About the Bush Surge...is it really just Bush digging in the heels

[Jackpine Radical]

of his low-heeled, never-been-on-a-horse cowboy boots, or is there a hard kernel of advisers around him telling him to stay the course? Everybody, on DU and in the real, rational world as well, seems to be attributing this buildup notion to the Little Emperor as if it were his idea and his stubborn determination creating this policy. But is it really? I've never thought of Bush as the originator of much besides fart jokes. I've never really conceived him as having designs on actually making world policy, just on aggrandizing himself in a very narrow sense. When people attribute motives to him based on his putative concern for his legacy, I remember the frat boy who kept walking away from one business disaster after another, unscathed and unconcerned about the disasters he left behind every time. I think of him walking away from Katrina, leaving his corrupt minions to finish the job of ethnic cleansing. Legacy schmegacy, I say. Narcissistic psychopaths really don't care enough about the opinions of others to entertain notions about reputations or legacies. This guy is a tool, has always been a tool, and will continue as a tool. My major intellectual problem right now is in trying to figure out whose tool, and what anyone hopes to accomplish. About the best I can come up with is that the looters--like maybe Cheney--see the handwriting on the wall and are putting him up to one last major outpouring from the national treasury, one last gigantic credit card binge, before the whole show closes down under public cries of outrage.

[wryter2000]

1. Honestly

I have no idea. I can't fathom anything that goes on inside that echo chamber of a head he has.

[KKKarl is an idiot]

2. It is the CEO's of the

oil companies & defense contractors who are making the decisions.

[BonnieJW]

3. Bingo

[Double T]

4. Acting president cheney is at the controls from his shadow government.........

outpost. Acting president cheney has empowered bush to be his front man, while cheney works behind the scenes with the military industrial complex, the big oil and energy companies and wall street. I agree with you; there will a final push to siphon off as many dollars as possible before the end of this heinous regime's reign of terror.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Yup. Exactly the way I see it.

It wouldn't be rove because there is no popular political advantage--at least none I can see--to the surge. Rove is a purely political critter, an image man, into power for its own sake. Cheney is the behind-the-scenes, secret policy, loot-the-treasury guy, Satan's policy wonk. It's gotta be Cheney, regardless of whatever cosmetic "distancing" he might play at.

[chieftain]

6. Every fucked up action of this regime has W's full support.

He is not controlled by the oil, armaments and pharmaceutical industries. He firmly believes in their right to screw the world for their private gain. I agree that the details of each of these perfidious operations have been left to others as the little prince bicycles around DC. But make no mistake, none of these misbegotten policies were pressed upon him against his better judgement, they accurately reflect what he truly believes. As more and more of his confidantes become discredited, there is no course correction. It is full speed ahead and damn the consequences to the rest of the world. We are in the clutches of a man with the world view of a 1920's plutocrat with an assortment of sociopathic tendencies that is truly frightening.

[NanceGreggs]

7. I think you've hit the nail on the head ...

"... one last major outpouring from the national treasury, one last gigantic credit card binge, before the whole show closes down under public cries of outrage."

[Tommy_J]

8. Bush has to dig in his heals!

When the war ends and the public realizes the cost of this defeat there will be deep anger.
When coming investigations into WMD, Katrina, 9/11, Haliburton, Cheney's Energy Task force, and so on, are complete there will be deep anger.

I believe * knows he may face trails.

His only hope is to continue the war. Being a "war president" is his shield