Bush in his bunker

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The reviews are in, and they are terrible. The reaction to the President’s speech of January 10 --from the public, the media, and the overwhelming majority of Democrats and many influential Republicans in congress -- shows just how isolated George Bush has become on the question of Iraq.

Victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan. When George W. Bush launched his illegal war almost four years ago, we who opposed it were an embattled minority. Our voices were only faintly heard amid the triumphal chorus. The public, in the mood for revenge and scared to death by the specter of more 9-11s continuously invoked by the Bush administration’s manipulation machine, supported the invasion by a large margin. Big media, in bed with the administration on the war -- the term “embedded” is apt -- asked no questions about the legality of the war and few about Bush’s justification or the ultimate cost of the conflict. In Congress, almost all Republicans backed the President enthusiastically while only a handful of Democrats dared mount a spirited opposition.

Now, more than three thousand American military deaths, almost half a trillion dollars, and many false declarations of progress later, many of those who cheered when it seemed it would be an easy task to remake Iraq into a country that would serve U.S. interests in the Middle East have defected.

In a typical poll, Americans opposed Bush’s plan to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq by more than 2 to 1 (66 percent versus 32 percent).

CNN, once willing to use the administration’s public relations language (“Operation Enduring Freedom”), now eschewed “surge” and other euphemisms and called the President’s proposal by its name: Escalation.

Hard-core conservative Republican Senators like Sam Brownback of Kansas and Gordon Smith of Oregon broke rank with Bush. Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, a moderate Republican, probably made the strongest statement of all in characterizing the President’s plan as “the most dangerous blunder since Vietnam.”

http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Max_Castro&otherweek=1169100000


El Mono Bush

I guess it was taken digitally, but can you imagine being the photographer in the old days, developing that in a bath, and watching that face float up at you? Gah!