No Apologies: Elanor Clift

[Nancy Waterman]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4703084/

This is the week Iraq spun out of control. And where is Bush? He’s on a weeklong spring break at his ranch. He seems increasingly disengaged. Perhaps behind the scenes he’s calling Rumsfeld and demanding to know what’s going on. When he finds out, he owes the country an explanation, and not just a speech, a full-blown news conference where he engages the press and lays out what is happening. The Iraqi people are supposed to be our friends. We liberated them. Why are they fighting us? And, Mr. President, it’s not enough to say, “They don’t love freedom.”

snip

If the definition of a quagmire is the more you struggle, the more you get pulled in, Iraq qualifies. It’s a loaded term because it evokes Vietnam. Sen. Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the explosion of violence this week in Iraq reminded him of the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam in the sense that it awakened the public to a failed policy. It took a change of presidents and several more deadly years before America cut its losses and withdrew from Vietnam.

[stellanoir]

1. you know. . .

I find the whole "they hate us for our freedoms" schtick is so tiresome. Like freedom hating people love oppression. . .?

Come on. . .poverty and lack of options and repression due to our support of totalitarian regimes causes terrorism. No one on earth hates freedom. They rebel completely against the total lack of it.

I've been wanting to compile an anti-* diatribe entitled "hated for his freedom"

to lie
to loot
to cheat
to mislead
etc.

but I've truly been too totally annoyed to get around to it.

oh well

[teryang]

2. Mea culpa

Fat chance. These arrogant killers? They've gotten away with murder and fraud so many times they don't know the meaning of accountability.

[cosmicdot]

3. "a full-blown news conference where he engages the press"

stop, Eleanor, you're killing me ... that would require a someone with skill ... a leader

[slor]

4. GREAT READ...

Thanks for posting.

[VolcanoJen]

5. "Lyin' Eyes"

Excellent article, thank you, Nancy!

Either way you shake this horrible situation, it's a bad outcome.

From Clift's editorial:

With U.S. Marines dying in Iraq and the administration’s postwar policy in shambles, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s reassurances that American forces would prevail met with skepticism on Capitol Hill. “Baghdad Bob could be working for the Coalition,” said a Senate aide to a senior Republican. “The scary thing is, the administration doesn’t know how bad it is, or they know it’s bad and they’re misleading the public. They’re telling congressional leaders this is a minor flare-up.”

[Beetwasher]

6. Clift Has Been Consistently Damn Good!

And she does it again! One of the few real good ones left...