Bush, Iraq, and Repeating Lies Until They Are True

Speaking of journalists, so many gave Bush an easy 3-4 years in office. Softball questions during any press conference...apparently scared to fall out of favor with a White House administration that you didn't want to anger.

Burn me on this quote...oh, how I know someone will want to burn me on this quote:

"First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."
by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

But the Bush administration reminds me of the quote based on their:

• persecution of gays in this country...
• insistence on repeating the same bad information (defined by most of us as lies) until most of America has been pounded into submission and takes it as factual evidence...
• harrassing, detaining, and deporting Arab Americans and muslims...
• abuse of Arabs who were neither terrorists nor enemy combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan (many of the abused were in for common crimes, rather than military fighting, but the prison population wasn't segregated)...
• shipping American citizens off to GITMO if they are suspected of aiding or participating in terrorist acts, without any semblance of due process...
• attempts to rig the vote while intimidating African Americans away from the polls...

Someone, please paint me a pretty picture on Iraq...if you can. Day by day, it becomes more of what I have always heard Vietnam to have been: a fruitless exercise littered with the dead bodies of economically-challenged young Americans. This battle for Falluja...mark my words...will not turn the tide in our favor. In fact, I can't think of much of anything that will turn the fight in our favor.

After toppling the Hussein regime, we had a wonderful opportunity to return the country to its citizens. But, of course, we didn't. An overwhelming majority (and I'm not talking about Rove's 51% definition) wanted a theocracy...a government that would be led by the Holy Quran and the people. Perish the thought! We couldn't let that happen. Self-determination and sovereignty? What are these things? No...we forced democracy on them (one, I believe, without an electoral college, I might add).

"Forced democracy" has to be the most oxymoronic phrase I've ever encountered.

The administration's failure to create an effective post-war plan of action for Iraq would certainly seem to make "military intelligence" rank a close second. (Note: I'm directing that at top brass, not at the men and women that are putting their lives on the line every day in Iraq)

We've made every attempt to keep religious leaders from having a fair chance at garnering a position of power. You know...the leaders that most likely helped galvanize the failed attempt to overthrow Saddam previously (one we basically gave Saddam a thumbs up to crush in the 90s). Good thing we didn't let them in...it isn't like they could rally their people or anything.

So...with a country that wasn't theirs under Saddam...and stands a great chance of not being truly theirs under Allawi...they have nothing to lose. Every night that we add to the total of dead Iraqis and foreign combatants, we basically produce a new recruitment video.

To put it in terms that any fan of bad 80's movies can understand: this is the Iraqi version of "RED DAWN"...except with porous borders that allow the Iraqi rebels to replenish the numbers of the resistance early and often. They're, also, much more effective than Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell.

This can only end badly, folks...