President Bush and his followers have now launched a full-scale
defense of his policy in Iraq and a full-on assault on his detractors.
And yet their weapon of choice is spin, not strategy. Listening to the
president speak about Iraq this week, one had the feeling that he must
be living in a parallel universe. Is he unwilling to level with the
American people about the cold reality that is Iraq today? Or is he
unaware of the minefield he has walked the country into?
The truth hurts. More than 60 U.S. troops have died
in Iraq since President Bush went on vacation. Iraq's interim
government has twice missed the deadline for presenting a constitution.
The current draft of the constitution not only threatens to create an
illiberal Shia theocracy that doesn't respect the rights of women and
religious minorities, but also risks intensifying the current
undeclared sectarian civil war. And the president's approval rating has
dropped to an all-time low of 36 percent -- lower than Richard Nixon's approval rating at the height of Watergate. Cindy Sheehan is not the only American who thinks that things aren't going so well in Iraq.
The
White House’s solution to its problems? Sending the president to the
friendly environs of Utah and Idaho and putting its spinmeister Dan
Bartlett on television to simply insist that "we have the right
strategy to prevail."
As a former White House chief of
staff, I can say that the most important duty of a senior advisor is
not to say "yes, sir," but to honestly present the facts and the
options available to the country. If the president's advisors can't
confront the truth or don't have the courage to tell the president the
truth, they shouldn't have taken the job in the first place.
Instead
of spending time plotting motorcade routes to avoid Cindy Sheehan
protests, the president’s advisors should be spending their time laying
out the situation on the ground and the impact the war is having on
terrorist networks, regional stability, sectarian conflict within Iraq,
our overstretched ground forces, and U.S. security.
The Center for American Progress has drafted a memo that outlines the facts and challenges in Iraq. This is the memo that the White House Iraq Group should – but probably won’t – send the president.
Jay Chase of Davenport New York rides
his 12-year-old horse, Will, past a gas station in Oneonta, New York.
Chase said this was the first time he had ridden his horse to run
errands instead of driving his car.
They started a war for oil that has actually decreased the number of
barrels produced by Iraq and they just rammed through Chimpy's energy
bill that does nothing but give tax breaks and kickbacks to the oil
industry. The GOP is not the party of responsibility, it's the party responsible.
At a town hall meeting this week, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) wanted to
talk about Social Security and Medicare, but the session quickly turned
to gas prices.
When Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) toured a Veterans
Affairs clinic Wednesday, the first question put to her was: "What are
you going to do about the high price of gasoline?"
And a growing number of GOP officials worry that, as the party
in power, Republicans will pay their own high price — at the ballot
box. They are scrambling to find ways to respond.
"People are mad as hell," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said.
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) predicted: "When [voters] start to see
that this is not the end but the beginning [of high prices], they are
going to be kind of harsh."
[Rep. Joe] Barton [R-Oil Indusrty], the House Energy Committee chairman, said complaints about high prices were hard to escape.
Because his car has a congressional license plate, people have
come up to him and asked, "Are you Congressman Barton?" But with public
irritation so high, he said, "My temptation is to say, 'No, I'm just
working for him.' "
No doubt the oil companies have been gouging us for years and have
gotten more agressive about it, with the Enabler in Chief in office.
But, it doesn't matter if we have tons of the stuff! We have to get off
of petrol before the planet completely burns up. Commander Collins of
the recent Shuttle trip said that atmosphere looked like a very fragile
egg from up there and you could actually see not only holes in the
ozone and there was a noticable difference in where the coasts lines
are compared to where they were just a few years ago. This is about 90%
due to burning fossil fuels. We have to get off of this stuff and fast
or there really won't be anything left but oil.
And anyone who is running on high gas prices should make sure to point
out that it's the almighty "free market" that got us into this. Destroy
the supply while boosting the demand. Nice work, clowns.
A
painting of the United States sinking into a toilet now on display in
the cafeteria of the state Department of Justice has raised the ire of
the California state Republican Party, which is demanding that Attorney General
Bill Lockyer remove the image.
The
painting -- part of an exhibit of more than 30 works by lawyer artists
and pieces with overt legal themes -- has an American flag-painted
continental United States heading into a toilet. Next to it are the
words: "T'anks to Mr. Bush."
The
artist, Stephen Pearcy, a Berkeley lawyer with a house in Sacramento,
won earlier notoriety for hanging an effigy of an American soldier on
the outside of his home here with a sign saying "Bush lied, I died."
Angry residents tore the effigies down.
To support his thesis, Pearcy recites a litany of government actions he
objects to including torture of detainees, censorship, hiring "more cops
rather than teachers," SUVs and lack of corporate accountability.
In front of Pearcy's painting is a pair of ceramic Western boots whose
creator, Corrine Singleton, said represented Western justice.
Other artists also expressed political sentiments:
John K. Landgraf, who created the Blind Justice in her cell with blood
spattered across it, said "the current administration's constraint and abuse
of Justice (for whatever reason) cast an ominous shadow over our nation's
moral integrity."
Another artist called for an end to genocide in Rwanda.
"I
don't know why we need to tolerate the cheap artwork of a gadfly with a
world view that is so offensive to a majority of the people," said
Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for the California Republican Party.
Didn't I see Ms. Hanretty leaving WalMart the other day with a shopping cart full of Bill of Rights toilet paper? I think I did!
President Bush and his followers have now launched a full-scale
defense of his policy in Iraq and a full-on assault on his detractors.
And yet their weapon of choice is spin, not strategy. Listening to the
president speak about Iraq this week, one had the feeling that he must
be living in a parallel universe. Is he unwilling to level with the
American people about the cold reality that is Iraq today? Or is he
unaware of the minefield he has walked the country into?
They started a war for oil that has actually decreased the number of
barrels produced by Iraq and they just rammed through Chimpy's energy
bill that does nothing but give tax breaks and kickbacks to the oil
industry. The GOP is not the party of responsibility, it's the 
