You'd think with so many failures under their belts,

[Ilsa]

that DimSon and Condi wouldn't be using the Israel-Lebanon situation to try and remake the Middle East. But they are so full of themselves that they think they can manage it with her going to Israel and allowing the slaughter to continue. Has anyone told the Chimperor yet that Iraq is falling apart and the Taliban have taken over all of Afghanistan except for Karzai's house?

Of course, the speechwriter would have bush calline my comments "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

[kenny blankenship]

1. They're keeping to a schedule that was laid down before 2003 no doubt

the Bush Administration is headed into its home stretch, right?
They expect to wring political gain from Israel on the warpath and perhaps with us bombing Iran and maybe Syria as well in conjunction with Israel.
In America, election dates are fixed. They can be planned around by Administrations and foreign powers as well... For example, in 1968 Johnson desperately wanted to get a ceasefire agreement with Vietnam (N), however the Republicans stepped outside the legal bounds of politics and persuaded the S. Vientamese gov't to hold out and not sign onto any peace agreements because, they said, Nixon could get them a better deal. 25,000 more Americans paid for that treachery with their lives and God knows how many more Vietnamese died because of it. Nixon's failure and the illegality of his manouver however aren't the point, the shaping role of the electoral calendar of the U.S. in world events is what I'm highlighting...

So this is THE YEAR, the last Congressional elections when Bush will still be President over the resulting Congress. The run-up to Iraq set the stage for 2002. Whipping up war-fever after an election doesn't make as much sense, you need war fever to drive more people to your banner. So they need to do "the Big One" now to polarize the electorate. keep Congressional elections stealable and achieve their remaining domestic goals inside the United States. Perhaps they wanted to kick off the festivities sooner and be in Tehran by Nov. 2006--and I'm SURE they thought things would be going much better in Baghdad about now--but after 2006 is definitely when the window closes. No other President in history would conspire to start a series of regional wars with Israel and encourage them to start their own interlocking wars and shield them from all UN criticism like George W. Bush has, so it's really now or never.

[thepurpose]

2. But every failure is a win when you have Karl Rove on your side. He just

scares everyone into believing the unbelievable.