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Most scathing article/opinion I have yet ever read.

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Decruiter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 03:46 AM
Original message
Most scathing article/opinion I have yet ever read.
snip to almost the end:

"General David Petraeus, U.S. commander in Baghdad, is an outstanding officer who knew when he accepted his job that it was almost impossible. He mused privately to a friend shortly before flying to take up command: 'How do you know when it's beyond hope, and how do you convey that to a President who does not want to hear it?'"

and here is the link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=468368&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=464
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MADem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 03:49 AM
Response to Original message
1. Good old General Betray Us!!! He sees stars, instead of his duty....
Viciously accurate article, that. The start is brutal:

    What if your neighbour suddenly announced that he had spotted fairies at the bottom of the garden, or thought he was about to give birth to an elephant? You would feel sympathy for his loved ones, and maybe suggest that he changed his sleeping tablets. There are lots of such people about the place, harmless and indeed often rather sweet.

    But when America's President, leader of the free world, displays the same symptoms, we are entitled to take fright. On Thursday, George Bush gave a press conference at the White House, during which he asserted that the United States 'can succeed in Iraq'. ......
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Decruiter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 03:58 AM
Response to Reply #1
2. Dear MADem, I feel as though I've lost my mind. I'm living in a twilight zone.
I really am feeling like I just can't take any of this anymore. At all.

I'm so sorry for what we have let happen, I just don't know what I can do to fix it.

Nothing, absolutely f'ing nothing.
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MADem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 04:06 AM
Response to Reply #2
4. Well, we can haul out our old "Regime Change Begins at Home!" bumper stickers, for starters
It is a mess, though.

Those 22 vulnerable GOP senate seats that are up for reelection in 08 I think are the key. Get those guys on our team, and we can grab the administration by the cojones and override anything the Monkey vetos.

Already they're bending, a lot of them. Anyone represented by them needs to call their offices and gripe. They're paying attention--they only do it in the run up to their elections, but now's the time to make them dance to the tune their constituents are playing...!
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WinkyDink Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 04:56 AM
Response to Reply #1
12. The ENTIRE raison d'etre for that "Press Conference" was to deflect attention from the same-time
Edited on Mon Jul-16-07 04:56 AM by WinkyDink
Conyers Hearing with Sara What's her Name.
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Captain Hilts Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 05:55 AM
Response to Reply #12
14. The one that swore to "uphold the President?" Oh, her. nt
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MADem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 02:09 PM
Response to Reply #12
20. Taylor. nt
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Quantess Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 04:03 AM
Response to Original message
3. Most true article/opinion, you mean?
Favorite quote: "It is monstrous to think that thousands more people must die to assuage the self-esteem of this discredited President."

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Decruiter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 04:15 AM
Response to Reply #3
7. I didn't say that. Although I did think and feel it. Like I said, SCATHING! n/t
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Quantess Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 04:51 AM
Response to Reply #7
11. No, I said that.
Edited on Mon Jul-16-07 04:53 AM by quantessd
It is Scathing. But deserved.
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MatrixEscape Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 04:06 AM
Response to Original message
5. And I ...
Edited on Mon Jul-16-07 04:19 AM by MatrixEscape
could succeed on Mars in this noble war! That is, if you will only believe me and have faith in the fact that I have decided it is truly possibler than was thought once before! People of faith and Americun ways can know this in their hearts and in the memory of 9/11 as it reminds of our unforgettable, patrotical duty to keep it remembered.

You see, if you would only ... if they ... if we all would only give me what I know you should and need to, I could do great things on Mars because, well ... there are massive weapons of self-destruction there! The planet is orangish ... ahhh, red colored ... and we all know that red is communistic in its ... presentations for the peoples of democracies at home and for broads.

So, let me, your next decider of ... things important to you and faithful folks from everywhere, get your support and understandings to send many big ships into space to find the tyrants of Mars and fight their terroristic intentions there before Saddam, I mean Osama, gives secret, frightening calls to Martian insurgents, and communicates in most certainly evil ways to them where you are, here ... in this Universe of mine ... ours ... where you are being right now. Fear Mars like I do and we can easily conquer the evildoers that wait to destroy us from every peanut ... uh, planet ... in this solarized system of creation! Ah, thank you!
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Decruiter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 04:13 AM
Response to Reply #5
6. So, you are channeling Bush now from another planet? Sweet, truly. n/t
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MatrixEscape Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 04:31 AM
Response to Reply #5
9. Yes, sadly, or without some sense of something not related ...
Edited on Mon Jul-16-07 04:33 AM by MatrixEscape
I have been chosen ... err, elected ... to channel this information for it's ... ahhh ... great and sudden importance to the communities that are represented by me on this ... peanut ... planet we are knowing as Terra, Terra, Terra, ... ah, ummm, Earth.

Le .. le .. let me say, without no uncertain terms or amounts that this task, that we, I ... all of us as .. (smirk) as a national, benifitting interest, must ... could, might find a relational base of data that we could impress upon Marian culuturisms. Yes, we must impress this data because it is freedom as numerical and like an algebra of stars ! This is data that I have been informed is of the most substance-like for all of you as you listen to me here and take my words as given to you by compassionate conservatism as government. I can only thank you for your prayers for goodness and unquestionable authority as I try to attempt to retaliate ... relate ... what is in the very best interests of spreading this democracy in its benificalist formats towards undemocratic planets that hates us like, heheh, like looters in New Orleans ... eerrh, in their ways across the universes as they are and may be for our goals of freedoms on the march ... as they are and do.

Continue, please, and with honey and sugar on it, because the threats I am helping are bigger than Uranus!
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Decruiter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 04:35 AM
Response to Reply #9
10. You are on a roll. Thank you for your humor and your light.
:rofl: :hug: plus quite simply, well you just :yourock:
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MatrixEscape Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 04:59 AM
Response to Reply #10
13. I can thank you ....
and you will receive a badge and a t-shirt that commemorates our relationships as true patriots in an inter-galactic respects for greater freedoms without restrictions in any ways or means that stand beyond evils.

You can always count on me, as your erected ... elected President, to mouth the words that you would want to speak to me as we engage in this voluntary planetary struggle for secure safeties that ensure our fights ... ummm, rights .... to hold three jobs without the socialist plot of health insuracne, and worry about what I know and tell you is worriable with my God-given, executive privlidges. I am no longer just the decider, I am the worrier for you all and I know and feel your drains ... ah, pains, here in my fortress of people given, decisional solitude!

You are a very good and rather abiding member of my unquestionable realizations of Americanism as we reach for its justified creationism of the facts we know are only truistic. We have only just ... ahhh, began! The best is yet to ... heheh ... happen!
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Solly Mack Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 04:26 AM
Response to Original message
8. It's real simple - you tell the truth and then you resign if no one listens
and then you continue to speak out.

There's no integrity - no honor - no nothing - in enabling a madman. Well, except for complicty...there's plenty of that
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Warren Stupidity Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 06:04 AM
Response to Original message
15. how do you convey that to a President who does not want to hear it
Nazi Germany, summer 1944.

"At 10:00 hours on 20 July Stauffenberg flew back to Rastenburg for another Hitler military conference, once again with a bomb in his briefcase. It is remarkable in retrospect that despite Hitler’s mania for security, officers attending his conferences were not searched.

Around 12:10 hours, the conference began. Stauffenberg had previously activated a pencil detonator, inserted it into a two pound block of plastic explosive, organized by Wessel von Freytag-Loringhoven, and placed it inside his briefcase. He then entered the room and placed his briefcase bomb under the table around which Hitler and more than 20 officers had gathered. After ten minutes, Stauffenberg made an excuse and left the room. At 12:40 the bomb went off, demolishing the conference room. Three officers and the stenographer were seriously injured and died soon after, but Hitler survived, suffering only minor injuries."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_20_Plot

This is one way a madman in charge of a nation gets the bad news about his failed war. Petraeus could of course just resign in protest. He won't do anything. He is a 'good soldier', just like Colin Powell.
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bananarepublican Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 08:46 AM
Response to Reply #15
19. ... via the use of sock puppets! n/t
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Rydz777 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 06:36 AM
Response to Original message
16. I despair not only at the remaining months of the Bush Presidency
but at the monumental mess he will leave behind. Mess is actually too weak a word. He has wrecked our armed forces, left us isolated in the world, piled up a staggering debt which we owe largely to China, Japan, and other Asian countries, sunk the dollar to new lows, corrupted the government, solved no problems, energy or otherwise, and set new standards of incompetence. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

We are going to get a Democratic President, but the challenge will be greater than that which faced any President since Franklin Roosevelt. My fear is that if the new President doesn't perform miracles, he/she will soon be so unpopular as to be paralyzed. I think the new Presidency will get a very short honeymoon - and the worst problem to be confronted will be this war if it is still going on in March 2009. The best present of Democratic Congress can give the next Democratic President is to stop funding this war NOW.
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CrispyQ Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 07:27 AM
Response to Reply #16
17. Well said.
I agree completely, but especially with this: "...the challenge will be greater than that which faced any President since Franklin Roosevelt. My fear is that if the new President doesn't perform miracles, he/she will soon be so unpopular as to be paralyzed."

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JohnnyLib2 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-16-07 07:36 AM
Response to Original message
18. Codependency: Bush and Rove have exploited it and this is another
Edited on Mon Jul-16-07 07:37 AM by JohnnyLib2
example. Appeal to God, Duty, Country, (and get advantages if you go along). Worked on the religious right, worked on the State Dept. and on and on.

Hmmm, wonder if Machiavelli has anything to say on codependency?
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