Sunday, July 10, 2005

Mendacity Never Sleeps

....and it certainly doesn't take the weekend off. From Saturday, President Bush: ""We will stay on the offense, fighting the terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them at home." And Scott McClellan, telling reporters what Bush will say in a speech at the FBI on Monday: "He'll talk about (how) in the short term, it's taking the fight to the enemy abroad..."

Right back on message, eh?

And for a refreshing dose of reality, Senator Harry Reid from yesterday: "We need to finally bring Osama bin Laden to account for his crimes."

On September 12, 2001, what would you have said if I told you that in 2005 the two main organizers of 9/11 would be living freely within the borders of one of our allies and casually releasing videotapes, Bush would mention Bin Laden's name only a handful of times over the next four years including statements like "I truly am not that concerned about him", and it was left to Democrats like Harry Reid to keep the flame of outrage alive?

Would you have believed me?

And if you're a Republican and the current facts were the same except Al Gore had been president for the past four and a half years, what would you be saying right now?

28 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Too bad you aren't privy to the GOP mailing list.

7/10/2005 8:33 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good point about what a Repub would say with a Dem president. I think I know the answer.

7/10/2005 8:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Reminds me of when, for at least one if not two weeks after Abu Ghraib broke, Bush was still out giving stump speeches that included the line about ending Saddam's 'rape rooms and torture chambers.'

Not to mention the Pet Goat bewilderment, or being uninformed while riding his bike when the recent errant Cessna had the rest of Washington in a panic.

Won't they ever let poor George be in the loop?

7/10/2005 10:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

No...I would not have believed you.
Life is just full of surprises...
guess we will just have to be a
bit more patient. Oh, I forgot,
you folks from the fast food
generation don't have patience.
(OMG, the Iraqi's don't have a
constitution yet..its been 48
hours..what's taking them so long!).
If Gore, who I voted for, had been
elected President and followed the
same exact policies that Bush has...I would have considered Gore
to be one great President; and I
truly believe that as President,
Gore would have followed the same
policies.

7/10/2005 10:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It doesn't matter one whit who's president. The single overriding concept to Americans is that we have not been attacked domestically again. Everything else is noise.

7/10/2005 10:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have a hard time imagining Gore fouling up as much as Bush has. Not because Gore is that great, but because nobody would have let Gore get away with half of the stuff that Bush gets away with. Gore would not have been re-elected in 2004 without Osama Bin Laden's head on a pike.

7/10/2005 11:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Norm204- Don't have patience?

Number of days elapsed between Pearl Harbor and VJ Day: 1,343

Number of days elapsed between 9/11/01 and 7/11/05: 1,399

'nuff said.

7/10/2005 11:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Guess we ain't in WWII anymore!
I think we are in a different type
of war today...but you can keep
counting the days if you wish.

7/10/2005 11:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not in WW 2 anymore? You can say that again. Remember when our leaders used to tell us we needed to SACRIFICE during wartime, and EVERYONE (including celebrities and top athletes) enlisted?

7/10/2005 11:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's asinine to believe Gore would have done the same thing Bush did. No president in modern times would have done what George Bush did. You are a serious kool aide drinker if you don't see Bush's surreal actions as completely outside the bounds of any modern historical context.

7/11/2005 12:10 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Would you have believed me?

Or if you'd said they would use our own tactics (read: taking the war abroad) against us?

7/11/2005 1:06 AM  
Blogger James Finkelstein (Ga.) said...

Fantasy meets Reality. Unfortunately, Fantasy is President of the United States:

“We are fighting these terrorists with our military in Afghanistan and Iraq and beyond so we do not have to face them in the streets of our own cities....Victory in Iraq is essential to victory in the war on terror. We have a strategy to achieve that victory.”

President George W. Bush, Greely Colorado, October 25, 2004.

"An assault on Iraq will inflame world opinion and jeopardise security and peace everywhere. London, as one of the major world cities, has a great deal to lose from war and a lot to gain from peace, international cooperation and global stability."

Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, September 28, 2002 (prior to America’s invasion of Iraq in March of 2003).

7/11/2005 1:34 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great catch on that Livingstone quote, Mr. Finkelstein. With Ken Livingstone being praised, and properly so, for his eloquent statement last week about the London bombings, this Livingstone quote from September '02 might be effectively placed on a number of pro-war blogs that are displaying the more recent quote.

7/11/2005 1:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What would I say, If I were a republican and Gore had been president doing all the shenanigans that Bush is doing, including the lies, the fraud,the lack of integrity, the injustice etc... etc.. and with 60% of the public against the war now, with the same congress i.e majority republicans, and the senate likwise, HE WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPEACHED WITH A VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE. It is that simple.

But because we have a congress that is as bad as the president, impeachment today for this president is not in the cards. Go figure where is justice - went out the back door or had an 8 years off?

7/11/2005 2:19 AM  
Blogger KS said...

I can think of a few things that President Gore would have done differently. Gore would not have shelved the Hart-Rudman report and Cheney would not have been able to block the changes that the report recommended. Condoleeza Rice would not have been in a position to decide that a memo titled ""Bin Laden Determined to Strike the United States." was 'old news', Gore is a policy wonk and would have read the August 6 memo himself. Gore would not have used the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to carry out a personal grudge against Saddam Hussein.

7/11/2005 10:53 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Forget ALL the things that Gore would have handled differently. If Gore had done with the August 6th PDB what Bush did with it, Gore would have been impeached, and rightly so. No, as KS said, Gore would have read the damn memo and not dismissed it, because, by the light of all the heads of 'hair on fire' he, and Clark et al, would have been busy heading off 9/11 rather than clearing bush (which he actually took care of that past November).

7/11/2005 12:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If Gore had been president and had fucked up as badly as Bush (which is a huge leap to think that he would) DEMOCRATS would have called for his head. That's the difference. Republicans are apparently perfectly happy to let Bush and his gang of criminally stupid thugs get away with it.

I've seen NO evidence from ANY Republican that they have a problem with anything Bush has done. Unless they think it might have some negative impact on the 2006 elections, they will stonewall any action to do anything about it.

To Republicans, it's only about politics. It's never about what's right for the country.

7/12/2005 8:11 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Another perspective on what it means when Bush says we'll fight the terrorist over there, so we don't have to face them here at home:

Riverbend, the eloquent, young Baghdad Blogger, recently put the matter this way from the perspective of a resident of the Iraqi capital:


"Bush said: 'Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war. ... The commander in charge of coalition operations in Iraq, who is also senior commander at this base, General John Vines, put it well the other day. He said, "We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us."'


"He speaks of 'abroad' as if it is a vague desert-land filled with heavily-bearded men and possibly camels. 'Abroad' in his speech seems to indicate a land of inferior people -- less deserving of peace, prosperity and even life. Don't Americans know that this vast wasteland of terror and terrorists otherwise known as 'Abroad' was home to the first civilizations and is home now to some of the most sophisticated, educated people in the region? Don't Americans realize that 'abroad' is a country full of people -- men, women and children who are dying hourly? 'Abroad' is home for millions of us. It's the place we were raised and the place we hope to raise our children -- your field of war and terror."

7/12/2005 3:52 PM  
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