- I guess it was inevitable. Someone has compared President
George Bush to "Baghdad Bob," the inadvertently comical Iraqi
information minister who kept insisting Iraq was winning the war even as
American tanks gathered outside his office.
-
- This came after the president's latest press conference,
when he said attacks were increasing in Iraq because the occupation was
so successful. In other words, the situation is worse because the situation
is better. The more successful we are, the more Americans and Iraqis will
die from bombs and ambushes. It was Bill Press, the other half of the TV
show with Pat Buchanan, who came up with that wisecrack.
-
- The president's handlers are wise to keep him away from
news conferences. He doesn't handle them well. At this one, you could see
from his facial expression that he was not happy to be there. He was, as
most politicians are, defensive and evasive. He absolutely refuses to acknowledge
that the people attacking Americans in Iraq are anyone but Saddam loyalists
and foreign terrorists. Actually, most of them are probably just Iraqis
who resent foreign occupation and the bad behavior of some American troops.
-
- If he read newspapers, which he told a TV interviewer
that he doesn't, he would know that. Even one of the American officers
in Iraq recently slipped up and, in an interview with a journalist, referred
to the guerrillas as "freedom fighters." There is scant evidence
of any sizable number of foreign terrorists, at least none that secretive
American officials have been willing to make public. One guy shot the other
day by Iraqis had a Syrian passport, but that doesn't mean he was necessarily
a Syrian. People in the terrorist business usually have several passports.
-
- And, of course, the president made no mention whatsoever
of weapons of mass destruction. During the marketing campaign for the war,
he hardly opened his mouth without talking about weapons of mass destruction.
He refuses to acknowledge that he made a mistake when he said major combat
was over last May. That's what irritates me most about politicians. They're
human. They can make mistakes. Why not say so?
-
- What's wrong with saying: "Yes, at that time, I
thought major combat was over. I knew there would be some resistance, but
it's been more deadly and lasted longer than I anticipated." Nobody
would hold that against him. But, no, he's perfect. It reminds me of that
old joke that says, "We Southerners may not always be right, but,
by God, we ain't never wrong." At any rate, now the guerrillas have
killed more Americans than the Iraqi army did during that major combat.
-
- He keeps repeating that canard that "terrorists
hate freedom." Nonsense. There is no terrorist in the world who is
a terrorist because he hates freedom. By far, the majority of terrorists
are fighting for freedom of some group that doesn't have it. In the case
of Iraq, it is freedom from American occupation; with the Irish Republican
Army, it was freedom from British rule; with the Palestinians, freedom
from Israeli occupation; and so forth. It is absurd to suppose that a human
being sitting around suddenly stands up and says: "You know, I hate
freedom. I think I'll go blow myself up."
-
- What one wants in a president, besides basic honesty,
are intelligence and sound judgment. One wants someone who is well-read
in history and geography and has experience so that he can properly assess
situations and make wise decisions.
-
- Sadly, I think that's where the president fails, despite
his good intentions. To admit that he relies on his staff to tell him what's
going on in the world is to admit that he puts himself in the position
of being manipulated by his staff. No good leader would rely on his staff
without developing his own independent sources of information, lest he
find himself being manipulated into following the staff's agenda instead
of his own.
-
- He was certainly told that Iraqis would be dancing in
the streets welcoming us, but the only dancing was done by Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz when rockets went off in the floor beneath his
hotel room and he leaped out of bed and frantically put his clothes on
to get out of there.
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- © 2003 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
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- http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20031107/index.php
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