Nichols: "A mess of Bush's own making" (analysis of Iraq, speech)

[Inland]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20051006/cm_thenation/127274;_ylt=A9FJqYEwkUVDlYEArAj9wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

John Nichols

October 6

The Nation -- It is fair to say that a good many Americans perceive George W. Bush to be a doltish incompetent who does not know the first thing about fighting terrorism.

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But, whatever the president's actual level of competence may be, it is now clear that he has even less respect for the intelligence of the American people than his critics have for his cognitive capabilities.

As the president struggles this week to make a case for the staying the course that leads deeper into the quagmire that is Iraq, he is, remarkably, selling a warmed over version of the misguided take on terrorism that he peddled before this disasterous mission was launched.

Apparently working under the assumption that no one has been paying attention over the past two and a half years, Bush delivered a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy Thursday in which he dismissed calls for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. "Some observers also claim that America would be better off by cutting our losses and leaving Iraq now," the president argued, before concluding that, "It's a dangerous illusion refuted with a simple question: Would the United States and other free nations be more safe or less safe with Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq, its people and its resources?"That's a scary scenario. Unfortunately, it is one that the president created. And it is one that the president still fails to fully comprehend.

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[texpatriot2004]

1. I love the part about him talking to us like we are "morans" he

says it in a much nicer, more intellectual way...but, same thing.

[Inland]

3. Molly Ivins said

Bush's problem isn't that he's stupid, it's that he thinks everyone else is. That's why he can't resist being duplicitous. He is sure we'll never figure out the truth, or if we do, he'll be long gone from office.

[texpatriot2004]

4. I like Molly...she's smart.n/t

[AuntieM1957]

5. I'd call that not having a sense of HISTORY

I suppose someone who doesn't read doesn't grasp the concept that future generations will mark his presidency as the beginning of the end of America.

[Cha]

2. I'm very fond of John Nichols..

"If any individuals on the planet feared and hated al Qaida, it was Hussein and his allies. The Iraqi Baathists were thugs, to be sure, but they were secularist thugs. Indeed, many of the most brutal acts of oppression carried out by the Iraqi regime targeted Islamic militants and governments aligned with the fundamentalists. The eight-year war between Iraq and Iran pitted the soldiers of Hussein's secular nationalism against the armies of the Ayatollah Khomeini's radical vision of Islam. That is why, while the United States remained officially neutral in the war that lasted from 1980 to 1988, it became an aggressive behind-the-scenes backer of Hussein."

He makes a very good point here.

Yes, and * does talk to us like he's talkin' to himself in the mirror.