March 24, 2006
"President Bush was beyond pathetic on the issue of Iraq during his press conference this week.
...
Bush has lost the American public on the war, and why he deserved to
lose it was illustrated in spades by the press conference. He was
confused and confusing; he made blatant misstatements of fact; he used
phony arguments against critics of the war; he offered a false picture
of progress in Iraq, then blamed the media for not telling that story.
We will succeed in Iraq ultimately, he said, because he "believes" it.
And, by the way, U.S. troops will be there at least until 2009.
Bush
apparently would like you to forget, and you shouldn't, all those
breezy predictions from administration officials before the war that
Iraq would be a breeze for U.S. troops. They would easily crush armed
resistance, be welcomed with open arms and flowers, seize Saddam
Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, stabilize the country with
minimal troops, quickly get Iraq on its feet and able to rebuild itself
with oil revenues, then leave. No one mentioned being in Iraq in 2005,
let alone 2009.
But there were no WMDs; troops are constantly in
danger; Iraq is still unstable, unreconstructed, full of sectarian
violence and inching toward civil war.
The administration frequently
has changed its story on why we went to war, but the strangest yet came
in Bush's answer to Helen Thomas, the octogenarian journalist who has
more courage in her toe than is evident in the entire White House press
corps combined. Bush invaded Iraq because the Taliban in Afghanistan
provided safe haven for Al-Qaida. Following Sept. 11, Bush said, part
of his job was to "make sure that we didn't allow people to provide
safe haven to an enemy. And that's why I went into Iraq. ... The
Taliban provided safe haven for Al-Qaida."
Bush went on to say that
the invasion ultimately occurred because Saddam "chose to deny [U.N.
weapons] inspectors, chose not to disclose." Actually, Saddam allowed
the inspectors entry, and they were doing their job -- though finding
nothing. They asked for a few more months to finish, and Bush declined,
the strong suspicion being that a clean WMD bill for Iraq would remove
all legitimacy for an American invasion."
Bush Flopped Big-Time in his Defense of Iraq March 24, 2006
See Bush stumble all over himself in front of Helen Thomas (whose microphone was silenced after the initial question).
Who is the terrorist?
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