Chimpie in Exile

Doesn't Chimpie begin to resemble Ferdinand Marcos all of a sudden? Well, maybe that's my own twisted take on all that happened last week, but increasingly he seems trapped and then booted from one location to another. He retreats to Crawford, and Cindy Sheehan pressures him into running away to Idaho, to dwell among white supremacists, I suppose. Now he's headed to Salt Lake City to speak to another hand-picked audience and try to make the moronic war in Iraq the equivalent of World War II. And, of course, having complete run out of lies to tell to justify the involvment and having yet had a single assertion actually prove to be true, he's going to pull out that old chestnut as rationalization that 9/11 made Iraq necessary.

Senior aides say Bush will attempt to portray the Iraq conflict in the context of long wars like World War II, which U.S. forces fought from 1941 to 1945.

They said the president also will invoke the September 11, 2001, attacks, arguing once again that the insurgents battling American troops in Iraq share the same ideology as the al Qaeda operatives who crashed hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

This is the rhetoric of desperation, when you recirculate lies that didn't pass the smell test the first time around. Bush is either so cynical or naive about the public's memory that he things this will work. And as his aides try to steer him only to venues which will preserve his delusion of righteousness, the rats are deserting the ship.

Hagel said "stay the course" is not a policy. "By any standard, when you analyze 2 1/2 years in Iraq ... we're not winning," he said.

President Bush was preparing for separate speeches this week to reaffirm his plan to help Iraq train its security forces while its leaders build a democratic government. In his weekly Saturday radio address, Bush said the fighting there protected Americans at home.

Polls show the public growing more skeptical about Bush's handling of the war.

Note that even as polls reflect the general public's increasing disillusionment with Chimpie's war, and a prominent Republican explicitly contradicts El Presidente's repeat assertions of victory, Bush remains true to script and true to form, unable to acknowledge anything counter to his calcified view of reality.

This guy must be fucking nuts.

Oh, yeah, Ferdinand Marcos . . . what I was getting at that even though Bush is headed to Salt Lake, which he must think will be a nice conservative bastion of monolithic Mormon support and will thus validate his endless repetition of lies, the mayor of SLC is calling out for mass protests to welcome the visit.

Naturally, as in Crawford, knee-jerk Republican supporter of Chimpie will organize a counter-protest, which is fine with me. There is one thing, however, that should be included in their preparations to support El Presidente and his misguided policies. Make sure that Army and Marine recruiting stations are set up around the counter-protest. Nothing tests sincerity like putting your life on the line. I'm sure a lot of those Brigham Young students will be eager to join to go and kill some infidels.