I don't know what is worse - the lies, or the massive self-deception.  Bush is holding the army back from massive attacks on Falluja and other insurgent strongholds till after the election since the army expects high US casulty rates and Bush doesn't want to jeopordize his re-cornonation.
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Dance of the Marionettes

September 26, 2004
 By MAUREEN DOWD 

 It's heartwarming, really.

President Bush has his own Mini-Me now, someone to echo his
every word and mimic his every action.

For so long, Mr. Bush has put up with caricatures of a wee
W. sitting in the vice president's lap, Charlie McCarthy
style, as big Dick Cheney calls the shots. But now the
president has his own puppet to play with.

All last week in New York and Washington, Prime Minister
Ayad Allawi of Iraq parroted Mr. Bush's absurd claims that
the fighting in Iraq was an essential part of the U.S.
battle against terrorists that started on 9/11, that the
neocons' utopian dream of turning Iraq into a modern
democracy was going swimmingly, and that the worse things
got over there, the better they really were.

It's the media's fault, the two men warble in a duet so
perfectly harmonized you wonder if Karen Hughes wrote Mr.
Allawi's speech, for not showing the millions of people in
Iraq who are not being beheaded, kidnapped, suicide-bombed
or caught in the cross-fire every day; and it's John
Kerry's fault for abetting the Iraqi insurgents by
expressing his doubts about our plan there, as he once did
about Vietnam.

"These doubters risk underestimating our country and they
risk fueling the hopes of the terrorists," Mr. Allawi told
Congress in a rousing anti-Kerry stump speech for
Bush/Cheney, a follow-up punch to Mr. Cheney's claim that a
vote for John Kerry is a vote for another terrorist attack
on America.

First the Swift boat guys; now the swift dhow prime
minister.

Just as Mr. Cheney, Rummy and the neocons turned W. into a
host body for their old schemes to knock off Saddam,
transform the military and set up a pre-emption doctrine to
strike at allies and foes that threatened American
hyperpower supremacy, so now W. has turned Mr. Allawi into
a host body for the Panglossian palaver that he believes
will get him re-elected. Every time the administration
takes a step it says will reduce the violence, the violence
increases.

Mr. Bush doesn't seem to care that by using Mr. Allawi as a
puppet in his campaign, he decreases the prime minister's
chances of debunking the belief in Iraq that he is a Bush
puppet - which is the only way he can gain any credibility
to stabilize his devastated country and be elected himself.


Actually, being the president's marionette is a step up
from Mr. Allawi's old jobs as henchman for Saddam Hussein
and stoolie for the C.I.A.

It's hilarious that the Republicans have trotted out Mr.
Allawi as an objective analyst of the state of conditions
in Iraq when he's the administration's handpicked guy and
has as much riding on putting the chaos in a sunny light as
they do. Though Mr. Allawi presents himself as representing
all Iraqis, his actions have been devised to put more of
the country in the grip of this latest strongman - giving
himself the power to declare martial law, bringing back the
death penalty and kicking out Al Jazeera.

Bush officials, who proclaim themselves so altruistic about
bringing liberty to Iraq, really see Iraq in a creepy
narcissistic way: It's all about Mr. Bush's re-election.

As The Chicago Tribune reported, Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage alleged that Iraqi insurgents have stepped
up their bloody attacks because they want to "influence the
election against President Bush."

At a recent G.O.P. fund-raiser, House Speaker Dennis
Hastert claimed that terrorists would be happier with a
Kerry presidency. "I don't have data or intelligence to
tell me one thing or another," he said, but "I would think
they would be more apt to go" for "somebody who would file
a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than
respond with troops."

Faced with their dystopia, the utopians are scaling back
their grand visions for Iraq's glorious future.

Rummy suggested last week that a fractional democracy might
be good enough. "Let's say you tried to have an election,
and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of
the country, but some places you couldn't because the
violence was too great," he said at a hearing on Capitol
Hill, adding: "Nothing's perfect in life."

At a Pentagon briefing on Friday, Rummy also blew off Colin
Powell's so-called Pottery Barn rule that if we broke Iraq,
we own it. "Any implication that that place has to be
peaceful and perfect before we can reduce coalition and
U.S. forces, I think, would obviously be unwise, because
it's never been peaceful and perfect," he said. "It's a
tough part of the world."

As he said after the early looting in Iraq: "Stuff
happens."

LINK



1:47:45 PM