Tide turns on Dubya's wreck

[cal04]

SYDNEY, NSW, is a long way from Washington DC but, even at this distance, it is clear that the Bush Administration is falling to pieces. In recent weeks, scanning the political coverage in the mainstream US media and sampling the blogs has been to watch a flood tide ebbing to reveal a rotting, skeletal hulk. It is the George W. Bush ship of fools, stuck in the mud for the world to see in all its mendacity, its incompetence, its faith-based stupidity.

It is possible, at this late stage, that even Bush himself has begun to realise something is wrong. That oddly simian face is ashen, the eyes leaden. The voice is shrill and its tone defensive. "I'm the decider and I decide what's best," he squawked to reporters in the White House rose garden the other day, as the screws turned tighter on his disastrous Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Can you imagine Roosevelt, Eisenhower or Kennedy blurting something like that?

Rummy is looking knackered too, with six retired generals going public to agree that he is "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically", to quote one of them. These men would have been junior officers in Vietnam, veterans of the all-American nightmare they now see replicated in Iraq. They don't want the mad old warmonger doing it over again in Iran. As former Marine Corps Lieutenant-General Gregory Newbold wrote in Time magazine: "… we must never again stand by quietly while those ignorant of and casual about war lead us into another one and then mismanage the conduct of it".

But the Middle East quicksands are not all that is killing Bush's presidency. Domestically, the rot is wide and deep. It is a budget deficit blowing out towards $US700 billion this financial year as Dubya juggles to fund his war while stealing from the American and immigrant poor to bestow tax cuts on the rich. It is criminal sleaze in Washington, with the Republicans' favourite influence peddler, Jack Abramoff, headed for jail, and one of Bush's closest Texan buddies, the disgraced House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, not far behind him.

more
http://smh.com.au/news/opinion/tide-turns-on-dubyas-wreck/2006/04/21/1145344276318.html

[Notoverit]

1. Wow! Greatly written piece! K&R

[CrazyOrangeCat]

2. Awesome piece. Rec'd.

[brokensymmetry]

3. K&R! n/t

.

[TomInTib]

4. What a great read! That guy nailed it.

Thanks for the find, cal04.

[pretzel4gore]

5. to think, i once nearly committed the hairy kari...

christ, living was misery since regan was 'selected' by the goober cabal in the usa, assholes with more money then brains...now to see the damn thing become carrion even while it still breathes, its squeals a tonic to wash away the memory of the dear departed old Soviet Union (:() the wonderful Workers Dictatorship; well, the end of bush and fascism cannot but bode ill for all gentle little living things, and that is very sad, but the good news is the 'pig is suffering'
and to see that is charming....

[rzemanfl]

6. WTF does "knackered" mean? n/t

[cal04]

8. Very tired; exhausted.

syn: drained

[bear425]

9. knackered:

knackered adj. To describe yourself as "knackered" means that you are really tired - something along the lines of "beat". However, as usual it has a slightly more dodgy meaning as it technically describes being exhausted after sex. You can get away with it in everyday conversation but bear in mind that everyone knows the true meaning too. The derivation, I understand, is from the time when old, worn out horses were taken to the "knacker's yard" and... well... converted into glue.



http://english2american.com/dictionary/k.html

[AuntiBush]

11. What Most of us are Feeling...

Totally drained, scandal fatigue.

[rzemanfl]

12. Thanks to all. Is there an aussie word that means, "tired, drained,

but madder than hell?" That's my mood lately.

[cal04]

7. here's another good one from him

Reptiles get in a blather over Blair

(snip)

IT HAS passed almost without notice in this country, but a top-secret British government document unearthed recently by The New York Times shows, with jaw-dropping clarity, that Blair and George Bush were committed to invading Iraq even as they were publicly pretending that war was not inevitable. It is a five-page memorandum written by Blair's foreign policy adviser, David Manning, after a long meeting of the two leaders and their senior aides at the White House on January 31, 2003. The Times believes it to be authentic.

To the world, President and Prime Minister were proclaiming the need for a second United Nations resolution to force Saddam Hussein to give up those famous weapons of mass destruction. In private, they had the finger on the trigger, come what may. "The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled in for 10 March," wrote Manning. "This was when the bombing would begin." In fact, it began nine days later. More startling still, the memo reveals that Bush had tossed up some bizarre scenarios to provoke a military confrontation. One of them - wait for it - was to deploy an American aircraft with United Nations markings and hope that it would be shot at.

"The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours," Manning reported Bush as saying. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach." Dubya also thought of assassinating the Iraqi dictator, and a scheme "to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam's WMD". Blair's reaction to these mad fantasies was not recorded.

Given John Howard's vaunted closeness to his great and powerful friends, you wonder how much he knew of this at the time. On February 4, 2003, just four days after Bush and Blair met in the Oval Office to decide on war, Howard got to his feet in Parliament to say this: "We, all of us, hope that it will still prove possible to find an outcome acceptable to the international community without military force being used. The Government will not make a final decision to commit to military conflict unless and until it is satisfied that all achievable options for a peaceful resolution have been explored." So did B1 and B2 keep him in the dark? Or had he, too, secretly agreed to take Australia to war? I think we should be told.

more
http://smh.com.au/news/mike-carlton/reptiles-get-in-a-blather-over-blair/2006/03/31/1143441335094.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

[axollot]

14. ROFLMAO @ B1 & B2 comment!

Hilarious, calling them from the ABC (Australia) kid show Bananas in Pajama's.

[AuntiBush]

10. Well Stated.

Wish he'd decide to step-down so this country can start the HUGE clean-up, both domestically and abroad.

:kick:

[glitch]

13. Someone made the great point that Rumsfeld can't step down, replacing him

would initiate too much publicity on what bushcos been up to. In which case, what karma. Even if he desperately wants to retire, even if he's exhausted, beleaguered and miserable and sick, he can't retire.
None of them can, not until they've put a "government" that won't investigate their crimes, ever, securely in place.
Talk about beware what you ask for.