NYT, p. 1: Making a Case for a (Bush) Mission

NEWS ANALYSIS
Making a Case for a Mission
By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: April 14, 2004


WASHINGTON, April 13 — Facing a moment of political peril unlike any in the more than one thousand days of his presidency, George W. Bush made the case on Tuesday night for staying the course in Iraq with the language and zeal of a missionary and combined it with a stark warning that failure would embolden America's enemies around the world.

"We're changing the world," Mr. Bush said halfway through a speech and news conference that was largely an hourlong justification for holding fast in Iraq, no matter how the casualties mount, no matter how chaotic the process of forming a new government.

Drawing later on a line he often slips into his campaign speeches, he reminded a global audience that "freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom."...

***

(Bush reached) for the kind of language about America's moral mission in the world that seemed drawn from the era of Teddy Roosevelt, whose speeches he keeps on the coffee table of his ranch in Texas. He described an America chosen by God to spread freedom. He never used the word "crusade," which touched off a firestorm of criticism in the Muslim world when he uttered it soon after Sept. 11, 2001. But he described one....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/politics/14ASSE.html

:puke:

slurping Bush's butt!

... too goddamned polite in this. Never a mention of the (l)ie word, not a one....

Sanger is scared, like most of the press attending to the White House.

Like too many.

by Bush's single-minded, religiously-based zeal: "Beyond the rallying call, however, Mr. Bush offered little in the way of new strategy, perhaps because he believes none is called for, perhaps because to offer it would be to acknowledge that the course he followed in Iraq over the past year did not end up with the April 2004 he once envisioned." Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but Sanger seems to offer up the possibility that Bush, in his missionary zeal, may believe that no pratical strategy is "called for."

... what Sanger wrote?

I think not.

I hope not.

as George W. Bush could have attained the Presidency, with or without a stolen election, in Murrow's time -- and, sadly, lowered standards both in education and journalism have contributed to the predicament in which we now find ourselves. My expectations of the working press today are pretty low, which is probably why I gave Sanger credit for pointing out to Times readers, in an otherwise curious piece, that Bush seems to think he is on a God-driven mission.

the NYT's lead editorial is scathing.

morning for flame wars.

I certainly did not get this. He continually linked Iraq 2 9/11, blaming Iraq for terrorism. Teddy Roosevelt, my ass! In your dreams, you wish!

How could Bush possibly have any ressemblence to Teddy?

Quite frankly Bush probably doesn't even know who he is.

Because you surely know that Teddy Roosevelt didn't create the United Nations? Franklin Roosvelt was instrumental in setting it up, though he died before it came into being. His widow Eleanor was also vital in getting it started.

Closing down the Iraqi Newspaper and suppressing freedom of speech did indeed set off the firestorm in Fulluja.

Was this an exercise in Democracy Mr. SANGER?

Is the the charge of murder, and the arrest of Muqtada Shra the excuse needed to lay siege to a city? Is Killing civilians young and old, by the clearheaded marine sharpshooters the answer to winning the hearts of the Iraqis?

Why $1000 a day mercenaries to guard food? Don't you find this more than strange Mr. SANGER?

Was this an act of Democracy?

I'm aghast by your article in the New York Times this morning. But I will defend the right and will fight for the right for YOU and your opinion. (By the way MR. SANGER, was it ever revealed what was written in those Iraqi newspapers that was so subversive?)

Who will fight for the Iraqis right to have freedom of speech?

Bush speaks like a robber baron from the gilded age-TR was an enormously well-read person -certainly personally brave and believed in the power of government to reign in corporate powers-he would roll in his grave after the sputtering performance of "Inarticulate Man" who happens to be our president-Teddy believed in a strong federal government able to combat the worst vices of corporate power-it seems like shrub never felt that way-today shrub makes TR look like a liberal!

That came after reporters asked him if he had made any mistakes up to 9/11.

It is Mr. Bush's sense of mission that sustains him these days, his friends say. But that trait may also explain why he was so unwilling to directly engage the reporters who kept asking him whether he had regrets about failing to do more to prepare for terrorist attacks in that fateful summer of 2001 or whether he believed that he had made mistakes in the march to Baghdad.

Same thing with the lead story in the Screw York Times. God, what a waste of dead trees :eyes:

that "freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world," I wonder? I'm half expecting these yahoos to come out with a new, improved version of the bible called "New American Century Bible." It will contain the "Book of Bush," wherein Bush will speak of his messages from God.

http://www.spectacle.org/1002/hogan.html

America's Messianic War Cult

We have met the hegemony, and he is us
by Matthew Hogan hoganzeroes@aol.com

HIJACKING NATIONAL SECURITY: THE WAR PARTY

Who's flying the plane? --- The probable terrifying final thoughts of many September 11, 2001 victims.

Today, many are asking the same thing about the Bush Administration's subsequent foreign policy. Despite failing to secure Osama bin-Laden's fate, the Administration now careens in search of ever-expanding Executive Branch-initiated war against an "axis of evil." First stop, Iraq.

* * * *

Inspired by the age-old impulse for a political Messiah, the neoconservatives seek to self-righteously impose world redemption through militant imperial American federal government power. In effect then, they are America's Messianic War Cult. And so, after the Twin Towers have fallen, the neocons turn to empire state building.

And God help those "evildoers" who disagree or stand in the way.

The neocons have the energy, and now with Administration allegiance, the firepower to pursue these goals in deadly earnest. Their vision is not limited government conservatism, nor even Big Government left-liberalism. It is Limitless Government insanity.

Predictably enough, cult-like language (e.g. "evildoers") has cropped up in the President's speeches post-9/11. The 2002 State of the Union speech gave us the "axis of evil". That phrase did not come from Christian Evangelical speech-writers as one might expect, but from the neoconnish David Frum. We also increasingly hear a regular insistence upon, rather than a mere responsible recognition of, America's place of leadership in the world.

We have met the hegemony, and he is us.