, George, you ARE a politician in Washington. You can’t claim to be an outsider when you’re the friggin’ PRESIDENT. Secondly, generals have been telling him he’s doing it wrong since before the war, during the war, during the counter-insurgency, and he fired them all and did the "surge" all by himself. Who needs Generals when "God told me to fight this war?" Which god—Bacchus, the god of wine?
"We need more troops in Afghanistan...because Al Qaeda is winning."
-- He took troops out of Afghanistan and put them in Iraq. At first, I thought they weren’t trying to capture bin Laden, they were trying to FIRE him. Now I’m convinced they don’t want to find him, ever. They need him to keep people in fear, and they can’t let him talk, and they can’t invade Pakistan, so they’re just stuck with him. Bin laden’s last video came out one week before Bush’s re-election. Coincidence, or co-operation? He was Bush’s best campaigner!
"The Taliban is back."
-- They never left! They didn’t get rid of them! They run one-third of the country and just had their biggest opium harvests on record! I guess Bush wants the Republicans to go for the heroin junkie vote.
"We must take the fight to the enemy."
-- Yeah, that’s why they pulled most of the troops out of Afghanistan. And you’re not taking the fight to the enemy, Mr. War Expert—they’re taking it to us, and they’re kicking our ass with some fertilizer and a cell phone.
"...Our friends in Iraq..."
-- We don’t have any friends in Iraq, especially because eight million Iraqis lack basic human needs, like water and power, after $20 billion was "spent" on reconstruction. Yeah, the reconstruction of Halliburton executives’ summer homes in Barbados.
"If we leave Iraq, we will be attacked here."
--Did Bush actually admit that the warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary renditions, torture, and the Department Of Homeland Security have all been complete failures? Yes, he did.
"They attacked us before we were in Iraq".
--Lie! We've been at war with Iraq since 1991--constant bombings, sanctions, the oil for food scandal, and millions of children starved to death. Greg Palast called this "Gulf War IV". They’ve lost FOUR of these fuckers.
"Return On Success".
--No withdrawal, 130,000 still there in a year, maybe there as long as we’ve been in Korea(--Tony Snow). By the next day, Bush forgot his slogan, and by now, it’s history. He is so owned by corporations that he keeps using these corp slogans like "political capital". He’s the CEO President, except any CEO of a company that ran things this badly in Japan would have been asked to commit hari-kari by now.
Bush promised the surge would be six months.
--Now it’s a year and a half, plus, and he said it would still be going on January 20, 2009. He basically admitted that only a Democratic President can end his war. Look at his business history—he’s never finished anything. Is it the ADD?
By the way, I accidentally bought "Surge Body Spray" and "Surge deodorant". Boy, they’re good at their P.R., you’ve got to give them that. I tried the Surge cologne—it smells like a car bomb.
"I’ve been talking to local sheikhs that say the violence is down in Anbar..."
--Yeah, like the sheikh Bush just met with who got blown up the day he said that. They didn’t protect the Museum, they didn’t protect the Iraqis, they didn’t protect the UN, they didn’t protect all the gov pols who got assassinated, and they didn’t protect that sheikh, either. Bush is the kiss of death—get a picture with him and you die. Please don’t make any more 90-minute visits to Iraqis, George. You’re the fucking Grim Reaper.
Bush quotes another sheikh as saying, "We are determined to strike back and continue our work."
--Arabs don’t talk like that, do they? Are the Bushies writing their speeches now, too? If they knew anything about Muslims, they would have thrown in a little Arabic-type phrase or something. But they can’t, because they fired 89 Arabic translators for being gay. The same thing a Middle Eastern theocracy would have done...The Republicans in office are so sexist and racist they’d rather lose the war and get attacked again than have a homosexual translator. What, are they worried they’ll think bin Laden is cute?
"Many schools and markets are re-opening..."
--BFD—they still have no electricity. The only successful businesses in Iraq are the candle stores.
Petraeus said attacks are down, from 1,600 a week to ONLY 1,000 a week. Oh, I bet that makes Iraqis really happy, especially the ones wounded in those measly 1,000 attacks A WEEK. That’s just about 150 a day, or about six an hour, or one every ten minutes. So Iraqis basically don’t even need watches anymore to tell time. It’s like having a church bell...They don’t really need electricity—they can read by the light of the car bombs...
"Walking away is dishonoring the sacrifice of our troops."
--No one can dishonor them—they took orders, they’re heroes. Let’s not have another 27,000 casualties to "dishonor". We have to stay in because we’re there. We have to let more troops get killed because troops have been killed. And the Republicants in Congress are still supporting this batshit crazyness? I think they’re the reason Congressional approval in the new poll is 11%, not Nancy Pelosi.
"Iraq is our ally."
--That’s like a man calling his right hand his "sexual partner".
"Sectarian killings are down in Baghdad."
--They had the bloodiest summer since the start of the war. Bush got a degree in economics or something, but nobody running this clusterfuck seems to have a working calculator. Or, they’re just compulsive liar sons of bitches. And they hope Americans don’t count—maybe that’s why they’ve let our educational system go to shit.
"The Iraqi Army is becoming more capable."
--General James Jones says they need 18 more months to "meaningfully contribute", and that it should be disbanded. He obviously didn’t get the White House memo. HE’S not getting the "Presidential Medal Of Blind Obedience"...
"Ordinary life is beginning to return..." --Bobby Ghosh of TIME said "nothing is considered normal". Dozens of tortured and mutilated bodies are dumped in the streets every day. Maybe that’s "ordinary" to Bush, because he has no respect for human life. It’s just meat puppets to throw into the hail of bullets. Then he says in Robert Draper’s book "Dead Certain", "You don’t know how many tears I’ve shed." Right after that, he lets the Republicans kill a bill to help the overworked, traumatized troops. I guess he’ll cry over that one, too. Hey, I’m crying because you’re President, Mr. Frigging Sensitive.
The White House did not clear Petraeus’ report.
--Washington Post, 9/7: Petraeus was on the phone with Gillespie every day. In fact, after Petraeus said in the hearings he "didn’t know" if we were safer because of Iraq, on the next break he was seen on the phone, and then tried to change his statement...MAN, those guys are good. They call him in the middle of his testimony, and nobody says anything. Why didn’t they just implant a chip in his head? They’re like magicians—you couldn’t even see the strings...
"We’ll stand up when they stand down." He says we’ve been training their Army.
--George Packer in the "New Yorker" says counter-insurgency depends on the Iraqi Army, but after four years, the Pentagon only has 6,000 troops training them—not what Bush has been saying at all. And the troops are not trained in training. Too bad Iraq didn’t have a huge trained, armed Army when we went in that we could...oh—never mind..
Bush said a year or so ago that the Iraqi civilian death toll was "30,000".
--Lie!!! "The Human Cost Of the War In Iraq", "Lancet", 10/06, says civilian deaths will exceed 650,000. Yes, he’s liberated the Iraqis—from life on this Earth.
"Mission Accomplished" speech: Bush said "we have removed an ally of Al Qaeda". Then he said he never said that about Iraq.
--These people still don’t understand video. And Cheney is still saying that today, because they’re too scared shitless of him to hand him the talking points.
"Most of Fallujah is returning to normal".
--The attack was actually a complete failure, and it turned the city over completely to the same insurgents who had killed the Blackwater contractors. Bush’s idea of normal must come from watching "The Road Warrior" too many times.
"We’ve got a huge coalition...larger than the one assembled in 1991 (I’m better than my daddy!) in terms of the number of nations participating."
--This was days ago! Bush lied again about the 36 countries in our "coalition"—he doesn’t call it the "Coalition Of the Willing" anymore, because none of them are willing. It’s actually only 26 countries, including Tonga, and here’s the troops in Iraq from some countries: Hungary—15, Japan—5, Latvia—2, Turkey—2, New Zealand, Singapore, and Canada—one EACH. Iceland is pulling out—their soldier. I guess their countries have the "Army Of One" slogan, too.
One CPA official recalled to Thomas Ricks in "Fiasco", "The Italians only patrolled by vehicle...The Japanese didn’t patrol at all." Can’t blame them. The Thai battalion wasn’t allowed by their military to every leave their camp. Many governments were furious that they had been lied to, told they were going to a "peacekeeping mission", then made to fight battles. By May, 2004, Spain, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, the Phillipines,, Hungary left. In 2005, the Netherlands and the Ukraine withdrew, and the three strongest European supporters, Poland, Bulgaria and Italy, announced they were pulling out soon. Most of the nations Bush kept bragging about were countries like Tonga. The "partners" totaled less than 24,000 troops. Ricks said "the real ‘coalition of the willing’...was the international jihadists flocking to Iraq to fight (us)." Commanders often commend the insurgents for their fighting ability. Too bad they weren’t an Army when we went in that would have fought on our side and...oh—never mind...
"The Iraqi Government is getting some things done, like sharing oil revenues."
--What oil? They pump a quarter of what they did under Saddam. The Iraqi Government itself says the oil deal is collapsing. Kuwait made their own oil deal. Iraqis wait four hours in line at gas stations, when they have gas. I hope that doesn’t make them bitter and turn against us and—damn! Never mind again.
"If we leave Iraq, there will be chaos."
--Hey, the Iraqi people are PRAYING for chaos. Chaos would be a nice break for them.
(All my diaries are factual information culled from real sources. Like I say onstage, "It’s all true, except for the later funny part." For this series, I am indebted as always to "Countdown With Keith Olbermann". Other sources include: Frank Rich in the New York Times, Thomas E. Rick’s "FIASCO", The New York Review Of Books, specifically the Ian Buruma review of "World War IV" by Norman Podheretz, George Packer, "Planning For Defeat", New Yorker, 9/17, the books of Noam Chomsky, specifically "INTERVENTIONS", and Greg Palast’s "ARMED MADHOUSE". I wish to thank all these sources and I highly recommend them all.)
To Be Continued...As Bush says...
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